Word: russians
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...Russian President Dmitri Medvedev wound up a three-day state visit to Paris on Wednesday, he had to be pleased with the results. After all, he virtually cinched an unprecedented military deal, bagged a significant gas contract and watched his French host, President Nicolas Sarkozy, dismiss American and European misgivings about his embrace of Moscow by treating Medvedev like his newest best friend forever. There wasn't a whole lot for the Russian leader not to love...
...military deals. On Monday, Sarkozy confirmed that France was negotiating with Russia over the sale of four Mistral-class assault ships worth a total of about $2 billion - the first deal of its kind between a NATO member and Moscow. It's turning heads for other reasons too. A Russian admiral recently said the amphibious vessels - which can carry 15 helicopters or 70 armored vehicles - would have allowed Russia to complete its August 2008 invasion of Georgia in a matter of hours. Little wonder, then, that the deal has prompted deep concern among American defense officials as well as among...
Sarkozy, however, says such suspicions are outdated and that Europe and its allies need to focus on common threats to security. "How are we to say to Russian leaders, 'We need you for peace, like on Iran,' but then say, 'We don't trust you'? That would be totally inconsistent," Sarkozy tartly said on Monday night, when he was questioned by reporters on the sale. "We want to turn the page on the Cold War." (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory...
Selling Russia warships is certainly a nifty way of doing that. But some observers think the naval deal is being used as bait by Sarkozy to secure France wider-ranging business deals with Russia. During Medvedev's Paris trip, for example, the Russian energy giant Gazprom signed a contract with Paris-based GDF Suez to give the French company a 9% stake in the Nord Stream natural-gas pipeline and up to 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas by 2015. Nord Stream had previously been exclusively a Russo-German affair - one of many deals that other European countries and companies...
Another motive behind Russia's high-tech endeavor seems to be staking out a part of the industry and a part of the Web that is distinctly Russian. This came through in a parallel initiative approved by Medvedev in November. It would allow Russian speakers to be the first to register Web addresses in their native Cyrillic script rather than in Latin letters like everybody else. Andrei Kolesnikov, the official in charge of implementing the idea and registering Cyrillic domain names, says using the Russian language online is the nation's "birthright." He concedes, however, that it offers "no technical...