This is horrible, horrible news, especially considering the circumstances behind the arrest of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer involved in the William Browder and Hermitage Capital affair (this saga of state corruption is best told in a ten minute film released by the defense).  We already knew the lengths to which Russian prosecutors can go in forcing prisoners to manufacture false testimony, but this terrible death is beyond outrageous.  Let's be clear that the circumstances of the death are currently unclear, but for a man who should never have been in prison in the first place, this incident requires a very serious and strong response.Read the Vedomosti coverage here.  This is from Greg White in the Wall ...

Greg White at the Wall Street Journal has a gloomy outlook on the Russian economy today, and it looks like once again that Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin (who has been subpoenaed to appear at the Khodorkovsky trial) has found himself at war with other elements of the government who are less conscious of the state budget.  Yesterday we saw some reports explaining why government spending has not be working to bail out the Russian economy, and today it looks like Kudrin is under additional pressure despite the news of rising oil prices (the argument is that the deficit has to be curbed to avoid sudden inflationary pressure).  Perhaps once the state's money taps open up, a lot of people get used to receiving these funds, and resist any ...

We've written before on this blog about the Russian government's declaration of "strategic sectors" in the economy, which is another way of saying that they are open game for state intervention, and foreign participation will be limited.  There are certain areas where this is logical - such as sensitive defense technologies.  There are other areas which make much less sense, such as energy, media, and internet.  The strategic sectors legislation has very little to do with the logic of reciprocity - Gazprom has snapped up assets across Europe, but foreigners aren't allowed controlling stakes in energy projects.  Even Alexander Lebedev has a newspaper in the UK, but no foreign company can get involved in disturbing the Kremlin's carefully managed flow of information to its citizens (how ...