In what could deteriorate relations between two former Soviet nations, unidentified assailants attacked the Russian Embassy with petrol bombs in Belarus' capital Minsk on Tuesday.

Coca-Cola Co. has finished its buyout of Nidan, a Russian juice maker. The Atlanta-based company said the acquisition will strengthen its commitment to Russia, where it has spent $2 billion since the early 1990's and plans to spend an additional $1 billion over the next 3 to 5 years.

Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov will present three electric vehicle models in December for public approval, he said on Tuesday. "If they don't like them, they can say 'we don't want these cars.' We will hold a vote on the Internet," said Prokhorov, an active blogger.

International food company Nestle SA has trumpeted that by starting production of two premium chocolate lines in Russia's Samara region, a move that will create 149 new jobs and allows the Swiss food giant to assemble its Russian chocolate manufacturing operations in one place. Nestle said the two production lines for its premium brand Komilfo, which it acquired by purchasing the local Ruzskaya Konditerskiy Fabrika in 2007, were transferred from the Tuchkovo factory near Moscow to the Samara region, in southwest Russia, where 600 people are claimed to have been employed. 

President Lee Myung-bak will visit Russia from Sept. 9 to 10 for a summit with President Dmitry Medvedev on bilateral economic and security issues, including North Korea, Cheong Wa Dae, the executive office and official residence of the South Korean head of state said Wednesday.

Lukoil, Russia's second-largest oil producer, said this week that its second-quarter net profit dropped 16 percent from a year ago to $1.9 billion due to a rise in export duties and cost inflation but its cash-flow is good as sales rose to $25.8 billion from $20.1 billion a year earlier, driven by higher oil prices. Oil production remained flat at 24 million tons while total oil and gas output advanced 2 percent in January-June compared to a year ago. The total production growth was driven by an advance in Lukoil's gas projects in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, analysts at Swiss bank UBS said in a note.

The company will also benefit from a tax concession for its Caspian Sea fields and it is preparing to bid for the rights to exploit the giant Trebs and Titov oil fields in Russia's arctic Yamal Nenets region.

"Trebs and Titov are very interesting and we will take part in the auction," said the company's Vice President Leonid Fedun.

Fedun also said that the company does not plan to buy back the entire remaining 11.61 percent of its shares from current owner ConocoPhillips.

"We will not use the whole Conoco option," he said.

Lukoil agreed with ConocoPhillips to buyback 7.6 percent from the 20% stake they held for $3.4 billion, and included in the terms of the deal are a 60-day option to acquire more stock in the company held by Conoco.

Lukoil has recently secured $1.5 billion in financing from a consortium of six banks.

The banks involved in the financing are said to be  Citigroup Inc., Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., ING Groep NV, Natixis, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and WestLB AG.

Vagit Alekperov, the chief executive of LUKoil, said Tuesday in an interview with Reuters, that the Russian government was ready to introduce tax breaks for oil extracted from its Korchagin fields in the Caspian Sea from Jan. 1.

Unlike greenfields in East Siberia being developed by competitors Rosneft and TNK-BP, LUKoil's Korchagin field does not currently benefit from tax breaks on export duties.

LUKoil has been lobbying for export duty breaks for its Korchagin field after launching production there in April and spending more than 40 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) over 15 years to get it commissioned.

"There was a meeting [in the Russian government], and there was a decision to introduce a tax break for the Korchagin field from Jan. 1," Alekperov said.

The field will produce 2.5 million metric tons of crude per year, or about 50,000 barrels per day, at peak production. This year, its crude output is expected to be 343,000 tons.

Alekperov told Reuters he expected tax breaks for Caspian Sea production to be the same as those for new East Siberian deposits, about 70 percent less than regular crude oil export duty.

Analysts say tax breaks on exports from the technically challenging and investment-heavy Caspian fields are crucial for the profitability of the company, whose oil production has been falling so far this year.

LUKoil plans to launch the largest of its Caspian deposits, the Vladimir Filanovsky field, in 2014 or 2015. Annual output there is expected to reach 10.5 million tons.

Russian companies will supply about 70 percent of the required oil at market prices for a joint refinery project involving China's CNPC and Russia's Rosneft, China's Energy Minister Zhang Guobao said on Tuesday.

"The issue is resolved following friendly talks," Guobao said after an energy cooperation subcommittee meeting between the two countries.

For 500 years, commodity traders have been trying to conquer the treacherous waters of the Russian Arctic passage – aware of its potential as a lucrative short-cut shipping route.The path is blocked all winter and only smaller cargo vessels manage to navigate through the icebergs for two to three months each summer. But last week, the first commercial supertanker has succeeded in traversing the strait. Carrying 70,000 tonnes of gas from Murmansk in Russia destined for Ningbo in China, the feat has moved the difficult Northern Sea Route a step closer to rivalling the dominant Suez Canal in the south.

At the most dangerous stretch of the journey – the Vilkitsky Strait – sailors onboard the Baltica threw flowers into the water in memory of all the men who have died in pursuit of a quicker trade route.

Named the North-East Passage when Britain still thought itself the centre of the world, the route first thwarted Sir Hugh Willoughby in 1553, an explorer sponsored by the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands. The British adventurer tried to discover if a trade path existed, but his ship got stuck in the ice and the crew froze to death.

William Barents, a Dutch hopeful, also got his ship crushed in the ice and later ended up living in a driftwood hut surviving on polar bear meat, before perishing in 1597. He, at least, had the Barents Sea named in his honour.

Explorers gradually chipped away at the cartography of the area and Russian traders have been navigating their northern coast since 1934, transporting fuel, supplies and other goods to remote Arctic settlements. The trade slowed down after the collapse of the Soviet Union and international shippers have been sceptical about attempting the route.

Only more recently, as the polar ice increasingly diminishes each summer, has it again been considered a possible commercially viable route for shipping goods from Europe round the northern coast of Russia to China, Japan and Korea.

Last autumn, two German vessels became the first European cargo ships to use the passage as a route to the Far East with a modest 3,500 tonnes of construction parts.

But the latest little-noticed news is far more significant: that a giant Russian tanker carrying a huge cargo of gas has managed to cross the passage in just 11 days – half the time it would take to go through the Suez Canal.

The giant Baltica, which belongs to Russia state-owned shipping giant Sovcomflot, is transporting the gas for Novatek, the country's biggest independent gas producer. It will have to travel only 13,000km rather than the 22,000km it would take to go through the Suez Canal.

"Never before has a ship of this size passed via the north-east sea passage," Captain Alexander Nikiforov said in an interview with Russian television.

Experts estimate that it could be four times cheaper in terms of fuel and charter time than the conventional route to China and the rest of Asia through the Middle East.

Not only is it free from pirates that plague the African coast where ships tend to refuel, but ships are escorted by a mean-looking fleet of nuclear ice-breakers to clear the passage for vessels.

This is where Russia aims to make its money, providing an indispensable service guiding the ships through the passage with specialist divers and oil spill clean-up equipment on board. The ice-breakers are still needed, despite reports of melting caps.

The Russian Ministry of Transport estimates that it could increase traffic from 2m tonnes to 30m tonnes as ships get bigger and the season for shipping gets longer.

The Kremlin also intends to support the construction of small supporting ports along its northern coastline where ships damaged in the ice can be repaired.

It is still unclear exactly how much can be shaved off costs, but the German ships saved $300,000 (£194,500) on the price of their voyage by heading north rather than south towards the Far East. A supertanker carrying 30 times their cargo in oil or gas would save a lot more – with the potential to pass on price cuts to energy consumers.

But how much will domestic and industrial consumers really benefit if the route gives Russia yet another powerful card in the global energy market?

It is unlikely to cause another Suez crisis precisely because there is another route open to shippers. What is more, the Kremlin will have limited power to hold shippers to ransom given that the Northern Sea Route is only open for a few weeks a year.

It is more the case that Russia needs the ships and will have to convince them that sending valuable commodities through a precarious Arctic environment is cheap enough to be worth the risk.

(Rowena Mason, Commodities Report, Daily Telegraph)

The Russian government will welcome outgoing BP CEO Tony Hayward to any new post in the Russian-British TNK-BP joint venture, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said on Wednesday. "The format of work can be different," Sechin said, adding Hayward will be welcome in any post he may be appointed to.

Sergei Bogdanchikov, the president of Rosneft, Russia's state-controlled oil giant, has denied a media report that he will soon resign."I will certainly not resign, I am a Rosneft shareholder, I am Rosneft president, a member of the board of directors, I feel devotion towards it," he said on Wednesday.

Earlier on Wednesday, Vedomosti business daily quoted a banking source saying that Bogdanchikov may quit in the near future. Rumors about his resignation have appeared previously.