Latest Eurasia Daily Monitor Articles
CRITICS PREDICT MEDVEDEV’S ANTI-CORRUPTION DRIVE WILL ALSO FALL SHORT
Last month President Dmitry Medvedev created an Anti-Corruption Committee that he will head and gave it a month to come up with a national anti-corruption program (see EDM, May 21). He devoted a June 9 meeting with Investigative Committee head Aleksandr Bastrykin to discuss this... MORE
WILL NATO BECOME POPULAR AMONG UKRAINIANS?
The Ukrainian government has launched a campaign to make NATO popular in the country in order to secure a Membership Action Plan (MAP) for Ukraine. The Cabinet of Ministers has approved a plan to increase public awareness of the benefits of NATO membership, and pro-government... MORE
DOES TURKISH-RUSSIAN AGRICULTURAL DISPUTE HAVE UNDERLYING CAUSES?
From Cold War enemies on opposite sides, Turkey and Russia have developed flourishing trade ties since 1991, so much so that last year bilateral trade exceeded $20 billion. Now a dispute over Turkish agricultural exports to the Russian Federation threatens to disrupt the burgeoning trade.... MORE
AUSTRIAN GOVERNMENT, OMV JOINING GAZPROM’S SOUTH STREAM PROJECT, UNDERCUT NABUCCO
The Austrian government and the OMV oil and gas company are about to join Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline project, Gazprom Vice-President Aleksandr Medvedev announced during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum on June 7. Gazprom’s South Stream is a rival to the US-backed, EU top-priority... MORE
SOUTH STREAM, NORTH STREAM INCREASINGLY SEEN AS EXCEEDING GAZPROM’S SUPPLY CAPACITY
One of Gazprom’s goals with South Stream is to circumvent the Ukrainian transit system, which traditionally carries some three-quarters of Russian gas exports to Europe. The South Stream pipeline would run from the Russian Black Sea coast across the seabed to Bulgaria, there to bifurcate... MORE
MEDVEDEV TRIES TO GAIN TRUST IN EUROPE AND RESPECT IN THE CIS
President Dmitri Medvedev’s much-anticipated European debut was held in Berlin last week and was immediately followed by his presiding over a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States in St. Petersburg. He succeeded in presenting himself as a Westernized liberal in Germany and as a... MORE
TURKEY’S AKP FINALLY BEGINS TO PREPARE FOR THE INEVITABLE
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has finally begun to prepare for what now appears to be its almost inevitable closure by the country’s Constitutional Court, according to reports in the Turkish media. On March 14 Public Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya applied to the Constitutional... MORE
MEDVEDEV PROMISES TO PROTECT THE MEDIA, HINTS AT KHODORKOVSKY PARDON
Those who predicted that Dmitry Medvedev’s arrival in the Kremlin would be followed by a relative liberalization or “thaw,” with real moves toward respecting press freedom and other rights and instituting the rule of law, have been given some cause for optimism in recent days.... MORE
MEDVEDEV PROPOSES ALL-EUROPEAN SECURITY PACT DURING BERLIN VISIT
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev used his visit to Berlin on June 5 for proposing an all-European security pact with Russia’s participation, inherently in opposition to NATO (Interfax, Itar-Tass, June 5, 6). The Kremlin apparently hopes that the evolving Russo-German “special relationship” could turn Germany into... MORE
GERMANY, RUSSIA BYPASSING OTHERS WITH NORD STREAM PROJECT
The Council of Baltic Sea Countries, which met at the prime-ministerial level on June 3 and 4 in Riga, failed to hold a multilateral discussion about Nord Stream, the Russo-German gas pipeline project on the Baltic seabed. The Council is mandated to deal with environmental... MORE