Stars Dazzle With Absurdities Over Holiday Break

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Lena Smirnova – January 14, 2013) No New Year’s celebration in Russia is complete without its most important guest: the television set. Although this year’s holiday shows and music concerts left much to be desired in terms of quality, Russians still got plenty of entertainment courtesy of the nation’s most flamboyant singers, dancers and politicians. […]

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Top 10 News Stories Over New Year’s Holidays

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anatoly Medetsky – January 14, 2013) The events that unfolded throughout the long holiday break ­ from a plane crash to attempts to find clarity for child adoptions by U.S. parents to a new formidable submarine entering service ­ have possessed a magnitude that would better befit a busy news week. While some of them […]

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Russia Takes Pause After Incredible Year of Discoveries and Disappointments

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 10, Issue 1 – Pavel K. Baev – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – January 7, 2013) Early January is a period of partying and hibernation in Russia. Yet, this pause also provides an opportunity to reflect on the incredible ups and downs of the past year. Designated by the Kremlin as a year of return to […]

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2012 in Review: Russia Turns in on Itself

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(Voice of America – Russian Service Crossfire – Donald N. Jensen – January 3, 2013) Russian state has struggled unsuccessfully since 1991 to reconcile ­three disparate, somewhat contradictory sources of legitimacy.  It portrays itself as democratic, but the trashing of the 1990s by the Putin regime deprives the current system of a founding myth.  During the Putin era there have […]

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NEWSLINK: A revolution in space but calmer streets at home; Pundits predict a loss of momentum for the protest movement at home and see little scope for improvement in relations with the West

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(A revolution in space but calmer streets at home; Pundits predict a loss of momentum for the protest movement at home and see little scope for improvement in relations with the West – Russia Beyond the Headlines – Artem Zagorodnov – January 4, 2013 – click here for google cache version of article) Russia Beyond the Headlines takes a look […]

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NEWSLINK: The most frequently asked questions on Yandex in 2012: In the outgoing year, Internet users were interested in love, the Russian presidential elections, the European Football Championship, and shampoo.

File Photo Dmitry Medvedev at Desk with Laptop Computer

[The most frequently asked questions on Yandex in 2012: In the outgoing year, Internet users were interested in love, the Russian presidential elections, the European Football Championship, and shampoo – Russia Beyond the Headlines/RIA Novosti – December 31, 2012 – click here for full article] Russia Beyond the Headlines provides an English-language version of a RIA Novosti report on the […]

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Russia’s three most important events in 2012

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(Pravda.ru – Oleg Artyukov – December 29, 2012) Pravda.Ru asked representatives of parliamentary parties and experts to name three, in their view, main events that took place in Russia’s political life in 2012. It is worth noting that most of our interviewees, regardless of their views and party affiliation, named the same events. Although, of course, there are differences in […]

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NEWSLINK: Ten reasons for Russians to be proud of their country

File Photo of Crowd of Russians

(Ten reasons for Russians to be proud of their country – Russia  Beyond the Headlines/ Russky Repoter – December 31, 2012 – click here for full article) Russia  Beyond the Headlines covers Russky Reporter magazine’s list of 2012 events it argues should stir Russian pride.  They focuses on volunteers first: Volunteers The birth of the volunteer movement is usually traced […]

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YEAR IN REVIEW: Cold war – state and private companies lock horns over Arctic shelf

Polar Map Showing Permafrost Areas, Adapted From NOAA.gov Graphic

MOSCOW. Dec 31 (Interfax) – The standoff between state and private oil companies over access to Russia’s continental shelf over the past year recalled the cold war of the early 1980s. It was also a combination of clashing ideologies and ambitions, coalitions of allies, war on the periphery, scare tactics, a search for compromises and absurdity. As in the cold […]

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Russians Anticipate Higher Wages, Higher Prices in 2013

File Photo of Cash, Coins, Line Graph

MOSCOW, January 1 (RIA Novosti) ­ Russians can expect to see their real wages rise in 2013, but along with that will come higher utilities tariffs, according to Economic Development Ministry forecasts. Take-home pay is set to rise 3.7 percent in 2013, the ministry forecasts, and the minimum wage is also expected to rise, although it will still lag significantly […]

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[Putin] New Year’s Address to the Nation

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(Kremlin.ru – December 31, 2012) Moscow PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Friends, We are saying goodbye to 2012 which becomes history. This was an important year for our country. I would like to sincerely thank you all for your efforts, your work and achievements, your trust and support. In these moments, we are particularly aware of the fleeting of time, […]

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2012: the year the Kremlin lost control of the script

Kremlin Aeriel View file photo

(Peter Pomerantsev – www.opendemocracy.net – December 28, 2012) Peter Pomerantsev is a British TV producer. For many years, he sold British programmes to the Russian TV industry. He now lives in London. Throughout the Putin heyday, Russian political discourse was invented, manipulated and owned by a handful of Kremlin spin doctors. Over the last year, that changed. Though they failed […]

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YEAR IN REVIEW: Gas comedy

Russian Gas Facility file photo

MOSCOW. Dec 29 (Interfax) – A classic situation comedy is where a snarl of ridiculous situations flow from one small lie that the hero says is only from good motives. For the justification of one untruth another is offered, then anothera(euro) and that is how a house of cards is built only to collapse amid uproarious off-screen laughter. FIRST STEP […]

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YEAR’S RESULTS: Modest results and record demand for Gazprom this year

File Photo of Blue Flame from Natural Gas

MOSCOW. Dec 29 (Interfax) – The gas sector in 2012 will be noted for peak demand, which gas companies dealt with honorably. It was also characterized but modest results, which only slightly topped the daily results posted during the first wave of the financial crisis. PRODUCTION According to Interfax’s calculations based on the Central Dispatching Department of the Fuel and […]

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New year’s greetings from US Ambassador Michael McFaul and his wife

Ambassador Michael McFaul file photo

New year’s greetings from US Ambassador Michael McFaul and his wife http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnZD_xtCfD4 [please note: a smaller frame is being provided, to accommodate users on mobile devices; click here for larger version over on youtube itself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnZD_xtCfD4]

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Russia’s 2013: Macbeth, or the Comedy of Errors?

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(Daniil Kotsyubinsky – www.opendemocracy.net – December 28, 2012) Daniil Kotsyubinsky is Russian historian and journalist based in St. Petersburg 2012 started in a huge upsurge of opposition activity: street protests, marches, arrests and imprisonments. A year later the scene is much calmer. Daniil Kotsyubinsky considers the future for the opposition, and does not find what he sees particularly encouraging The […]

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History Repeated Itself as Farce in 2012

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Roland Oliphant – December 28, 2012) Two hundred years ago this month, the miserable shreds of Napoleon’s Grande Armee shuffled out of Russian territory, thanking their lucky stars they had made it safely home and vowing never, ever to try that again. Those sentiments were shared by survivors of this year’s re-enactment of the Battle […]

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Orenburg 2013: Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New!

New Year's Eve in Red Square with Crowd and Fireworks

(Elena Strelnikov – www.opendemocracy.net – Elena Strelnikova is a journalist based in Orenburg (Southern Russia) – December 26, 2012) Regional journalist Elena Strelnikova takes a wry look at some of the events of the departing year. ‘When I was a child, I remember waking up in the morning and smelling the pancakes my mother would make in the kitchen. The […]

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