Marketwatch is reporting that scientist and firebrand Kremlin critic/author Andrei Piontkovsky faces trial in Russia December 5th for allegedly breaking Russia's "extremist activities" law, which has been expanded recently to include "abasement of national dignity" and "slander of a public official." Last year, a Russian judge ordered Piontkovsky's book, Another Look into Putin's Soul, sent to a panel of experts to determine whether the material was, in fact, extremist. According to the Hudson Institute, a nonprofit conservative think tank where Piontkovsky is a visiting scholar, the soon-to-be-released sequel to that volume, Russian Identity, "...analyzes the events from early 2006 through the fall of 2008, including the rise of systemic corruption, the cultivation of xenophobia, and a growing assault on independent media, and shows how they reflect the failure of Russia's attempt to enact reforms." 

Bloomberg reports that Brazilian oil production could top Russia's by 2014, due in part to Petrobras's massive offshore find earlier this year. The report comes amid a claim by Petrobras that it can develop the region and still turn a profit with oil prices below $50 a barrel, which must seem freakishly optimistic to the company's Russian counterpart. Also, Reuters is reporting that Petrobras will raise more than $1 billion in the international capital market in December, suggesting a healthier economic outlook than in October, when the company borrowed $877 million from a state-owned Brazilian bank.

At least for now, in other words, the economic crisis apparently hasn't affected the sale of Brazilian oil, which reportedly grew 3.3 percent this year. In a biofuels seminar in Rio, Petrobras's Supply and Refining director, Paulo Roberto Costa, suggested plans were on track to invest some $112.4 billion into the company between now and 2012.

"The details will only be disclosed after approval by the executive board and by the Board of Governors," Costa said. "But it is important for Petrobras to continue investing, we believe very much in our potential and are sure that the world is still going to need much oil."

Meanwhile, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva remains adamant that the economic crisis won't affect investment in Petrobras "not even one dollar."

"The contracts we are going to do for the subsalt oil deposits, the contracts we are going to do for ships and drilling rigs, we are going to continue to do," Lula said at a conference in Pernambuco state.

Seperately on Wednesday, Brazilian Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao said that plans to build refineries in several northeastern Brazilian states would also continue.

"A refinery isn't built in one year. It's built in five or six years, and this crisis isn't going to last more than a year," Lobao said after a congressional event in Brasilia.

There's an interesting piece in The Economist this week on the falling price of oil, which warns against cheering the news.  Despite the obvious advantages for governments struggling to deal with inflation and relief for the world's poorest consumers from the knock-on effects on food prices, falling prices mean bad news for global markets.

"[N]ot everything about a low oil price is a cause for cheer--nor is the dramatic volatility in the price a boon for consumers or producers. Most worrying is that the rapid recent decline is a symptom of a sharply worsening world economy: demand is dropping as economic activity stagnates, or slows, everywhere. More grim news about America's economy sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down by 7.7% on Monday with Japanese markets following suit."

Read the full piece here.

So NATO has finally found a way to navigate the 'bureaucratic trench-warfare' of negotiations and agreed to resume relations with Russia.  But how long will this attempt at civility last? 

Russian NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin's initial statements following yesterday's meeting suggest that Russia is still keen to demonstrate that it has the upper hand, implying that NATO's decision on membership for Georgia and Ukraine was a result of 'surrendering to pressure from Moscow'.

The BBC notes that NATO is 'deeply divided on a range of issues', but beyond that, it has to contend with Russia's ongoing bolshiness.  Nato has already issued a statement calling on Russia 'to refrain from confrontational statements, including assertions of a sphere of influence, and from threats to the security of Allies and Partners, such as the one concerning the possible deployment of short-range missiles in the Kaliningrad region'. 

At this rate, there won't be anything left to talk about...

On the same day the European Union began its first talks with Russia over an economic cooperation treaty since the crisis in Georgia, NATO foreign ministers convening in Brussels announced plans to resume a "conditional and gradual" dialogue with Russia.

"It certainly does not mean that we consider it acceptable to hear voices from Moscow we thought we would not hear any more on a possible siting of Iskander missiles near Lithuania or threatening our staunch ally Poland," said Nato's secretary-general, Jaap De Hoop Scheffer.

"This will take some of the bad blood out of the relationship," added a senior diplomat from an EU state. "But the speed with which ties are resumed - especially military ties - will depend on how Moscow acts now."

And said US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, "This is not business as usual."

Kommersant details a salient aspect of the Brussels session: an apparent compromise that could allow Ukraine and Georgia eventual, though not immediate, entry into the alliance, by meeting certain prerequisites of the so-called Annual Target Plan (a softer version of the Membership Action Plan rejected by France and Germany).

"They sit at the assembly hall's door smoking nervously," Russian Ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said of the Ukrainian and Georgian delegations. "They understand that everything will be determined today; tomorrow only the Georgia-NATO and Ukraine-NATO Council meetings will take place."

"No one in the Georgian delegation expects a breakthrough," said military expert Koba Liklikadze. "We are well aware of France and Germany's sentiments. Nevertheless, Georgia is believed to be capable of receiving the ATP. Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband told us today that the Georgia-NATO Council is enough for active development of relations between Georgia and the Alliance."

Meanwhile, most of the Brussels session was preoccupied with thwarting the burgeoning  Somali pirate problem, as well as dealing with increased tensions between India and Pakistan.

You don't have to go very far to find an instance of dubious Russian justice.  Only recently a senior judge admitted that she had been pressured by the Kremlin. 

And President Dmitry Medvedev is the first to admit that his country's justice system is in crisis.  Speaking at a congress of judges last night, Medvedev honed in on the 'embarrassing' fact that one fifth of the cases that have made it to the European Court of Human Rights since 1998 were filed by Russians.  The reason for this?  An abysmally low level of public confidence in the domestic judicial system.

From the New York Times:

Feeling let down or cheated by a domestic court system tainted by corruption and political influence, many Russians have turned to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France -- an embarrassment for leaders seeking to remake Russia as a successful and self-sufficient country after years of post-Soviet struggles.

'The Strasbourg court, and any international court, with all due respect, cannot and must not take the place of the Russian court system,' President Dmitry Medvedev said at a congress of Russian judges. 'The justice system must be effective enough to bring appeals to international courts to a minimum.'

It is difficult to ignore the ironies of such an aim, with the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky being the most glaring example.  How will the Kremlin reassure the public that it has reformed its judicial system with so many still convinced, as the New York Times puts it, that Khodorkovsky's trial is still 'widely seen as part of a Kremlin-driven campaign to punish the oil tycoon for perceived challenges and increase state control over the oil industry'?

The falling price of oil is worrying because it 'is a symptom of a sharply worsening world economy', says The Economist.  A consultant for Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro is speculating that Brazil's oil production could exceed that of Russia in 2014.  Equipment breakdowns, reduced gas supplies and delays in new projects in Russia, Qatar and Yemen, could severely halt the global output of liquefied natural gas.  Oil firm Sibir Energy is to buy real estate assets worth $340 million, including the Russia Tower project, from a Russian entrepreneur.  The move will almost double its losses.  Gazprom may ask the state to co-fund its investments in 2009 in order to be able to fulfill expansion plans.  Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state oil firm, wants Gazprom to postpone the deadline for repayment of its natural gas debts.  

The State is intervening to help engine maker Saturn survive the financial crisis, with a state buyout of shares and a personal visit from Vladimir Putin, who reportedly offered the company advice on nanotechnology.  Moscow's football fans are lacking a team to support as the financial crisis forces existing teams to merge.  Norilsk Nickel's Russia spending will fall by almost a quarter next year.  Rusal wants the government to create a metals reserve to protect metals producers from the crisis.  Oleg Deripaska says Russia needs a US-style 'New Deal' - 'a new partnership between the state and the business community'.  Putin wants the government to draw up an entirely new anti-crisis program before Christmas.  Half a million people lost their jobs last month, and levels could reach 7% by the end of the year, says the Health Ministry.  State bank VEB, a major agent in distributing the government's crisis rescue package, has itself asked the government for a loan of $34 billion to rescue its balance sheet from the damaging effects of assisting other companies.  The MDM and Ursa banks have merged, creating the second-largest non-state bank.  Will the crisis result in 'a redistribution of property comparable in scale to what happened in the early 1990s'?