Latest Articles about Middle East
PUTIN OBITUARY FOR CIS
Russian officials are performing some dialectical acrobatics in reinterpreting President Vladimir Putin's recent remarks in Yerevan, where Putin in essence pronounced the Commonwealth of Independent States to be defunct as a mechanism for integration (Kremlin.ru, March 25). Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov wasted... MORE
Putin Obituary for CIS
Russian officials are performing some dialectical acrobatics in reinterpreting President Vladimir Putin's recent remarks in Yerevan, where Putin in essence pronounced the Commonwealth of Independent States to be defunct as a mechanism for integration (Kremlin.ru, March 25). Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov wasted... MORE
RUSSIA SEEKS CLOSER TIES WITH POST-REVOLUTIONARY KYRGYZSTAN
In the aftermath of the revolution that has swept the Kyrgyz leadership from power and ushered in another democratic revolution in the former Soviet Union, Russia has sought to re-affirm its close ties with Kyrgyzstan. Indeed the Kremlin's handling of the crisis reveals that Russian... MORE
MOSCOW CRACKS DOWN ON INDEPENDENT MUSLIM ORGANIZATIONS
Muslims in Russia's Middle Volga region have taken to the streets to protest what they say is a rising tide of xenophobia and official brutality directed against them. On March 13, there were demonstrations in Kazan and Ufa, the capitals of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, respectively,... MORE
RUSSIAN OFFICIALS AND SOME POLITICOS URGE NON-INTERFERENCE IN BISHKEK
President Vladimir Putin made his first comments on the events in Kyrgyzstan from Yerevan today (March 25). The events in Kyrgystan were not unexpected and were the result of both the Kyrgyz authorities' weakness and "social and economic problems that have accumulated," Putin said. He... MORE
TAIWAN ISSUE CLOUDS RUSSIA-CHINA JOINT MILITARY EXERCISES
Russian Chief of General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky was dispatched to Beijing March 17-20 in order to finalize plans for unprecedented joint war games this fall. However, the upcoming drill wields a double-edged sword. Official pronouncements have sounded decidedly optimistic. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and... MORE
PUTIN’S RESIDUAL EUROPEANISM AND CREEPING SELF-ISOLATION
The Russian media paid about as much attention to President Vladimir Putin's weekend visit to Paris than it did to his meeting with the victorious team from the Paris-Dakar road rally (Ezhednevny zhurnal, March 17). Little is known about his talks with French President Jacques... MORE
Putin’s Team in Disarray Over Oil Money
Yet another quarrel between Gazprom and Rosneft, Russian state-owned energy companies that are due to merge but cannot agree on conditions, hardly qualifies as news (Financial Times, March 16). Their respective CEOs -- Alexei Miller and Sergei Bogdanchikov -- have been at odds since the... MORE
SECESSIONIST LEADERS PARADE IN MOSCOW
Sergei Bagapsh, Eduard Kokoiti, and Arkady Gukasian, leaders respectively of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Karabakh, spent most of this week meeting with Russian officials in Moscow. They also held a publicly reported meeting there among themselves on March 16. Transnistria leader Igor Smirnov was expected... MORE
RUSSIA’S ELECTRICITY TSAR ESCAPES ASSASSINATION
Moscow's political and business elites spent much of yesterday (March 17) discussing who was behind an apparent attempt that morning to kill Anatoly Chubais, head of Unified Energy Systems (UES), Russia's electricity monopoly, and the architect of Russia's controversial post-Soviet privatization program. The three main... MORE