Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Posted on August 7, 2009 - by Venik
Happy Anniversary, Misha
Tweeter celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Georgian-Russian war by setting it’s Web servers on fire. (For those of you with long-term memory problem, here is a brief recap of the events.) The Unix gurus at Tweeter’s datacenter blamed the downtime on unspecified hackers unleashing a DDoS attack. According to some networking experts interviewed by [...]
Posted on August 3, 2009 - by Venik
Finland Pushes Putin’s Buttons
As any family feud, this story has many ins and outs. Paavo Salonen from Finland married Rimma from Russia, they had a son – Anton – and they got divorced. Rimma’s older son from first marriage Nikita, who is now 19, lived with his stepfather Paavo in Finland. Rimma was living with her younger son [...]
Posted on July 28, 2009 - by Venik
Loose Lips…
Newspapers in America and Russia are busy busting Joe Biden’s chops for taking lead from Sarah Palin and going Maverick on relations with the Kremlin. It is not that Biden said something that the Russians didn’t already know: Russia’s economy and population are both in decline and long-term prospects are not exactly rosy. Depending on [...]
Posted on July 21, 2009 - by Venik
Saakashvili’s War
Entirely in line with his suspected drug abuse problem, Saakashvili is now waging war of words on the Wall Street Journal. In Georgia’s President Vows Changes (by Andrew Osborn, WSJ 2009-07-20) the following quote appeared: “He also called the hopes of Georgia joining NATO “almost dead.” “It’s tragic,” he said. “It means the Russians fought [...]
Posted on July 15, 2009 - by Venik
Talking to Taliban
Coalition losses in Afghanistan continue mounting. Most casualties are sustained when troops are at their bases or on routine patrol missions. Recent reports suggest that the coalition is short on operational helicopters. Available fleets of attack helicopters and ground attack planes are stretched thin providing cover to supply convoys and ground patrols. The overall situation [...]
Posted on June 3, 2009 - by Venik
Medvedev vs. Putin
A small scandal erupted in Russia’s Karelia region over the decision by a local newspaper to reprint the article from The Vancouver Sun critical of Medvedev. Editors of the Iskra – a small entertainment paper named after Lenin’s famed underground revolutionary newsletter and a relative newcomer to the Russian newspaper market – in a desperate [...]
Posted on May 19, 2009 - by Venik
Russia’s New Policy on Historical Revisionism
The Wall Street Journal is commenting on Russia’s new policy to counter attempts at historical revisionism (“Russia Frames New Policy on History“, by Andrew Osborne, WSJ, May 19, 2009). According to WSJ’s hand-picked collection of opinions, Russia is trying to move back to the Soviet practice of tightly managing the official, state-approved version of history [...]
Posted on May 17, 2009 - by Venik
Pipeline Business
The EU continues waging a losing battle for its energy independence from Russia. Gazprom, hit hard by the global economic recession and dropping energy demands, may be skating on thin ice, but it is still well ahead of the EU. Following the August war with Georgia, Russia moved to consolidate its gains in the region [...]
Posted on April 30, 2009 - by Venik
The Road to Afghanistan
The expedient defeat of NATO-sponsored Georgian army last August by the Russians left many hardliners in Washington and Brussels itching to respond. NATO’s decision to break formal contacts with Russia was a testament to NATO’s own political weakness. To add to the Alliance’s humiliation, the economic crisis forced the West to seek improved relations with [...]
Posted on April 28, 2009 - by Venik
Russian Frigate Detains Somalian Pirates
The “Admiral Panteleyev” frigate of Russia’s Pacific Fleet detained a suspected pirate vessel with 29 aboard around 6pm Moscow time on Tuesday 15 kilometers from the shores of Somalia. In addition to the crew, the detained vessel was carrying seven AK-47s, various types of handguns, aluminum ladders with grappling hooks, satellite navigation equipment, multiple fuel [...]
Posted on April 26, 2009 - by Venik
Su-35 Crashed in Russia
According the Russian media, a Su-35-4 (third flying prototype) crashed on Sunday around 11am local time while taking off from the runway of Sukhoi’s KnAAPO manufacturing plant in Komsomolsk-na-Amure. It has been reported that the aircraft collided with an unidentified obstacle at the end of the runway and was completely destroyed. Yevgeniy Frolov, one of [...]
Posted on April 24, 2009 - by Venik
Silver Lining
State Duma – the lower house of the Russian Parliament – voted over the objections of the Communist Party to adopt the redesigned red star marking for military aircraft. The new design is similar to the old one, but features a smaller red star surrounded by a thin blue border. Unexpectedly, the new legislature was [...]
Posted on April 20, 2009 - by Venik
Loudicrous
It seems Lou Dobbs decided to join the choir of starry-eyed optimists who believe that the recession is over that the American economy will begin to recover any month now. Lou, what is the point of parading Nobel Prize-winning economists on your show if all you do is interrupt them with your idiotic ideas? I [...]
Posted on April 16, 2009 - by Venik
Costly NATO Ambitions
Besieged in his new glass-domed presidential palace in Tbilisi by thousands of protesters demanding his resignation, Mikheil Saakashvili is desperately searching for any opportunity to strengthen his slipping hold on power. The EU, rattled by the brief but eventful 2009 gas war between Russia and Ukraine, is almost just as anxious to help Misha keep [...]
