One of the most pressing questions that arises in a currency crisis like Russia's -- and whose answer (along with surging oil prices) helped Russia rebound from its 1998 ruble meltdown -- is whether there are significant domestic sectors that can benefit from devaluation. Which invites the question:
QUIZ: What Does Russia Make?
Interesting headline on a column in Russian state's latest international media venture, the Sputnik "counterpropaganda" news agency:
If you aren't familiar with Sputnik, here's correspondent Daisy Sindelar's recent item that pretty much sums them up:
Five Things The Kremlin's New Media Agency Thinks The West Should Fear About Itself
Just to re-up ICYMI, here's that YouTube video of Grad rockets being fired -- apparently by pro-Russian militants -- from next to apartment blocks in Donetsk.
Russians instead should remember the “historic” words Stalin uttered on February 4, 1931, and launch a similar mobilization program to rebuild and expand Russia’s industrial base.
Such an effort, Super suggests, would allow the country to withstand any foreign challenges just as Stalin’s allowed the USSR to hold out “against the united force of Europe in the Great Fatherland War.”
Read more of Paul Goble's piece here:
Interfax on reports that the still-embattled former Georgian president might be offered a job by officials in Ukraine:
There is no final decision yet over Georgian candidates for jobs in the Ukrainian government, says Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's former president.
"Various candidatures were considered for various ministries: But, as far as I understand, no final decision has been made," Saakashvili told reporters in Kyiv on Monday.
There are several candidates, he said without naming them.
"This is within the remit of the Ukrainian government," he said.
Saakashvili also said that he had met with Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Groisman. "We discussed Georgia's aid for Ukraine, including at the international level, and maximum lobbying of Ukraine's interests internationally," he added.
The ex-Georgian president, who faces criminal charges in his home country, would not say whether he has been invited to work in the Ukrainian government.