The biggest news this week was, by far, Russia's re-accreditation of 12 more adoption agencies. The group, which included nine agencies based in the United States, brings to 26 the number of American agencies re-accredited.

Time magazine chose Russian President Vladimir Putin as its man of the year for 2007. In explaining its choice, the magazine noted that "Russia is central to our world--and the new world that is being born." It added that "if Russia succeeds as a nation-state in the family of nations, it will owe much of that success to one man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin." The Wall Street Journal published a commentary on Time's selection by Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion who is now one of Putin's most vocal critics.

Reuters reported that Russian election authorities accepted and rejected some candidates for the March 2 presidential election. Among those accepted: former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, a critic of President Putin, Boris Nemtsov and Andrei Bogdanov. But all three are independents running without party backing, so each needs to gather 2 million signatures from registered voters. The commission rejected an application by a former Soviet dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky, who has been living in Britain and is a British national. Also registered: Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who has the backing of Putin and the United Russia party.

In business news, Toyota formally opened its first plant in Russia. The factory, located near St. Petersburg, will produce 50,000 Camrys per year. Also this week, German engineering giant Siemens formed a joint venture with Uralmash to build equipment for the metals and mining industry.

On Friday, Russia extended a huge aid package to Belarus. The deal, which had been expected to be $1.5 billion, was raised to $3.5 billion according to Kommersant. That is 7% of Belarus' budget for the year. Russia also threw in a loan of 10 billion roubles.

And finally, if the children you adopted from Russia are studying judo, you might want to consider buying a new training video that features a Russian expert in the sport: President Putin. According to Reuters, the video will be sold with a judo textbook in Russia early next year.

Image credit: Semacc at Morguefile.com