Russia

As if the US did not have enough on its plate, the latest strongly anti-American statements of President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have suggested the possibility of a new Cold War with Russia. And from the Russian point of view, these statements are only responding to a whole series of bitterly anti-Russian statements and actions by the US administration over the past year, including plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, the speech attacking Russia by Vice President Cheney… more

Soon after I arrived in Moscow as a correspondent at the start of 1993, Andrei Kozyrev, the then Russian foreign minister, made a speech warning that if the west continued to ignore Russia’s vital interests and publicly humiliate the country, there would one day be a Russian reaction that would sweep away the new partnership with the west that he and other Russian liberals were trying to build. A western colleague scrawled on a transcript of his remarks: "More of… more

Inside the mind of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

I sure showed them on Tuesday. While poor Dick Cheney was being bombed in Afghanistan, I dropped a bombshell of my own on Capitol Hill: The United States will talk, publicly, with Iran and Syria. I’ll be participating, in Baghdad, probably in April.

Yeah, OK, I know what folks are thinking: The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, which pushed such negotiations back in December, has finally prevailed. Well, obviously the president wasn’t just going… more

The United States must face the fact that most of the world's energy resources are in the hands of powerful states such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela that are increasingly hostile to U.S. interests and consumers, analysts and senators said yesterday. Partly because of fumbled foreign relations by the United States, an "axis of oil" is developing outside of U.S. influence that encompasses Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, among other giant energy producers and consumers. To curtail… more

It is the world's longest pipeline, built during the Soviet era, and its official name is Druzhba, meaning Friendship.But given the nasty trade dispute between two former Soviet republics, which has disrupted refined oil and gas supplies to Europe, it could be renamed the Brinkmanship pipeline.At stake is the reliability of energy supplies from Russia flowing through Belarus to Europe. Also in question is the government of Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, referred to by the United… more

Fifteen years after the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia behaves as though it still calls the shots in the former Soviet republics. This fall, Russia severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Georgia and deported hundreds of Georgians when the former Soviet republic, which is looking to join NATO, expelled four Russians it accused of spying in September. Earlier this year, the Kremlin looked set to cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine over a pricing dispute before howls of protest… more

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Encouraging fair play in the international oil market, not isolation, is the route U.S. policymakers should take, energy economists say.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, an isolationist attitude has been taken up by many organizations and members of Congress and the Bush administration have expressed similar sentiments, said Pierre Noel, research associate with the Electricity Policy Group at the University of Cambridge.

Their claims that the United States would be better off importing less… more

Rocky US-Russian relations will complicate US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's bid to win Moscow's support to contain Iran and North Korea over their nuclear ambitions, analysts say.

Rice heads to Moscow this week after a visit in Asia aimed at pressing Washington's partners to fully enforce UN sanctions against North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear test.

The fact that Rice has to travel to Moscow is already a bad sign, said Anatol Lieven, an expert at the New America Foundation, a… more

Bad relations between Washington and Moscow are nothing new. But this time America may be lurching toward something it carefully avoided throughout the cold war: an armed confrontation between a U.S. client state and Moscow on Russia’s own border.

The crisis erupted on Sept. 27, when Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili arrested four Russian officers, accusing them of helping plan a coup against him. The men were soon released, partly under pressure from the United States, but Moscow promptly imposed heavy trade… more

On 27 September, four Russian military officers were arrested in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, on charges of spying. In a very public gesture, the alleged spies were paraded in the capital city before eventually being deported back to Moscow.

Russian president, Vladimir Putin accused Georgia of conducting "state terrorism with hostage-taking" and Russia has imposed economic sanctions on Georgia, including cutting all transport and postal links, closing major Georgian businesses in Moscow and deporting Georgians allegedly living illegally in Russia.

This… more