Free Republic

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s current prime minister and future president, has shown a strong interest in Asian affairs. In his second term, Putin would undoubtedly like to maintain good ties with China, consolidate Moscow’s first-among-equals status in Central Asia, manage the regional repercussions of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, prevent a war or major crisis in the Koreas, and deepen Russia’s integration into East Asia’s more dynamic and prosperous economic networks. At the same time, Putin is eager to strengthen Russia’s position in Europe. It’s a big to-do list, but Russia has already succeeded in raising its profile in Asia...

America and Eurasia will crash into each other over the north pole in 50-200 million years time, according to scientists at Yale University. They predict Africa and Australia will join the new "supercontinent" too, which will mark the next coming together of the Earth's land masses. The continents are last thought to have come together 300 million years ago into a supercontinent called Pangaea. Details are published in the journal Nature. The land masses of the Earth are constantly moving as the Earth's as tectonic activity occurs. This generates areas such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where Iceland has formed, and...

Many western politicians have harbored deep suspicions of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Vladimorovich Putin since he first emerged on the Russian political stage in 1999. This is hardly surprising, given his KGB background, though those with longer historical memories will recall that Yuri Andropov came from the same organization and that the West grudgingly found a way to work with him. While the worst aspects of the Cold War faded away with the peaceful collapse of the USSR in late 1991, twenty years later, trying to figure out Kremlin politics remains as vital an exercise as ever, and the “Putin...

One in three shops are empty in some parts of the UK after an increase in the gap between the best and worst performing towns, a new report shows. Nationally, one in seven shops have remained vacant in the past year and there is unlikely to be a significant improvement because of the economic climate

The Russian and American governments are discussing a bilateral government deal, under which Russian state-controlled oil companies Rosneft and Gazpromneft would supply kerosene directly to the Manas Transit Centre, a crucial logistics hub for the war in Afghanistan. "Ultimately it's in the security interests of Russia for the US to be using this base for its operations in Afghanistan, but under a very, very strict mandate," said Ana Jelenkovic, Central Asia analyst at Eurasia Group. "If Russia is able to monitor the destination of the fuel, it limits the ability of the US to stay there in the base long-term....

Turkey and Russia signed 17 agreements on Wednesday to enhance cooperation in energy and other fields, including pacts to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant and furthering plans for an oil pipeline from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The pipeline would allow Russia to expand its oil exports from the Black Sea, bypassing the Bosporus, whose shipping lines are already at capacity. The deal follows several rounds of agreements between Russia and Turkey in recent years that have helped Russia maintain its dominance of Eurasian energy routes. On his first official visit to Turkey, the Russian president, Dmitri A....

This century has witnessed China's emergence as the main challenger to the superpower status of the United States. In a dramatic fashion, China is beginning to establish its foothold in the highly strategic, energy-rich region of the Middle East by forging strong ties with regional powers and gradually challenging the U.S.-Israeli regional dominance. Thanks to decades of double-digit economic growth and accelerating military modernization, China now has both the need for and the capability of engaging the Middle East. Confined to the sidelines during the Cold War, the Chinese leadership finally found a window of opportunity to enter the regional...

While the international community is fixated on Iran’s nuclear program, China has been steadily expanding its political, economic and strategic ties with Syria. Since Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited China in 2004 on the heels of the 2003 U.S. intervention in Iraq, there have been increased economic cooperation and more recently, a flurry of high-level exchanges on political and strategic issues. On April 5, while at the 7th Syrian International Oil and Gas Exhibition “SYROIL 2010” to attract local, Arab and foreign investors, Syrian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Sufian al-Allaw told the state-run Xinhua News Agency that he...

Kyrgyzstan's interim government said it will extend the U.S. lease of a key air base by another year. "Kyrgyzstan is extending by one year the validity of the agreement with the United States over the Manas transit center," Omurbek Tekebayev, the deputy leader of the opposition, was quoted as saying by BBC News. Washington is using the air base in Manas to fly troops and equipment in and out of Afghanistan. After the bloody unrest that ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev last week, the U.S. government had been worried that the opposition would throw the Americans out. The move to keep...

Kyrgyzstan may be a landlocked country with a population of less than 5.5 million, but it still looms large in the regional calculations of China, Russia and the United States. The Kyrgyz Republic is the only country to host both a Russian and a US military base. The Russian base at Kant symbolises Moscow’s preeminent security role in the region, while the US base at Manas plays a vital role in sustaining NATO military operations in Afghanistan. And Kyrgyzstan also borders Xinjiang, prompting concerns among Chinese policymakers over infiltration by terrorists and narcotics smuggling into this sensitive province as well...

A recent report of an ancient textile facility, of sorts, is turning heads.[1] Sifting through the debris on a cave floor in the Republic of Georgia, scientists recently discovered evidence that the early cave dwellers processed textiles in the cave. While searching for ancient pollen grains, they found tiny flax fibers in the dirt. Some of these fibers were woven, some were cut, and some were dyed black, gray, turquoise, or pink. They also discovered evidence that these people were processing fur (for clothing) and animal hides. What is surprising about the find is that this was supposedly happening 30,000...

On June 30 the OSCE officially terminated its Mission in Georgia, which had for 17 years monitored the situation in and around South Ossetia. Russia forced the OSCE to close the Mission by vetoing the prolongation of its mandate in the OSCE's Permanent Council. Also on June 30 the U.N. Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG), which had for 15 years monitored the situation in and around Abkhazia, began evacuating its personnel, following Russia's veto against that Mission's mandate in the U.N. Security Council (EDM, June 2, 12, 17). OSCE military monitoring officers on patrol in Georgia, in 2008 Moscow wants...

Ahead of NATO’s April 2-4 Bucharest Summit, the alliance is preoccupied with maintaining the principles on which it interacts with aspirant countries. The core principles may be summed up as: the open door, membership action plans on the road to that open door, merit-based assessment of aspirant countries, and no external inputs into Allied decisions on membership or membership prospects. The alliance as a whole is alert to the risk of compromising those principles in the event that Membership Action Plans (MAPs) are denied to Georgia and Ukraine in a manner perceived as deferring to Russia. Even Germany, the leading...

Russia and China: The Mechanics of an Anti-American Alliance Fall 2006 - Number 11 Alexandr Nemets Conventional wisdom has it that China’s expanding military capabilities, and Beijing’s growing regional ambitions, will one day soon pose a challenge to the United States in Asia. Likewise, Russia under Vladimir Putin has shed any ambiguity about its post-Cold War direction, become increasingly assertive, powerful and anti-American. Yet perhaps the greatest threat to U.S. interests and objectives in the years ahead will not come from Beijing or Moscow alone, but from the ominous alliance that is emerging between the two. It is a partnership...

Rarely has Russia's leadership been so widely reviled in the West, yet rarely has the West needed Russia's friendship more. The most obvious reason the West needs Russia is the latter's abundance of natural resources, which Western governments have for decades assumed would always be at the disposal of their industries. Indeed, Europe has almost learned to take its dependence for granted, relying on its good fortune that, for the past three centuries, the Russian elite has identified itself wholeheartedly with European culture and values. The occasional voices that arose to call for a reorientation eastward to Siberia, or southward...

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."

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.

President Vladimir Putin insists he wants Russia to be a respected member of the community of nations. Why, then, does he keep doing things that remind us of the bad old days of the USSR? Russia talks a good game about wanting more trade and investment with the West. But then it goes and does something crazy: seizing the assets of Shell Oil off Sakhalin Island. ... Russia never had the technology to fully exploit its oil and gas reserves; it needed outside expertise. Which explains why Shell was in Sakhalin, one of Russia's most promising offshore oil sites. But...

Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests. Disturbing video footage of post-mortem examinations on dismembered tiny bodies raises serious questions about what happened to them. Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital of the world. There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses, amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases. But now there are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies. Wall of silence The BBC has spoken to mothers from the city of...

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...

PRAGUE, November 9, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Russian media today are predicting a chill in U.S.-Russia ties following the results of the November 7 U.S. elections, which appeared to hand both chambers of Congress to the opposition Democrats and have led to the surprise resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Many Russian newspapers predict the changes to the U.S. Congress will mean increased criticism of Russia's human rights standards, and a deterioration in cooperation on foreign-policy issues like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. RFE/RL correspondent Claire Bigg spoke to Aleksandr Golts, a political and defense expert for the Moscow-based "Yezhednevny...

November 10, 2006 -- Russia and the United States have reached an agreement in principle on bilateral terms for Moscow's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The [Russian] Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the acquittal of three suspects in the killing of American journalist Paul Klebnikov and ordered a new trial, a court spokesman said. The court, hearing an appeal by prosecutors and the victim's lawyers, said a new trial should be held with a new judge, court spokesman Pavel Odintsov said.

MOSCOW, November 10 (RIA Novosti) - The presidents of Russia and Belarus said Friday they will be guided by free market principles as they seek to broaden bilateral economic ties, the Kremlin press office reported.

MOSCOW, October 26 (RIA Novosti) - A total of four sailors have now been found dead, and 11 have been found alive from the 18-man crew of a Russian cargo ship that sunk in the West Pacific three days ago, after rescuers found another three dead on Thursday. The Russian ship Yury Orlenko, which had sailed from the country's Far East port of Vladivostok to join the rescue effort, pulled a body out of the water in the Sea of Japan at 5:30 a.m. GMT on Thursday, according to Russia's Transportation Ministry.

MOSCOW, October 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's defense minister highlighted Moscow's concern Thursday that Georgia could try to tackle disputes with the self-proclaimed republics on its territory militarily. Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which proclaimed independence from Georgia in the 1990s, have contributed to tensions in relations between Russia and Georgia, which accuse one another of plans to unleash a new bloody conflict in the region and to annex territory, respectively.

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kolesnikov) -President Vladimir Putin has left the audience intrigued once again. He is not ready to name his successor yet, he said, and believes that Russian people have to "determine who is the strongest candidate." At the same time, he did promise to name someone. "Of course, as any Russian citizen, I reserve the right of choice at a vote and I do not believe that I should give up my right to express my opinion in mass media," he said. "I will talk about it when the time is right." It is not...

The government of Turkmenistan has for years practiced a domestic policy that can only be described as "Turkmenization." Most non-ethnic Turkmen officials have been purged, and authorities have gone further in insisting, unofficially, that residents speak Turkmen and dress in what is regarded as a Turkmen fashion. Even schoolchildren are subject to the unwritten policies, which have led to the emigration of ethnic Russians, Kazakhs, and Uzbeks. The latest manifestation is the arrival in neighboring Uzbekistan of young women who married Turkmen citizens but were rejected registration and tossed out of the country, along with their children. Ziyoda Ruzimova lived...

Ukraine will be paying Russia $130 per 1,000 cu. meters of gas in 2007, Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said in Kiev on Tuesday. The parties did not comment reports that Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich managed to secure moderate gas prices for his country in exchange for political trade-offs. In any case, successful talks with the Russian premier helped Viktor Yanukovich show his abilities in putting relations with Russia back on track.

Various theories have circulated regarding who might have murdered the journalist Anna Politkovskaya on October 7, and why. According to these, she was targeted by nationalist extremists, or by Russian military officers that she had named in connection with human rights abuses in Chechnya, or by Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, whose alleged abuses she had chronicled in great detail. Two days after her murder, the website of Politkovskaya’s newspaper, Novaya gazeta, said it was either an act of revenge by Kadyrov or carried out by “those who want suspicions to fall on the current Chechen premier, who, having passed...

Russia is correct to argue that energy security is a two-way street, former U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania Keith Smith told the Prague Energy Forum today. However, he noted, many in the Kremlin seek not merely security, but control. Below, RFE/RL presents the complete text of Smith's remarks to the forum.Keith Smith: The prominent attention given energy issues at the EU-Russia "summit" in Lehti, Finland, on October 20 was quite illustrative. The summit demonstrated that there is a converging perception in Western and Central Europe regarding the risks of energy dependency on Russia. This may or may not be fair,...

BRUSSELS, October 25, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- At a European Parliament debate on South Ossetia and Transdniester today, EU officials had two distinct messages. First, that the bloc’s involvement in Moldova will remain strong. Second, that Georgia's requests for greater EU involvement are "unrealistic." From the EU’s point of view, not all frozen conflicts are alike. It continues to acknowledge Russia’s key role in attempts at resolution. But when it comes to its own involvement, Brussels is clearly more enthusiastic about Moldova than it is about Georgia. Moldova will share a border with the EU as of January 1, 2006, when...

Russian President Vladimir Putin faced his nation today in a live multimedia appearance broadcast on Russian television and radio, the fifth of its kind since he came to office in 2000.

WASHINGTON, October 23, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Last winter, Ukrainians were left shivering after Russia cut off gas supplies. This year, there's a chance it could be Russians feeling the freeze. Some observers are concerned that Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom will be unable to supply domestic electricity-generating companies with enough gas. If that happens, it could mean brownouts and blackouts this winter. Such a scenario nearly occurred last year. Mosenergo, the majority shareholder in Russia's Unified Energy Systems (EES) electricity monopoly, supplies electricity to the Moscow region. In the winter of 2005-06, it was faced with a severe lack of...

Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Lahti, Finland, to meet with European Union leaders and European Commission officials. Many expected the Europeans to greet Putin in an aggressive mood. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov did not see any signs of a battle among the participants in the informal summit, but neither was any evidence of agreement evident – not on the Energy Charter, human rights or the Russian-Georgian conflict. At dinner, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested negotiating an Agreement on Strategic Partnership and Cooperation between Russia and the European Union to replace the old one that is about to expire....

KYIV, October 13, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Professor Francis Fukuyama is best known for his idea that the world settled on liberal democracy after the ideological struggle of the Cold War. After giving a lecture at the 10th Anniversary of the Economic Education and Research Consortium in Kyiv, he spoke to RFE/RL Ukrainian Service correspondent Marianna Dratch about the unrealistic expectations of the Orange Revolution, the development of civil society in Ukraine, and how his ideas on liberal democracy have been misunderstood and misused.

Kazakhstan has conducted military exercises in its western region, partly to demonstrate more effective coordination of its security forces, but also to convey a powerful signal to Islamic extremists and confidently display its ability to protect its facilities in the Caspian Sea. These exercises, though showing practical progress for Kazakhstan’s armed forces, were held at a time when more corruption scandals marred the reputation of the Ministry of Defense. Moreover, the authorities are showing increasing concern about the activities of Islamic extremists and their networks within Kazakhstan, revealing uncertainty regarding the precise nature of the threat and the capabilities of...

Vladimir Putin’s visit to his old stumping ground, Germany, after he hosted Chancellor Angela Merkel in Siberia earlier this year, was delightful. Putin dropped by the old haunt, Dresden, where he used to run agents, then attended meetings with Bavarian officials and a dinner in Munich. The Green Party leaders boycotted the affair because of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya murder. Still, the Greens in the past gave hand to the massive German energy partnership with Russia – so that the Vaterland can shut down the much-hated nuclear reactors. Better be Red than dead; better be Green and pro-Russian than anti-environment....

UN Security Council Resolution 1718, adopted Saturday, includes serious international sanctions aimed against Pyongyang. At the same time, the original draft resolution as submitted by Japan was softened somewhat to address objections from Moscow and Beijing. But are such attempts at leniency in Russia's strategic interests?

Foreign executives appealed to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and senior economic officials for clarity and transparency Monday amid a major review of many of the country's largest foreign investment projects. They warned that corruption, administrative barriers, entangled bureaucracy and selective application of the law were casting a shadow over the country's strong economy and scaring away potential investors. Yet state officials failed to provide the clarity foreign investors sought. "There is a strong sense of optimism here, but also a strong sense of nervousness," said Ernst & Young CEO James Turley, who co-chaired the conference with Fradkov.

It is rare to hear good things about Russia's Kaliningrad region on the Baltic Sea. Cut off from the rest of Russia, tucked between Poland and Lithuania, during the 1990s Kaliningrad became notorious for smuggling and epidemics of heroin abuse and HIV. It was the first place in Russia to be hit by widespread HIV infection. During Soviet times Kaliningrad was a closed military zone, and after the fall of the USSR the exclave suffered one of the worst economic collapses anywhere in Russia. But things are quietly changing in Russia's smallest region, because Kaliningrad is experiencing an economic boom...

The latest crisis in the chronically uneasy relationship between Moscow and Tbilisi is not likely to fizzle out any time soon, as the positions of the two sides appear to be irreconcilable. This poses a painful dilemma for the West: do the United States and the European Union want to make the fate of Georgia and its breakaway regions a central issue in their relationship with Russia?

Russia has deported a planeload of Georgians, amid a deepening diplomatic row sparked by Georgia's recent arrest of four alleged Russian spies.

Khatuna Dadiani is one of the estimated half a million Georgians living in Russia, who send money home to support family members. As of today she faces two new problems - how to wire money to Tbilisi, and how to get to Georgia if she wants or needs to visit. But Russia's economic sanctions against Georgia strike her as more ridiculous than anything else. "Of course there will be ways round them," she says. "The worrying thing is that attitudes towards Georgians are changing so fast here - it's getting worse and worse." Money and travel Khatuna's husband, who has...

Fans remember Anna German, a Polish singer who became a star in the Soviet Union while keeping quiet about her tragic past. For millions of Soviet citizens, she was a Polish star who sang about love in melodic, accented Russian at a time when others were singing odes to communist glory. But she was actually born in a remote part of Uzbekistan, and only later did her mother take her to Poland, fearing for her life amid Stalin's purges. She was Anna German, a singer who moved fluidly between Russian, Polish and Italian, and won fame for romantic songs...

Kazakh Foreign Minister Qasymzhomart Toqaev called for closer energy links between Kazakhstan and the EU in an address to the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee on October 3. Toqaev is on a two-day visit to EU and NATO headquarters in Brussels. Toqaev also lobbied for EU support to Kazakhstan's bid to chair the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) in 2009, promising democratic reforms and arguing that the OSCE -- which he described as a "Eurasian" body -- could benefit from some Central Asian leadership. Brussels, October 4, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Kazakh Foreign Minister Toqaev's visit to Brussels...

A report provided to former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in May from the Japan Forum on International Relations, an independent think-tank, highlighted the country’s ongoing struggles concerning the implementation of a comprehensive energy strategy. “Japan’s overall energy approach lags behind the changes occurring in the world. The strategic importance of energy has a far greater importance than is appreciated in Japan,” the report noted. The report went on to say that the country’s very “existence as a state” could be jeopardized if it does not develop a more strategic approach to energy security. Japan, the world’s third largest energy consumer,...

Independence Day page 1 of 2 BBC Monitoring 2 October 2006 Bagapsh: "It's time Georgia was prevented from acting like this." [TOL editors' note: Before the undiplomatic words began to fly between Georgia and Russia over Georgia's arrest of four Russian officers on spying charges, tensions were already high between Tbilisi and Abkhazia, the Moscow-backed breakaway region in northwestern Georgia. In July, Georgian troops entered the Kodori Gorge, an area of shared control between Tbilisi and Abkhazia, to track down a militia leader who had reportedly shaken off Georgian control. After the arrest of the Russian officers in late September,...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has arrived in Poland on a one-day visit aimed at improving relations between the two countries.

LONDON, October 4, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Companies from all over the world head to the London Stock Exchange when they need to attract international investment and raise development capital. Firms from Russia and elsewhere in the CIS are among the latest to head to London to launch initial public offerings (IPOs) -- their first sale of stock to the public.