Word: kremlins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...gave similar reasons exactly a year ago when it turned off gas supplies to Ukraine, ensuring Kiev's swift agreement to new, tougher terms. Another former Soviet republic, Georgia, confronted with steep increases to Gazprom prices, is urgently seeking alternative supplies. Both countries are at odds with the Kremlin over pro-Western policies. Belarus, by contrast, has been seen as Moscow's closest ally - so close, in fact, that in 1997, its President, Alexander Lukashenko, signed a pact with Russia that envisaged eventually replacing the Belarusan ruble with the Russian one and suggested a constitutional change that could allow...
...double that which Belarus has paid since 2005. The country was also forced to sell 50% of its national gas pipeline operator Beltransgaz to the Russian gas company. The concessions will hurt. Lukashenko has propped up the Belarusan economy with Russian fuel and once was tipped to occupy the Kremlin himself. That seemed realistic as he cozied up to an ailing Boris Yeltsin. When Vladimir Putin took Russia's helm, Lukashenko's chances were dashed, and with them, one reason to expedite the alliance with Moscow...
...formal inclusion of Belarus into the Russian Federation. That would make Putin the first reunifier of the Slavic lands lost by the previous leaders in Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Annexing Belarus would also create a new legal option for Putin to stay on in the Kremlin, should he so choose: it would be his first constitutional term as President of a new state rather than the third unconstitutional one of the current Russian Federation...
...Putin's use of those energy resources, combined with his continuing crackdown on free speech and civil society in Russia itself, have provoked some dismay and led many observers at home and abroad to wonder in what direction he is taking his country. In January, the Kremlin briefly cut off gas supplies to neighboring Ukraine, ostensibly because of a dispute over prices. Ukraine saw the move as an attack on its pro-Western leader, President Viktor Yushchenko. That sent a chill through Europe and brought a public rebuke from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. In December, Russia threatened...
...their attention, rather, to the grains of polonium 210 that are at the center of the case. This is no garden-variety poison: polonium needs a nuclear reactor to cook it up and extremely careful handling. At first, the discovery of the element seemed to hang responsibility on the Kremlin. Russia is a big producer of polonium (although its annual output, less than a hundred grams a year, shows just how rare it is). The element is hard to procure. In the U.S., it takes a government license to buy more than minute quantities, and according to the website...