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Foreign Policy

The Arctic: Thinning on Top

January 11, 2009

Remember when a robotic submarine planted the Russian flag on the North Pole as a part of Russia’s efforts to claim a chunk of the Arctic? Well, the diplomatic wrangles over who owns what in the Arctic circle are still going on.
If you ever wondered exactly what the arguments were all [...]

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The EU’s Lumbering Elephant versus the Nimble Russian Bear

December 8, 2008

Note: The following article also appears in issue 7 of SHIFT magazine.
This September, the heads of each of the EU’s 27 member states met in Brussels for what was only the Union’s 2nd ever emergency summit.  Russia had just crushed its neighbour Georgia in a short, sharp war, and only one item was on [...]

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Does Ukraine hold the key to Russia’s future?

November 14, 2008

The MIT World Policy Journal is celebrating its 25th anniversary by making access to its Fall 2008 journal for free until the end of November.
The 25th anniversary issue looks ahead to the next 25 years and, in Russia’s Rotting Empire, Nina L Khrushcheva (yes – before you ask – she’s Nikita Kruschev’s great-granddaughter) has penned [...]

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Medvedev’s speech – world misses point

November 5, 2008

Dmitry Medvedev gives his first annual state of the nation speech, and announces that he’d like to extend the Russian Presidential term from 4 to 6 years. So what does the world’s press write about?
That Russia plans to deploy missiles close to the EU’s border to neutralise the US missile shield. Oh, and [...]

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Putin nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

November 23, 2007

This Russia Today report is a joke, right?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The International Center for Research on Biofuels and Patents in Zurich has chosen Putin for his alternative fuel initiatives in Russia.
The Swiss organisation says its main goal is to prevent future wars over oil.
The centre proposed [...]

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Putin and the Prince go rafting

August 14, 2007

Prince Albert II of Monaco is visiting Russia this week and, according to the Moscow Times, he and Vladimir Putin took off on a camping trip together:

Russian television showed them entering a yurt, a tent used by Mongolian nomads, and touring the grounds of the Por-Bazhyn fortress, a clay labyrinth built more than 1,200 years [...]

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Russian Foreign Minister pulls Foreign Affairs article

July 22, 2007

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has decided to pull an article from the next issue of the US-published Foreign Affairs journal.
“As a result of the excruciating and sluggish exchanges with the editors, the likes of which could only be found in diplomatic history, it was decided to give up trying to place Sergey Lavrov’s article [...]

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Joseph Nye – what Russia is doing wrong

January 30, 2007

Joseph Nye (the soft power guy) offers up four reasons why Russia will not be a major power in 2020:

They are failing to diversify away from energy and develop a broad based economy rapidly enough. 
They need a rule of law that protects entrepreneurs and helps foster a middle class that will support a democratic market [...]

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Has Russia lost control of its nuclear weapons?

January 27, 2007

Captain’s Quarters wonders what’s behind the recent spate of nuclear ‘incidents’ that can be traced back to Russia in one way or another:
A couple of scenarios could be in play. The first is that Putin has decided to gain hard cash by putting fissile material on the black market, which is not only insane but [...]

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Should Russia waste its money on nuclear weapons

November 25, 2005

Charlie Ganske at Russia Blog has a thoughtful post about whether Russia should focus its energies on maintaining a nuclear arsenal, or on preventing the breakup of the Motherland.
Today’s Washington Times features a story on Russia’s successful test of a maneuverable re-entry warhead. While this may bolster the national pride of Russian scientists and provide [...]

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CIS Secret Service heads meet in Yalta

October 30, 2005

Now this is a meeting where I’d like to be a fly on the wall…
The chiefs of the CIS countries’ secret services gathered for a conference at the Livadia Palace in Yalta, the Crimea, for the 19th time on Friday. It was the first such event to have been attended by the top officials of [...]

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Russia demands OSCE reforms

September 13, 2005

OSCE delegates are considering a raft of Russian proposals to make the organisation ‘more effective.’  Russia effectively held a gun to the OSCE’s head a year ago, when it threatened to withold it’s budget contributions unless it’s proposals were taken seriously.
In particular, Russian diplomats want to force changes to the Office of Democratic Institutions (ODIHR), [...]

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Russian – Chinese Wargames

August 18, 2005

A joint Chinese-Russian military exercise is underway in the Russian Far East, the first between the two countries.  10,000 personnel are involved in an operation that is said to be one of humanitarian assistance:
[T]he scenario for these exercises – aid to a state suffering political violence – isn’t aimed against any specific country.

However, the [...]

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Darth Lavrov

July 29, 2005

Mosnews – who else? – reports on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s barnstorming Darth Vader skit at the latest ASEAN conference party (yes, they really know how to party at these conferences):
Wearing a dark brown cape and hood (Darth Vader’s heavy breathing was difficult to create in the low-budget production), Lavrov brandished a lighted [...]

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Censorship of English language Russian media?

July 14, 2005

David McDuff points to what he sees as a trend towards censorship of English language translations of Russian media reports.
With the Kremlin’s increasing stranglehold on the flow of information out of Russia, it’s becoming evident that English-language versions of Russian press reports and commentaries, especially if they come from sources outside government control, are being [...]

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