February 12:
President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko have reached an agreement over Ukraine’s debts to Russia for natural gas, averting a threat by the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom to cut off shipments, NEWSru.com reports. “We heard from our partners today that repayment of the debt will soon begin and we agreed on principles for cooperation for 2008 and the following years,” Putin said in a joint press conference with Yushchenko after their meeting in Moscow. According to AK&M Online News, Yushchenko said the two sides agreed that the price of Russian gas for Ukraine will remain $179 per 1,000 cubic meters. Ukraine’s total gas debt to Russia is $1.5 billion.
During the same press conference, Putin said Russia could target Ukraine with nuclear missiles if it joined NATO and hosted elements of a U.S. missile defense system. “It would be awful even to consider the prospect that if such a missile defense system was eventually extended to Ukrainian territory too, and theoretically this can’t be ruled out, Russia would have to target its nuclear offensive systems at Ukraine,” Putin said, according to a transcript posted on the Kremlin’s website. “Just imagine it for a second! This is what worries us.”
The European University at St. Petersburg (EUSP) has been forced to suspend its activities after officials claimed that its historic buildings were “a fire risk” and a court ordered that all academic work cease, its classrooms be sealed and its library shut. The Guardian quotes EUSP academics as saying the move was politically motivated, stemming from the university’s decision last year to accept a European Union grant to run a project advising Russia’s political parties on such matters as how to ensure elections are not rigged. On January 31st, the EUSP’s academic council bowed to Kremlin pressure and abandoned the monitoring project.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has presented a joint Russian-Chinese draft of a treaty banning weapons in space to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, the International Herald Tribune reports. In submitting a draft on the “prevention of the placement of weapons in outer space, the threat or use of force against outer space objects,” Lavrov said deployment of weapons in space “by one state” would “inevitably result in a chain reaction” which, in turn, “is fraught with a new spiral in the arms race both in space and on the Earth.” Washington argues that there is no arms race in space and therefore no need to negotiate a treaty.
February 13:
Saratov Oblast’s chief prosecutor, Yevgeny Grigoryev, has been murdered in what law enforcement sources believe was a contract killing. Citing Interfax, Lenta.ru reports that Grigoryev was shot in the head in the courtyard of his apartment building in the city of Saratov. According to Interfax, Grigoryev told a meeting of Saratov Oblast district and city judges on February 8th that the oblast topped the list of the regions within the Volga Federal District in terms of the number of people prosecuted for taking bribes. He also criticized the fact that 81 percent of those convicted of bribe-taking avoided prison terms.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Russia does not plan any punitive measures if Kosovo unilaterally declares independence from Serbia but is demanding an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the province, Agence France-Presse reports. “Russia does not have among its political instruments any measures for punishing anyone,” Lavrov told reporters following an EU-Russia meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He added, however, that Moscow is convinced it would be “a mistake” for Kosovo to declare independence, which it is widely expected to do on February 17th.
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