June 12:
As part of its new, cooperative accession strategy, Russia will not seek entry into the WTO until early next decade, the Agence France Presse reports. "Russia will join as part of a customs union" recently announced with Belarus and Kazakhstan, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has confirmed to a G8 summit in Italy. "All the procedures for the customs union will be completed by the middle of 2011," following which time the three countries expect to launch a joint bid for membership in the international body.
June 13:
The simmering "milk war" between Russia and Belarus is breaking out into the open. Malaysia's Star newspaper reports that Belarusian leader Alexandr Lukashenko may boycott an upcoming meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) amid worsening relations between Moscow and Minsk. At issue is Russia's recent decision to ban the importation of more than 1,200 kinds of milk product from Belarus - an economic move that is likely to cost the former Soviet republic and traditionally erstwhile Kremlin ally billions of dollars in lost trade revenue.
Russia has agreed to provide the financing for two new hydropower stations in Angola, China's Xinhua news agency reports. The two power plants, to be built along the Kwanza River, will provide the African nation with 2,000 additional megawatts of electrical power once completed. The projects are intended to convey "goodwill" in "economic and commercial relations" between Moscow and Luanda, the news agency cites Sergei Nenachev, Russia's envoy to Angola, as saying.
[Editor's Note: Russia's foray into Angola appears to be part of a larger Kremlin strategy to regain influence on the African continent. "By all appearances Mr. Medvedev and, by extension, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are reviving the old Soviet Africa strategy," the Heritage Foundation's Ariel Cohen observes in the Wall Street Journal Europe. "The Soviet Union maintained friendly relations with many African countries, including Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique" during the early part of the Cold War. The significance of these states waned with the USSR's demise, but today has regained importance for different reasons: "Where once the Soviet Union sought political hegemony, today's Kremlin is after economic objectives like trade and access to raw materials."]
June 15:
Russia's intelligence presence in Crimea is coming under fire from Kyiv. In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Valentin Nalivaichenko, the head of Ukraine's main intelligence agency, the Sluzhby Bezopasnosti Ukraini (or SBU), has called for his organization's Russian counterpart, the FSB, to leave the Russian naval base in Crimea, which headquarters Russia's Black Sea fleet. The pressure, Nalivaichenko insists, is not political; the SBU is said to have enough resources and capabilities to ensure the security of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and the presence of Russia's FSB is therefore no longer necessary.
June 16:
Russia has effectively ended the UN's mission in Georgia by vetoing an extension of the mandate of the 131 person observer mission now operating in the former Soviet republic. Rejecting the UN effort as one "built on old realities," Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, has refused to allow the UN team to remain on the border between Georgia and the breakaway region of Abkhazia. Instead, the BBC reports that, in keeping with the Kremlin's efforts to hammer out bilateral security pacts with both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Churkin has declared that "only a new security system on the Georgian-Abkhaz border could guarantee non-aggression by Georgia."
Want these sent to your inbox?
Subscribe