They have entered our language. Everyone uses them. The terms, particularly with "byte", are almost commonplace. Kilobyte, Megabyte and Gigabyte are part of our lexicon.
But do you know where they came from?
First, let's show the terms:
| Kilo | 10001 | 103 | 1,000 |
| Mega | 10002 | 106 | 1,000,000 |
| Giga | 10003 | 109 | 1,000,000,000 |
| Tera | 10004 | 1012 | 1,000,000,000,000 |
| Peta | 10005 | 1015 | 1,000,000,000,000,000 |
| Exa | 10006 | 1018 | 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 |
| Zetta | 10007 | 1021 | 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 |
| Yotta | 10008 | 1024 | 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 |
Ok. So where did they come from?
Kilo comes from the Greek khiloi and means, curiously enough, 1000. It is interesting enough, the only prefix with a direct numerical meaning.
The next three come from Greek and Latin and are either descriptive or mythological.
Mega comes from the Greek mega meaning "great", as in "Alexandros O Megas" or "Megas Alexandros" (Alexander the Great).
Giga comes from Latin gigas meaning "giant".
Tera comes from Greek teras meaning "monster".
Now we return to numbers. Though not direct numerical references, the next two are indirect references.
Peta comes from the Greek pente meaning five. This is the fifth prefix (for 10005). This term, and the next one, were both added in 1975 by the General Conference of Weights and Measures (abbreviated CGMP because it is in France)
Exa comes from Greek hex meaning six. This is the sixth prefix (for 10006). Taking "Hexa" and making the "H" silent (as it is in France, home of the CGMP) gives "Exa".
Here we leave the numerical references again. Unable to return to the mythological (after great, giants and monsters what else is there), we move to the Latin alphabet. For reasons I don't know, we start with the last letter (Zetta), working backwards to the beginning.
Zetta, often mistaken for the Greek Zeta, is the last letter of the Latin alphabet. This prefix and the next one were added in 1990 by CGMP.
Yotta is the penultimate (next to last) letter of the Latin alphabet.
24 June 2009 – The Moscow Times by William Dunkerley – When U.S. President Barack Obama first met President Dmitry Medvedev in April, almost two-thirds of Americans were thinking negative thoughts about Russia. Now, less than two weeks away from Obama's meeting with Medvedev in Moscow, the Kremlin is showing new concern about Russia's image abroad. Indeed, the importance of external PR has been elevated by making it a responsibility of presidential chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin. 
15 June 2009 – The Moscow Times by Anatoly Medetsky - President Dmitry Medvedev has dismissed Russia's long-serving ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, months before the presidential elections in a country that handles most of the Russian gas transit to the European Union. 
05-27-2009 - AFP - MOSCOW, Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom is keen to participate in a pipeline to carry Iranian gas to Pakistan, the Kommersant daily reported on Wednesday, citing company and government officials. "We are ready to join the project as soon as we receive an offer," Russia's deputy energy minister Anatoly Yankovsky told the daily. The paper quoted another top government official as saying Moscow sees the pipeline as a means to divert Iranian gas from competing with Russian exports on the European market. "This project is advantageous to Moscow since its realisation would carry Iranian gas toward South Asian markets so that in the near future it would not compete with Russian gas to Europe," Kommersant wrote. Russian exports satisfy over one quarter of Europe's gas needs, but the European Union has sought to lessen its dependence with the construction of the Nabucco pipeline to pump Caspian Sea gas to Europe which would bypass Russia. The multi-billion dollar Iran-Pakistan pipeline, which aims to pump an initial 11 billion cubic metres of Iranian gas per year to Pakistan, could deprive the Nabucco project of one possible source for gas supplies. Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupryanov confirmed the company's interest in the project, Kommersant reported. It cited an unnamed official in the company as saying Gazprom could serve as the pipeline operator or also participate in its construction. The start date for construction of the much-delayed pipeline is planned for september 2009 to be completed in June 2014, the paper reported. Iranian officials have said the supply of gas to Pakistan could begin in three to four years. The pipeline project, when initially mooted in 1994, had proposed to carry gas from Iran to Pakistan and India. But India withdrew last year from the talks over repeated disputes on prices and transit fees. The 900-kilometre (560-mile) pipeline is being built between Asalooyeh in southern Iran and Iranshahr near the border with Pakistan and will carry the gas from Iran's South Pars field. Iranian officials said Monday that the final contract would be signed in three weeks.
May 21, 2009 - Eurasia Daily Monitor by Pavel Felgenhauer - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has recently made public comments about "the falsifiers of history," attacking the country and its heritage. This was a serious political statement of strategic importance - not merely a rhetorical proclamation, made just before the World War II Victory-Day military parade on May 9: "We will not allow anyone to undermine the sacrifice of our people" (EDM, May 13). Medvedev's statement was followed by the creation of a special presidential inter-departmental commission: "the commission to counteract against attempts to falsify history that undermine the interests of Russia." The presidential order to set up this "historic truth" commission was signed on May 15 and published on the Kremlin website on May 19 together with a list of its members (www.kremlin.ru, May 19). The state-controlled television (Rossiya TV, NTV, and First Channel) immediately lavished praise on "the timely move" to save Russian history from the "falsifiers" -namely the authorities in the Ukrainian, Georgian and Baltic republics. However, the more independent press was much more critical, pointing out that in the 28-member commission there are only three professional historians, and even these are not independent researchers, but government-appointed directors of two official historical research institutions and the chief of the official Russian government archive. Instead of appointing independent historians, the commission has been filled with high-ranking bureaucrats as well as a number of pro-Kremlin spin-doctors and nationalistic lawmakers. Two commission members - Sergey Markov and Konstantin Zatulin - have been banned from entering Ukraine for allegedly promoting the transfer of Crimea to Russia. Zatulin has been accused of being one of the organizers of the mass distribution of Russian passports in Abkhazia and South Ossetia that was used as a justification of the Russian invasion last August. Fear has been expressed that the commission may punish liberal historians or dissidents (Kommersant, Vedomosti, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May 20). "There are only three historians there, and even they are not recognized among professionals," prominent historian Roy Medvedev told Kommersant. "I am afraid that the commission will be used for witch-hunts and the settling of scores," the military historian Alexei Isayev commented to Kommersant. "If we are going back to those [Soviet] years, then hopes for Medvedev the liberal, in whose name the commission is being established, are somewhat unjustified," Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Center in Moscow, warned in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. These fears, though justified and genuine, might be somewhat misplaced. The Russian authorities already possess sufficient legal power under the existing "anti-terrorist" and "anti-extremist" laws to punish dissidents. In addition, the Duma is reported to be rushing through amendments to the Penal Code to make the "falsification of history" a criminal offense. The first reading of the anti-falsification law is planned for June 3 (Vedomosti, May 20). However, as a body the new "historic truth" commission per se appears to be too powerful and administratively weighted to be exclusively or primarily aimed at silencing the few independent researchers, dissidents and writers in contemporary Russia. The overall composition of the "historic truth" commission follows the pattern of other commissions that formulate Russian foreign, defense and national-security policies by establishing an inter-departmental consensus -which is the foundation of Russian executive decision-making. The actual composition of such commissions always includes prominent representatives of departments and ministries concerned about particular issues, which might prove an indicator as to any sanction they recommend. The chairman of the newly established "historic truth" commission is the chief of Medvedev's administration Sergei Naryshkin, a well-known loyal supporter of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. A number of other prominent presidential administration figures are members of the commission. The justice and culture ministers are represented by deputies as well as the chiefs of the government departments of education, science and the mass media. Deputy Chiefs also represent the foreign ministry and the security council. The intelligence community is represented by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Federal Security Service (FSB). The commission member from the armed forces is the top Russian military commander, the Chief of General Staff and First Deputy Defense Minister, Army-General Nikolai Makarov. The official task of the commission is to "analyze information about the falsification of historic facts aimed against Russia," to prepare "recommendations on adequate reactions to falsifications that hinder Russian interests and to neutralize their possible negative consequences" (www.kremlin.ru, May 19). The language is clearly aimed not at dissidents, but at Russia's neighboring states and the presence of such prominent figures as the chief of administration and the Chief of the General Staff might indicate that military action such as the war last August against Georgia is not excluded. The Georgian authorities are not attempting to rehabilitate any Nazi collaborators. However, Rossiya TV on May 19 accused them of falsifying history by assuming that Georgia was annexed by imperial Russia. According to Moscow, the Georgians gladly volunteered to join the Russian empire. After the commission makes its recommendations and adequate action is taken to "neutralize," dissidents, the Georgians, Ukrainians and others might face additional pressure to submit to the Kremlin's views.
May 26, 2009 - Washington Post by Philip P. Pan - USSURIYSK, Russia - As a young officer fresh out of a Soviet military academy, Alexander Primak was assigned to serve in this frontier city in the Russian Far East, eight time zones away from his home town in Ukraine. He spent the next quarter-century in the region, moving from garrison to garrison, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. But he always dreamed of moving back west, counting on the government's promise to reward officers with apartments upon retirement. Now, as the Russian government pushes ahead with an overhaul of the military that eliminates the positions of more than half the army's officers, Primak is jobless at age 46 and stuck in Ussuriysk waiting for an apartment he may never get. "They're finding any excuse not to keep their promises," the gray-haired colonel said coolly, maintaining ramrod posture as he sighed over a plastic cup of coffee in a roadside eatery. "When we were young, we put the motherland first. We were ready to tolerate discomfort and wait for something better. . . . Of course I'm disappointed." Low morale over pay and housing has afflicted the Russian military since the fall of the Soviet Union, but grumbling in the ranks is rising sharply as President Dmitry Medvedev attempts to carry out the most ambitious restructuring of the nation's armed forces since World War II in the face of a severe economic downturn. The plan seeks to transform an impoverished, unwieldy conscript army built to fight a protracted war in Europe into a more nimble, battle-ready force that can respond quickly to regional conflicts. Key to the overhaul is a drastic reduction in the number of officers, who now account for nearly one in three Russian servicemen. By eliminating thousands of officer-only units that were designed to call up draftees in wartime, and moving to a leaner, brigade-based structure, Medvedev intends to cut Russia's officer corps from 355,000 to 150,000, dismissing more than 200 generals, 15,000 colonels and 70,000 majors. The plan has run into stiff resistance, with some top military officials resigning in protest and the Kremlin firing others. Retired generals and nationalist politicians have accused Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of scaling back Russia's military ambitions by essentially giving up on trying to maintain an army capable of confronting NATO. Officers and troops have staged scattered demonstrations across the country against the reform plan, which would also shut dozens of military hospitals, schools and research institutes. A top complaint is the government's failure to provide apartments to all officers who are discharged after more than a decade of service -- a benefit that dates to the Soviet era and is written into Russian law. The apartments are important because military pay has lagged far behind the cost of living and few officers have enough savings to buy homes. But the army has suffered a severe housing shortage since the fall of the Soviet Union, when a wave of servicemen in need of lodging returned to Russia. The military's construction efforts have been plagued by corruption and inefficiency, and hundreds of thousands of active-duty officers as well as retirees are on waiting lists for accommodations. "Our military organization, our fleet, has cheated me with housing," said Vyacheslav Zaytsev, a former submarine officer who was interviewed on television during a protest in the arctic city of Murmansk. "A homeless officer is a shame for a nation," read one demonstrator's sign. Here in the coastal province of Primorye, tucked between China, North Korea and the Sea of Japan, as many as 8,000 officers are expected to be discharged in the restructuring, local activists said. "In our region, over 3,000 officers will be fired from the navy alone. . . . Where will these people go? How will they live?" said Boris Prikhodko, a retired vice admiral, before a protest last month in nearby Vladivostok, the provincial capital and headquarters of the Pacific Fleet. Under the law, retiring officers can request apartments anywhere in Russia or ask to keep the quarters assigned to them by the military. But in practice, most who have been sent to the Far East have little chance of getting housing anywhere else when they are discharged. When Primak became eligible for retirement, for example, he asked for an apartment in Kursk, a city near the border with Ukraine, where his parents still live. But he was released without being given any apartment. "I realized then that in Russia there are laws that are enforced, and other laws that are maybe for the future," he said. "What they say on television and do in reality are completely different." He and other officers in this city of 150,000 say local authorities have fallen behind in housing construction and have begun using loopholes to discharge officers without giving them apartments. Some have been given certificates that aren't worth enough to buy adequate homes. Others have been relieved of duty but formally remain registered with their units with minimal pay so commanders can keep them on waiting lists. The worst off are officers stationed in the scores of military garrisons scattered across the countryside here, isolated outposts that have fallen into severe disrepair and are set to be closed as part of the shift to a brigade structure. Many of these officers have been told to just keep their current quarters, which often lack running water. "These poor guys have to stay the rest of their lives in these ruined garrisons, without even minimal sanitation conditions," said Vladimir Kaplyuk, a retired colonel who heads an aid organization for veterans in Ussuriysk. "But after the units are shut down, there won't be anything left but these officers there. No troops, no jobs, nothing." Technically, Kaplyuk said, the officers will be on waiting lists for housing. "But for how long?" he said. "Some officers here have been waiting 12 years already." One 48-year-old lieutenant colonel assigned to a garrison near the Chinese border said he was offered a certificate that would have allowed him to buy only a tiny studio apartment on the outskirts of Ussuriysk or a rural house without a sewer system or running water. When he refused to take it, he was discharged without an apartment and had to sue his commanders to get reinstated. "I felt like they seized me by the scruff of my neck and threw me away as if I was something useless," said the colonel, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who asked to be identified only by his first name, Viktor, because he feared reprisals. "I'm upset with everyone -- the state, the commanders -- and there are many people like me facing similar problems." Officers said it would be difficult for them to unite and pose a serious challenge because they are forbidden from engaging in political activities. They said local authorities have been effective at containing dissent, recently quashing an attempt by discharged officers to stage a protest and arranging for them to gather in a room outside the city instead. The Kremlin has also pledged to upgrade equipment and weapons and to sharply increase wages for the officers who are not dismissed -- promises that have helped it win support in the military for the reform plan, analysts said. But most of the planned cuts and dismissals have yet to be completed, and discontent could rise further if the economy worsens, they said. Alexander Ovechkin, 50, a lieutenant colonel in Ussuriysk who retired without receiving an apartment, said officers are frustrated in part because Medvedev and Putin have raised expectations, repeatedly pledging to build enough housing for all discharged and active-duty officers by next year. "You can feel the social tension and uncertainty," he said. "They have promised a lot. . . . I'd like to believe it, but my experience is too sad."
MAY 21, 2009 - Wall Street Journal by Andrew Osborn - MOSCOW—President Dmitry Medvedev has created a special commission to counter what he says are increasingly aggressive attempts to rewrite history to Russia's disadvantage. Supporters said the commission is needed to tackle anti-Russian propaganda in the former Soviet Union, an area Moscow regards as its backyard, but liberal historians called the initiative a return to Soviet-era controls. In a signal that the Kremlin is continuing its assertive foreign policy despite Russia's weakening economy, Mr. Medvedev, in a decree made public Tuesday, ordered the commission to investigate and counter falsified versions of history that damage Russia's "international prestige." Mr. Medvedev empowered the commission—comprising senior military, government and intelligence officials—to launch inquiries, unearth historical documents, and call government and expert witnesses, as well as formulate possible policy responses for the president to consider. The ruling United Russia party also has proposed a draft law that would mandate jail terms of three to five years for anyone in the former Soviet Union convicted of rehabilitating Nazism. Analysts say they expect it to become law, though it will only be enforceable in Russia. First under Mr. Putin, who is now prime minister, and now under Mr. Medvedev, the Kremlin has sought to boost patriotic sentiment and its own popularity by tapping nostalgia for Soviet wartime achievements. But while the Kremlin encourages Russians to celebrate the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazism, politicians in several former Soviet republics denounce the Red Army as occupiers who brought their countries decades of totalitarianism. Russia in turn has accused those countries, including Estonia and Latvia, of rehabilitating Nazism, highlighting, for example, that some Estonians and Latvians fought alongside the Nazis. In Ukraine, attempts to classify a Stalin-era famine as ethnically targeted genocide have angered Russia. The Kremlin says ethnic Russians too died of hunger during the same period in other parts of the U.S.S.R., and that the Ukrainian initiative is a ploy to stir anti-Russian sentiment. Polish attempts to delve into a massacre of Polish officers at the hands of Soviet secret police during World War II have also rankled. Russian authorities have refused to disclose information about the killings from their archives or to initiate a new investigation. Estonia's decision to relocate a monument to the Red Army away from the center of its capital, Tallinn, is another source of tension. The Kremlin also has accused Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia of honoring those who fought alongside the Nazis by allowing them to hold public commemorations. Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin lawmaker and member of the new commission, said the new body wouldn't throw people in jail or blacklist historians whose analyses it disagrees with. Its priority, he said, was to challenge what he said were distorted interpretations of the Soviet Union's role in World War II. "There's an information war going on," he said. "This is about defining who the Russians were historically." The new commission will ensure the Russian view prevails, said Mr. Markov. He said grants would be given to pro-Russian historians in other countries to ensure their voices were heard. "We have to choose which history textbooks are telling the truth and which are lying," he said. Inside Russia, the Kremlin has already mandated certain textbooks for all Russian schoolchildren. Critics say the new books go easy on Stalin and justify Mr. Putin's political model of "sovereign democracy." Liberal historians said the commission initiative undermines Kremlin claims that Mr. Medvedev is less hard-line than his predecessor, Vladimir Putin. "One year ago Mr. Medvedev said he preferred freedom to non-freedom," said Alexander Cherkasov of human-rights group Memorial. "Initiatives of this sort have never led to greater freedom." Mr. Cherkasov compared the commission to Soviet-era bodies that had tried to establish a monopoly on various scientific and ideological truths. Earlier this month, shortly before Russia marked the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany with a military parade on Red Square, Mr. Medvedev said attempts to falsify history had become intolerable. "Such attempts are becoming more hostile, more evil, and more aggressive," he said in his online video blog. "We must fight for the historical truth." Historian and author Orlando Figes, a professor at the University of London, says the new commission is part of a clampdown on historical scholarship. "They're idiots if they think they can change the discussion of Soviet history internationally," Prof. Figes said. "But they can make it hard for Russian historians to teach and publish. It's like we're back to the old days."
04 May 2009 - The Moscow Times by Anna Malpas - When senior officials declared their incomes and those of their wives and children last month, some claimed that they owned tiny apartments and ancient cars -- while others said they earned as much as $11 million and owned snazzy Porsches and Lexuses. Ordinary Russians merely shrugged; they expected nothing less. "The declarations didn't make any real impact," said Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, a think tank. "There's no challenge to society. The public didn't expect anything different." But President Dmitry Medvedev did succeed in ruffling feathers by forcing top officials to reveal their incomes as part of an anti-corruption drive, a flagship program of his administration. Many mid-level bureaucrats have good reason to worry; they will be next, analysts said. Officials had to include property and earnings by their wives and underage children for the first time in their income declarations. Several officials claimed to own no cars, or only a 10-year-old car, like Medvedev's wife, Svetlana, who is often photographed in designer outfits. Several officials said they owned no property at all, like Vladislav Surkov, the powerful first deputy head of the presidential administration. On the other hand, some officials declared extreme wealth, such as Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev, who put his earnings at about 370 million rubles ($11 million) and listed among his property a Porsche Cayenne and a Porsche 911. The staff at the Prosecutor General's Office also published their declarations, revealing that Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee, could vacation in the Czech Republic in an apartment owned by his wife. This inflamed United Russia Deputy Alexander Khinshtein, who told Kommersant that it was "nonsense" for a senior official's family to own property in a NATO country. Bastrykin also declared earnings of 5,255,800 rubles ($156,702), more than Medvedev (4.13 million rubles, or $123,900) or Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (4.6 million rubles, or $138,350). Opinion polls on the declarations have shown mixed results. A VTsIOM poll found that 31 percent of Russians rated the idea of the declarations as an "excellent, long-overdue anti-corruption measure." Meanwhile, an informal poll conducted on the web site of Vedomosti asked if the publication of the declarations was an effective anti-corruption measure. Eighty percent of respondents said "no." "The average Russian understands very well that a bureaucrat can't be poor," said Alexei Mukhin, an analyst with the Center for Political Information. "Medvedev practically took no risk" in requiring the declarations. "There was never going to be any public outrage. That would be nonsensical." Public interest in the declarations is rather selective, Mukhin said. People were interested to read about Medvedev and Putin but felt "indifference" to the rest. They would rather see oligarchs' earnings, he said. Medvedev, however, is thinking beyond immediate popularity, said Tatyana Stanovaya, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies. "This is a personal, historic project of Medvedev that is not linked to short-time aims of raising public faith in officials right now," she said, pointing to a speech that Medvedev gave to a group of human rights activists late last month. Medvedev told the activists that many people had told him not to get involved in fighting corruption, saying, "Why bother, because you won't solve it quickly all the same?" The president also described his anti-corruption campaign so far as "modest steps." "Medvedev is thinking like a lawyer," Stanovaya said. "It's the beginning of a very long journey." Medvedev was unable to push through legislation forcing lower-ranking officials to declare their families' income and property this year. Instead, State Duma deputies postponed those declarations to 2010. Deputies "turned the bill into a damp squib," Mukhin said. "Medvedev was clearly not happy." "There's a standoff between the bureaucracy and what the president wants," Kabanov said. Things promise to get interesting next year when the legislation takes effect for lower-level bureaucrats, Mukhin said. The declarations will be used to remove the "most-hated figures" and the "unjustifiably rich" from among lower-ranking officials, he said. "Bureaucrats are about to have a mass inventory." The legislation, however, lacks a clear explanation of who should check the declarations and concrete punishments for providing false information. It would be more effective for officials to declare not only income but their families' business interests as well, said Vladimir Yuzhakov, an analyst at the Center for Strategic Research. "It often happens that an official makes decisions on an enterprise where he has shares or his wife is on the board," he said. The recently released declarations are a source of some real information, but they need to be taken with a pinch of salt, said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who tracks Kremlin politics and recently joined United Russia. "In fact, their earnings are more," she said. She said the high earnings or property attributed to wives and children raise red flags about possible corruption. Nevertheless, there are numerous ways that officials gain material benefits without having to declare them. Many officials drive cars that belong to their organizations or register their chauffeurs as owners of their cars, Mukhin said. Officials enjoy perks ranging from free vacations at state resorts to the free use of state apartments that they can privatize after only one year, Stanovaya said. "There should be monetization of officials' privileges," she said.
06 April 2009 - Moscow Times - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has postponed a visit to Moscow after an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude shook central Italy early Monday morning, leaving more than 20 dead and thousands injured. Berlusconi declared a state of emergency and has not announced a new date for the visit, the Italian Embassy in Moscow said. A group of businessmen were to accompany him for an Italian-Russian economic forum. The visit was expected to be capped with a signing ceremony Tuesday between Gazprom and Eni, Italy's biggest oil and gas group. The two companies agreed last month that Gazprom would buy a 20 percent stake in its oil arm that Eni won in an auction in April 2007. Eni could become the outright owner of the Gazprom Neft shares if Thursday's deadline for the buyback passes. Gazprom may also acquire from Eni and its partner Enel a 51 percent stake in Siberian gas assets won at the same auction.
04-05-2009 - MOSCOW (AP by Mansur Mirovalef) — The glittering Christ the Savior Cathedral, a pale-white marble structure decorated with bronze statuary and swaths of gold leaf, is more than just Moscow's grandest and most opulent place of worship. Built in the 1990s as a replica of a church dynamited by Communists in 1931, the cathedral symbolizes the Moscow Patriarchate's rising political influence — which may be greater today than at any time since the 17th century. It also serves as global headquarters of vast and expanding business operations that experts say are worth several billion dollars. To tens of millions of Russian believers, the Orthodox Church is first of all a sacred institution, a pillar of the country's 1,000-year-old identity and culture. The death of Patriarch Alexy II in December caused an outpouring of heartfelt grief, with crowds of people lining up to view his remains. On Feb. 1, top clerics enthroned Alexy's successor, Kirill — a towering figure with a gray-flecked beard and sonorous voice — in a cathedral filled with celebrities and political leaders. The first person to receive communion from Patriarch Kirill was President Dmitry Medvedev's wife, Svetlana. These events would have been unimaginable in the Soviet era, when the officially atheist Communist government treated the devout like moral lepers and criminals, defrocking and imprisoning tens of thousands of clerics of all creeds. Now the church "has become a serious power in society," former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told The Associated Press in early March. But critics claim that in the past decade the Moscow Patriarchate has sacrificed some of its spiritual authority in the pursuit of political power and commercial success. Some go as far as to compare the church to its former nemesis, the Communist Party's ruling Politburo. Roman Lunkin of the Keston Institute, which studies religion in the former Soviet Union, says the church has "turned into an authoritarian and totalitarian structure." A priest who condemned the 2005 conviction and imprisonment of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a leading foe of then-President Vladimir Putin, was defrocked and appointed to guard a church store in 2006. Orthodox leaders said the decision was not political, but had to do with the priest's "discipline." Bishop Diomid of Chukotka, who lambasted Alexy II's alleged subservience to the Kremlin, found himself demoted to the rank of a monk last year. The church accused Diomid's supporters of planning to seize power in the Patriarchate. A church council excommunicated Gleb Yakunin, a priest and former lawmaker, in 1997 after he headed a government commission that concluded that most top clerics, including Patriarch Alexy and his future successor Kirill, were KGB informers. The church has long denied these claims as "absolutely unsubstantiated" and said top clerics had to "communicate" with the Soviet Council on Religious Affairs, which forwarded their reports to the KGB. The church also claimed Yakunin worked for U.S. intelligence. "Unfortunately, Orthodox Christianity is antidemocratic and hails authoritarian rule," said Yakunin, who spent years in the gulag for criticizing Soviet religious policies, during an interview in his Moscow office. Today, the 74-year-old priest leads the Apostolic Orthodox Church, a splinter group that is harassed by authorities in Russia and Belarus. Despite the Russian constitution's legal separation of church and state, President Boris Yeltsin and his successor Vladimir Putin forged a political alliance with the Orthodox Church — an alliance that has continued under Putin's successor, Medvedev. Kirill is escorted around Moscow by a cavalcade of Kremlin security guards and was listed No. 6 on the government's list of state dignitaries. Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst with close Kremlin ties, says the church has become "the Kremlin's Ministry for the Salvation of Souls." Church leaders have blessed Kremlin plans to eliminate some social benefits for the elderly, called on Russia's youth to volunteer for military service in Chechnya and consecrated new warships and nuclear missiles, calling the latter "Russia's guardian angels." The church has also supported the Kremlin's official ideology, which asserts that Russia's unique historic role makes it unsuited for Western-style liberal democracy. "The church is trying to offer a new anti-European Utopia," prominent writer Viktor Yerofeyev complained in a December article in the French newspaper Le Monde. "Its main principle: Russian values are different from Western values." For the church, political loyalty has paid handsomely. The State Duma, or lower house of parliament, is considering a bill to return to the church up to 7.41 million acres nationalized after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Both federal and local authorities have granted the church donations, tax breaks and broad immunity from government regulation of its businesses. Moscow officials, in particular, have helped the church raise money for favored causes — such as rebuilding the Christ the Savior Cathedral — by pressuring private business to contribute. The cathedral itself reflects a dual focus on the spiritual and commercial. The structure has a dry cleaner, ATM machines, meeting halls for rent and convenient underground parking. According to Nikolai Mitrokhin, director of a research institute that studies religions in the former Soviet Union, the church built its fortune starting in the 1990s through trade in tobacco and alcohol, through exports of oil and sturgeon, by the construction of shopping malls and hotels and by operating jewelry stores — allegedly with counterfeit bling. The church also runs book publishing concerns and organic farms. A church spokesman, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, confirmed that the Patriarchate controlled many businesses. But Chaplin said neither the tobacco nor the oil business proved profitable, and claimed the church is no longer involved in them. He also dismissed the notion that the church's commercial deals had undermined its spiritual mission. "I don't see anything detrimental if the church can invest in this kind of work," he told AP. The Patriarchate does not make its financial reports public, but Mitrokhin estimates the Orthodox Church's annual income at several billion dollars. This secrecy has led to allegations — denied by the church — that it has engaged in money laundering. "All of their financial streams flow in the dark," said Sergei Filatov, a scholar of religion at Moscow State University. Today, the church says nearly half of its income comes from the four-star hotel in the Danilovsky Monastery, a short walk from the Kremlin, and a factory outside the capital that produces icons and other religious items. The church sells religious goods in places like the golden-domed Holy Trinity monasterial complex in Sergiyev Posad, 100 miles northwest of Moscow, where on a recent day pilgrims lined up in the cold to kiss the sarcophagus of St. Sergius, one of Russia's patron saints. Many of the pilgrims stopped by some of the dozen shops peddling icons, calendars and refrigerator magnets, or pricier goods such as jewelry with images of Jesus or the saints. Some Sergiyev Posad residents grumbled about the commercial atmosphere. "It's like a supermarket," said Alexander Bekker, 38, a martial arts instructor and a devout believer. "What spirituality are you talking about among these merchants?" Other believers say that the church's affluence has helped spread the gospel, aid the needy and restore thousands of churches and monasteries destroyed or desecrated during Communist rule. "We still have to rebuild what Communist iconoclasts destroyed," said Father Vitaly, 51, a priest from the central city of Vladimir. "Funds won't fly down from the sky." Top church officials may live amid pomp and splendor. But many priests scrape by selling candles and souvenirs, charging modest fees for performing wedding and funeral ceremonies and blessing new houses, offices or cars. "We trust in God, but rely on ourselves," said Father Alexander, a smiling 37-year-old priest, who consecrated a new office in downtown Moscow for $140. Some experts say that the Orthodox-led religious revival has made Russia's post-Soviet political leadership a kinder, gentler group than their Communist Party predecessors. "In Communist times, authorities completely lacked human, moral principles," said church historian Andrei Zubov, of the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. "Now that many politicians are religious, they relate their lives to moral principles."
April 2, 2009-04-03 by Xinhua writer Yu Maofeng – MOSCOW, In the latest effort to reset strained ties, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama held their first face-to-face meeting on Wednesday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in London. Without a breakthrough agreement in place, the leaders pledged in a joint statement to negotiate a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) by the end of the year. A new treaty on strategic offensive weapons, though of limited significance in overall Russian-U.S. relations, will create a favorable climate for mending their relations, analysts said. 
1 April 2009 - MOSCOW - (Andrei Kislyakov, for RIA Novosti) - So do UFOs with little green men inside exist or not? CNN supposedly filmed a UFO moving at a great speed from the right to the left during the inauguration of President Barack Obama. (But those who watched the replay say it was a bird.) After that, former President Clinton's White House Chief John Podesta, now one of Obama's closest associates, demanded that the thick UFO files be made public. The number of UFO sightings has dramatically increased in recent times. According to Britain's Ministry of Defense, there were supposedly 285 UFO sightings in the UK in 2008, double the figure for 2007, when the number of alleged UFO sightings was reckoned at 137. (UFOs attacking Ukraine. Video UFO seen over Moscow during Russia - Netherlands match. Video) The defense departments of the United States and the Soviet Union scrupulously registered alleged sightings of UFOs for decades. American ufologists say that the U.S. authorities were quite serious about the UFO question in the 1940s through 1960s. Project Blue Book, terminated in 1969, had two goals: to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data. The USAF concluded that UFOs are not a threat to national security. Paradoxically, the military still refuse to provide information about UFOs for security reasons. Ufologists insist that the USAF must give them access to certain documents, such as Project Moon Dust and Project Blue Fly. Project Moon Dust was started in 1953, ostensibly to recover "returning space debris." Operation Blue Fly was launched to facilitate expeditious delivery to Foreign Technology Division of moon dust and other items of great technological intelligence interest. It is assumed that they were in fact connected with UFOs. According to ufologists, the U.S. military also have kept the bodies of extraterrestrials who died in spaceship crashes over the United States. The most widely known of such episodes, the Roswell Incident, took place in New Mexico on July 2, 1947, when an object crash-landed on a ranch approximately 75 miles northwest of Roswell, leaving a large field of debris. The local air base at Roswell investigated the incident and announced that they had recovered a "flying disk." In fact, the crash was seen by a number of people. There were allegedly alien bodies found in the disk, but the film showing their autopsy was later denounced as a fraud. If UFOs existed and military units were investigating them, there should also be a place for their deployment. This is Area 51, also known as Groom Lake, a secret military facility about 90 miles north of Las Vegas. At the center of it there is a large air base the government will not discuss about. The Roswell story speaks of alien bodies and wreckage being taken to a "Hangar 18" in Area 51. Space photographs of the area show a huge landing strip crisscrossing the area and strange circles that can be interpreted as traces of landing of huge "flying saucers." Ufologists are convinced that this is so. As President, George W. Bush moved Area 51 from the Nevada jurisdiction to that of the Pentagon and Washington. Slightly more than 10 years ago, civilian aircraft were prohibited to fly over the area. The archives of the former Soviet Union are filled to capacity with data about contacts with extraterrestrials. They contain records of over 20,000 UFO sightings. The Academy of Sciences and the Defense Ministry both undertook investigations under the secret project names of Setka, Galaktika and Gorizont. It is even said that "competent agencies," meaning the secret services, established contact with aliens and waited for their arrival to Earth. The media is now writing about a team of General Staff officers and academicians waiting for the arrival of an UFO in the Kyzylkum desert in June 1991. Clearly, humans will always strive to search for beings of humanoid form in the Universe. But it is also apparent that apart from tall tales about "little green men" there are also facts that logically point to the presence of alien intelligence on the Earth. In this case, maybe the time has come for the U.S. and Russian authorities to declassify information on unidentified flying objects and their masters?
03–31–2009 – MOSCOW. (Oleg Mityayev, RIA Novosti economic commentator) - The global economic downturn has sent tumbling governments of smaller European countries. The first country to see its national currency collapse was Iceland in January; in February, Latvian prime minister filed resignation. The Czech government is resigning now as well, and the Hungarian and Bulgarian governments are likely to follow suit. Ukraine's largest and most influential opposition party, the Party of Regions, has demanded a resignation of the government. So why are European governments collapsing like houses of cards? The key reason is looming default that some of them may announce soon. Some countries could default because of the harsh terms on which they received financial aid from the International Monetary Fund. The money they receive must only be spent to support the national currency, which is usually directly linked to either the dollar or the euro, or to cover the budget deficit. However, national banks of the aid recipients are forbidden to print more cash to support internal demand, because, according to the IMF, such actions fuel inflation and undermine a country's financial stability. That a flagrant example of double standards. U.S. President Barack Obama and Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke do not have to ask anyone's permission to print another $800 billion to stimulate American producers. Even though these steps increase inflation in the United States, and, what is more, they devalue other countries' assets denominated in U.S. dollars, such as their central banks' reserves. The need to reform the IMF has been widely discussed lately. In fact, the IMF itself revised its credit terms as recently as last week. The main innovation is a new lending instrument, dubbed the Flexible Credit Line. The FCL, without any conditions or a limit on the amount of money that can be borrowed, will allow countries to use the credit line as a "precautionary instrument" and can be drawn on at any time, the IMF said, amending, however, that the FCL was designed for member countries the IMF views as having well-managed economies, "with very strong fundamentals, policies, and track records of policy implementation." In other words, it is unlikely to be available to countries on the verge of default. The most powerful emerging economies, the BRIC nations, currently support a radical reform of the IMF. These countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - suggest revising the international group's role and harmonizing it with the current global financial architecture. The BRIC counties insist on changing the system of distribution of votes in the IMF in favor of the most rapidly developing countries, which play a substantial role in the global economy. This would help augment the IMF's funds and make its loans more easily available to countries that need them. Along with the BRIC countries, the IMF reform plans are supported by the United Kingdom, Germany, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Canada and Mexico. The idea to replace the dollar as the international reserve currency by another supra-national currency that would be controlled by a reformed IMF is also gaining supporters. The proposal was made by Russia, China and Kazakhstan. However, while the world's leading economies are busy discussing reform plans for the global financial system, smaller nations may decide that announcing default is the shortest way out of their blind alley.
March 31, 2009 - Ecommerce Journal by Kara Deniz - Today, when the whole world is suffering consequences of the global crisis , when most of the countries are in the deepest recession, when even the largest corporations have to reduce their business significantly, when a lot of companies have to stop their activity, when people increasingly lose their jobs or have their salaries cut off at best, one important question is arising: whether the global economic recession influences somehow the incomes of the heads of the states, who are supposed to “take care” of the nations’ economic health. So let’s check which of the leaders earns more than others. The US President Barack Obama gets $ 400,000 annually, Prime Minister of UK Gordon Brown gets $353,188 annually, while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earns just $81,000 (that reflects almost the five, and four and a half times difference respectively). At the same time, as www.paywizard.org shows, the former President of the USA, present Public speaker, Bill Clinton has $51,855,599.00 annually. Charles, Prince of Wales earns $ 26,043,520 annually, Willem-Alexander, Prince of the Netherlands - $1,290,240, Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands - $6,401,280, while Prime Minister of the Netherlands earns only $172,800 annually. These huge salaries can be compared to President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s earnings, who has just $5,337 per year; or to President of India Pratibha Patil’s incomes, who has $ 36,434.00, or to President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s salary, that equals $53,468. President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet gets $134,429.00 yearly. President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon gets $189,027.00 annually. Thus Prime Minister of Denmark has $181,517, while Prime Minister of Russia earns yearly only $69,468 per year. It’s obvious, that world leaders earnings don’t even depend on the size of the country. Well, probably the size of world leaders’ incomes could be explained from the point of country’s riches. Actually, earnings of the heads of the sates do not even reflect the results of their work. So it doesn’t matter how successful they are in their business they will get as much money as it’s possible and as their governments allow. However, exceptions also exist. Thus in 2007 salary of Ireland Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, was raised to € 310,000 (38,000 increase), that was the time when Ireland was lightly affected by the crisis. But in 2008 Brian Cowen, who stepped in after him, agreed to get €257,000. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, got his salary doubled in 2008, now he earns $346,000.00 annually. However, he didn’t succeed enough in leading the country through the economic crisis that made French dissatisfied. So last week France faced the wave of protest demonstrations. Another well-paid European leader is Gordon Brown, whose salary was reduced, but it was just because of sterling weakening against the dollar. At the same time some leaders are trying to win their voters’ hearts by reducing their own salaries. Thereby Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia since 2006, halved the salary prescribed to him that made him elected by 67% of citizens. Well, how could it happen, that the President of the USA, the country that suffered mostly, the country that gave a start for the global crisis, has the incomes that exceed the incomes of the majority of country leaders? And why, when enormous amount of people across the world have no jobs and no earnings for living, our rulers’ salary size cannot be reduced, moreover it grows? Well, we can continue to ask questions like these, but unfortunately they can just stay rhetorical for us… - 
19 March 2009 - Moscow News №10 2009 by Ayano Hodouchi, Anna Arutunyan and Tim Wall - Henry Kissinger, the arch-practitioner of realpolitik and détente with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, is back in a new role - to reset relations between the new U.S. administration of Barack Obama and Russia. In Moscow, Kissinger is famous as Richard Nixon's National Security Adviser, who negotiated the historic Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. He has been involved in talks with every head of state in the Soviet Union and later Russia over the last 40 years. On Friday, he is to have talks with President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow as part of a group of four "wise men" in U.S. foreign policy, according to Kommersant. While Kissinger's role is being billed as an unofficial one, his access to Russian leaders in recent years has been nothing short of phenomenal - gaining several one-on-one meetings with then-President Vladimir Putin during his two terms in office. He also was the first senior U.S. figure to visit President Medvedev after his inauguration last summer, and most recently met with Medvedev in December. Then, sources say, he was acting as an unofficial envoy for Obama's transition team in proposing a revamping of U.S.-Russian relations after the Cold War-style falling out under George W. Bush's administration. The U.S. Embassy said on Thursday it did not have any information about Kissinger's visit. The choice of Kissinger to spearhead talks with Russia appears to be based on his long experience and popularity amongst Russian politicians. The Russians respect him for thinking and talking in concrete, realistic terms, and not about ideology. While Kissinger enjoys wide respect among Russian leaders, he has a controversial reputation internationally - particularly in South America, where he has been accused of involvement in the so-called Operation Condor in the 1970s, when the United States allegedly backed right-wing military dictatorships in Chile, Brazil and elsewhere in killing and repressing left-wing activists. Kissinger has denied any involvement. The Obama administration is seeking to rebuild relations with the Kremlin and win support over Afghanistan, Iran, missile defense and the reduction of nuclear arms. For Obama, U.S.-Russia relations seem to be an issue of considerable importance. This week Obama announced he would nominate Rose Gottemoeller, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre from 2006 to 2008, as Assistant Secretary of State for verification and compliance. If her nomination is approved by the U.S. Senate, Gottemoeller, a leading expert on U.S.-Russian relations and nuclear security, will have the great responsibility of negotiating a follow-up for the START Treaty, the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, which expires in December. The current Under Secretary of State, William Burns, served three years until 2008 as the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and Alexander Vershbow, who preceded Burns as ambassador, was nominated this month by Obama as Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security. With so many old Russia hands nominated to key positions in his administration, Obama has made it clear that he considers cooperation with Moscow one of the most important issues for his presidency. Jeff Mankoff, adjunct fellow for Russia Studies at Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said that the administration of George W. Bush believed the Clinton presidency had paid too much attention to Russia. While Russia at times rose to the top of Bush's inbox - for instance during the war with Georgia last summer - his administration never seemed to have a clear sense of where Russia fitted in the larger U.S. strategic landscape, Mankoff said. "Obama's interest in pressing the reset button seems to me not only about having better relations with Moscow, but also appears motivated by a belief that Russia really matters," Mankoff said. Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, put it even more strongly. In an advance copy of his testimony to the U.S. Congress on Thursday, Cohen said: "Moscow's efforts at carving out a ‘sphere of privileged interests' in Eurasia and rewriting the rules of European security have negative implications for U.S.-Russia relations, international security, and the autonomy of the independent former Soviet states. Russia is and will remain one of the most significant foreign policy challenges facing the Obama administration. Failure to stem Russia's revisionist efforts will lead to a deteriorating security situation in Eurasia and a decline of American influence in Europe and the Middle East." Cohen said that hopes for reaching an agreement on a third anti-ballistic missile base in Europe could be dashed in a few months' time, as Russia's sending of strategic bombers to Cuba and Venezuela, and the rearmament plan announced by Medevedev on Tuesday, clearly do not indicate that Russia is disposed to be amenable to U.S. suggestions. Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said on Thursday that Russia was also eager to clear up "stuff clogging relations between the two countries, thanks to Bush and his team." In particular, Rogozin pointed to the issue of NATO expansion towards Russia's borders as a key stumbling block, but identified weapons control and cooperation in dealing with the financial crisis as potential areas for progress. Gennady Yevstafyev, a security policy analyst and former official in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, expressed skepticism about U.S. hopes that Russia would play an important role in restraining Iranian nuclear ambitions. "I've always said - Iran is a thing in itself, and they will not do anything for another country," Yevstafyev said. "They act only in their own interests. To think that we can influence their decision in the sense that they will listen to us and stop their program - that is mistaken. We can assume certain commitments not to ship offensive military weapons, but we cannot make commitments not to supply defensive-type weapons. Every country has a right to defend itself, and the Americans have never made such concessions themselves." On March 16, a U.S. policy commission on Russia outlined a new approach to U.S.-Russia relations in a report. It was enthusiastically received in Russia, with Kommersant calling it "the most flattering description of Russia [since] the end of the Cold War." The report offers some concessions to Russia, including stopping short of backing NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, cooperation on arms control, and helping Russia's WTO accession.
March 6, 2009 - St.Pete Times by Yulia Latynina - Of all the official statements coming from the government and big business over the past few weeks, three stand out as most important. First, multibillionaire Oleg Deripaska announced that he would not request any more government assistance for his ailing business empire. Second, Olimpstroi, the state corporation responsible for preparing Sochi for the 2014 Olympics, will reportedly return 50 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) to state coffers. (Rosnano and Russian Railways will also hand back 130 billion rubles and 80 billion rubles, respectively.) The third most important announcement was made by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday when he met with United Russia leaders: “The crisis is far from hitting its peak,” he said. Translated from “Kremlinese” into ordinary English, the first statement means that even Deripaska — the most-connected oligarch among Putin’s favorites — won’t get any more cold cash from the government. The second means that financing for Putin’s pet project to turn Sochi into a winter wonderland is drying up. When oil prices were high, the Kremlin suffered no political fallout for making poor decisions. After former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced in May 2005 to eight years in a prison located in a remote, radioactive Siberian town, the markets had a brief scare, but they recovered relatively quickly because the economy was in the midst of an oil-driven boom. Almost a year after Khodorkovsky was arrested, then-President Putin abolished elections of regional governors, but few seemed to care too much because most Russians enjoyed higher living standards as petrodollars flooded the economy. Now, of course, the situation has reversed completely. The political cost of making bad decisions is extremely high, but poor decisions are the only kind the Kremlin is capable of making — in good times as well as bad. The authorities are unable to grapple with the crisis because it was precisely their actions that caused it in the first place. When a drunk driver slams into a tree, the tree is not the cause of the accident. Russia’s leaders are like a drunk driver. Intoxicated by petrodollars and racing along the highway at 200 kilometers per hour in his armor-plated Mercedes, the driver slammed into a huge tree called the global financial crisis. The driver is still alive thanks to the car’s fat air bag — the country’s stabilization fund. Although heavily bruised and injured, the driver is able to get out of the smashed car, look at the tree and scream, “It was you, America, that caused this whole mess!” Russia’s economy is falling at a record rate, comparable only to its rapid decline in fall 1941. The country has spent a whopping $200 billion on “supporting” the ruble. In the end, the only support to speak of is that the ruble has lost about 50 percent of its value since last summer, while the $200 billion spent on this accomplishment is gone forever. Few know for sure how much money is really left in the Reserve Fund. Meanwhile, the market value of Russian companies has decreased by roughly 75 percent on average since their peaks last year, while their huge debts have not gone away. This imbalance could easily result in mass defaults or bankruptcies. The ruling elite were willing to forgive Putin for his mistakes during the prosperous years, but when the magic goose stopped laying its golden eggs, they started taking a hard, sober look at the person who sparked a gas war with Ukraine in the heat of a dire financial crisis and who threatens to shoot protesters at unsanctioned political rallies.
17 March 2009 - The Moscow Times by Alexander Etkind - Ever since Vladimir Putin came to power a decade ago, the Kremlin regime has relied on two pillars: the security forces and energy exports. By suppressing internal rivals and absorbing their assets, the regime created a dual monopoly. Redistributing some of the profits from high energy prices enabled the regime to improve living standards and make itself popular with ordinary Russians. And resolving internal problems through a disproportionate use of force reassured even the regime's security-obsessed former KGB men. Until recently, this combination of carrots and sticks functioned effectively. The virtual absence of popular protest in Russia during the Putin years seems amazing. But make no mistake: Putin's popularity ratings relied not on his vigor, humor or mystique, but on salaries and credits that Russians had never enjoyed before. And as long as oil prices were growing faster than Russian salaries, those in power could still grab a big slice of the profits. Now that happy union between the Kremlin and ordinary Russians is ending. Few Russian policymakers, much less the people, expected oil and gas prices to collapse as they have. We do not know what will happen next. If prices rebound, Putin and his people will glorify themselves for their wisdom. But if prices remain stagnant at current levels, Putin's system is doomed to failure. It is no coincidence that George W. Bush's and Putin's disastrous presidencies were cotemporaneous. By driving up energy prices, Bush was Putin's greatest ally. Putin returned the favor by refocusing Russia from its multiple problems to "terrorism." Both sought to undo the work of their successful predecessors, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. Both led their countries into traps with which their successors must deal. When Bush said that he liked what he saw in Putin's eyes, he meant it. But their successors are as different as the procedures that brought them to power. Since Soviet times, the Kremlin has traditionally been wary about Democratic administrations in the United States. John F. Kennedy refused to tolerate the Soviet military presence in Cuba. Jimmy Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics. Clinton led the successful operation against Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, the Kremlin's best friend in Europe. And U.S. President Barack Obama's triumph heralded the fall in oil prices. With energy revenues screeching to a halt, Putin's regime will lose popularity. Central myths about Putin being the healer of the nation and the supplier of giveaway budgets are collapsing. And Putin cannot avoid responsibility. If the Kremlin claimed credit for the oil- and gas-fired prosperity of the past six years -- prosperity only because of economic exuberance elsewhere in the world -- the Kremlin should be accountable for the current devastation. In the 1998 crisis, Russians did not yet take for granted imported cars, foreign tourism and other middle-class perks. The ruling group in the Kremlin was variegated and conflict-ridden, but its response to the crisis was effective and even creative. Now, the ruling group is uniform, unanimous and most likely unfit for any serious revision of policy. It is a dangerous situation. Though the current level of anti-Americanism in Russia's official media seems unprecedented, the regime is most worried about internal problems. During the current financial crisis, which hit Russia right after the war with Georgia in August, the Kremlin and the State Duma issued a series of laws and orders that have turned Putin's authoritarianism into a dictatorship. Opposition parties have become negligible. The oligarchs' businesses have been largely nationalized. The presidential term has been extended. Industrial centers with growing unemployment will receive more troops. Trial by jury, which was infrequent anyway, is being seen less and less. The concept of high treason is bandied about almost daily. We will see more persecution of scientists, journalists and businessmen, whose work with international charities, media or corporations will now be construed as treachery. Some of these people will be murdered rather than tried; others will be tried by state-appointed judges rather than murdered. But this is not news anymore in Putin's Russia. What will become news will be the sort of mass protests that were seen recently in Ukraine, Thailand or Greece. Can Putin's dual monopoly survive them? Perhaps, but it will do so only if it risks deep change, a new perestroika rather than simply a thaw. But it is more likely that the regime is too rigid and too blinkered to act.