Hungarian MOL's oil-producing joint venture in Russia, ZMB, has gained a respite from the Russian authorities' threat to revoke its production license. ZMB (Zapadno-Malobalyk), a parity joint venture of MOL with Russneft in western Siberia's Khanty-Mansi district, had recently been warned by Russia's mineral resources... MORE

On August 10 the family of the celebrated murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who covered human rights abuses in Chechnya, issued a statement condemning a Moscow court's decision to refuse to reopen the investigation and to merge it with the main case, (designed to find... MORE

The Russian government began insisting in late July that gas from the Sakhalin-1 project must not be sold to China by its partners, including ExxonMobil, but instead diverted to meet the growing demand in Russia's Far East provinces. Many observers were shocked by what they... MORE

On August 3, the Head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill during his visit to Sevastopol stressed the importance of the work of orthodox clergymen in the Russian army. Kirill stated that the modern soldier must be "strong in spirit" and emphasized the importance... MORE

On July 31 the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, formally launched the construction of the 1,800 kilometer Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok natural gas pipe-line (ITAR-TASS, July 31). This new strategic pipeline is designed to supply natural gas to the population of the Russian Far East, so far deprived... MORE

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wooed Turkey's AKP government with grandiose vistas of a bilateral partnership on energy during his visit to Ankara (EDM, August 7, 10). Along with his proposal to build Gazprom's South Stream pipeline to Europe via Turkey's Black Sea economic zone,... MORE

In a highly unusual move, the head of North Ossetia Taimuraz Mamsurov in an open letter on August 1 called on the governor of the neighboring Krasnodar region Alexander Tkachev to stop persecuting Ossetians in Sochi. Mamsurov cited the complaint that he had received from... MORE

Putin's visit and gas offer to Ankara is first and foremost intended as a counter-strike to the Nabucco project. The Nabucco inter-governmental agreement was signed, also in Ankara, on July 13 ("they barely had time to clean the red carpet" - Die Presse, August 7).... MORE

On August 6 in Ankara the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, with a delegation of government ministers and state corporations' executives, announced vast plans for energy cooperation with Turkey (EDM, August 7). The Russian offers seem designed primarily for political effect in Europe, and secondarily... MORE

It appeared to be just another of ailing President Boris Yeltsin's oddities when on August 9, 1999 he appointed Vladimir Putin as prime minister and announced his support for this unknown bureaucrat as the next president of Russia. In a matter of a few weeks... MORE