Posted by Sean on September 23, 2008
Medvedev and Putin looking Presidential
Dmitri Medvedev is not just President of Russia. Nor is he simply a rising global interlocutor. He, or really his visage, is also the subject to the whims of the marketplace. According to Kommersant Vlast,
People are even trying to sell the portrait of the President of Russia using spam. Evidently, the reason for the crisis of production which has arisen in the market of portraits of Russian government leaders, is because sellers overestimated buyers demand for portraits of Dmitri Medvedev. On the internet several internet shops exists that sell the portrait of the President and between them there is a genuine trading war.
One site, www.portrets.ru, is allowing you to download creepy portraits of Medvedev and Putin for free!
Posted by Sean on September 17, 2008
Anatol Lieven’s “Lunch with Putin” deserves much thought and serious discussion. Here are his impressions from last week’s Valdai Discussion Club:
[T]here was another way in which the world seemed to revolve backward during the Valdai, which was if anything even more disturbing. During two lunches over the course of the conference, the president and prime minister of Russia spoke with us for a total of almost seven hours, answering unscripted questions without the help of aides. The foreign minister, deputy prime minister and deputy chief of the general staff spoke with us for several more hours. The chances of this happening in George Bush’s Washington, or indeed most other Western capitals, are zero.
On the other hand, I was told, several U.S. experts who had been invited refused to come because they were afraid that to be seen to talk with Russian leaders would hurt their chances of being selected for ..read more
Posted by Sean on July 10, 2008
It was Dmitri Medvedev’s coming out party to the other leaders of the G-8. It seems that he didn’t fail to impress. Bush called him a “smart guy,” which should apply to pretty much everyone when next to the outgoing American President. Medvedev stood his ground with Britain’s Gordon Brown when the latter raised the TNK-BP dispute, the closing of British Council offices, and, of course, that old dead horse Litvinenko. Though it appears that the handlers of the British PM and the Russian President want to put on a good public face. One source told reporters that “neither Brown nor Medvedev wanted to wrap up the talks.” They just wouldn’t shut up after the two got acquainted and shared their global visions. Or perhaps the tabs of Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin were more the topic of discussion than the issues that keep Russia and Britain at a cool ..read more
Posted by Sean on June 16, 2008
Jeffrey Tayler takes up clanology in his article “The Master and Medvedev” in hopes to map the innards of Kremlin Inc (hat tip to James at Robert Amsterdam for pointing to it). Tayler argues that Putin’s anointing of Medvedev as President, who in turn returned the favor by making his patron PM, was a great victory for Putin’s efforts to keep the siloviki at bay. If Putin left power completely, Tayler’s logic goes, he would open season to possible investigations and prosecutions for corruption. Putting Medvedev in power ensured him immunity and more importantly, Tayler adds, “Putin has outsmarted—and possibly imperiled—all those in Sechin’s clan.” But alone Medvedev is too keep to fight the sharks himself, so he needs Putin to have his back ready to pluck one with a harpoon.
All of this sounds plausible and I applaud Tayler for not rehashing the usual Putin as ..read more
Posted by Sean on June 11, 2008
The people want to know is the eXile‘s demise the result of a government inspection or money? Well, you see, the two can’t be untangled. Already in dire financial straights, the impromptu inspection scared the paper’s investors away, leaving it in debt and flat broke. Searching for whether it was the chicken or the egg doesn’t say much here. I think for the eXile, government attention simply nudged it off the financial cliff. As Yasha Levine explained on the eXile blog, “News of the [polite chinovniks'] visit had our investors fleeing instantly.” Now broke, the eXile is now begging for money to keep its website’s server up.
Why the eXile has finally attracted the government eye is easy to explain. Limonov, it’s offensive articles, and its love of pissing in the face of anything and everyone. The big question everyone is asking is why ..read more
Posted by Sean on May 13, 2008
(Top down, left to right: Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister; Viktor Zubkov, First Vice-Prime Minister; Igor Shubalov, First Vice-Prime Minister; Igor Sechin, Vice-Prime Minister; Sergei Sobyanin, Vice-Prime Minister; Sergei Ivanov, Vice-Prime Minister; Aleksei Kurdrin, Vice-Prime Minister; Aleksandr Zhukov, Vice-Prime Minister; Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister; Rashid Nuraliev, Minister of Internal Affairs; Aleksei Kudrin, MInister of Finance; Sergei Shoigy, Minister of Public Safety; Dmitri Kozak, Minister of Regional Development; Tatiana Golkova, Minister of Health and Social Development; Elvira Nabiullina, Minister of Economic Development; Anatolii Serdiukov, Minister of Defense; Igor Shchegolev, Minister of Communications; Andrei Fursenko, Minister of Education; Iurii Trutnev, Minister of Natural Resources; Aleksei Gordeev, Minister of Agriculture; Sergei Shmatko, Minister of Energy; Viktor Khistenko, Minister of Industry, Vitalii Mutko, Minister of Sport; Aleksandr Avdeev, Minister of Culture; Igor Levitin, Minister of Transportation; and Aleksandr Konovalov, Minister of Justice.)
Things to note are:
Putin basically brought his tail from the Kremlin into ..read more
