BRUSSELS/WARSAW — After centuries as Europe’s stomping ground and years as its prickly gadfly, Poland is now poised to lead the continent. Poland, a member since 2004, takes over the European Union’s six-month rotating presidency amid high hopes. “Europe’s foundations are threatened” and strong leadership is needed, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said recently, in [...]
Tag: Georgia
June 30, 2011
June 29, 2011
Due West: Moscow and Minsk start a cold war, while China waits in the wings
Everything you wanted to know about the Belarusian economy but were afraid to ask is now in the open domain. Belenergo, President Alexander Lukashenko’s state electricity monopoly, cannot pay its Russian counterpart about $20 million it owes for electricity supplies. The Belarusians are saying they have the amount of Belarusian rubles needed for payback, but [...]
June 29, 2011
Security Officials Deny Umarov Is Hiding In Ingushetia
The Republic of Ingushetia Security Council categorically rejected on June 27 claims by security officials in neighboring Chechnya that self-proclaimed Caucasus Emirate leader Doku Umarov has returned to the Caucasus after undergoing medical treatment in Turkey and may be hiding in the mountainous Jeyrakh district of southern Ingushetia. Top Ingush security officials insisted on June [...]
June 29, 2011
Desert island jazz
Desert island jazz The Usadba Jazz festival comes to the city for the first time this year, bringing jazz to leafy Yelagin Island. By Yelena Minenko The St. Petersburg Times Published: June 29, 2011 (Issue # 1663) jenialubich.com Singer Zhenya Lubich will perform with her band on Saturday. Jazz musicians and lovers will congregate this [...]
June 29, 2011
Pit Stop
Pit Stop Punkt Pitaniya // 5 Bolshoi Prospekt, Vasilyevsky Island // Tel: 329 9550 // Open 8.30 a.m. to 11 p.m. // Menu in Russian and English // Lunch for two without alcohol 1,800 rubles ($64) By Tobin Auber The St. Petersburg Times Published: June 29, 2011 (Issue # 1663) Punkt Pitaniya — literally “Feeding Point” [...]
June 29, 2011
Main news of June 28
WORLD * The Fatah and Hamas movements reached an agreement on the candidacy of the reconciliation government’s prime minister, Egyptian Al Ahram daily reported * Georgia sent a note expressing readiness for dialog to Russia on Tuesday via mediator Switzerland, in accordance with the recommendation of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a [...]
June 28, 2011
Hitherto we shall be the Kingdom of Sakartvelo!
This would be something I most likely would have wanted to hear as it would be more than logical. But, alas, it’s not to happen! One of Russia’s southern neighbors wants to “rename” itself so that the name of the country sounds the same in all languages: Georgia… Georgia in English is obviously Georgia; however, [...]
June 28, 2011
Presidential nomination of candidates begins in Abkhazia
A campaign to nominate presidential candidates started on Tuesday in Abkhazia and will last until July 17. The Forum of the National Unity of Abkhazia, a prominent oppositional political party, was the first initiative group to nominate their chairman Raul Khajimba. The former Georgian republic will go to the polls to elect a new president [...]
June 28, 2011
South Ossetian Officials Name Streets After Medvedev, Putin
TSKHINVALI, Georgia — Ceremonies have been held in the capital of the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia recently to name streets after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, RFE/RL’s Georgian Service reports. The two parallel streets named after the Kremlin’s current and former leaders are located in a newly renamed microregion [...]
June 27, 2011
Abkhazia to nominate presidential candidates
A campaign to nominate presidential candidates starts in Abkhazia on Monday and will last until July 17. The former Georgian republic will go to the polls to elect a new president on August 26, following the death of President Sergei Bagapsh on May 29. Bagapsh, 62, who had led Abkhazia since 2005, died of cancer [...]
June 24, 2011
Lost lessons of 1941
It is difficult to give an unequivocal assessment of the causes of the disaster of 1941. The army and the nation were preparing for war. Clausewitz saw the military as an instrument of diplomacy, and indeed the Soviet military and political leadership had ordered the army not to provoke Hitler to invade prior to the [...]
June 23, 2011
Kazan Summit: Time For Breakthrough In Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process?
When the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia meet this week, flanked by U.S. and French diplomats, they’ll attempt to budge a geopolitical bolder — and not let it fall back on them. That’s the metaphor of choice for Thomas de Waal, a South Caucasus analyst at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has [...]
June 23, 2011
The Legends of Russian Popular Music
RussiaProfile.Org, an online publication providing in-depth analysis of business, politics, current affairs and culture in Russia, has published a new Special Report on the performing arts in Russia: Bodies in Motion. Twelve articles by both Russian and foreign contributors examine the current trends in theater, music and adjacent forms of art both as creative activities [...]
June 23, 2011
Uncertain World: Twenty years after the Balkan tragedy
On June 25, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia, two republics of the former Yugoslavia, declared independence. Although political tensions provoked by ethnic strife started in Yugoslavia long before that, that day 20 years ago is seen as the beginning of a bloody fratricidal war that was to be the genesis of seven new European states. Fyodor [...]