FINROSFORUM: West buys Kremlin hype
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posted by eagle on April, 2009 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
21 APR The West seems more than willing to believe the Kremlin’s latest public relations campaign about a “thaw” under President Dmitry Medvedev’s rule. The most enthusiastic observers have begun to compare Medvedev to Khrushchev or Gorbachev. However, the Russian president has merely hinted at changes, and has so far failed to corroborate his words with action, Oksana Chelysheva points out. http://www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=49EDC950560CB
http://www.finrosforum.fi/?p=2561
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RFE/RL: Medvedev To Float European Energy Security Proposal
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Medvedev To Float European Energy Security Proposal
Finnish President Tarja Halonen hosted Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Helsinki.
Last updated: 21.04.2009 10:15
By Ahto Lobjakas Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, on a visit to Helsinki, has announced plans to release a proposal for an overhaul of European energy security, which he said has been in the works since last year.
In a keynote speech at the University of Helsinki on April 20, Medvedev also offered another glimpse of his designs for a "new European security architecture," first floated in June 2008. Citing NATO's 1999 war in Kosovo, and the former Serbian territory's 2008 unilateral declaration of independence, and the August 2008 war in Georgia, the Russian president said existing security organizations are no longer capable of guaranteeing Europe's security.
To remedy the situation Medvedev said all countries in the region, as well as NATO, the EU, OSCE, and CIS, should convene a top-level summit to hammer out a new security concept. He described the forum as "Helsinki Plus" in a reference to the ...
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WORLD AFFAIRS: Drunken Nation: Russia’s Depopulation Bomb
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Drunken Nation: Russia’s Depopulation BombNicholas Eberstadt
SPRING 2009
Drink of choice
Aspecter is haunting Russia today. It is not the specter of Communism—that ghost has been chained in the attic of the past—but rather of depopulation—a relentless, unremitting, and perhaps unstoppable depopulation. The mass deaths associated with the Communist era may be history, but another sort of mass death may have only just begun, as Russians practice what amounts to an ethnic self-cleansing.
Since 1992, Russia’s human numbers have been progressively dwindling. This slow motion process now taking place in the country carries with it grim and potentially disastrous implications that threaten to recast the contours of life and society in Russia, to diminish the prospects for Russian economic development, and to affect Russia’s potential influence on the world stage in the years ahead.
Russia has faced this problem at other times during the last century. The first bout of depopulation lasted from 1917 to 1923, and was caused by the upheavals that transformed the Russian Empire into the Soviet Union. The ... |
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Window On Eurasia: Medvedev ‘Imitates’ Political Reform To Defend Putin’s System, Moscow Commentator Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, April 20 – Despite a series of much-publicized events that some commentators in Moscow and the West suggest represent significant “breakthroughs” to “liberalization,” a Russian commentator argues that Dmitry Medvedev is in fact offering “the imitation of political reform” in order to defend Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian system.
In an article in today’s “Gazeta,” Vladimir Milov, the head of the Moscow Institute of Energetic Politics, says that during April, President Medvedev has “thrown out to society a whole bouquet” of “’signals’” suggesting a dramatic change in the political climate in Russian toward a more liberal order (www.gazeta.ru/column/milov/2976296.shtml).
But a careful consideration of what the Russian president has said and even more of the sources of his comments and actions suggests that “there is no basis to expect serious changes in the policy of the ruling clan” and that any “hopes for the softening of the [current] political course are once ...
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Window On Eurasia: Medvedev ‘Imitates’ Political Reform To Defend Putin’s System, Moscow Commentator Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, April 20 – Despite a series of much-publicized events that some commentators in Moscow and the West suggest represent significant “breakthroughs” to “liberalization,” a Russian commentator argues that Dmitry Medvedev is in fact offering “the imitation of political reform” in order to defend Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian system.
In an article in today’s “Gazeta,” Vladimir Milov, the head of the Moscow Institute of Energetic Politics, says that during April, President Medvedev has “thrown out to society a whole bouquet” of “’signals’” suggesting a dramatic change in the political climate in Russian toward a more liberal order (www.gazeta.ru/column/milov/2976296.shtml).
But a careful consideration of what the Russian president has said and even more of the sources of his comments and actions suggests that “there is no basis to expect serious changes in the policy of the ruling clan” and that any “hopes for the softening of the [current] political course are once ...
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