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 general consensus from the media seems to be that Khodorkovsky is trying to reconcile with Putin… Read the rest

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 reveals how he voted, then asks the pertintent question of…

Why did Putin have to turn the election campaign into

… Read the rest

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)
Sergei Glazyev, 4.1% (2.7 million votes)
Irina Khakamada, 3.8% (2.5 million votes)
Oleg Malyshkin, 2.0% (1.3 million… Read the rest

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 Irina Khakamada, the opposition candidate who got the most coverage in the Western press is running a disappointing fourth with under… Read the rest

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 of another of Maskhadov’s associates, “Colonel” Boris Aidamirov. Rumours are now flying that Maskhadov himself maybe about to turn himself in…… Read the rest

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 know, was the Soviet equivalent to the Shuttle. It was test flown a couple of times, but the… Read the rest

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, each with a headshot at the top) they have some interesting stuff to say.… Read the rest

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 letters each week. This letter comes from Vitaly Bakhrushin, a pensioner…

March 4 2004

Vladimir Vladimirovich!

I have 1,000

… Read the rest

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 Russia’s Tsars of old?

One from Steve Rosenburg at the BBC…

One from Angus Roxburgh, who… Read the rest

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 and laugh. Spies running around writing messages in secret ink and trying… Read the rest

A poll conducted by mobile phone in Russia suggests that Vladimir Putin will comfortably win the upcoming Presidential election. Although the poll is obviously unscientific (I know, all polls are unscientific) the sample size was fairly large – just under 100,000.

The poll did contain two results that I found a little surprising. First, Putin… Read the rest

Speculation about the identity of Russia’s new Prime Minister has been resolved today. Vladimir Putin’s choice of European Union envoy Mikhail Fradkov has suprised many analysts, who had thought that Putin would pick someone more recognisable. Fradkov has been a largely anonymous technocrat throughout his civil service career.

Putin explained why he had chosen… Read the rest