POLITICS
Activists from the United Russia party’s youth branch have been given permission to hold a protest meeting in front of the Japanese Embassy in Moscow after Japanese nationalist radicals desecrated a Russian flag amid a territorial dispute between the countries over four islands to the north of Hokkaido. Activists of opposition youth organizations have been prevented from staging protests.
(Kommersant, Nezavisimaya Gazeta)
Japan's foreign minister said ahead of his Friday’s visit to Moscow that Russia has no legal right to occupy the disputed southern Kuril Islands that have kept the two countries at odds for decades, despite Moscow's increasingly assertive stance.
(The Moscow Times)
The Ukrainian government is continuing its row with the opposition over next presidential and parliamentary elections. The Ukrainian president approved a parliamentiary decision last week to elect a new parliament in October 2012 and hold presidential polls in March 2015. But the opposition has filed a suit with the Constitutional Court demanding that the decision be declared unlawful.
(Nezavisimaya Gazeta)
BUSINESS
One of the most scandalous episodes on Russia’s gas market is approaching its end. Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo gas transportation company, owned on a parity basis by Russian energy giant Gazprom and Ukrainian billionaire Dmitriy Firtash and his business partner Ivan Fursin, is being closed.
(Kommersant, Vedomosti)
Renault-Nissan has announced its plans for an alliance with Russian car maker AutoVaz and the country’s automobile market in general. In two years it is expected to become the fourth most important project for Renault-Nissan, and by 2016 the company is planning to occupy at least 40 percent of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ automobile market, selling 1.6 million cars a year.
(Kommersant)
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s pledge to review all city contracts is being implemented: several construction projects in Moscow have been frozen since he took office in October, 2010.
(Vedomosti)
Bank of Moscow president Andrei Borodin and deputy chairman Lev Alaluyev seem to be making an attempt to snatch the deal to buy the city's share in the bank away from state-owned VTB bank, and they are ready to pay $3 billion to do so.
(The Moscow Times)
Desptite an announcement by Alfa-Access-Renova, the consortium through which the shareholders hold their stake in TNK-BP, that it will block the payment of interest to TNK-BP shareholders, the company will still have to pay $1 billion in interest.
(Vedomosti)
SECURITY
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev paid a surprise visit to Kievsky Rail Station in Moscow on Thursday, criticizing security at the bustling terminus when he did not see any police.
(Kommersant, Vedomosti, Nezavisimaya Gazeta)
A stroke of luck allowed police to detain a rebel leader linked to the Domodedovo Airport bombing - which, a media report said, could have been revenge for a law enforcement raid on an Ingush village in August.
(The Moscow Times)
SOCIETY
Construction of elite mansions is continuing at the Borodino Battlefield, a historic site to the west of Moscow where a severe battle between Soviet and German forces took place during the 1941 Battle of Moscow.
(Izvestia)
The Russian Judges Council has asked the head of the country’s Constitutional Court to carry out independent checks into the investigation of the most resonant criminal cases, including the imprisonment of former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a pretrial detention center.
(Kommersant)
The head of Moscow’s traffic police has proposed to equip all police cars with video cameras, which should help fight corruption among road police officers.
(Izvestia)
David Cameron should envy Dmitry Medvedev: The Russian president decided this week to move his whole country one time zone further east - something the British prime minister also wants to do, but faces stiff opposition over.
(The Moscow Times)
The Russian Transport Ministry’s final report blames the pre-New Year traffic chaos at Russian airports on the heads of Russia’s largest airline Aeroflot, airports’ management, Federal Air Transport Agency officials, and flawed laws.
(Kommersant)
The Kyrgyz National Commission on State Language has filed a proposal to President Roza Otunbayeva to rename some villages with Russian names. “It is time to return historic names to our villages,” the commission said in its address to the president.
(Izvestia)
An environmental activist was detained Thursday with her children, colleagues said, claiming that she is the latest victim in a campaign to silence opponents of a new Moscow-St. Petersburg highway that is tearing up the ancient Khimki forest.
(The Moscow Times)
While President Dmitry Medvedev is reverently pushing the country toward his sacred goal of "modernization," the clergy has launched its own quest for new ways to reach the flock - offering believers special cell phone tariffs and Bible quotations via text messages.
(The Moscow Times)
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