*Russia upped the ante this week in the stare-down with Georgia by sending additional troops to Abkhazia. Here, the Chicago Tribune has the back story and an analysis of Russia’s geopolitical aims in the conflict.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko urged Russia not to set aside the Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, a key treaty setting out relations between the two countries. Russia’s parliament suggested voiding the agreement in retaliation for Ukraine’s EU and NATO ambitions. See the EU Business story here.
Kazakstan, home to 3.3 percent of the world’s oil reserves, announced that its economy’s growth will slow in 2009, to 6 percent or less after seven years with and average growth of 10 percent thanks to the skyrocketing price of oil. A hefty supply of oil will not be enough to ward off the ill effects of the credit crunch, says this Kazinformstory.
Steve Breaux, or ‘Super Steve’ as he is referred to on his blog, is an international elections observer for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. He’s been chronicling his adventures surrounding the recent elections in Georgia - the photo above shows a typical rural polling station - and he has some particularly good images and information in his most recent post.
Check out his blog and learn how officials use UV light to thwart fraud, what Georgians do in lieu of absentee voting, and what sorts of refreshments one is typically offered at Georgian polling place.
In news related to an earlier post, the lawyer for the NGO head who won a constitutional court showdown this week was attacked late Thursday, RIA Novosti reports. Skinheads allegedly beat the attorney on the head repeatedly with wooden sticks, and one attacker said he had “a mission to kill the lawyer.”
The “smuggling” case against Aslamazyan had press freedom significance - the NGO she ran trained broadcast journalists and more than 2,000 Russian journalists had directed a letter protesting her arrest to former president Putin her arrest prompted more than 2,000 Russian journalists to send an open letter of protest to former-president Vladimir Putin.
So a Russian by the name of Dima Bilan won the recent Eurovision song contest, a sort of multinational version of American Idol. On the news that votes from the Baltic states helped Bilan claim the title, a young pro-Kremlin assemblage gathered outside the Latvian and Estonian embassies in Moscow to express their gratitude.
They even released a statement which read, in part: “It’s very pleasant to hear that Russia was supported in this contest by our nearest neighbours, including the Baltic states, with whom our bilateral relations aren’t very good.”
Just so you’re clear on how big this show is: Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev made a telephone call while on his first official foreign trip (to China) to congratulate Bilan, who’s win guarantees next year’s contest will be hosted by Russia. The former President/current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin referred to the win as “yet another triumph for all of Russia.” If ever anyone was all about triumph…
A case highlighting the crackdown by Russian authorities on NGOs with Western ties was decided today in favor of Manana Aslamaziyan, former head of an organization that helped train journalists and which was funded largely by U.S. sources.
Aslamaziyan had been charged with smuggling after failing to declare cash worth about $12,400 as she passed through Sheremetyevo airport in January of 2007. In the months following her arrest, her NGO was raided by police, its bank accounts were frozen and a new charge of tax evasion was brought against Aslamaziyan, who fled to Paris.
But today’s decision found the smuggling charge to be unconstitutional, on the grounds that the government’s definition of “large sums of money” was simply too vague. Reason to be cautiously optimistic? Aslamaziyan’s lawyer thinks so. Viktor Parshutkin, Aslamazyan’s lawyer, called Tuesday’s decision a “good omen” for the Russian legal system. He’s quoted in The Moscow Times story:
“This decision has made me very happy,” he said by telephone from St. Petersburg. “[The Constitutional Court] has demonstrated its independence from the political machinations of the authorities.”
In a speech at the University of Denver today, John McCain spoke of his willingness to work with Russia towards crafting legally binding limits on nuclear weapons. Such an accord would replace START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which expires in 2009.
The New York Times called the speech a sign of McCain’s efforts to distance his own policies from those of President Bush, who has been unwilling to enter into such agreements. But the same story also mentioned McCain’s proposed expulsion of Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized countries* (other members: Great Britain, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, and Italy), and questioned the subsequent likelihood of Moscow’s interest in bargaining with a President McCain.
Ever wish your job involved traveling to new places, learning as much as you can about the people there and conveying the message of the United States while you’re at it? A career as a foreign service officer might be right up your alley.
So say Russian nationalists, who are doing what they can to reverse the 1954 transfer of ownership of the Crimean Peninsula from the USSR to, well the other USSR (Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic).
With Ukraine aching for NATO membership, and Russia doing their best to thwart it, this dust-up centers around a naval base in the Ukrainian coastal town of Sevastopol. Vladimir Putin has nightmares of the strategic base falling under NATO command should Ukraine succeed in joining.
Georgia held parliamentary elections on Wednesday, and though the ruling party won the day, it was not without some serious drama which has, of course, led to much finger-pointing, speculating and insinuating on all sides.
An opposition leader was shot on the way to a polling station, buses bringing ethnic Georgians from across the Abkhazia border to vote exploded, and opposition supporters threatened to ambush the Central Elections Commission…but any hope of storming of the CEC evaporated when a night time rally turned out to be sparsely attended.
Why the poor showing? A soccer match, according to opposition organizers, who say President Saakashvili scheduled elections to coincide with the League of Champions final match broadcast, banking on the liklihood that the event would take priority over politics in the minds of Georgian men that evening.
Kommersant (”Russia’s daily online”) has the full story here and here.
The new Russian president is in China, where talks are expected to center around trade. His predecessor is credited with strengthening ties with China, though plenty of tensions still exist. According to Bloomberg, Medvedev hopes to persuade China to buy more than just energy from his country.
Medvedev also touched down in Kazakhstan en route; on the agenda there was a request that the country continue exporting its oil via pipelines through Russia.
All in all, the trip underscores the new global strategy game major players are part of: the struggle for control of energy supplies and growing resistance against Western dominance.
Medvedev’s first Western trip is set for early June when he’ll meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany.
