As the Western elite gathered in picturesque St Moritz to grapple with pressing world crises, the outsiders met in the bleak steppes of Central Asia, writes Eric Walberg

Last week’s 10th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the Kazakh capital Astana highlighted how the major rivals to empire, led by Russia and China -- themselves rivals, are trying to fashion an alternative to US hegemony.

As Russia gears up for its election season this winter, Putin’s Popular Front and Rogozin’s nationalist front are playing an old Soviet melody and even borrowing a tune from revolutionaries in Cairo. Eric Walberg recognises the refrain

There are no hostages in the game of geopolitics. Russia’s reaction to the Bin Laden assassination reveals its own dilemma about how best to accommodate the West, says Eric Walberg

Russia has always looked on at events in the Middle East from afar, shut out of the action, and remains an onlooker today, absorbed by its own problems. Eric Walberg looks at the implications for Russia of the revolutions and no-so-revolutions sweeping the Middle East  

Russian politics is in turmoil as a result of the uprisings in the Arab world, in particular the Egyptian revolution. Those fed up with an increasingly autocratic political system hope that Russian citizens will be energised, while those who came out on top following the collapse of the Soviet Union are quick to dismiss any implications for the Russian political scene.

Medvedev’s presence in Lisbon was more a show of Russia’s importance than of subservience to the Euro-Atlantic alliance.