KONSTANTIN SYROEZHKIN

The SCO tries to adequately react to the world processes, which the Yekaterinburg summit has shown. The main subject of the summit was the financial and economic crisis and the ways to minimize its negative consequences for the SCO member states.

TAIR MANSUROV

At the meeting of the Prime Ministers, which was held on June 9, 2009, it was decided that the single customs tariff would come into force on January 1, 2010. By this date, we should draw up all the remaining international documents.

IGOR BURAKOVSKY

At present, in Russia-Ukraine relations the economic issues are of the greatest importance, at least, to Ukraine. The economic crisis has reduced the demand for goods including natural gas, which offers a problem to Ukraine since there is a contracted volume of the Russian gas that should be paid for.

ARTEM ULUNYAN

Now Ashgabat seeks to take advantage of the economic recession strengthening its influence in the world and in Central Asia, and it seeks to step up cooperation with its neighbors.

VADIM KARASYOV

The change of Ukrainians’ social and political attitudes is a natural course of things. During the crisis it's a sign of the sound political system, which is developing on the right track.

VALERY KARBALEVICH

Europe concluded that its previous tactics (democratization demand, sanctions toward Belarus’ authorities, support for the opposition) were inefficient. Poland and Lithuania urged the EU to change its policy towards Minsk. Germany is also interested in development of economic relations with Belarus.

SERGEY NIKOLYUK

Minsk’s probable participation in the EU’s foreign-policy program “Eastern Partnership” is evidence of serious changes in Belarus. Rapprochement between Brussels and Minsk and, in general, of Belarus and the West is connected with the liberalization processes in Belarus, first and foremost, in the economic sphere.

ABDUGHANI MAMADAZIMOV

The informal part of Mr. Rahmon’s visit to Russia is of the greatest interest. The Presidents did the fishing, which could be interpreted in the following way: Moscow gives Dushanbe a fishing rod implying that it should fish by itself. It means that currently instead of relying only upon Russia, Tajikistan should seek extra foreign aid and investments.

ANDREY GROZIN

The visit of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon to Russia made on February 24, testifies to the serious problems in Russia-Tajikistan relations as well as in the relations between Tajikistan and its Central Asian neighbors, above all, Uzbekistan.

YURI PANASIK

The world financial crisis is a real challenge not only for Russia but also for the regional integration organizations and bilateral alliances in the former Soviet Union where Russia pretends to be the leader. This offers new opportunities as well as new challenges to Russia.

STANISLAV PRITCHIN

The Russia-Ukraine gas conflict, which took place in January, is of great importance to Ukraine’s politics in 2009. The presidential election will be held at the beginning of 2010, so all the major Ukrainian policy-makers use the conflict and its settlement for the further political struggle.

YULIYA TISHCHENKO

There are several deep-rooted causes for the President-Prime Minister confrontation in Ukraine. The first one is the presidential election is not far off. Yuliya Tymoshenko is one of the main potential presidential candidates and rivals of both Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych.

ANATOLY TSYGANOK

Bishkek’s foreign policy is similar to that one of Astana. Kyrgyzstan, like Kazakhstan, finds it important to keep on friendly terms both with the U.S.A. and Russia.

DMITRY VYDRIN

Russia-Ukraine gas dispute has had several consequences for the Ukrainian politics. As regards tactics, it led to polarization of views in the Ukrainian political establishment and in the Parliament.

YAROSLAV ROMANCHUK

The policy followed by the Belarusian authorities during the financial and economic crisis confirms the axiom of the economic influence on the politics. In Belarus the economic situation exerts considerable influence upon the politics.

DMITRY VYDRIN, VADIM KARASYOV, IGOR BURAKOVSKY

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has elected a new Speaker, Volodymyr Lytvyn. But an amorphous majority is created instead of the new coalition. Moreover, this majority cannot be regarded as the ‘orange’ coalition.

ALEXANDER RONDELI

The decision of the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting not to allow Georgia to join NATO Membership Action Plan did not surprise Tbilisi or anybody else. Georgia has received an annual plan for 2009, but its substance is not known. 

VITALY BALA

The potential Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc and the Party of Regions alliance can be created formally or informally. Regardless of the alliance format, this would be the best scenario because then the presidential campaign would be free of stark confrontations.

SERGEI ROGOV

Barack Obama is an outstanding policy-maker. He was considered to be a classical marginal politician, who had nothing to do with the U.S. political establishment and who was not taken seriously. But he felt that the U.S. voters expected changes.

VLADIMIR YASTREBCHAK

The goal of Transnistrian leader Igor Smirnov’s visit to Moscow was to continue the work with the Russian authorities that we had been carrying out for the whole period of the development of Transnistria and our relations with Russia.

VADIM KARASYOV, MIKHAIL POGREBINSKY, VITALY PORTNIKOV

There is a question about the situation after the elections. But why should it change? If the elections outcome is about the same as in the last elections (the public opinion polls show that), the Party of Regions and Our Ukraine will not have the majority to build a coalition. 

When the Arab emirate Dubai was on the verge of bankruptcy, the international financial speculators became worried. The rating agencies simultaneously came to correct their assessments. The bankers started to check if their debtors were solvent. Another financial crisis is in the air. It turned out that not only Ireland and Latvia, but also Greece and Spain face a default. Iceland has already become bankrupt.

If a train was blown up in Western Europe (as was the case with the “Nevsky Express” train when it travelled between the capital Moscow and St Petersburg last week), the railway companies would suffer in a much larger measure – many people would return the tickets they bought. In Russia the situation is totally different, and nobody is going to induce the passengers to buy tickets offering them the New Year discounts.

The East European countries began celebrating jubilees, the historians and political scientists in the Western countries hold conferences and discussions: twenty years have passed since the “autumn revolutions”, which started the democratic epoch in the former Communist countries. It is the worst time to observe the anniversary. The new regimes in Eastern Europe are suffering acute social, economic and political crises.

The subject of the global financial crisis is getting less and less interesting. Many articles about the crisis have been published and a lot of conclusions have already been drawn. It’s another matter that the conclusions differ from the decisions that are being made. Meanwhile, Russian officials as well as ordinary people would like to hear good news. It would be so nice to arrange a little holiday against the background of the crisis.

While the world leaders are slightly optimistic about the economic recovery in the Western countries, Eastern Europe prepares for the next wave of the crisis. The states are short of money to indemnify for their budgets and to support businessmen, a lot of companies stand on the verge of bankruptcy, the population’s employment and incomes continue to fall, and the demand slackens.

For the time being Russia is not haunted by the ghost of Communism, but there is a more modest and pragmatic ghost of Nationalization. Those talks started at the beginning of the summer 2009 when some enterprises forming company towns were closed down, and in August when the main assembly line of the AvtoVAZ automobile plant stopped working, the issue of nationalization of this former Soviet industry giant was raised at the trade union protest rally.

Nobody knows how many there are political prisoners in Russia. Most likely, the figure is lower than the opposition commentators say it is, but, of course, higher than the officials think, as the latter are sure that there are no political prisoners in Russia at all. However, it looks like, besides political prisoners, a new kind of prisoner appears in Russia – the social one.

A year ago, while we were warning about oil price downturn to 40$ per barrel, the price toped out by reaching 147$ per barrel, and high-paid experts on the ground of immense information content, processing by highly professional employees, were foretelling with confidence the increase of oil prices up to 200$ per barrel.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Africa. Speaking to the local audience, he said that Europe was indebted to the black continent, which had been colonized in the XIX century. At the same time Dmitry Medvedev noted that Russia itself wouldn’t pay a debt, because it had never been a colonial power.

Over the past twenty years the liberal social and political essays have written that under capitalism the economy must have nothing to do with the activities of the state that can damage the economic development by interfering in the economy. One can come to the conclusion that the Russian government is not responsible for the crisis at all, in particular since the crisis is global.

Russian officials have become optimistic again. Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev criticizes his Minister of Finances Alexey Kudrin in public because he said that Russia’s favorable economic trends had become a thing of the past, and the Central Bank representatives joyfully speak about the growth of gold and currency reserves. Everybody is inclined to believe that the crisis will not get deeper any more and that long-awaited economic recovery is just on the point of starting.

There is an eerie feeling in Eastern Europe. The color revolutions have faded like a well worn tie-dyed t-shirt that once looked bright but always lacked a clear design. The revolutionary dream of former Soviet satellite states to join Western Europe was always vague if for no other reason than Western Europe’s own lack of identity and purpose. Now, the dreamers are awakening to a new, uncertain and ominously familiar day.

The economic crisis makes the social movements more efficient, but the same is not true for the Russian local authorities. The functionaries’ fear of losing their jobs or of being reprimanded reaches the point of hysteria during the crisis.

The Yiddish language has the word “hutspah” that means a person who killed his parents and, during the trial, he asks the judge to make allowance for him as he is an orphan. I believe that this word is the best to depict the morality of Russian big businessmen and most officials.

Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, said on March 6, 2009, that a default couldn’t take place in a euro area country and the assumption that the euro area could break up was “nonsense”. The statement is strange if to take into account that mass media said neither about the euro area break-up nor about the default.

Ukraine is dangerously close to a sovereign default, the analysts are telling us. The currency has already dived to nearly half of its value of last summer, along with traded stocks. Worse yet, many of the nation's banks are expected to fail, taking down with them the hopes and savings of a fledgling consumer society.

The Russian government has a reason to be quite happy. The oil price has reached this winter $41-42 for a barrel, which is half the price written in Russia’s 2009 budget, but which is better than $25-30 for a barrel that the oil market sought to fix in the autumn. It is not a surprise: oil prices have a tendency to come up in winter since it is cold in the northern hemisphere and the fuel demand is growing.

One of the causes most often given for the start of World War One is the maze of bilateral treaties that had been signed between the European powers of the day. One country was obliged to declare war against another because it had signed a mutual defense pact to come to its ally’s aid in case of an attack.

During the economic crisis all states try to protect their domestic markets. But they are not bold enough to impose administrative measures for this, and a sharp rise of import tariffs is against the WTO rules. Moreover, the liberal ideology blames such actions. The only simple decision is to devalue national currency. Many governments resort to this measure simultaneously and even try to outdo each other.

It is often the case that wars result in a redrawing of international maps or a reshuffling of a country's political deck. Ukraine's recent gas war with Russia appears to be no exception in as much as it is likely to change the face of Europe's energy map while reshuffling the political elite in Kyiv. Wars, however, not only offer up spoils to the victor; they also spoil a lot of other things for those who are involved or not.

For the Russian economy good and bad events took place at the beginning of the year 2009. The good events are the gas dispute with Ukraine and the Gaza Strip war. Many people have been killed, many buildings have been destroyed, which is good for the Russian economy. The situation in the entire Middle East can be destabilized, and then the oil prices will grow again making the Russian government breathe with relief.

The result of the Russia-Ukraine gas conflict, which broke out by tradition on New Year's Eve, is quite predictable – the Russian gas will be supplied to the European consumers but Gazprom’s reputation has been seriously tarnished. In one of the most severe winters Europe does not receive gas, and though Russia tries to shift the blame onto Ukraine (its state collapse is evident), Moscow is also responsible for the conflict.

It looks like the government officials fail to realize that their actions are conductive to the politicization of the protests. What is more, they have bolstered the liberal opposition that had nearly ceased to exist and that now supports the demonstrating motorists.

The lady in braids has shown the political skill and ruthlessness worthy of Russian czars and Bolshevik commissars. The presidential race is still over a year away, and in a country like Ukraine anything can happen in the interim, but for now Ms. Tymoshenko is firmly in control of the chessboard of power in Kyiv.

The question “should Russia join the WTO?” has recently given place to the question “why should Russia do that now?” During the economic upsurge it is possible to speak about advantages and disadvantages of joining the WTO, but during the economic crisis we can raise this question only if we try to aggravate the situation deliberately.

For centuries, Ukraine's Cossacks were able to play off the superpowers of their time. Some would argue that the survival of the Ukrainian nation depended on a 'flexible' foreign policy. Unfortunately, the result of this policy was a culture of persistent internal division that eventually led to Russian domination.

The cri… no the word will not be uttered. Now that President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have finally allowed themselves to belatedly use the word, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to spit it out of these lips. It’s c-this and c-that. If there was C-Span in Russia then it would be c-ing all day and all night long.

Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 27, but they have a lot less to be thankful for during these difficult economic times. Congress has approved a $700 billion bailout for the country to ease its financial constraint, but no one seems to know where the money is going.

It is clear that the current authorities are maneuvering but they are doing that unsuccessfully, inconsistently and unreasonably. Such maneuvers would break up the ranks even of the famous grenadiers of Friedrich the Great, the Prussian king. The Russian officials do not resemble the Prussian infantry battalion.

A report recently released by U.S. intelligence agencies predicts that American influence on the global stage will diminish over the next 15 years, as the rise of powers such as China, India and other third-world giants creates a more multi-polar planet. So where does Ukraine fit into this scenario?

Now, more than any time since the country gained independence 17 years ago, Ukraine looks destined to come back under Russian hegemony. Ironically, the more the pro-Western administration of President Viktor Yushchenko resists this outcome, the greater the chances of it coming about.

Today the list of victims of the economic crisis in Russia is not long but is extremely revealing. It starts with “Moskovsky Korrespondent” weekly that appeared at the end of September and was closed in October. The fact that the newspaper, which is independent of the Kremlin, was the first to be closed, is very significant.

Along with Eastern Europe's other so-called emerging economies, Ukraine has been posting impressive rates of growth over the past several years. Now all that has been undone, and everyone is hoping that the International Monetary Fund will come to Ukraine's rescue.

It looks like there will be no war between Russia and Ukraine. It is clear that this fact will upset many in Moscow and Kyiv, but, unfortunately, there is a need to face realities. The efforts made by militarism heralds, admirers of Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa and defenders of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet proved to be futile.

Take a drive around Moscow’s Garden Ring. Leave from the Railway ministry near Krasniye Vorota and go anticlockwise toward Tsvetnoi Bulvar. Time will stand still if you are sitting in a traffic jam but if you have a free road, look upwards at the clocks on buildings and you can go back in time.

The Russian society is vaguely alarmed by the world economic crisis. I say “vaguely” because the people cannot realize how the events in the distant USA are connected with the Russian reality and how the stock market crash will tell on their wellbeing. The oil is being produced, the factories continue operating and the public transport works properly.

You can't trust anyone these days. You go on holiday for a couple of weeks and when you come back the world is teetering on the edge of a financial abyss. Banks are imploding, insurance companies are collapsing. Still, I'm glad that I got my five credit cards when I could.

The dollar is not king in most former Soviet nations. In its place, Gallup surveys this year show residents in 12 of 15 countries are more likely to view their own local currency or the euro as the most profitable and safest to keep their money in.

The recent developments in Russia lead to the question whether or not Russia has the potential and the resources to compete with the US - as the Soviet Union had for a long period of time.

Pessimists believe that Ukraine is on the verge of default.

Ukraine’s next president will inherit a nation in the throes of a spiraling economic crisis still searching for the bottoming out point.

The War once again showed that the Ukrainian leadership had dismally failed to take any steps to improve the country’s enormous energy inefficiency.

Gazprom 'Harms Russian Interests', Ukraine Refuses To Compromise.

According to the president, the real decline in the country's gross domestic product (GDP) began in August. Aggregate production in September saw a decline from 10.9 per cent (August on August 2007) to 5.5 per cent (compared to September 2007).

The panic will subside, and life will resume its normal course. Wages and salaries will grow slowly, prices will rise rapidly, but we have gotten used to it and will continue to blame the government.

This article does not assess the behavior of major Ukrainian political forces and their leaders as much has been and will be written about that. My point is that these all-versus-all political games obscure important economic problems which tend to aggravate underlying conditions of political instability.

Eurasian Home with a kind permission of The Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies publishes a report, prepared by Alexei Pikulik, Maxim Znak, Alexei Lashuk, Elena Rakov, Marina Roshina and Vitali Silitski, “Getting Belarus to the top 30 countries with the best business climate”. The study assesses the opportunities and proposes policies to ensure Belarus's entry in list of thirty countries with the most favorable conditions of doing business.

Eurasian Home with a kind permission of The Pontis Foundation and The Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies publishes a paper, prepared by Gleb Shymanovich, "Belarus external debt: Sustaining Levels in a Time of Global Crisis". The paper takes a close look at how Belarus´ foreign debt is structured and what potential impact it could have on the Belarusian economy in the upcoming period.