I’m absolutely baffled by the story coming out of this week of a 20 million rouble ($660,000) lawsuit involving Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian church, and Yury Shevchenko, a former Russian health minister. The basic story is pretty straightforward, but so odd that there must be something going on below the surface that [...]
As expected, Georgia brushed past a rather inept Russia in their latest European Nations Cup game and with just a re-arranged match against the Ukraine to play, the Georgians now head the table in group 1a. The result itself came as no surprise but the Bears would have been disappointed with the manner and margin [...]
In the latest round of European Nations Cup games, Russia grabbed their opportunity to turn in a winning performance over the Ukraine as they attempt to climb the 2011 European Nations Cup table. However, the most impressive performance of the weekend came in Bucharest where a physical encounter saw Georgia edge past their Romanian hosts. [...]
Around 10,000 people attended a rally on Moscow’s Novy Arbat Street on March 10, demonstrating their opposition to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President-elect. This weekend’s rally was smaller than many of the protests seen in Moscow recently. Rally organizers put attendance at around 25,000, but police estimates said the crowd was closer to 10,000 in size. [...]
After all the fuss, Putin actually won the Russian Presidential Election pretty comfortably. As I write this, 99.3% of the votes have been counted, and Putin got 63.75% of them and his nearest challenger (Gennady Zyuganov, of course) scored a mere 17.19%. There’s a lot to think about after the election, and I thought I’d [...]
While Russia would have been buoyed by their performance against Portugal in the last round of European matches, coach Kingsley Jones will have been bitterly disappointed with the manner in which they surrendered to a strong but beatable Romanian side at the weekend. Georgia however rebounded from their own setback against Spain last time out [...]
Dmitry Medvedev has submitted a draft law proposing the formation of new electoral districts to the Russian State Duma. However, his initiative comes amid signs that his ambitious proposals for electoral reform may be coming up against sustained opposition within the Duma. 225 new electoral districts The draft law is the latest of a series [...]
Moscow is gearing itself up for more protests and rallies on 23 February. Approval has already been given for two large rallies – one pro-Putin and one pro-Communist – and decisions are due shortly on a number of other rallies. What are the political parties doing? The Communists have scored a bit of a coup [...]
If you’ve been grumbling about Russia’s elections, spare a thought for those poor unfortunate souls in the democractic wasteland that is Turkmenistan. For they have apparently re-elected Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov as their President with a spectacular 97% of the vote, based on a 96% turnout. The result is a dramatic improvement on Berdimuhamedov’s performance in the [...]
Portugal 32-33 Russia Coach Kingsley Jones was indebted to the kicking qualities of Anton Ryabov and Yuri Kushnarev whose collective boots saw Russia scrape home by a single point in their European Nations Cup Tie on the 11th of February. Portugal actually outscored their opponents in the tries department by 4 to 3 but by [...]