Tag: Putin

A Ukrainian opposition leader jokingly said yesterday (29 August) that by staging a trade war against Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin “deserved a medal” for boosting Kyiv's chances of signing its Association Agreement with the EU in November.

Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to clinch a concrete energy deal on a rare trip to Azerbaijan yesterday (13 August), dashing Moscow's hopes to challenge the dominance of Western energy majors in the former Soviet republic.

Russian President Vladimir Putin faced further isolation on the second day of a G8 summit today (18 June) as world leaders lined up to pressure him into toning down his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

EU and Russian leaders appeared sharply divided over civil liberties in Russia and ways to resolve the Syrian crisis during a two-day summit that ended on Tuesday (4 June).

The 31^st EU-Russia summit will be held today (3 June) in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg. No breakthroughs or surprises are anticipated, but EU representatives are expected to warn President Vladimir Putin about “repressive tendencies” in Russia.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is meeting Commission President José Manuel Barroso in Moscow today (21 March), slammed the EU for behaving "like a bull in a china shop" on the proposed Cyprus bailout. Meanwhile, a prominent Russian opposition leader said the Kremlin was conducting an operation to save its “dirty money” in Cyprus.

EU leaders concluded their two-day summit today (15 March) with an informal discussion on Russia, largely intended as a brainstorming session to prepare an EU visit to Moscow next week aimed at ‘exploring areas of mutual interest'. Much of the debate focused on energy, which EU leaders will discuss during a special summit on 24 May.

Politically correct rhetoric of recent addresses from Russian President Vladimir Putin and his focus on problems in Russia and post-Soviet space may be attributed to the objective lack of foreign partners to form a global strategic agenda, writes Lidiya Smola.

The EU-Russia summit ended today (21 December) with no major decisions, but Russian President Vladimir Putin staged a show for the press, telling Commission President José Manuel Barroso that he was “not right” in his interpretation of energy liberalisation rules.

Ukraine's president pulled out of gas price talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the last minute on Tuesday (18 December), raising concern about the reliability of supplies to Europe before a Russia-EU summit.

The human rights situation in the EU has deteriorated with the economic crisis, a Russian envoy said yesterday (6 December), citing xenophobia, racism, violent nationalism, police abuse and neo-Nazism among others. “We believe that nobody should have the monopoly to assess the human rights situation in other countries,” the envoy insisted.

BP is ending a stormy relationship with Russian tycoons from a company known as AAR and is instead targeting a partnership with government-owned Rosneft. The deal, worth over $25 billion (€19.18 billion) could give the British oil company a stake of between 16% and 20% in the Russian oil giant. 

Russia officially joined the World Trade Organization today (22 August), ending a 19-year wait to become part of the global club.

Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to lower the price of gas for Ukraine yesterday (12 July) during his first visit to the former Soviet republic since returning to the Kremlin in May, a meeting which Kyiv had hoped would resolve the energy stalemate.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin made it clear that his country cannot advance negotiations on a new basic treaty with the EU, unless Brussels formalises relations with the so-called "Common Economic Space" - its Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. 

The Russian Ambassador to the EU slammed the bloc's inability “to move backwards” on some issues, but also pleaded for reaping the complementarity of European and Russian economies. The remarks were made yesterday (29 May) at a briefing in preparation of the 3-4 June EU-Russia summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was inaugurated for a new six-year mandate on 7 May, has signed ambitious decrees, but very little is expected to change in the way the country will deal with foreign investors, argues Bogdan Sumenko.

EU ministers held an animated discussion in Brussels yesterday (14 May), evaluating the risks of “losing Ukraine to Russia” if too much pressure is put on the country over the treatment of imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Little will change in the poor management of Russia's energy sector with the return of Valdimir Putin as president of Russia, says Mikhail Krutikhin in an analysis initially published the European Union Institute for Security Studies.

It is absolutely essential to have more coherent, structured, well-framed relations between the EU and Russia, said Thierry de Montbrial, founder and Director General of the French Institute for International Relations IFRI, in an exclusive with EurActiv, on the occasion of Putin's coming inauguration on 7 May for a new mandate as president.

Outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed yesterday (3 April) a new law officially designed to open up the political system to competition, but which according to critics would instead create "chaos". At the same time it became clear that he would not pardon jailed anti-Kremlin tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

EU leaders gathered in Brussels expressed outrage at the 'barbarity' of the repression in Syria, sending a discrete message to Moscow that Europeans were hoping for a gesture from Russia at the UN Security Council after Sunday's presidential election.

A speech by High Representative Catherine Ashton in the European Parliament yesterday (1 February) provided a rare insight on talks with Europe's largest neighbour ahead of the Russian presidential elections in March.