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Reuters blog archive
from The Great Debate:
Russia after Cyprus: Bringing the money home
The Kremlin’s initial outrage over developments in Cyprus – and the island’s shocking expropriation of billions of dollars held by Russian companies and citizens – has given way to mild indifference. “If somebody gets caught and loses money at the two largest [Cypriot] banks, it’s a shame,” First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov recently stated, “but the Russian government isn’t going to do anything about it.”
It turns out that the European Union settlement that left Cyprus’s banking sector in shambles has done Moscow a big favor. Not only did the EU take down a major offshore banking center, it helped President Vladimir Putin’s campaign to return to Russia any money stashed away in offshore bank accounts.
This seemingly technical financial issue also reveals a potential sea change in the rules of the game for Russian business.Instead of seeking shelter abroad, Russian companies and financiers may finally have a stake in fighting to protect their money at home
Putin had first talked about his policy of “de-offshorization” in a December 2012 state-of-the-nation speech. He criticized the lack of transparency of offshore tax havens and complained that Russian companies were escaping domestic law by selecting foreign jurisdictions to settle commercial disputes.
from The Great Debate:
Obama’s aims to reduce nuclear threat
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Barack Obama will reportedly reiterate his interest in reducing the threat of nuclear weapons, though unlikely to announce specifics. The administration is interested in seeking an agreement with Russia, building on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) of 2010 and cutting U.S. strategic nuclear forces by another third in the expectation that Moscow will do the same with its nuclear arsenal.
This would leave each country with roughly 1,000 deployed long-range warheads, plus several thousand more in reserve and in tactical arsenals.
from Photographers Blog:
Russia’s untouchables
By Denis Sinyakov
I don’t remember a time when Moscow hasn’t been flooded with them - migrants from Central Asia.
When I moved here in 1997 they were already here. They had started appearing more than 20 years ago, the time when the Soviet Union was falling apart. Some fled civil wars, but more often they were escaping the awful economic situation in their homelands. Not exactly an escape, but they came to make some money, leaving their families at home. The economic situation in Russia even now isn't enviable, at the beginning of the 1990’s it was woeful, but none the less better than there.
from Global Investing:
Moscow is not Cairo. Time to buy shares?
The speed of the backlash building against Russia's paramount leader Vladimir Putin following this week's parliamentary elections has taken investors by surprise and sent the country's shares and rouble down sharply lower.
Comparisons to the Arab Spring may be tempting, given that the demonstrations in Russia are also spearheaded by Internet-savvy youth organising via social networks.
from Global Investing:
Clinging to hope in bear-bitten Russia
Poor Russia. After spending six months as the world's best performing emerging market, the Moscow bourse has been the big loser of this month's rout -- year-to-date returns of over 10 percent until mid-July have since dissolved in a sea of red, with a plunge of over 20 percent since the start of August. As oil prices fell and the outlook for U.S. and European growth darkened, overweight positions in Russia halved versus July, a survey by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch showed this week.
But get this -- Russia remains among investors' main emerging market punts and only Indonesia is more favoured, according to the BoA/ML poll. The reason is that fund managers are still clinging to hopes that an increasingly wealthy Russian consumer will save the day. Unfortunately those hopes are yet to materialise. Returns on domestic demand-based stocks such as Sberbank, carmaker Avtovaz and supermarket chain Magnit have been even more disappointing this year than the broader Moscow market.
from Photographers Blog:
Quiet moment of glory
By Peter Andrews
I woke up on the morning of August 19, 1991 after staying at my friends’ apartment in Warsaw. I was on my way back from holidays in Canada and had just sold my car before departing to the Soviet Union to start my new job at Reuters in Moscow. Previously, I worked for the Associated Press in the then-Soviet Republics of Lithuania and Georgia as well as in Moscow itself where Reuters’ former Chief Picture Editor Gary Kemper and Moscow Chief Photographer Frederique Lengaigne recruited me for Reuters.
A neighbor stopped me on the staircase saying: “Do you know what happened in Moscow?”. There was a military coup and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was overthrown by Soviet Vice President Gennady Yanayev. It seemed impossible to me, I had just left Moscow two months earlier. Nevertheless, I immediately arranged the first available plane ticket to Moscow. The plane was almost empty and the only people on board were my colleagues from Poland with whom I had spent the previous year working with in Vilnius. The atmosphere on the plane was tense, but full of excitement. The change was happening in front of our eyes, but not the way we were expecting.
from FaithWorld:
Russian Muslims ask Moscow to lobby Saudis for increased haj quota to Mecca
(Muslims attend Friday prayers under a snowfall at the Central Mosque in Almaty February 5, 2010/Shamil Zhumatov)
Spiritual leaders from Russia's large minority of Muslims asked President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday to press Saudi Arabia to increase the number of worshippers allowed to perform the annual Haj pilgrimage. Almost three million Muslims flock to Mecca every year for Haj, a duty every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it must perform at least once in their lifetime. Riyadh allocates quotas for Muslims around the world.
from FaithWorld:
Moscow’s “Holy Rus” religious art show spotlights sacred Russia
(A member of gallery staff passes an exhibit at the Holy Rus exhibition at the Central House of Artists in Moscow May 25, 2011/Denis Sinyakov)
Russia opened an unprecedented exhibit of religious art pulled from across the country and abroad at Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery on Thursday, in a show of Kremlin support for an Orthodox Church growing more powerful since the fall of Communism.
from FaithWorld:
Russia’s Muslim elite vows to tackle Islamist extremism
(Russia's chief Mufti Ravil Gaynutdin in Moscow February 10, 2011/Sergei Karpukhin)
Russia's Muslims on Thursday set up a council of experts to devise ways to tackle extremism, two weeks after a suicide bomb attack on the country's busiest airport killed 36. Earlier this week Islamist leader Doku Umarov said he had ordered the devastating attack on Moscow's Domodedovo airport.
from FaithWorld:
Moscow prison opens first prayer room for Muslims
A prison where Soviet-era writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was jailed and a third of inmates are Muslims from the North Caucasus and Central Asia, has become the first in Moscow to open a Muslim prayer room.
Nineteenth century Butyrka prison in central Moscow, which also held Adolf Hitler's nephew Heinrich among other high-profile prisoners, held its first prayers on Friday, in a hall near a Christian church that has operated since 1989.
