Word: moscow
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...terror. The meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Zardari, took place in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. Reportedly on the table were plans to beef up trade ties as well as improve cooperation in the fight against Islamist extremism - clear signs, experts say, that Moscow is bolstering its role in the "Af-Pak" theater, a region Russia had largely retreated from after the scarring decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s...
...Europe's last Soviet-style government is finally on its way out. In Moldova this week, four months after popular upheaval, the Communist Party accepted defeat in a national election. Four pro-Western opposition parties must now scrabble together a coalition which they say will distance the country from Moscow, more fully embrace democracy and integrate with Europe. "This is definitely the beginning of something new," says Viorel Ursu, Moldovan analyst with the Open Society Institute in Brussels. "The difference between the Communists and the incoming government is huge, even just in terms of mentality. They are Western-educated...
...ensuing crackdown was violent, with hundreds of opposition supporters jailed. In the aftermath, Moldovan leader and Communist strongman Vladimir Voronin, 68, turned inwards - and to Moscow. He accused neighboring European Union member Romania of provoking the riots in order to pave the way for a coup against him. In June, Russia rewarded Voronin with $500 million in infrastructure loans. That was followed last week by good news from China, who announced $1 billion in similar loans. To put that in context: Moldova's annual GDP is just $4 billion...
...Cold-shouldering Moscow could also come at a cost. Moldova is dependent on Russia for gas, oil and electricity imports. The new government says it will pursue stronger relations with Europe and Romania, with whom it shares many cultural similarities. Moldova was part of Romania until World War II, when a chunk of the country was given to the Soviets by the Nazis. Fears of unification kept previous Moldovan governments from building bilateral ties. And then there is the problem of Transnistria, a tiny Russian-speaking province backed by Moscow that wants to secede. "At least we have a year...
...following the killing of yet another Novaya Gazetta reporter. "Medvedev ... said he's a full supporter of the Gulag Memorial project," Lebedev says. (Memorial was the most important human-rights group to emerge from the perestroika era. For years it has pushed for a monument in the center of Moscow recalling the victims of the gulag.) Putin, Lebedev says, would never back anything that subtracted from the Soviet record. "I think Putin thinks that this commemoration would spoil the everyday spirit," Lebedev says. "Stalin, for them, represents the state, and sometimes you can see Putin as sort of - in that...