November 15:
Russia says it has withdrawn its last troops based in Georgia months ahead of schedule, the Voice of America reports. A train carrying the last 150 Russian troops and military equipment left the Georgian city of Batumi on the Black Sea late on November 14th and crossed into Armenia early today. Russia still maintains peacekeeping forces in Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has accused the Russian troops of supporting those regions’ separatists and wants the Russian peacekeepers replaced with United Nations forces.
November 16:
Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko has told the Wall Street Journal on the sidelines of an energy conference in Rome that Russia will produce around 10.4 million barrels per day of oil by 2010, up from 9.8 million barrels a day this year, as new projects in Eastern Siberia, offshore Sakhalin Island and the Arctic north come on-stream. He added, however, that there will not be a return to the more than 10 percent a year oil production growth of earlier this decade. Khristenko said the Russian government is planning new tax breaks for the oil industry in order to “create conditions for the development of new projects, for example on the Continental Shelf, and in remote areas.”
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has announced it will not send election observers to monitor Russia’s December 2nd parliamentary elections, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports. The OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) blamed the Kremlin for the decision, saying Moscow had repeatedly denied visa requests for ODIHR’s observers and delayed extending invitations. The organization has called off an election observer mission only one time before – in Albania in 1996.
The upper house of Russia’s parliament has voted to suspend compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) limiting conventional military forces across Europe, Agence France-Presse reports. The unanimous vote in the Federation Council follows last week’s decision in the parliament’s lower house, the State Duma, to freeze Moscow’s participation in the CFE treaty from December 12th.
November 17:
Grani.ru reports that police have searched the apartments of Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak and two businessmen arrested on November 15th on suspicion of stealing tens of million of dollars from the state budget. The website identified the two businessmen arrested with Storchak as Viktor Zakharov, director of a firm called Sodeksim, and Vadim Volkov, president of a Moscow bank. On November 16th, Reuters quoted a source close to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin as saying it could not be ruled out that the detention of Storchak, who is responsible for Russia’s debt policy and oversees the country’s $148 billion stabilization fund, was part of a campaign against Kudrin ahead of next month’s parliamentary election.
November 18:
President Vladimir Putin has said that he agrees with the State Duma’s decision to cut the length of military service from 24 to 12 months while keeping the draft. United Press International, citing RIA Novosti, quoted Putin as telling parliamentary deputies from the United Russia party that the Duma’s decision was “weighted and absolutely right” and that Russia needs a modern and professional military. As UPI notes, Putin has increased military spending, which is expected to rise 16.3 percent to $36.8 billion between 2007 and 2008 and to $45.5 billion by 2010. At the same time, he has cut the size of the military to 1.1 million members. State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov told the meeting that the budget is divided equally between maintaining the military and modernizing it.