Archive - 2004

Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has rejected the results of the Ukrainian Presidential election and called thousands of his supporters onto the streets of Kiev to protest. I’ve only just managed to grab ten...

President Putin, earlier this week, offered to return two of the four disputed Kuril Islands to Japan, paving the way to a peace treaty that has eluded the two states since the end of WW2.  President Koizumi of...

This week a rumour surfaced that Russia was about to send a small detachment of troops to Iraq. Recent developments are beginnng to make this rumour sound almost plausible...

The Economist reports that the end is nigh for Khodorkovsky’s empire. There can be little doubt that, by the end of the year, Yukos, an oil company that has drawn the ire of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and...

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office has just released its Human Rights Annual Report 2004.   In their (1.4Mb!) section on Russia, they’ve chosen to focus exclusively on the situation in Chechnya...

I had intended to post about Damian Grammaticas’ BBC article about the decline of Russian villages, but two other bloggers have beaten me to it, and done it better, too.  Basically Grammaticas is arguing that...

Now that the dust has settled over the US Presidential election and Bush is back in office, Russia will be making plans for its foreign policy over the next four years. So, what does this mean in practice? Here are what...

Yesterday I noted John Shaw’s claims that Russia removed weaponry from Iraq just prior to the 2003 invasion. I argued his claims were rubbish. Now it turns out even the US administration doesn’t support...

Note (added 29/10/04): Shaw’s claims (below) have been rejected by the White House and the Pentagon. John A Shaw, America’s Deputy Undersecretary for International Technology Security, is behind the...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been attracting quite a bit of criticism on his visit to Ukraine for allegedly interfering in the Presidential election there. But what caught my eye was Putin’s statement...