Vladimir Putin was at a ceremony a few days ago at which he pressed the button that began the process of delivering natural gas to Germany through the Nord Stream pipeline. According to Gazprom, Nord Stream is the first direct link between Russia and the European gas transmission system. It runs under the Baltic Sea, […]
Oil giant Exxon Mobil has secured a contract with Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft, to explore the floor of the Arctic Ocean for oil. At a surprise signing ceremony in Sochi, site of the coming Winter Olympics, Vladimir Putin stated, “The scale of the investment is very large. It’s scary to utter such huge figures.” […]
Earlier this month, France’s former prime minister Michel Rocard, now French Ambassador for the Arctic and Antarctic, toured the Arctic aboard the Canadian icebreaker Amundsen. Rocard did not have high praise for his host’s capacities up north. He stated, “I have the impression that Canada has given up on the competition to attract a large […]
Last year, Russian people stuck it to the Man by painting a giant penis on a St Petersburg drawbridge. The Kremlin’s revenge sends that message right back. It’s much less funny, much more obscene, but also involves a bridge: a $1.3 billion bridge to a remote island as part of an overall $24 billion bill […]
When a hundred people are suddenly killed in Norway, it’s an unprecedented national catastrophe. But in Russia, it’s more like an average summer. Today, the final victims of the sunken Bulgaria were freed from the ship’s wreckage, bringing the toll to 122. Earlier, a helicopter crash, a bus collision, and a spike in various fatal […]
At the same June 30 regional conference of the United Russia party in Yekaterinburg where Vladimir Putin defended Russia’s growing presence in the Arctic, he spoke about his vision for developing the region. He focused on environmental restoration in the Arctic waterways and on natural gas development. First, he called for a “big cleanup” in […]
It was 25 years ago today that the Number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic exploded. The first the world learned of it was the following day when radiation detectors in Sweden went berserk. The heroics of the “liquidators,” many of whom died from radiation sickness in […]
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reports that Russia has increased tariffs on oil and oil products exported to Tajikistan by as much as 5.3%. This will increase the price of gasoline from the current $232 per ton to more than $250 or even as high as $285 per ton, just in time to squeeze the […]
Turkey on Wednesday reiterated its commitment for a Russian-built nuclear plant in an important show of confidence in atomic energy as Japan tried to prevent major radioactive contamination. President Dmitry Medvedev and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stressed that nuclear power could be safe even for earthquake-prone areas such as Japan and Turkey. “I […]
TAPI Signatories in Ashgabat The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline or TAPI is a 1,680 km (1,050 m) natural gas line originating in the Daulatabad gas fields in southeastern Turkmenistan. It crosses Afghanistan and continues on through Pakistan ending in Fazilka, a northwestern Indian city close to the India-Pakistan border. TAPI is one of the largest pipelines in […]
On Thursday, February 17, Kyrgyz parliamentarians overwhelmingly voted in support of Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev’s proposal to name a 4,446 m (14,587 ft) peak in the country’s northern Tian Shan range after his counterpart Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In an explanatory note the MPs said it would “cement friendly ties between Kyrgyzstan and […]
A reporter for the UK’s Guardian has been denied re-entry to Russia after a two-month absence. Luke Harding, who is the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, was told he could not enter Russia after two months away reporting on Wikileaks. According to the Guardian, Harding’s reporting on Wikileaks included “allegations that Russia under the rule of Vladimir […]
At the start of every year, we celebrate and wonder what the next 365 days will bring. We know that there will be ups and downs, things we didn’t expect, public scandals we never anticipated, tragedies of some sort that will unfold on our television sets, and a whole lot of everyday distractions in between. […]
The fact that government outrage continues to provide the international media with grist for its insatiable mill is one of the great ironies in this scenario: perturbed at the site’s revelation of embarrassing diplomatic discussions and fumblings–tales only mildly interesting to the average reader–government officials are now in the process of creating a better, and far more spectacular story over First Amendment rights and the ‘treasonable’ activities of a Dutch citizen accused of committing “sex by surprise” (in Sweden?).
Even worse, the official call from some quarters for draconian regulation of the internet has given Russia (which suggests nominating Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize) and China, a human-rights violator of mammoth proportion, opportunities to ‘prove’ to an already hostile world that when Washington suddenly finds itself looking out through wall-to-wall glass, this nation of stone-throwers is no better than anyplace else.
It’s only the media–not a special, dedicated tunnel team–who might believe the identification of Guzman as the tunnel mastermind qualifies as breaking news.Any agent who’s worked the southwest border for a while already knows that if a tunnel or any other kind of operation is high-end, it’s almost certainly the work of “El Chapo”…