Russia and Georgia are in the news again this week before President Obama's first visit to Moscow. But the rumors of war in the Caucasus being promoted by certain U.S. pundits should probably take a backseat to a report published by The Wall Street Journal on American Congressional trips to the two countries. Accordng to the WSJ, last year Russia was the 10th most popular foreign destination for Congressional delegations funded by the American taxpayer. Georgia trailed as the 13th most popular destination, but still didn't do too badly, considering that it is a small country in the Caucasus with barely four million people. Not surprisingly, France, Switzerland, Germany, and the United Kingdom were well ahead, with only Kuwait, China and Israel proving exceptions to the overall Euro-Atlantic (and perhaps taxpayer funded Alpine skiing and wine and cheese tasting) bias.

Next week U.S. President Barack Obama will meet Russian President Dimitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Moscow. This week American and Russian negotiators reportedly reached an agreement to expand the transit of U.S. materiel through Russia in support of the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Not coincidentally, Russia's military chief of staff announced that the U.S. and Russian militaries had resumed direct talks that had been cancelled last year when relations chilled following the August 2008 Russo-Georgian War.

There is no shortage of solicited and unsolicited advisors and pieces of advice for the upcoming Obama-Medvedev summit this week in Moscow. Some of the advice is pretty reasonable; for the most part it is best ignored. One’s first instinct is to stay away from this cacophony and try to moderate one’s expectations so as not to be hugely disappointed later.

However, the temptation to weigh in with one’s particular advice is very high. Since both Obama and Medvedev are Internet users one does not have to send a letter to the White House or the Kremlin and wait for the routine answer from some clerk. Chances are that both or at least one of them will surf the Net on the eve of the summit and pay attention to some of the items.

When the featured article was being written, the author and the Iranian people still had hopes to find leadership to their quest for freedom. Unfortunately, Mir Hossein Mousavi has not appeared in front of the protestors since the elections of June 12, and yesterday rejected another vote recount. The recent activities in Iran are, undoubtedly, a huge step forward in fostering democracy in this majority Muslim nation. However, they will result in nothing without proper leadership. Russia and China did not have to recognize, much less defend, Ahmadinejad’s victory as soon as they did, but perhaps they knew the painful truth ahead of time: the Iranian opposition has no leader, and a leader is what is so desperately needed at this historic moment.

Charles Krauthammer’s article published over at Townhall.com on June 26 does a great job of describing the difference between Russia’s 1991 and Iran’s 2009: “They need a leader like Boris Yeltsin: a former establishment figure with newly revolutionary credentials and legitimacy, who stands on a tank and gives the opposition direction by calling for the unthinkable -- the abolition of the old political order.” Most Russians remember Yeltsin as a despot, a drunk, and a sometimes embarrassing grandpa. World history will remember him as the man who ended 70 years of an Evil Empire, permanently curing Russia's infection of Communism. Hopefully, four years from now, an Iranian Yeltsin will stand up on a tank and prove that innocent protestors did not die in vain.

Visit the extended post to read the full version of the discussed article.

Today, undoubtedly, the biggest world news is the unexpected death of Michael Jackson, the only true King of Pop. It was night time in Moscow when the news reached Russia, and the sad event dominated the news reports around the country all day long since early morning. All Russian news channels, including the state-owned Rossiya and the First Channel, started their news reports with the details of Michael Jackson’s passing, his career, his visits to Russia, and tribute of his fans around the world and in Russian cities. Many finished the news with a “no comment” music video tribute to the singer. Gazeta.ru wrote that “only a lazy paralyzed person didn’t throw a rock at the idol in the last few years,” however they agreed that his death brought out the true feeling about the star in Russia and around the globe: unreserved love and admiration.

Among many Russian leaders, the president of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov said “I deeply grieve with the musician's relatives, friends, and fans because of the untimely passing of the outstanding man, unmatchable singer Michael Jackson, whose death ends the entire epoch of the world music culture.”

Michael Jackson was a household name in the countries of the former Soviet Union. During his visits to Moscow in 1993 and 1996, he was greeted as a head of state. Radio Free Europe writes that “his live concert in Moscow in 1993 sparked near-hysteria among scores of Russians hungry for a taste of Western culture.” One of my brightest personal memories from the Nineties is attending Jackson’s History Tour concert at the Dynamo stadium in Moscow in 1996. Today, hundreds of fans laid flowers and toys near the American Embassy in Moscow and in downtown St Petersburg to honor the idol. We all deeply grieve the untimely passing of the musician who influenced our lives and cultures.

View the extended post for additional images

The World Health Organization announced that the pandemic of swine flu (H1N1 influenza) is unstoppable; but so thought Napoleon and Hitler about their offensives against Russia… "The world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic in the 21st century," said WHO's director-general, Margaret Chan, “further spread [of H1N1] is inevitable.” Russian border and health officials think differently. If you are flying from the United States to Russia (as I did just two days ago), be prepared to fill out a form with your basic personal information and list all the geographic locations you visited in 10 days prior to your arrival to Russia.

While in flight, we were informed that no one would be able to leave the plane until Russian health officials checked everyone’s body temperature! If a single passenger had high body temperature, all of the passengers would have been put into quarantine until the doctors found out the origin of the disease onboard. A long flight and free servings of wine produced multiple jokes about the way our body temperatures would be checked.

However, upon the landing, we were truly concerned: How long would it take to check the body temperature of over 200 passengers onboard the Boeing 767 airliner? We expected to see people in white uniforms with a lot of little appliances taking an hour to complete the testing. Our suspense expectations were crushed when a young gentleman in casual clothes (in the picture) went around with a Star Trek tricorder-looking device, pointing it at everyone from far away. Upon exiting the plane, there were half a dozen officials to collect our forms. The temperature testing of the entire plane took less than five minutes. Coincidental or not, but only three swine flu cases so far have been confirmed in Russia.

Over at Discovery Blog, Ambassador Bruce Chapman is writing about the current upheaval of popular discontent against the Islamic Republic regime in Iran. Nearly three years ago, Discovery Institute hosted Amir Abbas Fakhravar at its Seattle offices. Mr. Fakhravar is a former head of the Iran Student Confederation who was previously jailed and tortured for his opposition to the Islamic Republic regime. You can read Mr. Fakhravar's blog here.

So far, Russian diplomats have maintained a firm "no comment" policy concerning the ongoing power struggle inside Iran. [UPDATE: The Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement concerning the post-election revolt today, not over the weekend when this story was written]. But since Russia has already been mentioned in passing in some analysis of the crisis inside Iran, it's worth looking at the facts surrounding the complicated relationship between Tehran and Moscow.

Today is the 68th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. For a roundup of previous Russia Blog posts on Russia's role in winning World War II, click here and scroll down. To watch a Russia Today video on the solemn commemorations that took place across Russia to mark this day, click on the extended post.

In the Eighties, lots of folks who regarded themselves as true Reaganites often said that The Washington Post should more properly bear the title of "Pravda on the Potomac". Indeed, the paper’s vicious anti-Ronny rhetoric, as well as its views on some other policy issues, were stylistically pretty close to Pravda in its heyday.

Ironically, with the collapse of Communism “Pravda on the Potomac” became a common epithet for The Washington Post not only among the people on the right but on the left and center as well. A recent Google search on this entry provided 13,100 links including articles and sites representing practically the whole spectrum of American politics.

Anatol Lieven is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Over the last several days, two pieces attacking the realist approach to Russia were published in prominent media outlets in the United States and Russia. One, co-authored by Lev Gudkov of the Levada Center, Igor Klyamkin, vice president of the Liberal Mission Foundation, Georgy Satarov, president of the Russian NGO the Indem Foundation and Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center was featured on the editorial page of The Washington Post.

[Editor's Note: This article is titled "False Choices for Russia", an excerpt of which was republished on Russia Blog earlier this month in the post "What Can Save Russia's Liberals" by Ambassador Bruce Chapman]. The other, by Andrei Piontkovsky, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, was released in the Moscow Times.

I read these pieces concerning the moves to improve relations between America and Russia with a profound feeling of depression.

American Enterprise Institute demographer Nicholas Eberstadt's recent article on Russian hypermortality was titled "Drunken Nation"

Editor's Note: This is a succinct summary of the article "Rite of Spring: Russia's Fertility Trends" previously published by Russia Blog on April 29, 2009. To find more articles on Russian demographics, click here.

In 1992, for the first time since the Great Patriotic War, deaths exceeded births, forming the so-called “Russian Cross”. Since then the population fell from 149mn to 142mn souls. Ravaged by AIDS, infertility and alcoholism, Russians are doomed to die out and be replaced by hordes of Islamist fanatics in the West and Chinese settlers in the Far East...or so one could conclude from reading many of the popular stories about Russian demography today.

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared May 4, 2009 on Kendrick White's blog at the Marchmont Capital Partners website (www.marchmontnews.com).

I had such an interesting set of meetings last week. After long preparations and much organizational work, I finally had an opportunity to meet the CFO of a large industrial group with 10 factories spread across Russia.

While I could find little info on this group to prepare myself, one of our partners assured me that this was a very serious group with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales. They made big metal things with lots of electronics inside, nothing secret in their production, but you know, they had really serious owners behind this group “very well connected” as they say.

Editor's Note: This feature article was originally published on the Marchmont Capital Partners website, www.marchmontnews.com, on May 22, 2009

The recent financial crisis has sharply changed the financing options for mid-market and developing companies as the market balance has been driven from one side of the pendulum to the other. In 2008, cash stockpiles from easy credit and windfalls from high natural resource prices created hungry buyers allowing sellers able to dictate terms unthinkable in more rational times. The sale of a solid mid-market company in a western country would generate dozens of bidders and less attractive businesses still had ample options. Normally cautious and even conservative investors, such as private equity funds had to either invest or return funds to their shareholders, found themselves accepting terms never considered in the past.

Last week Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA), the number two Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, compared President Barack Obama to Russian leader Vladimir Putin in an interview with the Associated Press. Cantor did not mean the comparison in a flattering way.

While criticizing the Obama Administration's handling of the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, Cantor declared:

"They said, 'Set aside the rule of law, let's strip secured creditors, bondholders, of their rights. Take them away outside of the bankruptcy process and give them to the political cronies and the auto workers' unions...it's almost like looking at Putin's Russia...you want to reward your political friends at the expense of the certainty of law?"

"Don’t bother pushing the ambiguous Reset Button; just replace the whole operating system." That’s the advice offered President Obama and President Medvedev at the 28th Annual World Russia Forum that took place 27-28 April in Washington. Since 1981 the Forum has been organized by Edward Lozansky’s American University in Moscow (AUM). Of late, Discovery Institute of Seattle, Eurasia Center of Washington, the Congress of Russian Americans, and Aeroflot airlines joined this effort at people’s diplomacy to improve US -Russia relations.

The Forum attracted a powerful array of speakers, such as former US Ambassadors to Russia, Thomas Pickering and William Burns; former National Security Adviser (under President Reagan) Robert McFarlane; and Russia experts professors Marshall Goldman of Harvard and Robert Legvold of Columbia University. The Russian side was represented by Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, Dr. Igor Panarin of the Russian Diplomatic Academy, and Dr. Sergey Rogov, head of the Institute of USA and Canada, among others. (View the photo report).