Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
Some smart people have suggested to me that the EU/US foods import ban is a crude way to increase the current account surplus, providing extra euros and US dollars for Russian corporates to service and repay their short-term debt. The…
CNN reports: A Malaysia Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, crashed Thursday in eastern Ukraine. Now consider this: – The separatists seized a Ukrainian air defense base late in June. A Buk missile system has been photographed in a…
Last week, a senior official of the St. Petersburg city government was seen in the city center with a briefcase, in a business suit but without trousers, muttering “Lugansk, Lugansk”. Within minutes, he was picked up by an ambulance and driven to a hospital,…
The Moscow sex ad mag, Flirt, keeps educating its readership on fine points of international politics. “Who needs WW3?” asks the cover of Issue 69, the answer hidden from view on pp. 2-3 but probably some variation of “AmeriKKKa”. The…
Last Friday, when pro-Russian separatists had started leaving Slavyansk, news came out that a new “acting Prime Minister” had been appointed in the “Luhansk People’s Republic”. The new “PM”, Marat Bashirov, is a Russian citizen, a Moscow resident, and formerly a senior…
VTB v Nutritek (registration required), finally decided by the UK Supreme Court in February 2013, was notable for the judges’ take on “piercing the corporate veil”, jurisdiction, and injunctive asset freezes. Now, let’s take a look at the parties involved. VTB Capital…
I was half-listening to Moscow’s Business FM radio last weekend when the anchor, talking about the standoff in Eastern Ukraine, mentioned “Graham Phillips, a British journalist”. I cocked my ears: the name rang a bell. Phillips was then quoted as…
Howard Amos reporting live from Odessa, where pro-Russian crowds are storming the police headquarteres to free the pro-Russian militants (and, I fear, butcher the pro-Kyiv detainees). Via February 31st. Amos links to a blog post (in Russia) detailing the tragic…
I believe the separatists in Eastern Ukraine are getting their orders from Russia, but the crowds seizing buildings in Donetsk look different from the “polite people” a.k.a. “little green men” of Crimea. Yulia Latynina, the controversial, libertarian-leaning Ekho Moskvy commentator, suggests…
March 21, 2014. PM Medvedev says Russia may sue Ukraine for $11 billion, the amount Russia was going to lose by denouncing the 2010 Kharkov agreements. (A statement so absurd and brazen at once it was hard to believe. Having annexed Crimea, Russia denounced the…
I believe Berezovsky’s claim that Abramovich stripped him of his share of Sibneft was not without merit. Unfortunately for him, Berezovsky could only prove that his informal control over Sibneft was as close to ownership as was possible in the…
Early last week (or this week, if weeks begin on Mondays), there was a rumor on Russophone networks and sites that Yanukovich would arrive in Donetsk on Easter. Hardly on a white horse but, perhaps, in a KrAZ. Gazeta.ru reports from…