A while back we pointed to the Twitter feed of Russia's Amb. to NATO Dmitry Rogozin.  Today it looks like he has launched a personal assault on Radoslav Sikorski, the Polish MFA (everybody is just so prickly around this Berlin Wall anniversary).  I put Dima's tweets in chronological order to better understand his thought process:@Rogozin  Polish FM Sikorsky gave a very strange interview. Hu suggested demolishing the Stalin-style House of Science and Culture in centre of Warsaw about 6 hours ago from web ...

This in from the Wall Street Journal on the somewhat disturbing, political dimensions of Russia's Nord Stream pipeline.  Approved just last week by Finland and Sweden after ecological concerns were overcome, the project is now ready to get off the ground, or rather under the ground.  For the pipeline will traverse the Baltic Sea floor to Germany, rather than crossing overground through former Eastern bloc countries; a divisive move, Alexandro Peterson suggests:[ . . . ] The Nord Stream project is part of an exclusionary agreement between Moscow and Berlin--nicknamed in circumvented Warsaw the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact," after the 1939 Soviet-Nazi deal to carve up Poland. It would have been much cheaper to build an overland pipeline ...

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is apparently 'astonished' to hear that Poland's Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, asked NATO and the US to deploy troops in Europe to provide 'some strategic reassurance', on a recent visit to Washington.  Since the scrapping of the US Bush-designed missile defense scheme which would have seen troops deployed in Poland and Czech Republic, the former has apparently been feeling vulnerable . . . Kim Zigfeld points out on Pyjamas Media that Russia's recent war 'games', which simulated a full scale pipeline-sabotaging missile-battering attack of Poland, taking place in the same month that seventy years earlier Russia did actually invade, is hardly likely to reassure the Poles of the ...

Rosneft has been fined $180 million by the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service for deliberately driving up wholesale prices for gasoline and other oil products in the first half of 2009, and Lukoil was warned that it could face a similar penalty...in which case, it's going to need the $1.5 billion it is trying to raise by selling dollar-denominated debt to international investors.  The state-owned Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant was raided by riot police yesterday as part of a probe into an August flood that killed 75 employees.  Iran agrees with the 'general framework' of the UN-brokered proposal that it send most of its enriched uranium to Russia for processing into reactor fuel, but plans to make some changes.  'One common reaction is: 'If the foreigners are prepared to agree to this, there must be something wrong with this from Iran's point ...

A very interesting if not controversial article from Luke Harding makes the argument that we are seeing continuity in foreign policy toward Russia under both Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel.  In my experience, the change has been night and day in terms of getting high level politicians willing to talk about human rights issues (just look at Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger), though Harding does make a good point that this has not produced any concrete or measurable changes on the ground or any visible political costs of the relationship.  He has a point, but my response would be that we should wait and see.

During her first visit to Russia as chancellor, in January 2006, Merkel made a point of meeting human rights activists - an apparent break with the sleazy Schröder era. She also promised to

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Yevgeny Zhovtis - the political prisoner of Kazakhstan

Grigory Pasko, journalist

During the time of my brief sojourn in Almaty, I met with many people - journalists, jurists, human rights advocates - and asked of them: what do they think of the Yevgeny Zhovtis case? One thing became clear and distinct from all our talks: this human rights activist is now widely considered as a new political prisoner of modern-day Kazakhstan - a state which although masquerades its commitment to democratic principles, regularly violates the rights of her people and flouts its own laws through its deeds.

Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда.Read parts one, two and ...

TODAY: Medvedev defends the right to critical; suggests US responsible for crisis.  Washington concerns about arms deal with Venezuela.  Poland bombarded by Georgian refugees. Russian-German diplomat problems. Spiraling yet unenergetic Bolshoi renovation project to be investigated. In a move seen by the Washington Post to mark a break with predecessor Putin's zero tolerance approach, President Medvedev has defended the right to criticize and accept criticism from other countries.  Putting this into practice, ahead of his first trip stateside, Medvedev has implicitly blamed the US for the financial crisis:  'last year, we witnessed how one country's ill-conceived financial policies became the reason for a global financial crisis, whose effects every country ... feels today'.  The US ...

I very much enjoyed this book review by Gerard DeGroot published in Sunday's Washington Post on Michael Meyer's new book on the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It never fails to impress me how much our ideas about this recent period in history continue to inform (or more aptly, misinform) our understanding of contemporary politics and relations with Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union.  Apparently Michael Meyer's book pokes some holes in the traditional hero myths, and points to the accidental and chaotic nature of how all these world-changing events spun out of control.  Very interesting and thoughtful stuff here.The events themselves were played out by a cast of thousands in Budapest, Berlin, Prague, Warsaw and Bucharest. There was no script; this was an improvisational drama conceived by Camus, with help from Kafka and Molière. The Soviet Union came ...

Reuters reports that Poland and Russia are unlikely to reach a deal on gas when Putin visits Warsaw in September, and negotiations could continue until the end of the year, meaning Poland may, in the meantime, have to seek supplies elsewhere.  Ukraine will accelerate attempts to restructure the debts of state energy giant Naftogaz by opening talks with bonds investors imminently.  A new government bill will give wholesale electricity markets special access to stations that are powered by associated gas.  The government has decided that 95% of associated gas extracted must be used by 2012.  Pipeline maker Transneft's net profits have fallen by 17% year on year.  Petrom and ExxonMobil are initiating a seismic study of 3,000 km2 in the Black Sea.  The state-controlled Chinese chemicals company Sinochem has agreed to buy London-listed Emerald Energy for $879 million, with ...

We continue to hear bad news about US commercial real estate. But Europe also is also going through a major CRE correction after a boom earlier this decade. The declines in leasing and transaction volumes are in many cases worse than in the US.Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) tracks many large European markets, and the current trends are dismal. According to JLL, overall transaction volumes in Europe dropped 54% in 2008 vs. 2007. We don't yet have 2009 numbers, but volumes will continue to drop this year due in part to difficulty financing large projects and the lack of buyers.Many buyers are waiting for prices to come down to reflect new economic realities, and sellers are reluctant to sell at discounted prices.JLL's latest European Office analysis from 1Q09 shows a major downward trend in office fundamentals throughout Europe and Russia. Office leasing is ...