The Moscow Times

The Crisis: Electricity Providers Face Bankruptcy
Electricity suppliers across the country are cracking down as the number of delinquent private and corporate customers surges, as the dilapidated industry is mired in debt linked to unpaid consumer bills and the multibillion-dollar investment programs that investors signed onto during the privatization of Unified Energy System, which wrapped up just weeks before the financial crisis struck.

The Moscow Times » Opinion

Issue 4036 | 21 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: 2011: My Space Odyssey
Most people who know of me think of me as an information-technology expert, someone who probably lives in California and invests in edgy Internet startups.

Michele A. Berdy: Getting Rid of Guests
As we start to gear up for the long holiday season, it's time to go over some Russian departure etiquette at parties.

Issue 4035 | 20 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Summit in Nice Proves We Can Work Together
The EU-Russia summit held in Nice last week clearly showed that the two sides are capable of creating constructive proposals to address not only the financial crisis but also areas such as global and regional security, the environment, nuclear nonproliferation, the demilitarization of space, the fight against AIDS, food prices and supply, drug trafficking and support for the United Nations.

Op-Ed Contributor: The Kremlin Pretends the Heat Is Off
Television shows in Russia and Ukraine are worlds apart when it comes to covering the financial crisis. Watching Russian television over the past month, it might be easy to miss that the country is mired in the same twin crises gripping the world -- the ongoing credit crunch and the emerging downturn in the real economy.

Boris Kagarlitsky: Doomed From the Start
We can say three things with certainty regarding reforms to international financial structures: They are necessary, inevitable and doomed to fail.

Issue 4034 | 19 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: One Term Keeps the Kremlin's Air Fresh
President Dmitry Medvedev's proposal to extend the presidential term has sparked a heated debate. One conclusion is clear: Russian leaders are productive, innovative and efficient for no more than five or six years. After that, they become detached from the real problems facing the country, corruption flourishes and the economy declines into periods of stagnation and then crisis.

Yulia Latynina: Making a Jester Out of Medvedev
We all learned from the Russian media how President Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Washington for the Group of 20 summit and offered his ideas on how to build a new global financial system. What the media did not report, however, is that Russia has been essentially evicted from the G8 as the West has reached a consensus that Russia has no place in the elite club of developed, wealthy and democratic nations.

Fyodor Lukyanov: The Real Issue Isn't a Shield in Central Europe
In the two weeks since he was elected president, Barack Obama has received conflicting signals from Moscow. Whether we see a new chapter in U.S.-Russian relations will become clear only after Obama and his foreign policy team are firmly in place after January. Nonetheless, we can still identify the key points that will determine the nature of the relationship.

Issue 4033 | 18 Nov 2008

Alexei Pankin: Back-Scratching in America
As people search for the cause of the financial crisis, experts increasingly point to the lack of objective analysis in the United States.

Alexander Golts: U.S. Not a Threat After All
Every year, the Defense Ministry holds one of its most important conferences. At this annual event, in which all the generals are present and the president gives the key address, we usually learn details about new military reforms and weapons programs. But this year's meeting was unlike any of the previous ones.

Issue 4032 | 17 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Putin's Constitutional Junta
What is most interesting about the term increases for State Duma deputies to five years and for the president to six years is the reaction to these changes. We heard hearty, prolonged applause by the Kremlin lackeys in the audience when President Dmitry Medvedev made his announcement in the state-of-the-nation address on Nov. 5. On the other hand, ordinary Russians are strangely silent on the issue.

Alexei Bayer: Policing Immigrant Workers
Two years ago, I wrote a column about perverse relations between Russia's immigrant communities and the police. At least 5 million illegal migrants, mostly from other former Soviet republics, work at construction sites, do low-paid manual labor or engage in legal businesses and commerce as well as a variety of shadowy activities.

Vladimir Frolov: Medvedev Learned His PR Skills From Chavez
President Dmitry Medvedev's first state-of-the-nation address raised a lot eyebrows abroad both by its content and tone. If the objective was to make people shake their heads in bewilderment, it succeeded beyond expectations. But if the intention was to send a reassuring message to the international community, it was a stunning failure.

Issue 4031 | 14 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Staying in Power by Any Means Necessary
The Kremlin wants to rush legislation to extend the presidential term through the State Duma on Friday to make sure the Constitution is changed before the financial turmoil snowballs into a social and political crisis. The effort is a clear signal that Vladimir Putin's team does not intend to relinquish its eight-year grip on power anytime soon.

Boris Kagarlitsky: Obama's Skin Color and Other Myths
My daughter gets terribly offended whenever my wife and I, in good Soviet style, refer to the children's club where she spent the fall holidays as a "pioneer camp." But unlike anything from the Soviet period, the camp counselors woke up my daughter and her campmates in the early morning hours of Nov. 5 with the exuberant shout, "Girls, wake up! Barack Obama won the U.S. election!"

Issue 4030 | 13 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: The Next Bretton Woods
It took 15 years and a world war to address the last major financial crisis. Let's hope it won't take that long this time.

Op-Ed Contributor: Putting an End to Offshore
Russia is a country with large geopolitical ambitions, yet the country will probably not play a major role at the Group of 20 summit to be held in Washington on Saturday.

Editorial: Exchanging Freedom For Security and Food
Your Letters -- Responses to "Eagerly Waiting for Change -- Within Russia," a column by Yevgeny Kiselyov on November 6 and "No to Saber-Rattling"

Issue 4029 | 12 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: The Right Way to Rebuild Georgia
At the recent donors' meeting on Georgia, aid pledges rolled in, totaling $4.5 billion -- about $1,000 for each Georgian citizen. That's the good news. The bad news is that the meeting was restricted to donors and Georgia's government, with Transparency International criticizing its opaque decision-making process.

Yulia Latynina: Turning Noodles Into Ammunition
Late in the evening on Nov. 4 in Chicago, Barack Obama addressed the American people after he won the U.S. presidential election. In his speech, Obama said one of the strengths of U.S. democracy is its ability to change.

Martin Gilman: Don't Expect Miracles From the G20 Summit
Those expecting a bold initiative to come from the meeting of the Group of 20 in Washington that President Dmitry Medvedev will attend Saturday will be disappointed.

Issue 4028 | 11 Nov 2008

Alexander Golts: Medvedev's Missile Myth
Imagine the following scenario: After the standoff between the United States and Russia has reached boiling point, the U.S. president decides to launch a nuclear first strike. Is this the script of the latest cheap Armageddon novel? Not at all.

Nikolai Petrov: Preparing for Putin's Return to the Kremlin
President Dmitry Medvedev's first -- and perhaps last -- state-of-the-nation speech on Wednesday did not adequately address the problems facing the country's troubled economy. It was clear from his speech that the Kremlin does not realize the seriousness of the situation and lacks a plan for dealing with the financial crisis. There could be another explanation for this omission as well: the authorities are preoccupied with something they personally find much more important -- planning out a change in leadership.

Op-Ed Contributor: Ready for Re-engagement
Barack Obama won the presidential election because the American people strongly support change in both domestic and foreign policy. Apart from the global financial crisis, the major foreign policy issues in the campaign were Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, along with oil imports. But Russia suddenly catapulted to a high-priority issue after the outbreak of the war in the Caucasus. Now that the election is over and campaign rhetoric can recede, what is the outlook for U.S.-Russian relations under Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev?

Issue 4027 | 10 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: The Court Makes the King
Senator Barack Obama's impressive victory will clearly lead to important changes in U.S. domestic policy, where he differs significantly from both President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain. Whether the president-elect will make major adjustments in U.S. foreign policy, particularly policy toward Russia, is a different question.

Richard Lourie: Obama and the KGB
I was arrested by the KGB in Stalin's hometown of Gori in March 1988. Six men interrogated me about my Russian-language skills, my lack of papers and my high-speed camera, but after several hours my explanation was accepted. In the end, the leader said he wanted to ask one question about the U.S. primaries then under way and which included among other hopefuls, Jesse Jackson. He asked: "Is that negr going to be president?"

Mark H. Teeter: 1,000 Presidential Pardons
Which do you prefer -- justice or mercy? Most people probably "prefer both," so to speak, with each appropriately meted out to right wrongs and reconcile the lost, respectively. The devil, of course, is in the details. At what point has justice been done and mercy come due?

Matthew Collin: Tbilisi Protesters Could Be Doing Russia's Work
November 7, 2007, was a day that Georgian leaders would rather forget, but the opposition is determined to remember. One year ago, President Mikheil Saakashvili sent in riot police to crush demonstrations outside the parliament on the pretext of averting a coup. Hundreds were injured as pitched battles raged along the main boulevard of Tbilisi and through the back streets as darkness fell.

Issue 4026 | 7 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Getting Along With Obama
Almost every country greeted the news of President-elect Barack Obama's victory with joy, hoping that the United States would carry out a new, more balanced foreign policy relying primarily on diplomacy and multilateralism and rejecting the previous administration's heavy dependence on military power and unilateralism.

Op-Ed Contributor: Getting Along With Obama
It was not only President-elect Barack Obama’s charismatic personality and well-orchestrated election campaign that won him the election. It was also the fact that American voters were tired of the Republican administration.

Michele A. Berdy: New Ways to Insult Americans
A few years ago, the only vaguely derogatory slang words I could find for Americans were америкашки and америкосы, the first rather affectionate (though condescending), the second more contemptuous (but still rather friendly). Ah, what a difference a few years make. Today, my fellow Americans, we are пиндосы.

Issue 4025 | 6 Nov 2008

Alexander Golts: Friendlier Relations or Mean Streets
Ironically, the U.S. presidential elections have proven one of the Kremlin's basic propaganda points: that its foreign policy has become completely impervious to outside influences. Barack Obama's victory had not the slightest influence on the Kremlin, where demonstrative anti-Americanism has become something of an official creed.

Georgy Bovt: A Guarded Liberalism
The timing of Dmitry Medvedev's first state-of-the-nation address left something to be desired since he could not compete with Barack Obama's victory, which was the main news around the world.

Yevgeny Kiselyov: Eagerly Waiting for Change -- Within Russia
The election of the 44th U.S. president elicited an unusually large amount of interest from the Russian people from the very beginning of the campaign two years ago.

Issue 4024 | 5 Nov 2008

Yulia Latynina: A Departure of National Significance
Ingush President Murad Zyazikov has been dismissed from his post. The news prompted spontaneous celebrations across the republic, with everyone from police officers to insurgents joining in a touching outburst of unity.

Alexei Pankin: Cold War Tool in a New Era
At a recent conference devoted to Andrei Sakharov's legacy as an academician, human rights activist and peacemaker, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock said, ""Our next president must very early on sit down with President Medvedev -- and there's no reason not to have Prime Minister Putin present -- and really discuss what is getting in the way of doing what both countries most need to do in the interest of all countries. And that is to continue the process started by Reagan and Gorbachev.""

Vladimir Frolov: Medvedev Should Scrap Putin's Plan for His Own
Dmitry Medvedev will deliver his first state-of-the-nation address since being elected as president on Wednesday. Medvedev was elected on a promise to stay the course and implement what was then called "Putin's Plan."

Issue 4023 | 1 Nov 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Is Obama or McCain Better for Russia?
If Barack Obama is elected U.S. president on Tuesday, he will join President Dmitry Medvedev in becoming the first post-baby boom leader of his country. Both men were born in the 1960s -- well after the tumultuous post- World War II decade, when the United States and Soviet Union were preoccupied with nuclear arms races and a deep divide in Europe.

Editorial: In Need of Better Safety and Gold Standards
Your Letters

Issue 4022 | 31 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: The U.S. Leader the World Needs
Around the world, the U.S. presidential election campaign has attracted as much attention as domestic political controversies in each of our own countries. The interest the world has taken in the U.S. vote is the best example of the United States' soft power and a lesson in democracy from the world's only superpower. If only we could all vote as well as watch and listen, because the outcome is vital for everyone around the world.

Michele A. Berdy: Linguistic Middle Finger Raised in Cyberspace
Every once in a while when I'm poking around Russian Internet sites, I start following links that lead me out of the world of polite discourse and into the thicket of the blogosphere, where the grammar and orthography of Russian that I have spent more than half my life trying to master disappears in the undergrowth.

Issue 4021 | 30 Oct 2008

Alexei Bayer: The Looming Depression
The Kremlin still frowns on the use of the word ""crisis"" to describe Russia's financial markets. But no such taboo exists in the United States. As the election campaign enters its final days, Democratic front-runner Barack Obama appears to understand the seriousness of the situation. He has proposed measures to boost government spending and to stimulate demand in the spirit of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

Editorial: Boosting Russian Ties With New U.S. Leader
Your Letters

Boris Kagarlitsky: Peeved but Not Protesting
When there is a financial crisis in any country, it is usually bad for the ruling party but good for the opposition. In this regard, Russia's crisis promises to become an economic disaster on a grand scale. True, it hasn't peaked yet, but we don't have long to wait.

Issue 4020 | 29 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: A Crisis Letter to Expats
Look around at your Russian colleagues, business partners, clients, bosses and employees. Remember how self-assured and optimistic they were just this summer. Remember their grandiose business plans and strategies.

Yulia Latynina: The Biggest Insider Trade in History
The United States calls its own crisis the mortgage meltdown. Banks went on a lending splurge, handing out mortgages to every homeless and unemployed Joe Blow who walked in off the street. Not surprisingly, they defaulted on their loans.

Issue 4019 | 28 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Russia's Jerry-Rigged Oil Pump
We read with interest the Oct. 22 comment, "Russia's Top Economist Needs to Face Reality," by Anders Aslund in this newspaper. While it is gratifying to see that Aslund emphasized the price of oil as the predominant factor in the Russian economy -- an argument we have made for a long time -- we would offer a different interpretation of recent events and their impact on Russia's economy right now.

Nikolai Petrov: Moscow Losing Clout in the Regions
After a long quiet spell, the Kremlin has made several personnel changes affecting both regional heads and Moscow's relationship with the regions.

Op-Ed Contributor: Another Balkan Sleepwalk
Almost exactly 13 years ago, U.S. leadership brought an end to Bosnia's 3 1/2-year war through the Dayton Peace Agreement.

Konstantin Sonin: Putin's Costly Crash Course in Economics
What makes Russian leaders so confident that the country can ride out the financial storm? Above all, the country's large foreign currency reserves and its low government debt.

Issue 4018 | 27 Oct 2008

Richard Lourie: Financial Crime and Punishment
It is now in Russia's interest to release former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky from prison.

Mark H. Teeter: The Russian Obama Effect
It's all over but the shouting. Senator Barack Obama will carry Russia by a wide margin next week.

Matthew Collin: Covering South Ossetia Is Practically Impossible
The Russian soldiers at the checkpoint on the road to the disputed South Ossetian town of Akhalgori were casually waving through cars and buses full of locals. Journalists, however, weren't being allowed to pass.

Issue 4017 | 24 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: My Tips on Running a Successful Business
Most Russia observers will be quick to point out that trying to transform the Russian business culture is a nonstarter. There are many rookie expat managers who have been tripped up by doing things in Russia the same way they do back back home.

Michele A. Berdy: A Very Handy Word
According to your mother, your priest, your shrink and your accountant -- that is, according to every authority figure in your life -- hiromantiya (palmistry, palm-reading) is a colossal waste of time and money and probably not very good for your soul.

Issue 4016 | 23 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Obama's Change Must Start With His Advisers
Twelve days before the U.S. presidential election, all indicators are pointing to a victory by Senator Barack Obama. There is always a chance for last-minute surprises, but miracles are rare things. I think the main reason for Senator John McCain's likely defeat is that too many influential groups within his own Republican Party never regarded him as the best choice available.

Op-Ed Contributor: Blue Europe and Red Asia
Could Europe be a Democratic ""blue state"" and Asia a Republican ""red state""?

Georgy Bovt: The Backward-Looking Metro
Anybody who has ridden the Moscow metro has undoubtedly noticed the elderly women who sit hermetically sealed in their little glass booths at the bottom of the escalators. They look as if they have been sitting there ever since the metro first opened in the 1930s.

Issue 4015 | 22 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: End to Fast Growth for Developing Countries
The current credit crisis has led to scaled-back projections for growth around the world. Governments and central banks are responding to damaged balance sheets and credit lockups in an attempt to limit extreme harm to their economies outside the financial sector.

Yulia Latynina: Why Kudrin Has Severe Chest Pains
At the World Policy Conference in Evian, France, President Dmitry Medvedev laid out his vision for overcoming the global financial crisis. The president called on Europe to create a new world order in which the role of the United States would be reduced to a minimum.

Anders Aslund: Russia's Top Economist Needs to Face Reality
On Friday, the government reported that growth in gross domestic product for September slowed to 0.4 percent. On Monday, however, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia, Brazil, India and China ""will remain the locomotive of the world economic growth for the next few years.""

Issue 4014 | 21 Oct 2008

Alexei Pankin: Too Jaded to Panic
Here's a typical story connected with the financial crisis. I recently phoned a friend of my parents whom I have known since childhood.

Alexander Golts: 100,000 Jobless and Angry
When Anatoly Serdyukov was hired as defense minister in early 2007, most of my colleagues poked fun at him because he once worked in the furniture business.

Op-Ed Contributor: 10 Days That Shook Faith in Capitalism
In 1919, John Reed published his classic ""Ten Days That Shook the World."" It told the story of revolutionary Russia, when the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917.

Issue 4013 | 20 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Russia's Big Bang
Given how rapidly Russia moved from near-bankruptcy in 1998 to what seemed like unprecedented prosperity in 2007 and early 2008, perhaps we should not be surprised that Russian financial markets have been hit even harder than those in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Alexei Bayer: Time to Rejoin the International Community
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently said that the financial crisis has undermined confidence in the United States as the leader of the free world and destroyed trust in Wall Street -- perhaps forever. It is an amusing assertion.

Vladimir Frolov: Russia Steps Up to Plate As Global Crisis-Solver
With a financial tornado devastating the world's leading economies, there is very little global leadership to stop the contagion.

Issue 4012 | 17 Oct 2008

Yevgeny Kiselyov: Moscow Stuck in Dead Sea While Kiev Evolves
Kiev is caught up in a turbulent political crisis. Against this backdrop, it is interesting to take a look at Russia, where the political scene is like the Dead Sea -- thick, swampy and lifeless. You can't swim in it.

Michele A. Berdy: Decoding Politician-Speak
The financial crisis is providing an unexpected lesson in language and culture. By my unscientific observation, in the United States some people believe only politicians in their political party.

Issue 4011 | 16 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Largest Bubble Burst in History
The rich world's financial system is headed toward a meltdown. Stock markets have been falling most days, money markets and credit markets have shut down as their interest-rate spreads skyrocket, and it is still too early to tell whether the raft of measures adopted by the United States and Europe will stem the bleeding on a sustained basis.

Boris Kagarlitsky: Blind Faith of Free-Market Cheerleaders
Vasily Koltashov was relatively unknown among Moscow's economic analysts. That is, until the young journalist moved to Athens and began publishing his economic forecasts there -- each prediction was more dire than the last. Unfortunately, they all came true.

Issue 4010 | 15 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Throw Anti-Graft Plan in the Trash Heap
At the first meeting of the Anti-Corruption Council on Sept. 30, President Dmitry Medvedev unveiled what he believes to be the key weapons in the battle against corruption.

Yulia Latynina: A Lonely Stand on South Ossetia
Although the Georgian war has ended victoriously for Russia, many questions remain.

Fyodor Lukyanov: United States Lost Russia and Everything Else
The financial crisis has pushed the Russia question to the back burner during the U.S. presidential election campaign.

Issue 4009 | 14 Oct 2008

Nikolai Petrov: Moscow's Last Stand in Regional Elections
Russia held its latest national elections on Sunday. Five regions held elections for regional and local parliaments. In addition, mayoral elections were held in Vologda, Magadan, Stavropol and Khabarovsk.

Op-Ed Contributor: The Nuances of Diplomacy
In the second U.S. presidential debate, we were treated to the ruminations of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama over whether it is accurate to describe Russia as an ""evil empire.""

Konstantin Sonin: Russia Remains Calm Before Financial Storm
Government leaders, businesses and citizens are beginning to understand that the economic growth of recent years is ending. But where are the signs that the boom is over?

Issue 4008 | 13 Oct 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Turning Russia Into a Global Citizen
The government is sitting on a giant pile of cash that it plans to invest in foreign assets

Richard Lourie: Gorbachev's Gallant Example
I was heartened to learn that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and billionaire Alexander Lebedev are founding a new political entity, the Independent Democratic Party, which is scheduled to make its debut in the 2011 State Duma elections.

Mark H. Teeter: Even Stranger From Afar
Testing, testing -- is this mike on? OK, please take your seats, people. Live taping starts in five, four, three ...

Articles 1 - 80 of 705
First | Prev. | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | Next | Last

Features

Services

Tools

MT news

Sponsored links