Word: putinã
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...corporation.” In the last months, this behemoth bought, in a throwback to good ol’ Soviet times, curious assets to “complete its portfolio”: Izvestia, a money-losing newspaper, and NTV, a leading TV network formerly owned by one of Putin??s rapidly vanishing rivals. This cold New Year, the company was used for a 21st-century taste of realpolitik...
...away from the Kremlin’s spheres of influence. Former Soviet republic Belarus, on the other hand, has an authoritarian government keen on close relationships with Moscow and still enjoys cheap energy. Thus, gas from murky companies like Gazprom flows with political scents—and according to Putin??s desires...
...problem with Russian politics is that increasingly, everything flows according to Putin??s cravings. Long gone are the days when Kremlin-watchers thought this sober former KGB officer would copy-cat feeble former President Boris Yeltsin. Damningly, when the Kremlin intervened to rectify most of the shady privatizations of his predecessor, media freedom was severely obstructed. The State took control of most media outlets and kept them, minimizing criticism within its borders...
...president didn’t stop there, either. In comments that seemed bound to irk Putin, whom Bush visited on Sunday as part of his European trip, the president called for free elections in Belarus, whose president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is among Putin??s remaining friends in Eastern Europe, where former Soviet republics, such as Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, are turning westward in increasing numbers...
Most of Shleifer’s argument rests, predictably, on Russia’s economic indicators. He does not, however, ignore Russian politics. He explains away President Vladimir Putin??s efforts to undermine democratic institutions as perfectly ordinary activities for middle-income heads of state, comparing the level of election fraud, voter intimidation and vote-buying in the Russian Federation to those of Argentina and Brazil. So Russia is “normal,” at least according to the conveniently quantifiable indicators economists such as Shleifer use to gauge the economic and political life (or lack...