Miriam Elder

Miriam Elder covers Russia for GlobalPost. Elder has been in Russia since September 2006, covering politics, business and culture as the world's largest country seeks to shape its post-Soviet...

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Miriam Elder's Notebook:

November 17, 2009 11:11 ET

Lawyer for major Russian investor dies in jail

A 37-year-old lawyer for William Browder, once Russia's biggest foreign portfolio investor, has died in jail, the FT reports.

Browder has been banned from entering Russia in 2005 on national security grounds, but he  says the ban is politically motivated, as he had worked to expose corruption inside of some of Russia's largest corporations, including Gazprom.

For the past year, his London-based fund, Hermitage Capital Management, has been battling charges of tax evasion. Browder says interior ministry officials are the ones who stripped the company -- and the Russian state -- of assets and tax payments, in a complicated story  laid out in the glitzy video below. His lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested about a year ago after giving testimony against a Russian interior ministry official who helped carry out a raid on Hermitage's Moscow office.

Magnitsky died of pancreatitis that he developed in prison, after failing to receive treatment despite repeated appeals, people close to him told the FT.

The case of Browder, one of the country's highest profile investors, highlights one of the more insidious possible stumbling blocks to investing in the Russian economy. The death of Magnitsky, meanwhile, highlights the horrific conditions in Russian jails. (For more on the latter, take a look at this week's Al Jazeera report on physical abuse in Russian jails.)

November 16, 2009 09:10 ET

Russia delays launch of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant

Russia has again delayed the launch of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, saying it would not launch the plant by the end of this year as planned.

The move was announced Monday by Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko, who insisted the move was governed by “technological conditions” and not politics.

The plant, being built by Russia under a contract believed to be worth $1 billion, is nearing completion, and Iran began tests there in February ahead of a 2009 launch.

The latest delay will likely please the U.S., which has stepped up efforts to prevent Iran from going nuclear, despite the Islamic Republic’s insistence that the program is purely civilian.

Meeting at the APEC summit in Singapore on Sunday, President Barack Obama appeared to win agreement from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Iran was not living up to its international obligations.

Russia has also dragged on delivering its S-300 antiaircraft missiles to Iran, prompting a senior Iranian lawmaker to say this weekend that the country could start to develop its own missiles.

Russian cooperation on Iran is vital, not least of all because of the military ties between the country and Russia’s veto on the U.N. Security Council. Russia has stopped short of supporting U.S. plans to impose sanctions on Iran.

November 12, 2009 12:00 ET

Medvedev gives a "timely" state of the nation address

With much pomp and circumstance, President Dmitry Medvedev gave his second annual state of the nation address Thursday.

For nearly two hours, he counted off the tasks that stand before the country — battling corruption, improving education and access to medicine, modernizing the economy, supporting the sciences, an easing of electoral laws.

But what really got to the hundreds of ministers and parliamentarians, religious leaders and regional governors gathered in the Kremlin’s grandest hall?

Time zones

Russia spans 11 time zones, if you include the European exclave of Kaliningrad. This, says Medvedev, is terribly inconvenient and so several of those times zones should be cut. As should daylight savings time. “I hope experts will give us objective answers to these questions,” he said.

The crowd, who had listened to his speech with polite applause and glassy eyes til then, was suddenly all abuzz. Even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who spent most of the speech staring at the ceiling, seemed to take interest.

Time zone issues and daylight savings are not new subjects in Russia, but they’ve never gotten presidential attention before. As Russia switched to daylight savings this summer, a deputy from the nationalist LDPR party accused the move of being a Western plot to weaken Russia.

“A tragic day approaches — the day of the moving of time,” said Sergei Abeltsev (a man whose colorful words have graced this blog before). “They beguiled us with the idea of universal equality and brotherhood, then they promised us to build a society of equal opportunities, and now they’re playing with the most valuable thing a person has — his time,” he said.

Looks like Medvedev took notice. 

November 11, 2009 13:41 ET

Marat Safin retires

Marat Safin, otherwise known as The Most Gorgeous Russian Who Ever Lived, has retired from tennis, at the ripe old age of 29.

Safin played his last match today, losing 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 to Argentinian U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro in the second round of the Paris Masters.

Once the world's No. 1 player, Safin hasn't won a title since the 2005 Australian Open. His arrival on the scene in 2000 signalled that Russian tennis was a force to be reckoned with (the sport, deemed bourgeois, was banned in the Soviet Union, but achieved popularity with the support of Boris Yeltsin, the country's first post-Soviet president).

Safin plays beautiful tennis and he, and his temper tantrums, will surely be missed. Maybe the Moscow native will finally head home? I'm sure plenty of people would be glad to see him back. 

October 12, 2009 09:30 ET

Clinton due in Russia day after marred elections

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to arrive in Moscow today, one day after a Moscow election that opposition parties roundly decried as full of violations.

Ruling party United Russia, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, won 32 of 35 seats to the Moscow city parliament, leaving three seats to the Communist Party. The liberal Yabloko party and far-right LDPR were shut out. Democratic opposition parties were barred from running. Turnout was low, hovering just over 34 percent, but United Russia said the results showed its anti-crisis policy was resoundedly supported by the population.

Reports of violations — ballot stuffing, paying off voters — were widespread.

Other regions also held elections. Regions like Chechnya and Ingushetia claimed turnouts of over 90 percent. Reports of widespread chaos came out of neighboring Dagestan, including the kidnapping of an election official. The head of Russia’s Election Commission flew to the republic and later insisted everything there was calm.

Wonder if Clinton will broach the sticky subject? Talks on Iran and bilateral nuclear arms cuts are due to top the agenda when she meets President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tomorrow.