The Russia Blog
Note: The following article also appears in issue 7 of SHIFT magazine.
This September, the heads of each of the EU’s 27 member states met in Brussels for what was only the Union’s 2nd ever emergency summit. Russia had just crushed its neighbour Georgia in a short, sharp war, and only one item… Read the rest
Russia is brilliantly playing divide and conquer with European Union nations, argues a new paper from the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In “A Power Audit of EU – Russia Relations“, authors Mark Leonard and Nicu Popescu provide a sharp analysis of exactly how the nimble Russian bear – which on almost every… Read the rest
Hooray – it’s EU summit time again – this year we’re off to Portugal!
As usual, the summit begins amongst tensions between the two European powerhouses (but, then again, if there were no tensions, there would be no point in holding a summit, I suppose…).
Top of the agenda for the Europeans from the… Read the rest
Russia is to increase its military and intelligence spending again:
“The situation in the world and internal political interests require the Foreign Intelligence Service to permanently increase its capabilities, primarily in the field of information and analytical support for the country’s leadership,” said Putin.
Or, to put it another way: ‘we need more spies’.
Which… Read the rest
This beautiful map from Kommersant graphically demonstrates why Russia is concerned about the proposed US anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech republic.
If the US plan goes ahead as expected, high powered radars from Poland will be able to cover all of European Russia, and a good chunk of Siberia as well:
So, after spending the past few weeks ratcheting up the pressure, Putin has made an about turn and offered to work on a ‘joint’ missile shield with the United States.
Details of exactly how such a scheme would work are a little sketchy at the moment, to say the least, but it seems as… Read the rest
Russia test fired a new ICBM yesterday.
As you would expect, the western press – particularly in the UK – are muttering darkly about the new Cold War and a renewed arms race (see the Express and Guardian, for examples).
I was more interested by the following comment from First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei… Read the rest
By my count, this is the third time in the past five years that Russia has cut off oil supplies to a European Union member state to make a political point.
The Euroblog roundup will be hosted at Siberian Light this week, as Nosemonkey’s computer has packed in. Clearly, he should have bought the latest Russian model.
Anyway, without further ado, I bring you the best of this week’s Euro-blogging, with an Eastern twist (plus a bit from France, because they’ve got an election this weekend).… Read the rest
The second Euroblog roundup came out last weekend.
One post in particular caught my eye – 1948 Blog’s article about how Russia is “hijacking” the European Court of Human Rights.
Apparently, there are about 90,000 cases currently meandering their way through the ECHR (Russia is the defendant in 19,300 of them) that the… Read the rest
In a surprise move, Aeroflot have made a bid for the Italian flag carrier Alitalia:
Aeroflot joined with the largest Italian bank, UniCredit, on Monday to bid for most of the 49 percent stake in Alitalia held by the Italian Finance Ministry, which is selling its shares in hopes that a private owner will
Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has been arrested by French police in a sex scandal involving alleged prostitutes. Prokhorov is Russia’s tenth richest man, with a 54.8% stake in Norilsk Nickel.
None of the press agencies have quite come out and said it, but they are heavily implying that he was breaking the law by organising ‘parties’… Read the rest
I picked up some incoming traffic from Matthew Yglesias’ blog today. Wondering what was going on, I wondered over to his site, to find the following story about the Russian decision to shut down the flow of oil through Belarus:
All of Europe gets cut off from crude oil supplies, apparently.
His source is… Read the rest
Russia and the European Space Agency (ESA) could be working together to develop the Kliper (Clipper) space shuttle.
It’s all but official�Russia and Europe will soon embark on a cooperative effort to build a next-generation manned space shuttle. Speaking at the Paris Air Show, in Le Bourget, France, in June, Russian
There have been some interesting reactions coming out of Moscow after France’s decision this weekend to reject the new EU constitution.
President Putin himself, has wisely not shared his own opinion with the world at large, although I’m sure he passed on heartfelt comiserations to President Chirac in their telephone conversation. He did, however, repeat… Read the rest
Arthur Chrenkoff writes about European attitudes towards Russia:
Basically his summary is that Eastern European states, with strong memories of Russian & Soviet imperial rule, are desparate to not only forge stronger ties with Western Europe, but also to build up a democratic buffer between themselves and Russia. Western Europe, by contrast, doesn’t fear… Read the rest
