September 2:
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has announced his country’s willingness to invest “hundreds of millions of dollars” in high-voltage power line and gas pipeline projects in Central Asia. According to Bloomberg, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, the principal countries that would be involved in those projects, all “welcome Russia’s interest” in a planned gas pipeline project planned stretching to India. Aghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, is seeking to make his country a viable energy bridge from Central to South Asia, while Tajikistan hopes to export electricity through a 220-kilovolt power line to Pakistan.
September 4:
Buoyed by record corporate profits and the continuing debt crisis, Russian companies are beginning to break into Eastern European markets for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russian acquisitions in the region over the past three years totaled $2.8 billion, according to Bloomberg, up from $2.4 billion over the previous 17 years combined. Energy titan TNK-BP, lender OAO Sberbank, and Russian Railways are among the largest emerging investors, with Sberbank agreeing to buy nine Eastern European units of Austrian bank Oesterreichische Volksbanken AG at a rumored pricetag of $838 million.
Attempted purchases in Poland by OAO Russian Railways and TNK-BP, however, are still being met with resistance. While one Polish official insisted that “There are no jobs without investment... Historical grudges mean nothing to me,” a member of the country's leading opposition party has promised that he would “make Treasury Minister Aleksander Grad stand trial if Lotos (an oil refinery) is sold to a Russian company.” Major acquisitions are also being pursued in Slovakia and Bulgaria.
September 7:
Nearly the entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team has been killed in the country's latest deadly plan crash, which took place on the banks of the Volga River. London's Telegraph reports that only one player and a flight crew member survived the crash, the third such aviation disaster since the start of the summer. Officials have stated that pilot error caused the wreck, though some claim that one of the plane’s three engines failed, preventing it from gaining sufficient altitude. The aircrafts generally in use in Russia's air fleet are outdated and poorly maintained. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who was in Yaroslavl ahead of a conference intended to “tout Russia’s growing economic and political clout,” called the incident a “shock for the entire country.”
Russia does not have any current plans to build additional nuclear power plants in Iran following the completion of the Bushehr atomic plant. Bushehr is expected to be up and running soon, Bloomberg reports, but Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, has called talk of further plans for Russian-built nuclear facilities in Iran “premature.” This does not mean that Moscow and Tehran are not engaged on the nuclear front, however; last month, Russia introduced proposals aimed at breaking the international stalemate over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, under which Tehran would be forced to cooperate with the IAEA in a step-by-step plan in exchange for a gradual lifting of international sanctions.
September 8:
The Lokomotiv Yaroslavl crash has officially made Russia the most dangerous place to travel by plane in 2011.According to the Moscow Times, even air travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 106 people have been killed in three airline crashes this year, is less dangerous. All told, seven crashes so far this year have left 119 dead in Russia.