Nato foreign ministers hoped to persuade their Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to back Nato’s missile defence shield at a meeting in Brussels. Progress has been slower than expected with a recent rise in anti-Nato rhetoric from Moscow – the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned the alliance that Russia would take counter-measures if Washington went [...]
Tag: NATO
December 8, 2011
December 2, 2011
Why Russia is backing Syria | David Hearst
While an international noose is tightening around the neck of Bashar-al Assad’s regime in Syria, with Turkey this week doing most of the pulling, one country, other than Iran, is intent on bucking the trend – Russia. A day after the UN human rights council said that Syrian forces were committing crimes against humanity, and [...]
November 24, 2011
Medvedev: Russia will deploy deterrent to Nato missile shield
Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev has spoken out against American and Nato plans for a missile defence system. Although western officials say the system is not targeted at Russia, Medvedev says Russia will respond by deploying missiles of its own, and possibly by pulling out of strategic arms reduction negotiations
November 12, 2011
Poland’s new breed of optimists | Remi Adekoya
There’s an old joke about a Polish optimist meeting a Polish pessimist: “Things are so bad, so terribly bad, that they couldn’t possibly get any worse”, says the pessimist, to which the optimist replies: “Don’t worry my friend, they could, they really could.” The Polish national character might be famous for its glum outlook on [...]
November 1, 2011
Russian foreign minister: mediation better than Nato intervention
Sergei Lavrov has criticised the model of international intervention used in Libya, saying it is not the way to deal with conflict in the region
June 30, 2011
Video Catches Medvedev in Driving Gaffe
Memo to President Dmitry Medvedev: Next time you plunge into a crowd, don’t forget to park your car first. Medvedev took his “Go, Russia!” motto a bit too far in an incident captured on video, stepping from the driver’s seat of an SUV and then frantically trying to hold the vehicle back as it kept moving toward a group of people waiting to greet him. Burly bodyguards swiftly came [...]
June 30, 2011
In Tit-for-Tat, Russia Wants to Blacklist Foreigners
With the United States considering sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the prison death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the Foreign Ministry has turned to the State Duma with a blacklist of its own. But instead of punishing other countries for human rights abuses against their own citizens, the ministry would blacklist foreigners deemed to have violated the rights of Russian citizens. Under a bill submitted to the Duma on Tuesday, blacklisted foreigners [...]
June 29, 2011
Washington: Russia Is ‘No Obstacle’ To U.S.-Armenian Military Ties
YEREVAN — A senior U.S. military official says close defense ties with Russia do not impede Armenia’s growing military cooperation with NATO and the United States in particular, RFE/RL’s Armenian Service reports. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Celeste Wallander called cooperation between Washington and Yerevan “very effective” as she ended a two-day visit [...]
June 29, 2011
Graft and Unrest Put Kyrgyz Gold Rush on Ice
The Kumtor mine. With 100 sizable gold fields mapped but never tapped, Kyrgyzstan is ripe for a mining boom. 1 of 2 BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — The bus loaded with supporters of a planned $100 million mine had just left its remote Kyrgyz village when a mob on horseback blocked the road. What happened next was a warning to foreign mining companies who [...]
June 29, 2011
Billionaire Prokhorov Eyes Foreigners, Putin’s Job
Billionaire Prokhorov Eyes Foreigners, Putin’s Job By Alexander Bratersky The St. Petersburg Times Published: June 29, 2011 (Issue # 1663) Igor Tabakov / The St. Petersburg Times Mikhail Prokhorov addressing delegates at a Right Cause congress that elected him as leader of the party on Saturday. MOSCOW — Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov seized the reins of the pro-business [...]
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
June 29, 2011
Russia: From empire to great power
To start off, independence brought different things to different republics. The Baltic countries became EU and NATO members and their future is now linked with European and Euro-Atlantic institutions. In Central Asia, the former Soviet republics each have a very different status. Some of them, like Kazakhstan, have managed to score impressive results in economic [...]
June 29, 2011
Taliban raid on Kabul hotel leaves 8 civilians, 2 policemen dead
At least eight civilians and two policemen were killed in a raid by a group of Taliban on a landmark hotel in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Tuesday night where senior provincial governors were staying, police say. At least eight militants, some of them suicide bombers, were involved in the attack on the heavily-guarded [...]