Word: russian
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...location may have been the first hint. The 23rd European Union-Russia summit on Friday was held in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk, a former Tsarist army outpost just a few dozen miles from the Chinese border and 5,000 miles east of Western Europe. The location seemed more aimed at inducing jet lag and awe at Russia's size than at forging agreement on energy, an issue that has consistently soured relations between the two powers over the past months - and which the summit failed to resolve...
...While the site implied that Russia was not ready to budge on any of the issues on the table, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev made the point exceedingly clear. "The Russian Federation has not given any assurances and will not give any," he said after requests from the European side that the January gas crisis - when Russia cut off supplies to Ukraine for over a payment dispute - not be repeated. Although smiles abounded and the talks were held at the Musical Comedy Theatre, just off Khabarovsk's main Karl Marx Prospekt, the tone was one of disagreement. (See pictures of Russians...
...have to spend $4 billion to buy the 19.5 billion cubic meters of gas it requires to fill its storage reservoirs before the cold comes again. But how it will afford the purchase from Russia remains unclear. "We have doubts about the solvency of Ukraine," Medvedev said, according to Russian news agency Interfax. "We are ready to help Ukraine, but we would like to see much of this work taken up by the European Union, that is, by those who are interested in the reliability and security of energy cooperation...
...Which makes Rakhmon's sudden bout of modesty all the more puzzling. According to Russian news agency RIA Novosti, on May 15 local Tajik officials received phone calls from the president's office playing a recorded address by Rakhmon in which he stated that from then on, they could only display portraits of him that had been given official approval: "In order to prevent the veneration of bureaucrats [and] eliminate misunderstandings among the public ... the placement of portraits of the head of state in public places will be determined by the Office of the President of Tajikistan." The directive says...
...plagued by rampant corruption, vote rigging and unemployment that has forced around half of the male population to leave for Russia as guest workers. "Lately, people have been using pictures of the president to show off," said journalist Dzhura Yusufi, in an interview on local Tajik television. (Read: "The Russian Empire Strikes Back...