Kremlin

Perhaps more than any other capital in the world, Beijing has closely observed the change of the guard in the Kremlin. There are many reasons for Beijing's concerns: Russia's revival as a major power, its petro-politics approach to foreign relations, managing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), not to mention the stability of the 4,300-kilometer Sino-Russian border.

Russia wants to use the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a mechanism to regulate Central Asian energy exports. It remains to be seen whether China, the other power in the SCO, shares Russia’s energy vision. At a meeting of SCO prime ministers, held November 2 in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, Russian Premier Viktor Zubkov reiterated Moscow’s desire to forge a Central Asian energy ‘club’ within the SCO, which comprises Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The SCO energy club could be set up as soon as 2008, Russian Deputy Industry and Energy Minister Ivan Materov announced in Tashkent. However, he insisted that the club would not amount to a sort of mini-OPEC within the SCO. Political and economic analysts in Moscow believe the Kremlin is keen to establish an energy club as a means to prevent a possible clash with China over Central Asia’s energy resources.

Demonstrations in support of a third term for President Vladimir Putin were held across Russia, including Chechnya, on October 24. As Kommersant noted on October 25, while both the Kremlin and the pro-Kremlin United Russia party claimed the demonstrations were spontaneous actions "from below," members of Russia's political opposition claim they were organized "from above" by United Russia.

Despite consistent Kremlin claims that Moscow isn’t trying to resurrect the Cold War, a landslide of Soviet-style actions over the last few weeks is doing a pretty darn good job of indicating the exact opposite. One of the frostiest events was President Vladimir Putin’s announcement a little over a week ago that Russia’s nuclear bombers were resuming regular long-range patrols on a “permanent basis” after a 15-year hiatus. In fact, British Tornado and Norwegian F-16 fighters had already escorted the newly-started Russian flights off their coasts going back to mid-July - and the Americans launched to meet the Russians en route U.S. bases on Guam earlier this month.

Thousands of Pro-Putin youth activists attending a summer camp in central Russia have been hearing warnings that western values are "evil".