Russian gas monopoly Gazprom accused the Ukraine on Wednesday of planning to siphon off gas that Russia transits through Ukrainian territory to the European Union, as a payment dispute escalated. Ukraine is the main transit route for Russian supplies to the European Union and a previous such dispute in 2006 led to knock-on disruption in EU countries.
Russia and Ukraine slid towards a new gas war on Tuesday as Moscow slashed supplies to the ex-Soviet republic by 50% and Ukraine’s state gas company said it may cut deliveries to Europe. Russian gas monopoly Gazprom was to cut supplies to 50% of their normal level on Tuesday at 5pm GMT, doubling a 25% cut already in force since Monday.
The West cast doubt on Russia’s presidential election on Monday after Dmitry Medvedev won a landslide victory and vowed to follow the course set by outgoing leader Vladimir Putin. Near complete results gave Medvedev 70,2% of Sunday’s vote, crushing his nearest rival, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who won 17,8%.
Russia’s next president Dmitry Medvedev pledged to uphold Vladimir Putin’s policies on Monday after a big election win that critics said was stage-managed to let the outgoing Kremlin leader keep his grip on power. Medvedev (42) who will be the youngest Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas II when he is sworn in on May 7, has asked former KGB spy Putin to be his prime minister.
Dmitry Medvedev was elected as Russia’s next president, early results showed on Sunday, after a vote that will preserve the power of his mentor President Vladimir Putin but which opponents said was unfair. Medvedev, a 42-year-old former lawyer who has worked at Putin’s side since the 1990s, will take over the trappings of the Presidency from his patron in May.
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/ 27 February 2008
Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, whose victory in Sunday’s presidential election is all but assured, on Wednesday took a day out from his unofficial campaign … in order to campaign. National television showed Medvedev responding to the audience’s queries about pensions and salaries.
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/ 7 February 2008
Russia’s prison service bowed to international pressure on Thursday by saying it would transfer Vasily Alexanian, an inmate gravely ill with HIV/Aids, to a specialist clinic. A former vice-president of the now-defunct Yukos oil company, Alexanian says he is nearly blind, has cancer of the lymph nodes and suspected tuberculosis.
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/ 7 February 2008
A Russian court refused bail on Wednesday to a jailed oil executive who is gravely ill with HIV/Aids, the latest ruling in a case that has put Russia in breach of an order from the European Court of Human Rights. Vasily Alexanian (36) has said he will die unless he is transferred from his Moscow prison to a specialist hospital.
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/ 1 February 2008
Russians visiting a health resort received a rude shock when a nurse used hydrogen peroxide instead of water to give them enemas. Itar-Tass news agency reported Thursday that 17 tourists in the Caucasus spa town of Yessentuki had to be treated in hospital after the mix-up.
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/ 1 February 2008
Russia accused Europe’s main election watchdog of trying to sabotage plans for monitoring its presidential election next month, the latest round of an increasingly bitter dispute with the West over democracy. Russia said the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s monitoring body, ODIHR, was trying to politicise monitoring of the March 2 election.
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/ 24 January 2008
A Russian university has bought one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, the first time that such sophisticated technology has been exported to the former Soviet Union, makers IBM said on Thursday. The Moscow State University has selected a Blue Gene device capable of 27,8-trillion operations per second to use in research on nanotechnology.
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/ 16 January 2008
Britain warned Russia on Wednesday that any attempt to intimidate staff of its cultural arm was ”completely unacceptable” after Russia’s state security service summoned local employees to speak to its officers. Britain’s consulate in St Petersburg said the British Council office in the northern city had been forced to shut temporarily.
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/ 14 January 2008
Russia announced on Monday it will not issue new entry visas to staff working in the British government’s cultural offices in two regions, sharpening a row that has soured already-poor relations. Russia ordered the British Council to halt work at the two regional offices from January 1 in a move both sides have linked to a diplomatic feud.
Russia is leading the race to complete a manned mission to Mars and could land a Russian on the Red Planet by 2025, a leading scientist was quoted as saying on Tuesday. ”We have something of a head start in this race as we have the most experience in piloted space flight,” the director of the prestigious Space Research Institute, Lev Zelyony, said.
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/ 20 December 2007
A clash between ministries over how to stop Russia from flaring nearly -billion of gas each year is reinforcing doubts that the country can meet President Vladimir Putin’s goal to all but eliminate the waste by 2011. Some experts say Russia is also the leading flarer of gas, although by its own calculations it is only the second largest after Nigeria.
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/ 17 December 2007
Russia warned on Monday that Kosovo could slip into ”uncontrollable crisis,” ahead of a United Nations Security Council showdown over the Serbian province’s push for independence. The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that the ”indulgence” of some countries in allowing Kosovo to move towards independence could have ”serious negative consequences” for stability.
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/ 3 December 2007
International observers declared on Monday that Russia’s parliamentary elections failed to meet widely accepted democratic standards, saying President Vladimir Putin and his government abused their power to favour the dominant Kremlin-backed party while opposition forces were harassed.
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/ 2 December 2007
Russians voted on Sunday in a parliamentary election expected to hand President Vladimir Putin’s party a crushing majority and boost his bid to retain authority after leaving the Kremlin. Polling stations opened in a wave across the world’s biggest country, starting on the Pacific coast.
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/ 1 December 2007
Final preparations were under way in Russia on Saturday for parliamentary elections expected to hand a sweeping victory to President Vladimir Putin’s party, just three months before presidential polls. From Kamchatka to Kaliningrad, 109-million voters are eligible to cast ballots on Sunday in Russia’s fifth parliamentary elections since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
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/ 30 November 2007
President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed into law Russia’s suspension of a Cold War treaty limiting military forces in Europe as a senior lawmaker warned that other international accords could be reviewed. The signing came on the final day of campaigning ahead of parliamentary elections on Sunday in which Putin has accused the West of trying to weaken Russia.
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/ 29 November 2007
Former chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov was freed from jail on Thursday and warned that Russia is sliding toward dictatorship under President Vladimir Putin. Kasparov complained that he had been denied access to a lawyer during the five days that he spent in a Moscow prison.
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/ 29 November 2007
A Russian businessman with a passion for Tsarist treasures said on Thursday he was behind the record purchase of a Fabergé egg in London for £9-million (,5-million), which he called inexpensive. Alexander Ivanov, who helped found Russia’s first private museum, bid in person at the tense Christie’s auction in London on Wednesday for the egg.
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/ 20 November 2007
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday warned that Moscow would not remain indifferent to Nato’s ”muscle-flexing” and said Russia’s nuclear forces would be ready for an adequate response to any aggressor. Putin said the Nato military alliance had built up its forces close to Russia’s borders.
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/ 12 November 2007
The leaders of veteran allies Russia and India agreed on Monday to launch a joint unmanned mission to the moon, as well as to intensify deals on weapons and energy. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Vladimir Putin called during Kremlin talks for boosting their countries’ traditional ties.
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/ 11 November 2007
A Russian fuel tanker broke in half during a storm on Sunday, spilling about 1 300 tonnes of oil in the Kerch Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, a Transport Ministry spokesperson said. The spill is an ”environmental disaster”, the deputy head of the state Rosprirodnadzor agency said.
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/ 5 November 2007
Fire tore through a retirement home in central Russia, killing 30 people while two others are still missing, a senior local official was quoted as saying on Monday. The home near the city of Tula did not have basic safety equipment and police have started a criminal investigation into the latest in a series of fire disasters in Russia.
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/ 31 October 2007
A bomb on a bus in the Russian car-making city of Togliatti killed at least eight people and injured 50 on Wednesday in what authorities called a terrorist attack. The blast, which came as people travelled to work in the early-morning rush hour, was probably caused by a bomb hidden under the floor of the bus, police sources said.
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/ 31 October 2007
Russian prosecutors labelled as a ”terrorist” act a bomb explosion that killed eight and injured more than 20 passengers in the city of Togliatti on Wednesday. They opened a criminal investigation into the attack, Russian news agencies reported, three hours after the early-morning explosion.
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/ 29 October 2007
A judge handed out a sentence of life in prison on Monday to Russia’s ”chessboard murderer”, who was convicted last week of killing 48 people. The sentence was read out by the judge as Alexander Pichushkin, a 33-year-old former supermarket worker, looked at the ground, a reporter in court said. Asked if he understood, Pichushkin replied: ”I’m not deaf. I understood.”
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/ 29 October 2007
Britain’s relations with Russia faced another downturn last week following fresh reports that the missing billionaire oligarch Mikhail Gutseriyev had fled to the United Kingdom. Gutseriyev — the former head of Russneft, a Russian private oil firm — disappeared in August shortly before a Moscow court issued a warrant for his arrest.
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/ 25 October 2007
Russia’s ”Chessboard Killer” Alexander Pichushkin showed no remorse on Thursday when he addressed a Moscow court for the final time after being found guilty of a series of 48 murders. Instead of asking for lenience, he taunted the court, which on Wednesday found him guilty on all charges.
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/ 24 October 2007
A Russian supermarket worker branded ”the chessboard murderer” was found guilty on Wednesday of killing 48 people after he confessed in court that the first time he took a life was like falling in love. He was given his nickname by Russian media because he had hoped to put a coin on every space of a 64-place chessboard, one for each victim.