The Russia Blog
Russia has formally handed over the Nerpa, an Akula class nuclear submarine, to India.
The Nerpa, along with a second Akula submarine to be handed over shortly, will be leased to India for ten years in a deal thought to be worth $2 billion.
Under the terms of the deal, once the ten… Read the rest
The Central Election Commission (CEC) has confirmed liberal Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky and independent candidate Dmitry Mezentsev will not be allowed to enter the 2012 Russian Presidential Election.
Although both candidates claimed that they had obtained the 2 million signatures needed for a candidate from a party not represented in the Duma to secure a… Read the rest
After Canadian Navy officer Jeffrey Delisle (pictured, left) was arrested, accused of spying for Russia, the Canadian Government moved quickly to expel four Russian diplomats.
Or did they?
The Russian Government has hotly denied that its diplomats were linked to Delisle, and claimed that they left Canada as part of a long-planned rotation… Read the rest
Opposition politicians Mikhail Prokhorov and Grigory Yavlinsky have each announced that they have collected the two million signatures needed for them to enter the 2012 Russian Presidential election race.
Prokhorov, who with $18 billion to his name is Russia’s third richest man, plans to run as an independent candidate with no party backing and Yavlinsky… Read the rest
Phobos-Grunt, the Russian space probe intended to explore Mars, crashed back to earth late on Sunday evening.
Defense Ministry official Alexei Zolotukhin told reporters tersely that “Phobos-Grunt fragments have crashed down in the Pacific Ocean”. There’s not much official news from the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos yet though, other than information narrowing down the… Read the rest
Outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev used his final State of the Nation address to promise a “comprehensive reform” of Russia’s political system.
Key proposals include directly elected regional governors, making it much easier for new political parties to register for parliamentary and presidential elections, and a form of proportional representation in the State Duma.… Read the rest
The Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) today announced that no-one will be able to establish military bases on the territory of a CSTO member state without the express agreement of all other member states.
In practice, this is a setback for the United States, who will find it next to impossible to establish… Read the rest
Russian space agency Roscosmos today announced that it had agreed in principle to undertake a number joint missions with the European Space Agency. The agreement was reached at a meeting in Moscow between Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos and Jean-Jacques Dordain, the ESA’s Director General.
The first, and most headline-worthy, is a mission to… Read the rest
It’s been a busy few days for Russian elections news, so I thought I’d roundup a few of the key stories that caught my eye.
Webcams in every polling station
In his recent marathon TV interview, Vladimir Putin proposed placing webcams in every single polling station during March’s Presidential election. The proposal came in reaction… Read the rest
After an enforced break (a doctor jabbed a very sharp needle into my thumb joint – long story) TWiRB is back to update you on what Russia bloggers have been talking about in the last week – which as it turns out was one of the most interesting weeks in Russia for ages.
As there’s… Read the rest
Mikhail Prokhorov’s dramatic entry into the 2012 Russian Presidential race has caused confusion among analysts. Put simply, no-one can fathom why Russia’s third richest man would want to have another stab at entering Russian politics.
After his humiliating failure this summer – Prokhorov announced to great fanfare that he would turn Right Cause into a… Read the rest
Protests took place in Moscow on Monday as people unhappy at United Russia’s manipulation of Sunday’s Russian Duma election took to the streets.
Numbers are difficult to judge, but it appears that around 5-6,000 people protested earlier in the day, breaking off into a smaller group of around 1,000 that then went on to… Read the rest
United Russia won 49.54% of the popular vote in this weekend’s Duma Election, which was just enough to secure it an overall majority in the Duma.
By and large, election observers felt that the ballot itself was run fairly across the country, BUT, there were a few ballots in which the results were just absurd.… Read the rest
The big story of this year’s Russian Duma election is that United Russia’s share of the vote has dropped below the psychologically critical 50% mark. With 95% of ballots counted, United Russia has 49.67% of votes which, because of the 7% threshold needed for parties to enter Russia’s Duma, means that United Russia will actually… Read the rest
The 2011 Russian Duma elections are underway today.
Results (even preliminary results) are not expected until late this evening and tomorrow. United Russia, the party led by Vladimir Putin, has slipped slightly in the polls recently and is expected to lose the constitutional supermajority that it currently holds – it is, however, still expected… Read the rest
Time for the second edition of our resurrected roundup of what’s been happening in Russia blogs over the past seven days.
To my mind, the most intriguing story of the week has been that of the chaos surrounding the annulment of South Ossetia’s Presidential election. And that’s where my top blog post of the week… Read the rest
France has begun work on building the first of two Mistral class warships for Russia. French naval defence company DCNS confirmed that it had received initial payments from the Russian Government of $1.2 billion, which enabled it to begin construction.
In a statement, DCNS said: “The advance payment was received several weeks ago and… Read the rest
There was more unrest and behind the scenes politicking in South Ossetia today, following the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to annull the results of the election and ban Alla Dzhioyeva – the opposition candidate who looked to have secured victory – from participating in a re-run.
Dzhioyeva has refused to accept the Supreme Court’s decision,… Read the rest
The South Ossetian Supreme Court has dramatically and controversially annulled the results of its Presidential election. In announcing its verdict, it also banned Alla Dzhioyeva – the opposition candidate who appeared to have won the election – from competing in a re-run of the election scheduled for March 2012.
RIA Novosti reports that
In an embarrassing setback for the British Government, a British court has today ruled that Ekaterina Zatuliveter is not a Russian spy, and that she should be allowed to remain in the UK.
The British Government had been trying to deport Zatuliveter, who had had an affair with her employer – the British MP… Read the rest
