Word: vladimir
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...many clubs harder to join than the G-8. You have to be at the top of the global heap: one of the very richest industrialized countries, potent enough to help steer the world's economy. And you're supposed to be a functioning democracy too. So when Vladimir Putin opens this year's G-8 summit next weekend at the sumptuous Palace of Congresses overlooking the sea 15 km from St. Petersburg, the famously stone-faced Russian President can be forgiven a brief flicker of a smile. The former kgb officer in East Germany will be in charge...
...Putin has noticed such criticisms, he gives little sign of it. He has turned the Duma, political parties and regional governments into elaborate rubber stamps. "The separation of powers has been dismantled," says Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the very few independent liberal deputies left in the Duma. "All power belongs to the President and his administration, and 1.3 million federal bureaucrats." People don't go to jail for expressing deviant views anymore (though a bill about to pass through the Duma will soon make that possible), but organized politics have been switched off in favor of direct rule. People...
...Bush is no exception. He ran for office proclaiming contempt for Bill Clinton's closeness to Yeltsin, but in office has tried the same dance with Putin - and his aides argue that over Iran, Hamas and North Korea, such an approach is getting results. Next week George and Vladimir will meet once again. Hard facts will be attractively packaged. Bush is prepared to say that Putin should stop centralizing power, for example, but not because Russia's government is an embarrassment to democracy. Rather, says a senior U.S. official, more centralization will "create a situation where the Kremlin doesn...
...Sept. 11, many in the U.S. began looking to it as a potential major alternative energy source to the Middle East. Now the Chinese, too, are clamoring for much larger deliveries of Russian oil and gas. But dependence on Russian energy comes at a political price. Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't hide his ultimate goal. Russia "must aspire to claim world leadership in the realm of energy," Putin told his Security Council last December. For the Kremlin, energy security equals Russian national security, and it won't shy away from making oil and gas significant tools of its foreign...
...shipments from its Vankor fields by rail to China, even though it could sell the same oil to Europe without the subsidies, which are needed to bring down the high transportation costs. In that case, the desire to improve political ties with China outweighs commercial considerations. Yet by contrast, Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent member of the Duma, reckons that the key driver of the Ukraine conflict earlier this year was Gazprom wanting better prices - "not some willingness to revive the [Russian] empire or punish [Ukrainian President Viktor] Yushchenko." A former Russian Deputy Energy Minister, Vladimir Milov, reports that top officials...