Posts Tagged “russia”
Posted by: admin in 87, tags: Gazprom, russia, Ukraine
Source: Bloomberg.com
OAO Gazprom, Russia’s state gas exporter, called for a resumption of talks on a dispute with Ukraine that led to a cutoff of Russian supplies of the fuel today to the country, the second interruption in three years.
Price was not the main issue in negotiations broken off yesterday, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told a press conference in Moscow today, adding that the Ukrainian delegation had no mandate to sign a deal. He said Gazprom has cut 110 million cubic meters of gas a day in supplies to Ukraine.
Gazprom is waiting for the Ukrainian energy company, NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy, to respond on the offer of new negotiations, Kupriyanov said.
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Technorati Tags: Russia, Ukraine
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Posted by: admin in Police State, russia, tags: civil unrest, Economic Crisis, Financial Woes, FSB, High Treason, Medvedev, Police State, russia, Russian Security Services
Source: Reuters
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Critics say that under Putin, security services have become excessively influential and expressed fears Russia could one day become a police state.
Rights campaigners have urged Medvedev to veto a cabinet bill ordering that professional judges rather than juries run trials involving terrorism, civil unrest and several other serious crimes.
They also urged Medvedev to block government attempts to impose high treason charges on people accused of “harming the constitutional order,” which critics believe could lead to a political witch-hunt.
Analysts say the role of the security services is likely to grow even further as Russia plunges into an economic crisis marked by rising unemployment and financial woes that threaten the popularity of the government.
Avoiding civil unrest and maintaining political stability is viewed by the government as a top priority.
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Technorati Tags: Russia, FSB, civil unrest
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Source: The Raw Story
Russia test-fired three long-range missiles on Sunday and pronounced its nuclear deterrent strong in a show of force that experts said had not been seen since the days of the Cold War.
Two of the missiles were fired from nuclear submarines in the Asian and European extremes of the sprawling country while a third was watched by President Dmitry Medvedev on land in northwest Russia, news agencies reported.
It was the second Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test in as many days and the latest in a series of high-profile military exercises of conventional land, sea and air forces as well as strategic nuclear units.
“This shows that our deterrent is in order,” Medvedev was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying after Sunday’s missile launches.
“We will of course be introducing new types of forces and means into the military,” he added, without elaborating.
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Russia, Cold War
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Source: Yahoo! News
Russia has informed Norway that it plans to suspend all military ties with NATO, Norway’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday, a day after the military alliance urged Moscow to withdraw its forces from Georgia.
NATO foreign ministers said Tuesday they would make further ties with Russia dependent on Moscow making good on a pledge to pull its troops back to pre-conflict positions in Georgia. However, they stopped short of calling an immediate halt to all cooperation.
The Nordic country’s embassy in Moscow received a telephone call from “a well-placed official in the Russian Ministry of Defense,” who said Moscow plans “to freeze all military cooperation with NATO and allied countries,” Espen Barth Eide, state secretary with the Norwegian ministry said.
Eide told The Associated Press that the Russian official notified Norway it will receive a written note about this soon. He said Norwegian diplomats in Moscow would meet Russian officials on Thursday morning to clarify the implications of the freeze.
“It is our understanding that other NATO countries will receive similar notes,” Eide said. The ministry said the Russian official is known to the embassy, but Norway declined to provide a name or any further identifying information.
A Kremlin official declined to comment on the report, and the Russian ambassador to NATO did not reply to messages left on his cell phone. But the Interfax news agency, citing what it called a military-diplomatic source in Moscow whom it did not identify, reported that Russia is reviewing its 2008 military cooperation plans with NATO.
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Source: Reuters
Russia aims to extend its control over energy deliveries to the West and it is important that European countries push forward on efforts to diversify routes for oil and gas supplies, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.
As Vice President Dick Cheney visited Italy to seek support for Georgia after its brief war with Russia, the official, said: “The fact is Russia has worked hard to try to corner the market, so to speak, and is working to foreclose options to transit for those energy products across Russia.
“They want everything to come out through Russia and a lot of us think it’s more important that there be diverse means of gaining access to those resources,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“No one country ought to be able to totally dominate those deliveries.”
Italy was the last stop on a weeklong trip for Cheney that began with Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine to reinforce U.S. support for the former Soviet states after the conflict between Tbilisi and Moscow.
The crisis erupted in early August when Georgia tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia and Russia responded with overwhelming force. Cheney, in a weekend speech in Cernobbio, Italy, called Moscow’s actions “brutality against a neighbor”.
In those remarks, he also accused Russia, the world’s second largest oil producer, of using “energy as a tool of force and manipulation” in Central Asia, the Caucasus and elsewhere by threatening to interrupt the flow of oil or natural gas.
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