Word: russians
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...this particular juncture in Russian history, it is Lebedev's self-assigned role to play, simultaneously, the oligarch and the anti-oligarch - to be the big, brash banking magnate whose estimated wealth prior to the financial crisis was around $3.7 billion and to decry the system that produces people like him, to live among the powerful while lambasting those who lord it over others. Before the global downturn, which Lebedev says has cost him $1 billion, he was a predictable, if persistent, critic of former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, routinely calling for an independent legislature, a free...
...since the Russian stock markets crashed in mid-September - Bloomberg has reported that Russia's top 25 wealthiest people have lost a collective $230 billion - Lebedev's campaign has acquired a new urgency. He has ridiculed the efforts of Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev to revive the economy, including bailouts for the oligarchs that he estimates at roughly $11 billion. He has announced plans for an English-language radio channel in Moscow; bought the London newspaper the Evening Standard; announced plans to launch a democratic political party with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev; and (briefly) run for mayor of Sochi...
...system doesn't work," Lebedev says. "It has nothing to do with the ordinary Russian." He pauses for just a moment. "I don't think I'm an enemy of this state. I am a critic, yes. But they need an opposition who is going to correct their mistakes, and they need a different political system...
...Moscow's idea of what influence means may well be different from Washington's. Nations should be allowed to choose their partners, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said, but "it is important that this be done transparently, without under-the-carpet games and not at the expense of others' interests." United Russia's Markov said Russia does not want a sphere of influence, but that historically, Russia has a "privileged interest" in Georgia and Ukraine and that in order for U.S.-Russian relations to be reset, "the U.S. has to recognize Russia's legitimate interests - that Russia...
Nikolai Petrov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, an independent think tank, said the trip "was pretty successful in the sense that he managed to reassure the leaders of these countries and to not make any statements which would seriously influence the Russian leadership." The problem in "Russian-American relations in this part of the world is to keep certain expectations and not to aggravate," he said...