Last week, I blogged that Andrei Lugovoi, prime suspect in the Alexander Litvinenko murder, is running for mayor of Sochi, the Black Sea resort town that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. [Update: Looks like Lugovoi's out.] But Lugovoi's only one of the 25 fascinating characters (including some Passport favorites) running in what's shaping up to be one of the world's more interesting political contests.

Liberal opposition leader and political sex symbol Boris Nemtsov is running, and got ammonia thrown at him by pro-Kremlin hooligans a few days ago. Ex-KGB oligarch Alexander Lebedev is in the running, as is freemason lodge leader Andrei Bogdanov, who we last met when he was waging a high-profile beef with far-right leader (and Lugovoi's boss) Vladimir Zhirinovsky during his highly suspicious presidential run.

But there's more! Former Bolshoi ballerina Anastasia Volochkova is running, as is porn star Yelena Berkova, and local wrestling promoter Stanislav Koretsky. Then, of course, there's the guy who will most likely win, Anatoly Pakhomov from Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party.

A lot of these candidates have fairly minimal connections to Sochi, which doesn't seem to be a huge problem in Russian politics. Though the Communist Party's candidate did gripe about Lugovoi, "Maybe he vacationed here once.”

So why does every egomaniac in Russia want to be mayor of Sochi all of a sudden? First, the upcoming Olympics makes the race a perfect opportunity for self-promotion. Second, for the slightly more serious candidates, a recent upset in Murmansk, where a United Russia incumbent was defeated in a mayor's race by an independent candidate, has the Russian opposition sensing blood in the water. 

Has the financial crisis broken United Russia's seemingly invincible grip on Russia's regional politics? Let the games begin.

Photos: Getty Images

Few countries have as enduring a national cliché or tourist tchotchke as pervasive as Russia has with nesting dolls. So it's not exactly shocking that the matrioshka industry has been deemed too big to fail by the Russian state:

The state will place about 1 billion rubles ($28.4 million) in orders for crafts such as nesting dolls and hand-painted dishes and could reduce taxes to support craft makers whose sales have plummeted, the Industry and Trade Ministry said last week Thursday.

It's been a tough couple of months for nesting doll makers:

Polikarpov used to sell 400,000 rubles ($11,300) worth of dolls per month in Russia and had exports of $10,000 to $15,000 — mainly to Britain, Argentina and the United States.

Now, he said, the company’s warehouses have enough stock to cover sales for the next 1 1/2 months without producing anything. Dyuna had no profit in January and February and has just paid its employees for January. The company cut production by 30 percent this year and has started producing wooden toys such as robots.

Better that the government buy matrioshkas than missiles I suppose.

(Hat tip: Johnson's Russia List)

DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/AFP/Getty Images

With three weeks to go until the G20 Summit, the British government is assiduously preparing to host the world's leaders. It's beefing up security. It's passing out press credentials. And, like any shrewd party host, as shown by a memo obtained by the Financial Times, it's naming the in-crowd.

The document solicits bids from public relations firms, asking them to help create "moments of drama for the media" around the Summit. In a section entitled "Target Audiences," it splits the G20 countries into "tier one" and "tier two," spelling out who's worth some extra attention.

Early indications suggest that the following are our priority countries and will be the focus of intensive diplomatic lobbying and engagement:

• US, Japan, France, Germany (key G8 countries) and Italy (as next G8 President)
• China, India
• South Africa (as the only African nation)
• South Korea (as the Chair of the G20 after the UK)
• Brazil (as the main South American nation)
• Saudi Arabia (as the only Middle East nation)

Tier 2 countries include other G20 members, non G20 countries, regional groups and developing countries.

Who falls into "tier two"? Russia, Australia, Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, and Canada.

A Tory spokesman immediately responded:

"The downgrading of some participants before they have even set foot in London sends completely the wrong message. In particular it is wrong for Commonwealth countries such as Australia and Canada to be put into the so-called second tier. So too are some of the world's developing countries whose people will potentially be among those hardest hit by the global crisis."

Looks like its Gordon Brown's turn to be called an ungracious host.

Photo: Carsten Koall/Getty Images

It seems the world won't get to see Georgian vocal group 3G (left) perform their Putin-mocking single "We don't wanna put in" at the Eurovision song contest in Moscow. The politically charged dicso tune was a little too hot for organizers to handle:

The contest's oversight committee said in a statement on the Eurovision web site that the song violated a statute in the contest's charter stating that songs must not bring the contest "into disrepute" and banning "lyrics, speeches [and] gestures of a political or similar nature."

The committee has given Georgia until March 16 to select a new entry or "change the lyrics of the selected song" so that it complies with the rule, the statement said.

I call BS on this. Ireland's Eurovision entry last year, sung by an obscene turkey puppet name Dustin, poked fun at a number of other countires, was purposely designed to mock the contest, and nearly set off a diplomatic incident in Macedonia. And Arab-Israeli singer Mira Awad has angered Palestinian nationalists with a pro-reconciliation Eurovision duet with a Jewish singer.

Whether it's a kitschy song contest or the Olympics, geopolitical rivalries are inevitably part of any international competition. It's very sad to see Eurovision's organizers compromise the integrity of this august institution by bowing to Russia's objections.

If Russia Today is to be believed, out of 12,000 dogs competing at the recent Eurasia-2009 dog show in Moscow, President Dmitry Medvedev's three dogs just happened to all win top prizes:

The president’s two English setters, Joly and Daniel, got first place in their individual classes, while his golden retriever, Aldu, received a silver medal at the Eurasia-2009 dog show.

I find this about as convincing as a Chechen election, but one audience member swears that the presidential pooches deserved their honors:

“I understand that some people may think that the president’s dogs only won because of their master, but his dogs really performed well. And they are beautiful.”

Whatever. The judges are just lucky Putin's dogs Koni and Tosya weren't competing. Awkward.

DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/Getty Images

The three men accused of playing a role in the 2006 murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya were acquitted today. While it would be great to see Politkovskaya's killers brought to justice, that clearly wasn't going to happen at this trial anyway. None of the three Chechen men on trial were accused of actually killing the journalist, who was known for her fearless and critical coverage of Russia's war in Chechenya. The L.A. Times' Megan Stack wrote shortly before the verdict:

There is a pervasive sense that the trial is tangential, that the evidence is patchy and that the Russian government has only skimmed the edges of the crime rather than dug at its roots.

Conspicuously missing from the cramped courtroom is anyone accused of pulling the trigger or ordering or paying for the slaying. Lawyers say evidence has linked the crime to the FSB, domestic successor of the KGB, but has failed to reveal how far up the ranks of intelligence services the plan to kill Politkovskaya reached.

Whether these men played a role or not, a conviction in this "chaotic, confused and even farcical" trial would probably have actually set back the campaign to find and prosecute the actual killers. Politkovskaya's newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, is currently conducting its own investigation. That one may aim a little higher.

BORYANA KATSAROVA/AFP/Getty Images

Considering that their states are still technically at war, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso got along remarkably well during their summit meeting in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Wednesday. While palling around on Sakhalin Island at the opening of a new $22 billion LNG plant (the first such plant in Russia), Aso and Medvedev praised the economic cooperation that has helped Russia and Japan strengthen their relationship over the past ten years.

Annual trade has now reached $30 billion, tripling in size since 2004. The first phase of the massively expensive ESPO pipeline, connecting oil reserves in Siberia with Russia's Pacific coast, has been completed and the construction of phase two has been announced. This is rare good news for two economies that have been hit particularly hard by the global financial crisis.

But it's still not all smiles between the two countries. The violent reaction of Vladivostok's workers to the imposition of a tariff on Japanese vehicles in late December displays the importance of Japanese commerce to Russia's remote Far East provinces. More seriously,a Japanese ship carrying ¥12.8 million worth of medical aid at the request of Russian residents on the disputed Kuril Islands was turned away in January because the Japanese delegation refused to show disembarkation cards, a move that the Japanese consider tantamount to recognizing Russian sovereignty over the Kurils. T

The Japanese claim that the Kuril islands -currently under Russian control - are historically Japanese and were seized illegally by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. The dispute over the islands has prevented Russia and Japan from signing a peace treaty and officially ending the war.

Until the Kuril issue is resolved, Japan and Russia will continue to be in the contradictory position of building ever closer ties while still officially fighting World War II.

NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave an interesting interview to Der Spiegel today. He expresses some optimism about relations between Russia and the United States, attributing the thaw to the need to address the financial crisis:

The global financial crisis is forcing all countries to focus on the real problems. It's actually a simple task....We can no longer afford the luxury of little geopolitical games, because we all face challenges that directly affect our citizens. So we should no longer ideologize problems, we should instead honestly express our own national interests, understand the legitimate interests of our partners, and have no more hidden agendas, where one thing is said while something else is done behind someone's back. The signals that we are receiving indicate that our Western partners are aiming for the same objectives.

Lavrov also denies (though not quite explicitly) that Russia put any pressure on Kyrgyzstan to close the Manas air base:

Lavrov: This is a decision by the Kyrgyz leadership. There were many incidents that caused dissatisfaction: Once an American soldier shot a Kyrgyz citizen and the police were not allowed to investigate the case; on another occasion, an American ran over pedestrians without legal consequences. In another incident, tons of jet fuel was dropped on Kyrgyz villages, and once again no one was held responsible. The Americans have even damaged the official state aircraft of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

SPIEGEL: Now Russia has agreed to grant significant loans to Kyrgyzstan -- are you saying this is just a coincidence?

Lavrov: We have signed the corresponding agreement. Kyrgyzstan is one of the poorest countries and an ally. We treat an ally the way it should be.

ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images

The Russian central bank appears to have avoided a currency crisis this week, at least temporarily. Policymakers virtually painted a target on the ruble by announcing in late January that they had established a new floor on the currency in order to stabilize its slide. In fact, the opposite happened. Within days investors pushed the currency's value down against the floor, threatening to cause another large selloff of foreign exchange reserves in its defense.

After losing over a third of the country's reserves since August and having the government's debt rating lowered by Fitch last week, the central bank made a change of course by tightening interest rates, making speculation more costly and easing the pressure to draw down official reserves. The move even caused the ruble yesterday to make its biggest gains against the dollar and euro in the past two years, signaling a temporary stabilization.

While they are not out of the woods yet, the Russians seem to have finally taken a step in the right direction. And at time when everyone is focused on the mounting woes in the world economy, any good news on the economic front is welcome.

ALEXEY SAZONOV/Getty Images

Russian officials may be walking back a bit on earlier hints that they were suspending the deployment of missiles to the Kaliningrad region in response to Barack Obama's more conciliatory tone. Voice of America is reporting that senior Russian military officials have called the reports "premature":

They said Russia has not taken any practical steps to deploy the short-range Iskander missiles and therefore one can not speak of a suspension.

The earlier reports stated the Russia had made its decision after a phone call between Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama in which the U.S. president promised to reexamine the U.S. missile shield program on its merits.

Previous statements indicate that Obama isn't a big fan of missile defense, but it would be hard for him to scrap the program entirely without looking weak and angering the Czech Republic and Poland, who have signed treaties to host the system.

The two leaders will likely discuss the issue in person at the G20 summit in April, but an unspoken arrangement in which the U.S. is in no particulary hurry to set up the shield and Russia is no particular hurry to set up its missiles without any options being taken off the table, might be the best conceivable outcome.

Photo: DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/Getty Images

Vladimir Putin has a lot of faults, but I never really thought being "too trusting" was one of them. I certainly wouldn't put "lacks sense of irony" on the list.

Hunting, fishing, fighting, kissing babies, Machiavellian political maneuvering, ruling with an iron fist...and painting? Is Vladimir Putin the most complete human of the 21st century?

Putin's debut painting, a delicate if somewhat rudimentary water color based on a Nikolai Gogol story, will be auctioned for charity this weekend. The work is part of a collection of paintings by celebrities to raise money for a cultural fund in St. Petersburg. The painting has some weird resonance with current events, the Telegraph reports:

According to organisers, Mr Putin popped into the exhibition unexpectedly on Boxing Day where, after drinking some mulled wine, he agreed to reveal his previously hidden artistic talents by contributing a painting of his own.

According to the rules of the exhibition, Mr Putin was required to paint an image related to the Night Before Christmas, a story by the Ukrainian born author Nikolai Gogol, the bicentenary of whose birth is celebrated this year.

Set in Dikanka, a village in central Ukraine, the story tells of events on a blizzard-swept Christmas Eve thrown into chaos because the Devil has stolen the moon.

With Russia locked in a bitter gas dispute with Ukraine, the theme is replete with ironic symbolism with even the frost encrusted windows unwittingly suggesting freezing homes across central Europe after Mr Putin ordered all supplies through Europe to be cut.

I have a feeling the mulled wine bit is journalistic embellishment. Putin is, famously, a light drinker or at least unlikely to appear sloshed in public.

Rather than a drunken whim, this seems like a well calculated move to soften Putin's already sufficiently manly public persona. Not everyone's buying Putin's sensitive side though:

"A leader who demands that the world play by our rules could hardly have painted such a picture," said one painter, who asked to remain anonymous for his own security. "It looks as if it was painted by a sentimental woman. It is too sweet; you can feel it in the brushwork and the palette. The core theme is feminine too."

The charge was denied by exhibition organizers. "He did the painting all by himself, but he was given advice by a lady artist," said Polina Vavilina, press secretary for Tsarskoe Selo.

I have to say, Vavilina's explanation really raises more questions than it answers.

Georgia and its pipelines may be central to plans to bypass Russia as Europe's main gas supplier, but the country may soon be partially dependent on Russia for its own power supply.

Georgia has sold a partial management stake in the hydroelectric plant that supplies almost half the country's power to a Russian state-controlled energy firm for $9 million. The plant straddles the border between Georgia-proper and the Russian-occupied territory of Abkhazia. Even though Russia is now paying for electricity that Abkhazians and nearby Russians were already using for free and Georgia will maintain ownership, Georgian opposition leaders smell hypocrisy:

Salome Zurabishvili, leader of the opposition Georgian Way party, sharply criticized the move. “The government is a traitor, which says, on the one hand, that Russia is an occupier, and on the other hand makes deals with the same country.”

Even though this seems like a decent deal for Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili's government had to expect to take a hit from the public. It may be a sign that while top Georgian officials continue to decry the Russian occupation of their territory, in reality they're learning to live with it.

On Friday, Georgia and the United Staets signed a strategic partnership agreement in what foreign minister Grigol Vashadze called a "stepping stone which will bring Georgia to Euro-Atlantic structures, to membership within NATO, and to return to the family of Western and civilized nations." The agreement can be considered the Bush administration's final friendly gesture to one of its staunchest allies.

I got a chance to speak with Vashadze at the Georgian embassy shortly after the agreement was signed. He had a number of interesting things to say about the U.S.-Georgia relationship, but seemed a bit perturbed when I referred to the disputed territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "conflicts":

We are not speaking about conflicts. We could speak about conflicts before the August war. Now this is not a conflict; it's an occupation. From one point of view, it's absolutely dreadful because you wake up and 20 percent of your territory is occupied by an unwelcome neighbor. From another point of view, Russia played all their aces. Everything is called its proper name right now: Russia is not a peacekeeper; it is an occupier. We're not talking about ethnic conflict; we're talking about the cleaning of those territories of their core population to build up Russian military bases.

So we have a very simple question: Can Russia use those occupied territories as an instrument of influence? As this charter shows, and as the world's attitude changed, we see that, no, Russia cannot do that anymore.

Read the whole interview here.