"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."

"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.

"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.

About the author. At the end of the book is written that this - is a «famous journalist, deputy editor of a department at «Izvestiya», that he has «broad erudition» and an «excellent style» and that this book - is the first in his glorious labor biography.

I read the book. From the very first page of the text the author tries to convince the reader that the trial of Khodorkovsky showed that «the power is stronger , the law is stronger». Here's a quote: «Having demonstratively punished the most mighty of the oligarchs, the president showed the others who's boss in the country». Here Perekrest himself kissed goodbye his book and any value it might have had: he absolutely justly asserts that in the criminal case against Khodorkovsky the president decided everything (then he was V. Putin), and not the law. The conclusion from the author's passage is simple and clear: in Russia there is no independent court, because it is precisely to a court that are given the powers to punish and to be merciful, and not to the president, no matter who he may be and what his personal attitude towards a figurant in a criminal case may be.

It is all the more so incomprehensible why after such an unwitting message the author hotly persuades us that Khodorkovsky is sitting justly?

Personally, later on the entire book is dedicated to the premise of how good the president is and how bad Khodorkovsky with his team from YUKOS is. As confederates the author takes for himself the following persons: «a knowing person», «a former employee of MENATEP», «the founder of one of the collectives», «a lad from the Kuban», «one of the female participants in the project», «one of the loyal subjects», «one such lobbyist», and so forth. Surnames are not named. Go ahead and try to check if these people exist in reality, or of they - are a figment of Perekrest's imagination.

And this just begs the question: if the power really is stronger and the law really is stronger, then why is the author so cowardly that he's afraid to name his witnesses?

It is also demonstrative that the author, painting a collective portrait of the company YUKOS, resorts exclusively to such phrases: «the team fiddled around [химичила]», «the dons of his family», «Khodorkovsky's empire», «coordinator of financial flows»... That is, he intentionally creates an image of a mafia. Moreover, a ruthless mafia, because the lion's share of the book is devoted to businessmen and bureaucrats, supposedly killed by Khodorkovsky's and Nevzlin's people. Of the most weighty, in the opinion of Perekrest, evidence of the involvement of the YUKOS managers in murders are the words of a certain Rybin. In so doing, what are cited are not even Rybin's own words, but a conclusion of the author: «Rybin is convinced that the contract for his elimination came from the very top of YUKOS». And that's all the evidence there is. Among the people this is called «one little old lady said...».

By the way, according to the witness of the lawyers of Lebedev, Pichugin, Alexanyan, Bakhmina, and Khodorkovsky, there's a whole slew of such «evidence» in the case files of their clients.

Here's a typical citation from the creativity of Perekrest: «Khodorkovsky makes money out of thin air. He comes up with dodgy schemes to get away from taxes, buys up enterprises on the cheap, then sells them, but already more expensively». Evidence in so doing - zero. But this doesn't stop the author from making such a conclusion: «Let's try and project the morals of «Menatep», YUKOS onto all of Russia:

The economy - built on fraudulent schemes for making money out of thin air.
National idea - getting around the law.
Internal life - tightest possible control by the Security service.
Argument in disputes with opponents - a bullet to the head.
Ideology - tremble, you worthless shit. ...In reality the well-being of Khodorkovsky was mixed up with two connected vessels: in one - oil, while in the other - blood».

The author rarely sinks down to specifics. Painting some kind of schemes of supposed getting away from taxes, he, intentionally as it were, doesn't write anything concretely.
If you attentively delve into what is written in the book, it is highly unlikely that you would understand what the point of these supposedly unlawful business dealings and schemes was. Because it is known: neither were there criminal cases started up with respect to bank «Menatep», nor were there trials prior to the arrest of Lebedev and Khodorkovsky...

In principle, the entire book by Perekrest - that «famous journalist» with his «excellent style», - is sheer propaganda, and not investigative journalism as such. The book is full of factual inaccuracies. One of them is such. Perekrest writes that «a tasty morsel from the loans-for-shares auctions of the year 1995 was the company YUKOS». In so doing, the author keeps silent about how in the year 1995 YUKOS was a loss-making company with huge debts and wage arrears. So it couldn't have been a tasty morsel. That's why it had been put up for loans-for-shares auction to begin with.

About these and other inaccuracies was said to the author on the air at «Radio Liberty» - there the presenters of the radio station literally smeared his position apart.

When I read the labor of the «famous journalist» with the «excellent style», I could not shake the feeling that the author had been given a task to paint a portrait of a loathsome character - the «greedy Khodorkovsky». Here's how the author describes «don» Khodorkovsky: «A plumpish, pasty young person with unkempt hair, with an excessive appetite for devouring hors d'oeuvres at petty merchants' parties...»

In so doing, the author placed at the end of the book a photo of Khodorkovsky, where it can be clearly seen that Mikhail was neither plumpish nor unkempt. Fuller than now, after five years of jail and colony, - yes, that he was.

There are in the book openly false messages and examples. Here's what's written about «Open Russia» - the foundation that YUKOS funded. The author writes: «The target audience - adolescents from 12 to 18 years... The task - the formation of a positive informational field around «open Russia». I [Grigory Pasko] was once at a seminar that was conducted by this foundation. There were no adolescents there. And the objective of the seminar was clearly not the formation of a halo around the foundation. So even here the author lied...

Another example. Perekrest writes that when Khodorkovsky ended up in the colony in Krasnokamensk, they «took to «chmurit'» [military slang term for abuse--Trans.] him to the max - the impression is such that the zeks and the administration are competing to see who will be more successful in this». Here every word - is a lie. I have actually spoken with many former inmates who sat together with Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the Krasnokamensk zone. Not one of them said a bad word about Mikhail Borisovich - they all spoke only respectfully. That's the first thing. Second, zeks never compete with the administration in anything, be it bad or good: that's not "by understandings" [по понятиям - the unwritten social rules of the criminal world, which are strictly complied with under pain of death--Trans.]. Third, the administration would not have dared on its own to abuse Khodorkovsky: only by command from above. Fourth, there's no such word as «chmurit'» in Fenya [underworld dialect--Trans.]. That's from the lexicon of draftee soldiers...

Examples of lies, distortions, omissions, insinuations - a multitude. If they are meant for idiots, then all that's left is to feel sorry for Perekrest - the «famous journalist « with the «excellent style». Oh yes, I've also forgotten to mention to readers that Perekrest - is a Companion of the Order «For personal courage». Seeing how in his first book he takes cheap shots at a person sitting in jail, you immediately understand: this is a very courageous person indeed. Very. Just like the ones who contracted him to write this book.

Ignalina provides 70 per cent of Lithuania's electricity, and when it shuts down the nation will have nowhere to turn for its energy supplies except Russia - the very country that, in its Soviet guise, annexed Lithuania in the 1940s, deported tens of thousands of its people to Siberia, and did not permit the nation's independence until the Soviet Union itself fell apart in 1991.

"We're becoming an energy-isolated island. I'd even call it a Russian monopoly," says Valdas Adamkus, Lithuania's president. "We don't understand the real reason why the EU insisted on closing the Ignalina plant, which is very safe operationally. Finland is building new nuclear power units, and Lithuania is being forced to close something that's not broken. If you ask if it's unfair or not, I don't believe it is fair."

In the past, we've done a fair amount of blogging about the staggering business lobby enjoyed by the Kremlin in Germany, and the various questions and tensions this sometimes raises in terms of managing Berlin's relations with third parties, depending on what kind of trouble the Russian government finds itself getting into.  Today in the New York Times there's a good piece by Nick Kulish, who points out the occasional discomfort of the Germans as they find themselves dragged into confrontation as Russia's key ally in the European Union - underscoring the long-standing thesis put forward by the ECFR that Russia's rise is presenting a fundamental challenge to the continued existence and purpose of the EU alliance of nations.

Mrs. Merkel's shifting focus served as a reminder of the pivotal role played by Germany in shaping the West's relationship with Russia. It is Russia's largest trading partner, Europe's single biggest economy and one of America's closest allies. Moscow's aggressive posture has not only thrust Russia, a nuclear-armed energy power, back to the geopolitical spotlight. It has also dragged Germany there with it.

Just as the United States is struggling to redefine its relationship with a resurgent and at times antagonistic government in Moscow, Germany is scrambling to protect the close commercial, cultural and diplomatic ties with Russia it has forged since the end of the cold war -- and, in some areas, long before.

How broad that divide has grown will become clearer this week, when NATO foreign ministers gather in Brussels. (...)

Germans see not dependence on Russia, but interdependence. The European Union's 27 nations account for 80 percent of the cumulative foreign investment in Russia, a fact starkly exposed -- if the Kremlin ever forgot -- by the flight of capital after the Georgia crisis.

The Europeans, after Georgia, angrily froze negotiations with Russia over a new partnership agreement. Barely 10 weeks later, they decided to resume the talks. "We cannot build a European architecture against Russia or without Russia, only with Russia," said Alexander Rahr, director of the Russian/Eurasian program at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

While Germany needs Russia's raw materials and covets the significant market there for its precision machine tools, Russia is equally dependent on European investment to diversify its economy, a fact driven home all too clearly for Russians now that the financial crisis has sent energy prices plunging.