Word: britain
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...have been watching recent developments with dismay. "Russian big business can only wish that the whole thing is over and done with as soon as possible," says Mikhail Kozhokin, the vice president of VTB-24, a major Russian state- controlled bank. "Nobody wants any disruptions. Not just in business - Britain is the favorite country where many top Russian businessmen send their children to school, buy real estate, settle their families and look forward to enjoying retirement...
...Unlike the games played in the cold war, when the globe was clearly divided into East and West, friend and foe, the dispute between London and Moscow is taking place in a more confusing world. As the Kremlin prepares to take the inevitable retaliatory action against Britain, the motivations of the main players appear mixed. Britain lodged the extradition request for Lugovoi knowing that the Russian constitution rules out the extradition of Russian citizens. The government anticipated this would create an impasse but says the murder on British soil of a British citizen demanded action. The Kremlin, for its part...
...says. The country's new confidence is founded on its oil and gas reserves, which it has used for political leverage. "There's been a lot of pressure on governments to go soft on Russia because it's seen as an important new economic player," says Denis MacShane, Britain's Europe Minister from 2002-05. And Western governments have wanted Russia's cooperation on everything from combating terrorism to tackling such tricky international negotiations as the future of Iran's nuclear program. Earlier this month President George W. Bush welcomed Putin to the Bush family spread in Maine...
...Moscow, however, efforts by the West to make nice don't seem to have worked. Government officials seem convinced, rather, that the West resents Russia's growing clout. One such official told Time he saw Britain's expulsion of the Russian diplomats as part of an "anti-Russian campaign" backed by the U.S. "The West is pissed off we won the 2014 [winter] Olympics, so they sought a way to prick us," he said. Andrei Kokoshin, a pro-Putin member of the Duma, dismissed the British action as "a political novice [and new Prime Minister] Gordon Brown trying...
...Litvinenko was one of those Anglophiles. After fleeing Russia in 2000, he had planned for a life in London. Some fellow expatriates - there are now thought to be around 400,000 Russians in Britain - support the British government's moves to keep up the pressure over his case. "Nobody wants there to be visa restrictions or any impact on business," says Natasha Chouvaeva, the editor of Britain's Russian-language newspaper, the Russian London Courier. "Confrontation is not an option." But neither, she adds, "is looking the other way. It is in the interests of the Russian community that [Litvinenko...