From documents we see that the issue of this project is finding out special social networks, creating data bases of them and monitoring program which would allow to listen to them attentively on regular bases.  And in addition the task of this project is developing the strategy of promotion the interests of  federal executive committees in social media.

So, if new project runs every user can influence on its realization just posting his/her genius ideas on the web. There will be a chance of noticing them on «high level». Another question – how to analyze and select all this stuff. Though there is another way to deliver your genius idea – just post a comment on Medvedev’s blog or write to kremlin@gov.ru.

The event was headlined by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, attended by several of Russia’s most notable CEOs, and widely reported by business media.

Jere Sullivan, Edelman’s Vice Chairman of Europe, presented the data to the country’s political and business elite. “It was a fascinating discussion.” - mentioned Ekaterina Kvasova, Director Russia&CIS Projects. ”The data highlighted significant contradictions in opinions on trust within Russia, which ranks amongst the highest in terms of country’s trust levels in their government and outside the country where Russia shares the lowest trust scores along with China.”

You can download the full copy of the presentation, which is relevant to any company/organisation conducting business in Russia, Moscow.

This site is supposed to be a presentation of Russia for foreign people, where the author collected all the stereotypes that foreigners have about our country. And I enjoyed every text that Elena wrote with a great sence of humor. Check out some of examples:

About the country  – “everybody knows that there are two cities in Russia – Moscow and St. Petersburg. The rest of the country is called Siberia – pretty simple geography”. 

About national emblem – “Russian eagle is the only Siamise eagle in the world!”

About Vodka and cut glasses – “good company in Russia always means 3 people, 3 cut glasses and 1 bottle of vodka. No other way of drinking vodka is allowable”.

 “Russian brides – one of the leading Russian export items”.

“Chelsea is the most famous Russian football club in the world.”

Preved Medved – “one more kind of famous Russian bears which lives on the internet.”

If you haven’t seen this project before, I strongly recommend you to check it out and by the way - grab your attention on “phrases to survive”.

Much has been lately said about Russia – either about its world policies or state of domestic economy. Still, much of the coverage is biased by some reasons – foreign media tend to portray Russia’s assertiveness worldwide as a new threat to the world, while Russian media are committed to state interests.

With this bulletin Edelman Imageland Russia, that has been prepared by our experts, will try to provide Edelman colleagues and clients worldwide with a kind of unbiased insiders’ general outlook that might be helpful, when it comes to the relations with Russian partners.

You can download it russia-bulletin_dec-08.pdf or read more in blog.

With the global economic crisis unfolding and much of challenge still looming there will obviously be no safe business heaven on Earth. Still, there are always two sides to a coin.

Bad news is that economic predictions for 2009 sound rather adverse. The decade of economic growth fuelled by high oil and commodity prices is over and leaner times are ahead. Russian economy is not immune to the crisis.  The demand is record low. Industrial output already fell below the 1998 financial collapse level. Russian companies are cutting jobs. In November only, the industrial output plunged nearly 11 percent while the number of unemployed climbed by 400.000 up to 5 mln people, according to official data. The country’s large foreign currency reserves dropped from $583 bln in August down to $456 bln by Dec.1, prompting the S&P to downgrade Russia’s sovereign credit ratings.

Our short-term predictions are greater state intervention in business and substantial redistribution of property in Russia. Some Russian oligarchs may loose their shares in the companies to the state. Russian companies are grossly overleveraged with about $110 bln of foreign obligations due next year. Almost half of top 25 companies faced margin calls from lenders since August (DB, Bloomberg). Key Russian oligarchs are lining up for $78 bln of Kremlin loans to survive the credit squeeze. The government runs in to help. But at a price. It will provide (through VneshEconomBank – VEB, the Russian state lender) a one year loan with assets or shares as collateral. That will be difficult to repay in the coming year. 

Still, there is a brighter side of the current economic turmoil. The first and the foremost is existential – with the oil and commodity boom being over, Russian economy has an excellent chance to get rid of a much discussed in media ‘oil curse’ – emerge from the crisis as a modern and sustainable economy.

GDP slowdown to 4-6% per year would still present a pretty high growth-rate – much higher than of most highly developed countries. As per the World Bank’s ‘Global Economic Prospects 2009’ report (Dec. 9, 2008), Russia’s GDP growth forecast is going to be 6% (2008), 3% (2009) and 5% (2010).

And a huge $200 billion-plus federal bailout and rescue package deployment for the economy is on the way. The Kremlin is working out a list of strategic enterprises to provide state support. Some 400 public enterprises are to make government allocations (government guarantees on loans, subsidized interest rates, securing the state order or tax relieves etc.).

Russian Central Bank keeps on easing its support of the Russian currency depreciating the ruble against major foreign currencies. Inflating ruble will result in the least profitable Russian business entities becoming cost-effective.

Foreign investors are still confident of the Russia’s market long-term prospects. Many World business majors consider current crisis to be the last opportunity to enter Russian market at low cost. Particularly, Daimler has recently paid three times as much a price for a mite Russian commercial automaker KAMAZ share.

‘Over-the-horizon’ trends are even more promising. The commodity prices currently plummeting to a historic five-year boom will eventually bounce back as the world’s hydro-carbon fuel resources are limited. And Vladimir Putin may be right saying that the era of cheap gas is coming to an end. And Russia holds the world’s largest gas reserves and is the biggest gas exporter.

The crisis aside, Russian consumer market is far from demand saturation. Unlike people in most leading countries, the Russians still have far lesser level of possession of most consumer goods and products (cars, cell-phones etc.). When the crisis ends we’ll see the surge of differed demand like in the US in 1950’s.

Given the above said, one can’t help but agree with Thomas Omestad’s recent practical anti-crisis advice in U.S. News & World Report (Dec.29 – 50 Ways to Improve Your Life; Your Mind – Learn to Speak Russian): «…with Russia widely pegged as a re-emerging great power… – mastering the tongue of the Kremlin could well come to regain some cachet».

In this post I’d like to review some online resources, which present Russian position on the main economic and political issues:

The Voice of Russia – state radio company broadcasting in foreign languages. It broadcasts 450 programs about life on modern Russia, its history, culture, internal and external policies.

Russia Profile - is an English-language information service offering expert analysis of Russian politics, economics, society and culture.

Nikitsky fund -  Strategy: Truth and Beauty (and Russian Finance) by Eric Kraus.

Russia Today - is 24/7 English-language news channel to present the Russian point of view on events happening in Russia and around the globe. A selection of the best news reports, stories and programmes can be viewed at it’s Youtube channel.

«Kommersant» – Russia’s daily online English version of business magazine.

RIA news and Information Agency – a news portal in 10 languages offering news and analytical articles, photo, video, online conferences and readers’ comments.

I was so curious about this new one though I hadn’t seen the old before. So, I’ve asked Simon Collister to show me this new office in pictures. He kindly uploaded some on Flickr and while I was looking at, I thought that it would be interesting for me or may be for others, too – to make a collection of views of/from Edelman’s offices.

And now the set View from Edelman offices counts 72 photos from 17 Edelman’s offices:

Montreal (Canada) 

Press to see another view – in winter! 

(photo by Katheryne Boileau)

Vilnus (Lithuania)

(photo by Wolfgang Lünenbürger)

Portland

(photo by Rian Merrill)

Chicago

(photo by Leticia Gomes)  

(photo by Dmitry Dolgov, he’s made it when was in Chicago Summer school) 

San Francisco 

(photo by Leah Jones) 

Mexico

(photo by Vianey Campos from Edelman Mexico) 

Buenos Aires

(photo by Leonardo Ayala from Argentina)

Paris

(I had been there for two marvelous weeks!) 

 Hamburg

(it was a great digital summit!)

Moscow

(it’s our view from conference room in Moscow office) 

Sao Paulo

(photo by Simon Collister) 

Seattle

(great view from Jason Mical) 

New York

(photo by Leah Jones)  

London

 (photo by Jason Mical) 

Frankfurt 

(photo by Bjoern C. Hasse) 

Shanghai

(photo by Adam J. Schokora)

Miami

(photo by Valeria Lento)

This collection is supposed to be updated with new views, so, please, if you have some – let me know here or via www.twitter.com/olkarose.