September 7, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 7 CONTENTS

(1)  Russia Secretly sending Weapons to Iran

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Putinomics Poisons Russia

(3)  EDITORIAL:  The Putin Dictatorship Poisons Russia

(4)  Abkhazia spits in Putin’s Eye

Russia Secretly sending arms to Iran

The Times of London reports on the latest barbaric outrage from Putin’s Russia:

A cargo ship that vanished in the Channel was carrying arms to Iran and was being tracked by Mossad, the Israeli security service, according to sources in both Russia and Israel.

EDITORIAL: Putinomics is Poison for Russia

EDITORIAL

Putinomics is Poison for Russia

The latest stunning bad news on the Russian economy is that the nation’s budget deficit increased a whopping 37% in August, Russia’s month of doom.  In the first seven months of the year the budget deficit was 4.3% of GDP, but in August it increased a gut-wrenching 1.6 points to reach 5.9% of GDP.  The budget deficit could get close to double digits by year’s end. 

EDITORIAL: The Putin Dictatorship Poisons Russia

EDITORIAL

The Putin Dictatorship

Anyone who had the slightest doubt about whether Russia is a dictatorship or not lost them last week, when the Putin regime removed Ilya Yashin’s name from the list of candidates running for the Moscow City Council, removed it along with all three of the other Solidarity Party candidates.

Abkhazia Spits in Russia’s Eye

Paul Goble reports:

Moscow’s expectations of gratitude from Abkhazia because of Russia’s decision to extend diplomatic recognition to that breakaway republic are proving to be unjustified, according to an influential Russian analyst, and he predicts that Abkhazia will continue to “drift away” from Moscow as Sukhumi pursues its own interests.

In an article published on the Nezavisimaya Gazeta website, Aleksandr Karavayev, who is the deputy head of the Moscow State University center for the study of the former Soviet space, offers the most pessimistic assessment yet from a Russian analyst about where Abkhazia is heading. If most analysts have assumed that Abkhazia will pursue a variant of the pro-Russian policy that South Ossetia’s Eduard Kokoity backs, either because they assume that both breakaway republics will act only on the basis of gratitude or because they think that the only issue is whether these regimes will survive, Karavayev draws a very different conclusion.