Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Russia

Ukrainian FM Urges Cool Negotiating With Russia

Borys Tarasyuk (file photo) (epa)

22 December 2005 -- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk called for less emotional comments to resolve his country's dispute over higher prices Russia is demanding for exports of natural gas.

TEXT SIZE - +

December 22, 2005

Tarasyuk said calls for raising the Russia's rent for using the Black Sea naval base at the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol quote "is not the method needed to solve these vitally important questions."

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said on 20 December that the if Russia quadruples the price of gas, as Russian officials have said, then Ukraine should ask for higher rent for Russian use of the Sevastopol base.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's charge d'affaires in Russia Leonid Osavolyuk accused on 22 December Russia's Black Sea Fleet of misappropriating facilities in the Crimea.

Osavolyuk said a "array of facilities" was illegally in the hands of Russia's Black Sea Fleet and Ukraine wanted that property back. Osavolyuk did not name any specific facilities.

(ITAR-TASS/AP)

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin covers his face during a conference of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in Moscow on February 9.

Administrative (Resource) Breakdown

Administrative resources make up the glue that holds authoritarian structures like Putin's power vertical together. And there have been plenty of signs recently that this glue is weakening. More

Syrians in the northwestern town of Kfar Nubul pose with a cartoon depicting Russia

Angry Over Syria, Arab World Threatens Russian Boycott

Groups in a number of Arab states, angry over the Russian-Chinese veto of a UN resolution aimed at stopping the violence in Syria, have called for a one-day boycott of Russian and Chinese goods on February 12. More

Alla Dzhioyeva attends a protest by her supporters in Tskhinvali on January 28.

South Ossetian Opposition Leader Hospitalized After Raid

Alla Dzhioyeva, the opposition candidate whose victory in a runoff ballot in November for de facto president of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia was swiftly annulled by the republic's Supreme Court, was taken to a hospital after a raid by some 200 masked security personnel on her headquarters in Tskhinvali. More