A Slow-Motion Train Wreck

Keeping track of the economic crisis in Russia and its side effects is no easy task. So I was glad to discover today that Ekho Moskvy journalist Vladimir Varfolomeyev is blogging it for us (in Russian, of course). If you want to know which Krasnoyarsk food producer is paying employees in caviar or how many people the "Komsomolskaya pravda" newspaper plans to lay off in February, this blog is the place to go.

The website demokrat-info.ru, in fact, has a whole crisis-related website going that has a good deal of analysis and information. The information is presented by the opposition Solidarity movement. Of particular interest is this timeline of the crisis, a handy reference guide although it hasn't been updated since November 29. I hope that's not a bad sign.

You can follow links there to the blog of opposition figure Irina Yasina and the sites of former First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and former Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov.

RFE/RL's Russian Service has aggregated its crisis coverage here.

-- Robert Coalson