TODAY: Crumbling infrastructure stalling development; US and Russia are stuck in the Cold War past; renegade Russia does not deserve G8 membership; South Ossetia “on the brink of war”; authorities raid National Bolshevik activist’s house; bomb at Sochi.

A new poll of Russian government experts by the State Analytical Center cites crumbling infrastructure and inadequate state funding as the main drawbacks to “innovative economic development”. The growing chasm between the rich and the poor is one of Russia’s “most striking paradoxes”, says the Moscow Times.

Contrary to expectation US President George Bush will not hold talks in Beijing with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin today. Putin may have intended by appearing before the cameras with Bush to “show the world that he’s still in charge, including in foreign policy,” says one analyst. One reporter says that Bush was right to compare Hitler’s Germany with Stalin’s Soviet Union. Russia and the US are stuck in the past, according to a former UN Ambassador. “The United States still looks at Russia too much in Cold War terms — as if nothing had really changed”, and for its part, Russia sees any enlargement of NATO as “a continuation of the Cold War on new grounds”. Read The Economist on Russia’s desire to replace NATO with a new security organization. Russia is a “renegade” power which doesn’t deserve its place in the G8, says Bloomberg, pinning hopes on Dmitry Medvedev for reform of the increasingly “centralized” government.

Last 5 posts by Robert Amsterdam

• Grigory Pasko: Journalists Are Fleeing Russia - November 20th, 2009
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