Archive - March 2004

The biggest news coming out of Russia in the last couple of days has to be jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s open letter – The Crisis of Liberalism in Russia. It’s long, but well worth reading in full. The...

A quick roundup of views on the Russian election from around the english speaking blogosphere for your education, enjoyment, or work-avoidance. Follow the links for the full posts. First up, Alexei at Russian Dilettante...

Yes, of course, Putin romped home by a country mile. With 97.5% of the votes counted the (almost) result is as follows… Vladimir Putin, 71.1% (48.05 million votes) Nikolai Kharitonov, 13.8% (9.3 million votes)...

Yeah right. Early results coming from the far east of Russia show that Putin has 66.5% of the vote. Communist Party candidate Nikolay Kharitonov is Putin’s closest challenger with 14.7%. Interesting to see that...

Chechnya’s former Defense Minister, Magomed Khambiyev, surrendered to Russian forces last weekend. He was one of the closest allies of seperatist leader, Aslan Maskhadov. He has now been followed by the surrender...

From Mosnews.com comes the story that Russian company Energia is developing a new reusable spacecraft – the Clipper, which will combine the best of the Soyuz and Buran spaceships. (The Buran, for those not in the...

The BBC has an article from Maria Lipman and Dmitri Gubin who go ‘head to head’ and tell us exactly why they think Putin is great. Or not. Once you get past the annoying formatting (two columns side by side...

Russian peasants used to write letters to the Tsar in the hope he would be able to address their grievances. The Guardian reports that this tradition has been reinvigorated under President Putin, who receives 11,000...

I know that everyone in Russia is supposed to love Putin, but does anyone else find it just a little bit suspicious that three British news organisations all have articles out this weekend comparing young Vladimir to...

A couple of days ago I linked to the story that the CIA was responsible for a massive gas pipeline explosion in Russia during the Cold War. The Cold War is finished now. Seems like ancient history. Its easy to look back...