Word: russian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...weeks, as the stock market cratered and some private Russian banks wobbled, the official Kremlin line was: "This is primarily an American issue." Finally, on Nov. 20, Putin admitted that Russia, too, was in trouble. Announcing a $20 billion economic-stimulus package and an increase in unemployment benefits, he said Russians were asking "a fair question" when they wondered about what was happening. His answer: "We will do everything, everything in our power ... so that the collapses of the past years should never be repeated in our country." Says Alexander Kliment, a Russia analyst at the Eurasia Group...
...oligarchs, has shelved an $8 billion investment program at his Severstal metals company that was scheduled for 2009-2011. The government now estimates that companies will lay off about 200,000 workers over December and January, but that's probably an understatement. Yevgeny Gontmakher, an economist who heads the Russian Academy of Sciences' Social Studies Center, expects that Russia's official unemployment rate, long below 6%, will be twice that level...
Challenging the official line is still hazardous. On Nov. 6, the Moscow business newspaper Vedomosti carried an opinion piece by the Academy of Sciences' Gontmakher titled NOVOCHERKASSK - 2009. The headline was a reference to spontaneous strikes by workers in a Russian town in 1962 that ended in bloodshed when troops were called in and opened fire: at least 20 people were killed and three dozen wounded. In his article, Gontmakher drew some parallels between the social tensions back then and the deteriorating economy today. Within days, the newspaper received an official warning from the Kremlin's media watchdog...
...pictures of Russian aristocracy...
...spiritual patriarch of more than 110 million members of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexy II, 79, led his followers for 18 years. Credited with restoring the church in the post-Soviet era, he mended a rift with a rival sect established by Russians who had fled the Soviet Union for the West. In his later years, Alexy was an ardent supporter of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin...