Russia is turning into a Third World country, says Russian expert.

via blogs.minyanville.com

First step in curing an illness is accepting that you are ill indeed. And as far as that is concerned, there might be a glimmer of hope for Russia.

There is also the face of extreme corruption, nepotism, clientelism, organized crime, local ‘kingdoms’ and effective (sometimes lethal) suppression of people that have a different opinion: citizens, journalists, lawyers and business men.

If you pay for it, you can have anything. If you won’t pay, you get nothing.

And then there is the face of the Russia that I know quite well, due to my lovely, Russian wife Olga.

That is the Russia of quite honest, hard-working people, that accept their leaders and politics as a fact-of-life. Instead of fighting it, they just try to make an honest living and ‘go with the flow’ as far as the corruption and bureaucracy concerns.

New deadly drug spreading quickly among young in capitalist oligarch Russia

The average user of krokodil, a dirty cousin of morphine that is spreading like a virus among Russian youth, does not live longer than two or three years, and the few who manage to quit usually come away disfigured.

Russia's Krokodil Addiction: Deadly Designer Drug Spreads - TIME

Gas crisis escalation, incresing confrontation Russia - West

Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, halted nearly its entire export of natural gas to Europe on Tuesday in a sharp escalation of a dispute over prices with neighboring Ukraine that also underscored Russia's increasingly confrontational stance toward the West.

Ukraine has angered Russia by seeking membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as has Georgia, a country Russia fought a brief war against in August.

Oil and gas exports make up about 60 percent of the Russia budget. Oil prices, meanwhile, have fallen by about two-thirds since their peak last summer 08 of around $150.

Gazprom is seeking to raise the price Ukraine pays for gas from $179.50 last year to $450, and to collect what it says are fines for late payments on previous shipments.
Ukraine, in exchange, wants to raise tariffs for gas shipped across its territory.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/06/europe/gazprom.php

I guess this is better than the open war.