February 7:
A rash of murders in Moscow has cast new international attention on rising violence and lawlessness in the Russian capital. Glasgow’s Sunday Herald notes that at least four people were gunned down in apparent contract killings in Moscow over the past week - an alarming indication that Russia could be returning to the bad old days of the 1990s. Among the recent casualties are human rights lawyer Stanislav Margelov and junior Novoya Gazeta reporter Anastasia Baburova, who were killed on the same day less than a mile from the Kremlin. The murders, the Herald suggests, may be the work of “Chechen death squads” commissioned by either commercial or political opponents of the deceased.
In the clearest indication to date that the U.S. is planning an overhaul of its ties with Russia, Vice President Joseph Biden has indicated that the White House will “press the reset button” in Russo-American relations. “The United States and Russia can disagree and still work together where our interests coincide and they coincide in many places,” Biden said in his foreign policy address before the annual Munich security conference. On the American side, the Financial Times reports, the policy reboot will include an overhaul of American attitudes toward missile defense, which will henceforth be developed in coordination “with NATO allies and with Russia.”
In an effort to cushion the impact of the global economic crisis on ordinary Russians, prime minister Vladimir Putin has called for enhanced governmental oversight of employment conditions in the nation’s regions. While the Kremlin has “recently adopted serious decisions to support different branches of Russia’s economy,” Itar-TASS reports the Russian premier as saying, “most part of Russian people face certain difficulties and they can’t feel the state’s support. The life of most part of Russian citizens, our people, and their condition often depend on how effective the social system is.” In response, Putin has called for upgrades to “regional employment programmes,” including the federally-backed retraining of currently employed workers, the expansion of temporary job opportunities, and additional aid for those holding limited-term employment.
February 8:
Gazprom’s recent row with Ukraine may have left much of Eastern Europe in the cold and the dark, but in Asia the Russian energy giant is playing nicer. According to the Kyodo news service, Gazprom’s deputy chief, Alexander Medvedev, has told reporters that his company could begin exporting liquefied natural gas to Japan as soon as the month of March, and that those supplies will continue "in a stable manner over a long period of time." Medvedev’s comments come amid jitters among global investors over the reliability of Russian energy supplies following the late December/early January political crisis between Moscow and Kyiv.
February 9:
Russia is on the cusp of a major expansion of its nuclear relationship with India. Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reports that TVEL, one of Russia’s leading nuclear fuel producers, is poised to sign a $780 million deal to supply nuclear fuel to Indian power plants. The arrangement, once finalized, will make Russia the first country to supply New Delhi with nuclear fuel since the Nuclear Suppliers Group lifted its longstanding ban on sales to the South Asian state last fall.
February 10:
The current economic malaise plaguing Russia is not the result of global economic instability, but of its own systemic deformities. That’s the assessment of the Institute of Contemporary Development, a top Russian policy think tank established by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev himself back in 2008. “Russia’s economic crisis is not an infection brought on by the West,” Institute head Igor Yurgens has said in comments carried by Pakistan’s Daily Times. Rather, the culprits are Russia’s own “structural flaws,” ranging from “ballooning state involvement” in the national economy, government support for flawed and inefficient companies, and inefficient market institutions. This trend, says Yurgens, “worries us” and “presents risks both now and in the future.”