Britain is to lead an armada of EU warships to the Gulf of Aden next month to tackle the escalating problem of piracy in a mission expected to last 12 months.The naval fleet, under UK command, would "disrupt and to tackle the scourge of piracy", foreign secretary David Miliband said today on a visit to Beirut. Piracy threatens trade and prosperity, he added.EU military planners this week drew up a detailed mandate, including rules of engagement for the use of force, for the mission at a meeting at Northwood, Britain's joint operations centre in north-west London. Plans for the EU fleet, led by HMS Northumberland and known as Operation Atalanta, are due to formally agreed early next month, European defence officials said today.The EU fleet, originally proposed to escort boats carrying food...

When Novaya Gazeta’s crusading journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, was murdered in 2006, there followed a stream of innuendo implying that the Kremlin had ordered her death. Conspiracy theories involving VV Putin’s regime are ten a penny, but even by the fantastic standards of such conjecture, the idea that Russia’s president had ordered Politkovskaya’s killing was not one of the more plausible.The journalist was certainly a robust critic of the Kremlin, but Putin was not being disingenuous when he dismissed the notion that her journalism constituted a threat to his regime. To be frank, Politkovskaya was a fly on the hide of an elephant. Indeed the president acknowledged that her criticisms were healthy and welcomed them. She was not censored or silenced. Any large bookstore in...

Russia's deepening strategic partnership with Venezuela took a dramatic step forward today when it emerged that Moscow has agreed to build Venezuela's first ever nuclear reactor.President Dmitry Medvedev is expected to sign a nuclear cooperation agreement with his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chávez, during a visit to Latin America next week, part of a determined Russian push into the region.The reactor is to be named after Humberto Fernandez Moran, a late Venezuelan research scientist and former science minister, Chávez has announced. It is one of many accords he hopes to sign while hosting Medvedev in Caracas next week. The prospect of a nuclear deal between Moscow and Caracas, following a surge in Russian economic, military, political and intelligence activity in Latin America, is...

The trial of three men allegedly involved in the murder of the campaigning Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya will be held in open court, a judge ruled yesterday. The unusual move, by the military court in Moscow, stunned Politkovskaya's family and lawyers, who had asked for the trial to be open to the public. Prosecutors wanted the case to be heard behind closed doors, and the ruling paves the way for details of the much-criticised investigation to be made public. The evidence in Russia's most high-profile journalistic killing will be laid out in a small, overcrowded Moscow courtroom. Three of the men accused of acting as accomplices in her murder appeared there yesterday, inside a cage. They include two brothers from Chechnya - Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makmudov - and a former police...

12th November 2008 saw HTC and Scartel launch the world’s first integrated GSM/WiMax handset – the HTC MAX 4G. Scartel (brand Yota) are a Russian mobile WiMAX provider, founded in 2007, in order to provide mobile services of the most up-to-date mobile broadband access technology (4G). “The introduction of the HTC MAX 4G represents the culmination of [...] Related posts:James Bond Style Mobile Phone Watch Gathering dust at the bottom of my jewellery box, I...Get Paid to Watch Ads on Your Mobile Phone I don't know about you but I simply can't...Back up your Mobile Phone…Mobyko Style Mobyko have just partnered with us to offer Gaj-IT.com readers... Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin....

As I have warned over the past few months, Russia is being particularly badly hit by the global financial crisis. Partly this is a function of the severity of the collapse of commodity prices, especially oil and gas, which has had an exceptionally serious impact on a country where 85% of GDP relies on the extraction of raw materials. However the scale of the crisis in Russia has been hugely increased by a number of massive miscalculations by the Silovik state. Now the speed and scale of the Russian meltdown could conceivably become a threat to the stability of the Silovik regime itself.As energy prices rose from their lows of a decade ago, the regime which took power after the resignation of Boris Yeltsin on New Years Eve 1999 made oil and gas the central plank of their economic policies....

In the UK Mr George Osborne MP, the Conservative opposition finance spokesman (pictured above) has defended his warning in a recent interview that sterling could be about to collapse, saying it was his job to tell the truth about the consequences of ballooning Government debt. The Shadow Chancellor stated that increased public borrowing was already making the currency “less attractive” and there was a risk of a “run on the pound”. His comments have been criticised by business leaders as well as by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat finance spokesman. With the currency markets due to reopen today, Mr Osborne dismissed suggestions that he had “talked down the pound” and re-stated his “duty to tell the...

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France joined Russia in condemning the Pentagon's plans to install missile defence bases in central Europe yesterday and backed President Dmitri Medvedev's previously ignored calls for a new pan-European security pact.Both presidents concluded a Russia-EU summit, in Nice in the south of France, with an agreement to convene a major international conference next summer at which the Americans, Russians and the 27 countries of the EU should come up with a blueprint for new post-cold war "security architecture" in Europe.The call for such a pact has been Medvedev's central foreign policy message since he succeeded Vladimir Putin as president earlier this year. Medvedev has called for the new deal in several keynote speeches but has been snubbed by western leaders...

I’ve been reading Richard Sakwa’s book ‘Putin: Russia’s Choice’ over the past few days. The author does a fine job of explaining how the former president’s political programme, ‘sovereign democracy’, ‘managed democracy’, ‘the dictatorship of law’, call it what you will, comprised a rational and defensible, if imperfect response to unique challenges which Russia faced post-Soviet Union and post Boris Yeltsin. It is the most forensic examination of the politics of Putin’s Russia, which I have as yet read.‘Three Thousand Versts’ often wrestles with matters of identity, nationality, culture and these concepts’ interaction with more concrete notions of citizenship and state. Problems related to these areas are particularly abundant in Russia, with its huge...

Russian MPs today took the first step in changing the constitution to pave the way for Vladimir Putin to make a comeback as president.Putin stepped down in May as he was barred constitutionally from seeking a third successive term as president, and became prime minister.He was succeeded by his protege, Dmitry Medvedev, although Putin, a former head of Russian intelligence, is considered the power behind the throne. In today's vote, the Duma, Russia's http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/russia lower house of parliament, approved by 388-58 changes in the constitution that would extend the presidential term from four to six years. The chamber, dominated by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, also voted to extend its own term to five years from four.The amendments need to pass through two more...

Europe yesterday stepped up attempts to reduce its exposure to potential Russian blackmail over energy supplies, unveiling an ambitious strategy aimed at weakening Russian giant Gazprom's domination of Europe's gas imports.On the eve of the Russia-EU summit today in France, the energy package released by the European commission highlighted Europe's dependence on Russian exports and sought to devise strategies to wean Europe off the addiction.Of six energy projects pinpointed for development, commission officials said the two "absolute" priorities were to connect the three post-Soviet Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to European power grids and to forge ahead with the so-called "southern gas corridor", which is supposed to transport gas from the Caspian basin to Europe...

Pictured above is the President of Georgia, Mickheil Saakashvili . All in one piece and looking quite healthy. But things might have been different. French President Nikolas Sarkozy reportedly saved him from a serious recent threat by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to depose him from power and “hang him by the balls,” according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Elysée Palace. The Russian PM informed Mr Sarkozy of his plans for deposing the Tbilisi government and rather unconventionally disposing of President Saakashvili when the French leader was in Moscow in August to broker a cease-fire in Georgia. The conversation apparently went like this : “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” said Mr Putin. Mr Sarkozy responded:...

Antagonism between the Kremlin and the Bush administration over the deployment of missile systems in Europe deepened yesterday after the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, accused President Dmitry Medvedev of "provocative, unnecessary and misguided" plans to station short-range ballistic missiles in Russia's Baltic exclave, Kaliningrad.Speaking on a visit to Estonia, Gates said the plans to place Iskander-M missiles in eastern Europe were "hardly the welcome a new American administration deserves".Medvedev revealed his intention to move Iskander-M tactical missiles into Kaliningrad during his first annual speech to parliament on November 5 - hours after Barack Obama was elected. He said the deployment was necessary to "neutralise" interceptor missiles and a radar station that Washington...

Europe today stepped up its attempts to reduce its exposure to potential Russian blackmail over energy supplies, unveiling an ambitious strategy aimed at weakening Russian giant Gazprom's domination of Europe's gas imports.On the eve of a Russia-EU summit tomorrow in France, the energy package released by the European commission highlighted Europe's dependence on Russian exports and sought to devise strategies to wean Europe off the addiction.Of six energy projects pinpointed for future development, commission officials said the two "absolute priorities" were to connect the three post-Soviet Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to European power grids and to forge ahead with the so-called "southern gas corridor" which is supposed to transport gas from the Caspian basin to Europe...

The news that HMS Cumberland attacked and captured a Somali pirate vessel in the Gulf of Yemen was one of those slightly quaint pieces of news that is somehow rather cheering.On the one hand while we know how desperate the situation is in Somalia and the autonomous Puntland, Pirates, by definition, are the bad guys. The seizure of the Ukrainian ship "Faima" and its cargo of weapons was clearly the last straw for the international community. The fact is that we can not allow global logistics chains to be disrupted like this. On the other hand, there is not the global political will to actually sort out the truly awful situation on the ground in the wreckage of Somalia.Personally, I think it is about time to admit that Somalia as a state is not fixable. To my mind that means recognising the...

British commandos killed two suspected pirates who tried to seize a Danish ship in the Gulf of Aden in an unprecedented operation involving a Royal Navy and a Russian warship, it was revealed yesterday.The suspected pirates were shot after the Royal Marine commandos, in rigid inflatable boats launched from the frigate HMS Cumberland, were fired at from a Yemeni flagged dhow, the Ministry of Defence said.It said the Cumberland was conducting routine Nato security operations in the Gulf of Aden when a number of its crew boarded the dhow, which was towing a skiff. The British crew "had reason to believe" the dhow had been involved in an armed attack on the Danish-registered vessel, the MV Powerful, earlier on Tuesday, the day of the gunfight."Various non-forcible methods had been used in an...

British commandos killed two suspected pirates who tried to seize a Danish ship in the Gulf of Aden in an unprecedented operation involving a Royal Navy and a Russian warship, it was revealed today.The suspect pirates were shot yesterday after the Royal Marine commandos, in rigid inflatable boats launched from the frigate HMS Cumberland, were fired at from a Yemeni-flagged dhow, the Ministry of Defence said.It said the Cumberland was conducting routine Nato maritime security operations in the Gulf of Aden when a number of its crew boarded the dhow. The British crew "had reason to believe" the vessel had been involved in an attack on the Danish-registered MV Powerful earlier that day."Various non-forcible methods had been used in an attempt to stop the dhow but they were unsuccessful," the...

A British frigate and a Russian warship fought off Somali pirates trying to hijack a ship in the Gulf of Aden today, according to a statement from Russia's...

European Union foreign ministers have decided that they would prefer partnership with Russia to fomenting a new ‘cold war’. Edward Lucas will be livid. Against the ever temperate advice of Lithuania, 26 other member states have decided to resume talks aimed at reaching a new partnership agreement with the Federation. Whatever the reservations of Lucas and his Baltic nationalist fellow travellers, less febrile observers will recognise that a constructive relationship with the Kremlin is to the benefit of the EU and does much more to encourage good governance within Russia than treating the country as a pariah. I noted below that Barack Obama’s election victory offers something of an opportunity to repair relations between the US and Russia. Despite being prompted to do otherwise...

Few readers will need reminding that tomorrow is the nintieth anniversary of the 1918 Armistice.  British Embassies and High Commissions around the world commemorate November 11th in a multitude of ways, and the Embassy in Moscow is no exception.  Yesterday, on Remembrance Sunday, some 150 people - including representatives from 26 Embassies - gathered at St Andrew's Anglican Church in Moscow for a traditional remembrance service, followed by a reception at our Ambassador's Residence.   Remembrance in Russia, though, goes far beyond an annual church service.  The older generation, in particular, are tremendously proud of what they see as a shared military history between the UK and Russia.  And the UK is still seen as the ally which stood shoulder-to-shoulder...

There’s been another accident amongst the Russian Submarine Fleet. Can’t they keep the bloody things afloat – pun intended. The Russian Navy keeps loosing these subs or their crews all the time, I think they should seriously have a deep look whether they’re cut out for this underwater lark. Besides, since when has Russia needed a Navy anyway, they've always had a land mass and a big army to protect them. The only thing the Russian Navy has contributed to history is allowing the Japanese to fill them with holes, and start a Revolution which was hardly a winner for the Russian people - Gulags, the KGB, Food Queues and brown coal production targets.Now whilst I dislike Putin intensely, I don’t dislike the Russian people and naturally my sympathy goes to the families of the poor...

Initial tests show the fatalities were the result of a malfunction in the fire extinguishing...

He’s not starting out using ‘war on terror’ rhetoric: ‘Here in America we compete vigorously in elections and challenge each other’s ideas, yet come together in service of a common purpose once the voting is done.’ He cast America’s economic woes in a grim light. ‘Tens of millions of families are struggling to figure out how to pay the bills and stay in their homes,’ he said. Simple figures bear that out, especially after new figures on Friday showed that the economy had lost 240,000 jobs in October. That was the 10 successive month of losses and America has now shed 1.2 million jobs so far this year. The tone of Obama’s words provided a contrast with Bush. Though he repeated a vow to help Obama in establishing a smooth...

The Soviet-era radio station is visible from the road. Rising above a forest of tall pines and birches, the radio masts near the town of Bolshakova were a listening post during the cold war. Up the road is Lithuania. In the other direction is Poland.Two decades later, the Soviet Union has gone. But the town with its pretty German cottages and gardens full of geese is now on the frontline of a new cold war. On Wednesday Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, said he would deploy Iskander nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad - the small Baltic Sea chunk of Russian territory encircled by what are now Nato countries. The hardware would be pointed at US missile defence and radar bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, Medvedev said. Russia would use sophisticated radio jamming equipment to sabotage...

From the Lux Pod in London to Home in Buenos Aires, here's a round-up of some of the best hotels and...