As Vedomosti, Russia's business daily, points out, Mr Putin has always been the real obstacle to Russia's entry into the WTO.
Robert Orttung, who edits a newsletter on Russia's regions, says that their leaders could supplant Russia's tycoons as the country's main power-brokers.
Earlier this month Sorokin, who is also the head of Russia's 2018 bid, defended Russia's track record in dealing with racism in football.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst who accurately predicted Russia's war with Georgia in August, says that Russia's troops are still poised for action.
This left Russia's Soyuz capsules as the only means of transportation to and from the space station, reducing Russia's ability to sell seats on its rockets.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Astronauts may get time extension
Mr Illarionov, who followed Russia's preparations for the war, complains that the EU report scandalously accepts Russia's chronology and ignores facts that contradict the Kremlin's version of events.
The acquisition of the stake in TNK-BP, one of Russia's biggest oil firms, will give Rosneft about half of Russia's energy sector and make it the world's largest publicly-traded oil group.
Although Vladimir Putin, Russia's incoming president, dislikes Mr Lukashenka, he is even less keen on the idea of regime change in Belarus and the intrusion of the EU into Russia's back yard.
Shareholders in MegaFon, Russia's second-biggest mobile-phone operator, agreed to a management reshuffle that gives control of the company to Alisher Usmanov, one of Russia's business oligarchs, and paves the way for an IPO in London.
But there are huge disparities between Russia's richest and poorest regions and, critics argue, the poorest ones will have more trouble making the payments, leaving untold numbers of Russia's most needy people hanging on for months.
According to a 24 February 1993 report by the Sacramento Bee, Russia's Security Agency (the successor to the KGB) estimates that one-third of Russia's oil exports and one-half of its nickel exports are stolen state property.
On April 27th even Igor Sergeyev, the defence minister, a doveish Yeltsin stooge in the eyes of many of Russia's military types, said that he was wondering whether to extend the life of Russia's elderly nuclear arsenal.
And the Belarussian leader is in a hurry, both because his economy is (even) wobblier than Russia's and because he seems to think that, under existing agreements with Russia, he can leap across the border and win Mr Yeltsin's job at Russia's presidential election next year.
Mr Lukashenka has also sabotaged the customs union with Kazakhstan and Russia, demanding that Russia scrap its export duty on oil and oil products, which would allow Belarus to buy them at Russia's domestic prices and to re-export them at a profit. (Russia wants to keep oil out of the union for now.) Russia's response is to reach for its favourite weapon: the gas taps.
At approximately the same time as the Putin meeting, several hundred attendees from Japan, S. Korea, Russia and the U.S. gathered at a separate Moscow location to attend the Megaprojects of Russia's East Conference, the first in a series of conferences organized by several Russian economic development agencies and regional governments to discuss efforts surrounding the project.
America looms much larger in Russia's mind than Russia ever did in America's.
Ella Paneyakh, a sociologist and legal expert at Russia's European University in St Petersburg, said the case illustrated how in President Vladimir Putin's Russia "they are getting very creative, interpreting the law very literally, in a way which does not correspond to the spirit of the law".
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- The U.S. ambassador to Russia has denied claims by Russia's ambassador to Iraq that U.S. forces deliberately fired on a convoy of diplomats and journalists in Iraq and says the convoy deviated from an agreed-upon route.
China's economy is the world's seventh largest, bigger than Canada's and Russia's, with a GDP climbing toward the trillion-dollar level.
So far, says Muratbek Imanaliev, a former Kirgiz foreign minister, America's and Russia's interests in the region have been closely aligned because they are both committed to fighting terrorism.
It is a sensible, incremental treaty that will cut America's and Russia's deployed strategic nuclear warheads by about a third, from the current maximum of 2, 200 to 1, 550, and the number of deployed missiles and bombers to 700 apiece.
ECONOMIST: The case for early ratification of the New START treaty
Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia did not intend to hamper the U.S. draft, Reuters reported.
However, Nato's leader said Russia's alternative to the US missile defence shield had its weaknesses.
With the cold war's end, Russia's strategic need to be close to the Arab states evaporated too.
Before the meeting, Larijani repeated Tehran's rejection of Russia's main condition, a moratorium on Iran's own nuclear fuel production.
For more on this see our commentary, Beyond Gazprom and take a look at the company's effect on Russia's image.
But I think it's actually in Russia's interest that we deal with this problem, that we achieve transition, and that we get peace and stability in Syria.
WHITEHOUSE: President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron Hold a Press Conference | The White House
Russia's State Duma made a conciliatory gesture towards improving relations with Washington Wednesday when it answered calls by Putin to ratify the most recent U.S.-Russia nuclear arms treaty.
The one blot in foreign policy has been Mr Berlusconi's partiality for Russia's Vladimir Putin, whom he appears to see as another businessman-turned-politician under unfair attack from the media.
Just how much so readers will learn from Martin Gilman's account of Russia's fitful, often stumbling economic reforms in the short decade between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the country's default on its domestic debt in 1998.
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