Back to the ’90s

and why Russia is the new Wild West

United Company Rusal and the management of Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of nickel, continued their bitter fight for control of the mining firm last week, as Norilsk shareholders rebuffed a request from Rusal to change the board of directors. It is a struggle that media observers have described as the Russian corporate scandal of the year.

Slon.ru, Russian online newspaper, compiled the "Ikea index", the relative cost of the 32 Ikea products basket across 28 countries. According to the newspaper, the index shows the cost of doing business in the given country. And guess what: Russia's Ikea products are some of the most expensive in the world.

More than a decade ago, Igor Panarin, current Dean of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Moscow’s Diplomatic Academy, launched what would become a series of increasingly entertaining predictions about the imminent dissolution of the United States. It wasn’t until the current financial crisis, however, that Panarin’s conjectures gained a touch more relevance and, therefore, more airtime. Unsurprisingly, Russian state media are all over the guy, but Panarin’s name has also garnered celebrity in the West thanks to the likes of Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, who apparently get a kick out of fueling those cold, cold flames. And who can blame them? So this Tuesday, apparently operating on the no-publicity-is-bad-publicity principle, the Russians invited the Associated Press and other foreign media outlets to feast on Panarin’s latest thoughts.