Putin's limits displayed again
Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 2:47AM ARTICLE: "Mechel bashing: Vladimir Putin's attack on a mining company shows that nothing has changed," The Economist, 2 August 2008, p. 65.
Putin, having consolidated the oil and gas sector, has been moving recently into the metals. He pulls one of his usual shticks with the metals company Mechel, making vague threats in the direction of its main owner.
The result?
Mechel's share price plummeted, "prompting a dramatic fall in Russia's stockmarket," only accelerated now with Georgia.
Also like with Georgia, Medvedev's people seemed surprised by the attack.
The usual explanation seems to hold: a competitor of Mechel's engineered the attack through Putin.
Rule by law.
Putin and Russia's markets paid no price for destroying Yukos. That seems to be changing.
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