Free Republic

Belarus and Russia have traded accusations of "blackmail" in their dispute over gas prices.

A Russian passenger plane has made an emergency landing in Prague after a man tried to enter the cockpit, saying he had an explosive device. A spokesman for the airline, Aeroflot, said the Russian citizen wanted the Moscow-Geneva flight diverted to Cairo.

Novelists have always reveled in Russia's extremes. But as this year's crop of Russia-related books shows, sometimes imagination is no match for reality.

As 2006 passes into the history books, it might just end up being lost, as nothing of really great significance took place in the country. There also wasn't much in the way of world events that significantly affected life in Russia. Analysts summing up the last 12 months make mention of shake-ups in the Prosecutor General's Office and the Justice Ministry, as well as the Sakhalin-2 scandal, in which the state unexpectedly played the "concern about the ecology" card in order to increase Gazprom's share of the project's profits. But did these events make much of a wave with Russians?...

In the shopping malls of Moscow, the only relic of Soviet times could be the lines that snake around the counters. The rest is glittering displays, unsteady men in Santa suits, and the bustle and noise of eager shoppers, which came to fever pitch this month. The holidays are here. "It is only the shortages that people cannot understand," said Galina Vishnyakova, 28, a shopper at the Ramstore mall on Sheremetyevskaya Ulitsa whose cart was loaded with champagne and expensive treats. "But they adapt very quickly to all these little luxuries." During this holiday season, Russians will shell out 13...

Jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is looking at a possible 15-year prison term in connection with a money-laundering inquiry. The prison term would come on top of the eight years he is already serving. Prosecutors on Wednesday questioned Khodorkovsky as part of their inquiry. "Khodorkovsky is suspected of stealing oil revenues from Yukos subsidiary firms and then laundering these funds by donating them to Open Russia," Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Yury Shmidt, said by telephone from the regional capital, Chita.

December 28, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Gazprom and Minsk have managed to agree on one thing -- Belarus's asking price of $2.5 billion for a 50 percent stake in the state pipeline operator Beltranshaz. Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov has confirmed that concession to Belarus: "We have agreed to the most comfortable conditions for Belarus," Kupriyanov said on December 27. "We want to obtain 50 percent [of Beltranshaz], not control over it, and we are [offering] a price that is even higher than the market one."

The head of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, has met the Pope in Rome as part of efforts to bring their two churches together. It was the first official meeting at the Vatican between Greece's most senior cleric and the leader of the world's Roman Catholics. Their talks focused on attempts to end the Great Schism that dates from 1054. They also appealed for an end to religious violence, and pledged to defend Christianity in Europe.

A Russian literary expert says the U.S. secret service oversaw the publication in Russian of Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago," paving the way for him to win the world's most coveted literary prize. PRAGUE, December 14, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- In 1958, Boris Pasternak, the great Russian poet and novelist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for what the Nobel committee described as his "important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition." Best known in the Soviet Union for his poetic verse, it was his "epic" novel "Doctor Zhivago" that gained him...

The Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups, vowed Thursday that it would defy the authorities and press on with its March of Dissenters on Saturday. Moscow officials this month banned the march, which is meant to protest what opposition leaders describe as Russia's slide into the authoritarian abyss. United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov blasted the city for trying to shut down the demonstration, citing federal law No. 54. "This is an absolute violation of our constitutional rights," Kasparov said. Kasparov, a former chess champion, spoke with other members of The Other Russia at a news conference at the...

MOSCOW, December 11 (RIA Novosti) - The ex-wife of a witness in the case of a murdered former Russian security officer, her two children and boyfriend have been hospitalized in Germany with suspected polonium-210 poisoning, the head of the investigation team in Hamburg said Monday. He said a medical examination will show if their organisms contain a dangerous concentration of the radioactive element. Authorities did not identify them by name. Businessman Dmitry Kovtun met with defector Alexander Litvinenko around the time of his poisoning at the beginning of November. Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin's administration and a...

Shell succumbed to months of creeping state pressure on Monday, offering Gazprom new terms of entry into its key Sakhalin-2 project. Shell CEO Joroen van der Veer held talks in Moscow on Friday with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko, spokespeople at Shell and Gazprom said. Both sides refused to comment on a Reuters report citing industry insiders that said Shell had offered to cede its controlling stake in Sakhalin-2 to the state-run gas giant.

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Alexander Bogatyrev) - The other day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it would be counterproductive to introduce UN sanctions against either side in the Kosovo conflict. Before that, the Russian ambassador to Belgrade had said that Russia would veto any "harsh" UN Security Council resolution on Kosovo. The sanctions in question are directed against Serbia. According to the Kremlin, the Kosovo dispute can be resolved only at the negotiating table and there should be no deadlines. The sides involved in the conflict need time to resolve their problems. Criminal organizations have taken over the...

MOSCOW. (Vasily Zubkov, RIA Novosti economic commentator) - In the context of the forecasted gas shortage in Russia, the government has called for increasing the role of the so-called independent gas producers. In late November, the first electronic gas trading session was held in which such producers received the same rights as Russian gas monopoly Gazprom. Many said it was evidence that Russia was beginning to liberalize its gas market. According to the International Energy Agency, by 2020 worldwide gas consumption will almost double to more than 5 trillion cubic meters a year. By that time, the world's largest gas...

PRAGUE, December 8, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- On December 8, 1991, the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine gathered at a site in the Belarusian forest of Belavezhskaya Pushcha to declare that the Soviet Union was dead. In its place, they announced the formation of a new alliance, the Commonwealth of Independent States. For those who lived through it, it was a heady but uncertain time. Hopes of social change and political freedom mixed with fears of economic freefall and the disintegration of state institutions. But what about those with no memory of that time? RFE/RL spoke to young people born...

December 9, 2006 -- Arson is being investigated as the possible cause of a fire that killed at least 45 female patients and staff at a drug-abuse treatment hospital in the Russian capital, Moscow.

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Nine patients of a clinic for the mentally ill in Siberia died in a fire Sunday, a day after a blaze at a Moscow drug treatment center killed 45, officials said. The accidents underlined widespread neglect for fire safety rules in Russia, which records about 18,000 fire deaths a year -- several times the rate in the United States. The fire in the psychiatric hospital in the town of Taiga in central Siberia, about 2,200 miles east of Moscow, began shortly after midnight local time.

PRAGUE, December 5, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- During the recent NATO summit in Riga, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar urged the alliance to declare that an energy boycott of any member be seen as an act of coercion against all members of the alliance and one that requires a collective response. U.S. Senator Richard Lugar urged NATO to update its charter. "We are used to thinking in terms of conventional warfare between nations, but energy could become the weapon of choice for those who possess it," he said. Lugar warned the opening session of the NATO meeting that "it may seem to...

The Moscow headquarters of IBM and several other computer companies were raided Wednesday by masked law enforcement officials toting automatic rifles. It remained unclear Wednesday evening which branch of law enforcement was conducting the raids on IBM and two other companies, Lanit and R-Style, and what might have been the purpose of the raids. An unidentified law enforcement source told Interfax that a total of 10 locations in the city had been raided. Agents from the Interior Ministry's economic crimes department Wednesday raided the headquarters of the State Pension Fund, Gazeta.ru reported.

British investigators are now treating the poisoning death of former Federal Security Service agent Alexander Litvinenko as murder. "It is important to stress that we have reached no conclusions as to the means employed, the motive or the identity of those who might be responsible for Mr. Litvinenko's death," Scotland Yard said in a statement.