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E!"#$%"&' !e spirit of Deauville
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N(#)$%*+ Valentina Matvienko and the ruling circles of Saint PetersburgO'",&%-.+ Vladimir Potanin makes progress in his struggle with Oleg DeripaskaE/-'0+"1( General Makarov criticizes the GRUSukhoi "ghter jets for South Sudan?D"2'$3&-4 Moscow and Caracas strengthen economic co-operationF$-0+ Gennady Timchenko checkmates Gazprom over YamalA'(%# Alstom strengthens its positionv in Russia
E5(%,4 South Stream: Gazprom and the Bulgarian stumbling block
G$1(%53(5# Collateral damage from Mezhprombank collapseB(."5! #.( +-(5( Vyacheslav Volodin moves upDmitry Medvedev to attend Davos Forum
G&+ Ukraine caught between Russian pressure and European hopes
K&6&*.+#&5 Maksat Idenov turns up at ENIA'(%# IPO expected for KazMunaiGazT0%*3(5"+#&5 Russia encourages Ashgabat to look towards its southern neighboursA'(%# Kyrgyzstan: All roads lead to MoscowI%&5 Teheran deepens relations with South Caucasus StatesC&0-&+0+ Baku-Yerevan arms race continuesvArmenian and Azerbaijani parties discuss Nagorno-Karabakh
F$-0+ Russia and Europe resume discussions over “frozen” Transnistria dispute
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Mikhail Khodorkovsky
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Prosecutors have asked for a !"-year sentence for the former boss of Yukos, who has been in prison since #$$% serving an &-year sentence for tax evasion. The verdict of the second Khodorkovsky-Lebedev trial is not expected for several weeks.
!e spirit of DeauvilleOvershadowed by French political and social issues, the
summit in Deauville, on October 18 and 19, that brought together French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chan-‐cellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitry Medve-‐dev, was a diplomatic event of great importance. Although
from the discussions, one may nevertheless draw some conclusions from what took place in Normandy last week.
of relations between Russia and the rest of Europe, and on the European security architecture (which is really Eur-‐asian). The decisions that might, or might not, be made will commit our nations for many long years to come. In the wake of the failed opportunities of 1992 and 2001, we
order between Vancouver and Vladivostok. Secondly, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have
decided to give their support to Dmitry Medvedev, who
from what it was in the years 2004-‐2008, one that is more open to the future. For all that, the show of unity between France and Germany should not blind one to the fact that these countries have their own eastern agendas and pri-‐orities that do not necessarily coincide with each other’s, whether it be on NATO, nuclear issues, antimissile defence, or relations between the European Union and Russia. Par-‐is’ concern is not to give up in relation to Berlin, especially on matters regarding the economy and investments.
Although not invited to Deauville, the United States did not, of necessity, disapprove of the trilateral summit. It is not as wary of Sarkozy and Merkel as it was of Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroder and Vladimir Putin in 2003. Yet the initiatives that these two friends of America may take could potentially go a lot further than the positions taken
It is, however, still too early to measure the real im-‐pact of the Deauville summit. Many questions remain. Can Paris and Berlin still lead the rest of the European Union? How far are Sarkozy and Merkel ready to go? The question also applies to Dmitry Medvedev. Then there are serious uncertainties. In Russia, this, of course, would be the election in 2012. It would surely not make matters easier if Putin were to return to the Kremlin. And in the United States, the return of the Republicans to the White House would certainly compromise the detente initiated by Obama in 2009.
Arnaud Dubien
The Russian government announced late October that it wants to allocate two billion dollars for research in the Antarctic. Russia has 've permanent stations on the icy continent and wants to boost its scienti'c presence there.
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The secretary of the Union of Journalists, who is a former Russian ambassador to UNESCO and author of the !((% federal media law, has been appointed head of the Presidential Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights, replacing Ella Pam'lova.
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The Russian deputy and businessman, who has been on the run for several weeks, has had his parliamentary immunity lifted by the State Duma at the request of the General Prosecutor’s O)ce. Egiazaryan is suspected of embezzlement and fraudulent dealings, in particular with regard to renovation work on the Hotel “Moskva .
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Valentina Matvienko and the ruling circles of Saint PetersburgThe fact that Saint Petersburg na-‐tives are everywhere within the fed-‐eral institutions in Moscow has led one, paradoxically, to lose sight of the power plays taking place in the “north-‐
Valentina Matvienko was elected governor of the city in 2003. In December 2006 Vladimir Putin nominated her to continue at her post. She has long found support from her old network of contacts from the Komsomol, the communist youth
secretary for Leningrad in the early 1980s. However, since 2009, another clan, originally linked to the banker Vladimir Kogan and represented by Mikhail Oseevsky and Yuri Molcha-‐nov, the expense of the governor’s old po-‐litical associates, while a third group, with ties to the security services, re-‐mains in place. Matvienko, whose mandate will not be renewed when it expires at the end of 2011, is paying a heavy price for turning against Dmi-‐try Medvedev’s former law professor, Nikolay Kropachev, who has mean-‐while been appointed rector of the University of Saint Petersburg.
The fall of the Lobko clan. The
inextricably linked to Viktor Lobko. Born in 1943 in Belarus, Lobko came into regular contact with Valentina Matvienko at the Komsomol in the 1970s and played a decisive role in her rise to power in Leningrad in the mid-‐
dle of the 1980s. As governor, she returned the favour by appointing Lobko deputy governor and head of her admin-‐istration. Lobko was an unrivalled apparatchik who helped his protégé put several of her allies in key posts. Some of these include Oleg Virolaynen, who was appointed dep-‐uty governor in charge of housing, energy and transport, Alexander Vakhmistrov, nominated as deputy governor in charge of the building sector, and Alexander Prokho-‐renko, president of the Saint Petersburg Committee for External Relations, a post long held by Vladimir Putin, and Alexey Sergeev.
However, in conformity with orders from the Kremlin, Matvienko was obliged to dismiss Lobko in January 2009. This was soon followed by the dismissal of several of his
close associates, including Vakhmistrov and Deputy Gov-‐ernor Alexander Polukeev. Matvienko was considerably weakened by these changes and found herself having to deal with a group that has longstanding ties to Vladimir Putin. This is not the case for the governor herself. Her support on the federal level came from former Prime Min-‐ister Yevgeny Primakov, who helped her rise to power in the 1990s.
The Kogan network. In 2003, at the time when Val-‐entina Matvienko succeeded Vladimir Yakovlev (whom Putin never forgave for having beaten Anatoly Sobchak in the 1996 municipal elections), a man by the name of Vladi-‐mir Kogan was one of the most prominent businessmen in Saint Petersburg. He was a member of Putin’s entourage and known to have close ties to Alexey Kudrin and Ser-‐gey Stepashin, the former head of the security services and today head of the audit chamber. At the time, Kogan was the head of Promstroybank, which he sold in 2004 to the State-‐owned bank Vneshtorgbank (VTB). He suc-‐ceeded in putting several of his right-‐hand men in the City Hall. Both Mikhail Oseevsky, who was appointed deputy
Vladimir Blank, who presides the Committee for Industrial Policy in the municipal assembly, are former Promstroybank execu-‐tives. Kogan also has ties to the deputy governor in charge of investments, Yuri Molchanov, who was in charge of in-‐ternational relations at Leningrad University at the start of the 1990s. Mulchanov gained the trust of Vladimir Putin, whom he recommended to Sobchak upon his return from the GDR. Yuri Molchanov also has very close ties to the current speaker of the senate, Sergey Mironov, with whom
-‐tion company in the early 1990s. Today, Oseevsky and Mol-‐chanov are, without a doubt, Valentina Matvienko’s most
administration since June, having succeeded Vakhmistrov.The ineradicable Chekists. In 2003, Vladimir Putin
the City Council. At the time, Andrey Chernenko was the
He was appointed to head the Federal Migration Service in 2004 and was replaced by Valery Tikhonov, the former second in command of FSO, who is still deputy governor in charge of public security.
Valentina Matvienko is not a favourite of Dmitry Med-‐vedev’s, who knows that she favoured Sergey Ivanov as
most of her allies in the City Hall in order to stay at her post until the end of her mandate. One may venture to guess that her succession at the end of 2011 will result in at least as fascinating an intrigue as the one surrounding Yuri Luzhkov’s replacement at Moscow’s City Hall.
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Valentina Matvienko
Viktor Lobko
Yuri Molchanov
Mikhail Oseevsky
Valery Tikhonov
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