Global Trends 2025, a new report written by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) ahead of President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration, envisages a future world marked by diminished US power, dwindling resources, and more people.
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The current trend of global wealth and economic power shifting roughly from West to East, described as “without precedent in modern history”, [...]

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President Dmitry Medvedev’s address to the Federal Assembly had two principal political surprises, one internal and one external. Medvedev announced that the present Russian constitution, adapted by referendum in December 1993, would be amended to increase the term of office of president from four to six years and the parliamentary term from four to five [...]

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The American Defence Secretary has launched a furious attack on Russia accusing it of Cold war brinkmanship in its threats to position nuclear weapons on its European border.
Mr Gates, who is tipped to keep his job in Mr Obama’s new cabinet, said: “Within hours of the conclusion of the American election, Russian President Medvedev responded [...]

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In what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to rattle the president-elect, Mr Medvedev said that short-range Iskander surface-to-surface missiles would be stationed in Russia’s baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders EU states Poland and Lithuania.
Delivering his most aggressively anti-American speech yet, Mr Medvedev said he was ordering the deployment in retaliation to a missile [...]

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Russia has announced its most ambitious, systemic military modernization program since the collapse of the USSR, scheduled to deliver a more efficient and combat-ready military by 2020. These plans betray breathtaking confidence. They will include 955 Borey-type submarines, armed with the Bulava sea-launched ballistic missile; ground-based modernized Topol-M ballistic missiles that will completely replace conventional [...]

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Russia’s enormous size, its lack of cultural cohesion, its sparse and fast shrinking population, its deficient infrastructure and lack of communication lines, are some of the factors that feed the disintegration pressures within Russia. Medvedev’s speech in Kamchatka showed just how worried the Kremlin is about the possibility of the country breaking apart.
It is paradoxical [...]

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The unwelcome political reality of deepening European dependency upon Russia is somewhat similar to the American asymmetric and unbalanced economic relations with China, which is the main holder of U.S. state debt, although mutual trust is very weak and political compatibility nonexistent. In both Moscow and Beijing the current analyses of the political options available [...]

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In a sharp escalation of military rhetoric, Mr Medvedev ordered a wholesale renovation of Russia’s nuclear deterrence and told military chiefs to draw up plans to reorganise the armed forces by December.
He said that Russia must modernise its nuclear defences within eight years, including the creation of a “system of air and space defence”.
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Russia [...]

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President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that Russian President Dimitri Medvedev wants to send a Russian naval fleet to visit Venezuela.
“Russia has informed us they intend to visit Venezuela, that is, the intention that a Russian fleet should come to the Caribbean,” Chavez said on his weekly radio program.
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My impression is that a new phase of Russian politics is under way. The statement that the president designs foreign and security policy, and the prime minister implements parts of it, has become the mantra of Russian officials from Medvedev and Putin down. I encountered no Russian in or out of government who doubted that [...]

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“We propose to have an army of 1 million within four or five years, that is by 2013,” Russian media quoted Serdyukov as telling reporters after meeting President Dmitry Medvedev.
Russian officials had earlier put the number of Russian army servicemen at 1.13 million at the end of 2007. Serdyukov said the Defence Ministry had earlier [...]

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It’s hard to take Medvedev/Putin’s complaints seriously about the American missile defense system in Europe while they help arm a China that might turn on them at any time.
Of course, I can’t help but bring up the fact that Russia has helped Iran create the missile problem in the first place. Russia has long been [...]

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Russia’s new President Dmitry Medvedev, winding up his first foreign trip, said Saturday the world could not ignore the joint voice of his country and China, and rejected criticism of the alliance.
Medvedev said it was symbolic that he picked China as his first destination outside the former Soviet Union. The two countries have been increasingly [...]

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In their concise and eloquent report, Nemtsov and Milov present a devastating picture of Putin’s eight years in the Kremlin. Indeed, the report’s appraisal of Putin and his administration is so damning that the Kremlin attempted, with considerable success, to block its distribution. Originally, the publisher, Novaya Gazeta (which produces the newspaper of the same [...]

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Former president Putin initiated Russia’s move to regain “great power” status by consolidating Soviet-style control over resources, infrastructure, the economy, and security. He used the Kremlin’s full powers to quash all serious political opposition by recreating a virtual one-party state. He tapped national nostalgia by restoring former communist symbols such as the Soviet anthem and [...]

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ON a frigid evening in February, the hottest place to be here was the Kremlin Palace theater. The draw inside the towering hall wasn’t Tina Turner or Deep Purple — rock icons well past their prime — but Gazprom, Russia’s most powerful corporate leviathan, which was celebrating its 15th anniversary.
Gazprom certainly had reason to party: [...]

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When Boris Yeltsin left the Kremlin eight years ago, he gave Vladimir Putin the pen he had used to sign important documents and decrees, a gesture symbolizing the transfer of power to Russia’s new president. When Putin left the Kremlin, he took the pen with him. Putin, who became prime minister Thursday, has signaled that [...]

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, have promised a harmonious dual leadership. But as Medvedev prepares to be inaugurated as Russia’s new president, the two leaders’ supporters are already gearing up for a power struggle. By Uwe Klussmann in Moscow more…

Photo Gallery: The ‘Putvedev’ Era Begins
EU Condemns Saber Rattling: Russia and Georgia [...]

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Diplomatic novice Dmitry Medvedev will take over next week as Russian president with a thick stack of foreign policy challenges in his in-tray.
Here are some of the international issues that will confront Medvedev when he replaces his mentor Vladimir Putin as head of state on May 7:
NATO ENLARGEMENT
The Western military alliance agreed at its summit [...]

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Outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin told visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel that his successor Dmitry Medvedev will defend Russia’s interests just as aggressively as he has.
Medvedev “will be free to demonstrate his liberal views, but he isn’t any less of a Russian nationalist, in the positive sense of the word, than I am,” Putin [...]

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favored successor, Dmitry Medvedev, has the support of more than 70 percent of voters and is almost certain to win Sunday’s presidential election.
Following is a timeline of highlights of the Putin presidency:
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Vladimir Putin: Russia’s New Dictatorship

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