A Dissenter's march in Russia wouldn't be a Dissenter's march if it didn't end in large-scale detentions.  Saturday night's march was no different, with up to 50 protesters allegedly held.  Thanks to la Russophobe, for highlighting this link to activist Oleg Kozlovsky's English weblog, in which he recounts the details of his own arrest:   In order to find a pretext to arrest participants of the action, members of Rossiya Molodaya (Young Russia), a Kremlin-aligned youth group (a part of the so-called Putinyouth), were used as provocateurs. They began lighting flares, chanting slogans and throwing leaflets (mocking the opposition) in the middle of the crowd. The police were ready: they arrested the Putinyouth and many regular ...

After months of painstaking negotiations, GM has scrapped the Opel sale on the basis that it was 'no longer in the best interests of GM, now that the environment for car sales has started to improve', reports the Independent.  The decision comes just after Opel's labor force had agreed to contribute $390 million in annual savings.  'Management had planned a release saying that they will proceed with Magna, so there must have been a fundamental change of view within the board', the FT quotes an insider as saying.  The Russian government is planning to raise $1.87 billion to bail out ailing carmaker Avtovaz, most of which will be apparently allotted to bad debts, and some of which will be allocated to modernization and on job creation, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has reportedly announced.  Daimler Trucks will proceed ...

Russia has reached a new record high in monthly oil production, at more than ten million barrels a day in October, maintaining its position as the world's biggest oil producer.  Rosneft is at the forefront of the increase with production from its new Vankor field in the Arctic.  Vladimir Putin has nodded approval for a Danish initiative on CO2 emissions that could replace the Kyoto Protocol, but with two caveats - that Russian interests be taken note of, ie the country's immense CO2-absorbing forests, and that the resolution be ratified by all the world's biggest economies.  Russia may increase threefold its supplies of gas to Denmark, which could see supplies reach a total of 3 billion cubic meters a year via the Nord Stream pipeline.  The Prime Minister has urged the 'stingy' EU to assist Ukraine in its difficulties ...

TODAY: Opposition activist torture claims; Miliband leaves with no breakthrough regarding diplomatic concerns; meets with rights activists; Putin and Medvedev popularity waning?; President in need of own power structure to realize reforms; Stalin resurrection an identity issue; Gorbachev on Russophobia; alcohol; jokes; artThe Other Russia reports that Konstantin Makarov, a member of the outlawed National Bolshevik Party, and organizer of an opposition rally planned for the 31st October in Voronezh, was detained and beaten by two policeman, one of whom was S. Yemkov of the notorious Interior Ministry's Center for Extremism Prevention.  According to Makarov, his torturers told him that he would face similar treatment after each rally held by the National Bolsheviks.  Foreign Minister Sergei ...

The race for Ukraine's Presidency is hotting up.  With the incumbent serial Kremlin-offender Viktor Yushchenko flagging with ratings of just 3%, it seems that battle has truly commenced between Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych.  Russia-Ukraine relations have considerably suffered under Yushchenko's leadership -  will Tymoshenko, the other, (lest it be forgot) architect of the Orange Revolution, be West or East-leaning?  RFE/RL quotes her as suggesting that whilst involvement with Europe will be prioritized, warmer Russia relations may be on the cards:I'm sure that our relations with the Russian Federation can be equal and respectable, open and honest, without ambiguities.Or is she planning an altogether different kind of homage to Russia?  Yevgeny ...

Russia 'counts on a controlling stake' in the three small hydropower plants it is building in Tajikistan and 'hope[s] for the Tajik side's understanding' in the matter.  The United Nations nuclear watchdog is in the process of inspecting Iran's uranium enrichment plant.  Both Iran and the U.S. are wary of falling into a trap over the nuclear question, reports the New York Times, and President Barack Obama reportedly called Dmitry Medvedev over the weekend to discuss the need to maintain Russian and U.S. unity over the issue.  The environmental safety of the Nord Stream project has been questioned by several of the transit countries, including Finland, but Vladimir Putin's meeting with his Finnish counterpart yesterday seemed to leave the schedule for completion in place.  China's oil demand is recovering at its fastest rate since June 2006.  ...

The ever-positive Vladimir Putin is forecasting 8% inflation for the coming year, which would be a 'post-Soviet low'.  The government will sell tons of its gold stockpile this year to cover its budget deficit and help it fund other supporting measures such as Moscow's $570 million federal loan.  Private lender Alfa Bank is working on debt restructuring terms for giants BasEl and RusAl, and threatening to take the latter to court over unpaid debts.  St Petersburg Bank plans to raise up to $150 million selling additional preference shares to cope with its losses.  Reuters has compiled a timeline on Russia's bad loans.  'For all of the vaunted stability of the current regime, Russians still don't believe in the permanence of their system enough to invest into their society,' comments this reporter in a piece about ...

Outcry over the election results continues.  Sergei Mitrokhin, chairman of the Yabloko party, has an impassioned piece in the Moscow Times regarding the alleged vote-rigging in the October 11 election.  Numerous practices to impede opposition candidates were highlighted both in the run up to and following the elections, and Mitrokhin gives a full overview of these hurdles.  He refers to a number of techniques: the 'carousel system',  the 'dead souls' who boost the number of United Russia supporters, the 'house calls' made by social workers to 'help' the elderly to vote, votes which then may be 'corrected'.  It seems as if an entire vocabulary of pseudos and 'so-calleds' has developed to describe this ersatz polling procedure.  None of which are doing much to promote the notion of Russian 'democracy'.  From the Moscow Times:One exception to the falsification was the polling station where ...

The following is a translation of an article about the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky published in the French weekly magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur.

The Convict who Frightens the Kremlin From our special correspondent in Moscow

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of oil company Yukos, is serving eight years in prison in Siberia. He is again judged in a trial in which the arbitrary rivals absurdity. The Russian power in the hands of Putin, does not want to see out of prison the person who was formerly the richest man in the country...

It is in this tiny and outdated courtroom No. 7 on the second floor of the Khamovnitchesky District Court of

...

In a meeting with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, Vladimir Putin made a surprise announcement that the South Stream pipeline, a joint project between Gazprom and Italy's Eni, could be finished before its official start-up date of 2013.  Plans for South Stream's expanded volume were discussed by Russia's Energy Ministry in Bulgaria this week, as was the controversial plan to use the existing Bulgarian gas transit network to aid this expansion. Transneft says it will complete its China pipeline by the end of the year. Russia's Energy Minister is leaving the question of Rosneft's privatization open, with the possibility of selling a 75% stake not to be considered until 2011. Canada-listed mining group SouthGobi Energy Resources has secured a $300 million loan from CIC (China Investment Corp). More on Russia's surging oil industry.  ...