(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Oleg Sukhov – October 30, 2013) Two commissions of the Moscow City Duma on Tuesday recommended against registering opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s bid to submit a bill on utilities prices, which he has sought to make the first-ever grassroots initiative considered by legislative authorities in Russia. Navalny wrote on Twitter that the City Duma would […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 30 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said an atmosphere of intolerance of corruption should be created in Russia. “The laws alone, the demands [against corruption] alone are not enough. We need to form an atmosphere of zero tolerance of corruption in society,” Putin told the Council on Corruption Prevention on Wednesday. The president believes there is a […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, October 29, 2013) Head of the Human Rights Council (HRC) under the Russian president Mikhail Fedotov has expressed the view that there are political prisoners in present-day Russia and they should be amnestied. “There are political prisoners in present-day Russia. The human rights community, include one abroad, has a view on this, and it clearly says that […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – October 29, 2013) State pollster VTsIOM released survey results Monday regarding last month’s Greenpeace protest in the Arctic that indicate more than a third of Russians believe the protest was a foreign plot and more than two-thirds disagree with the group’s message of needing to protect the environment from oil drilling. Armed […]
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MOSCOW, October 26 (RIA Novosti) Russians must learn to perceive the decisions of courts and investigators as legitimate for the country to develop forward, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in a televised interview Saturday. Answering a question about a high-profile corruption case that has ensnared several top Defense Ministry officials since late last year, Medvedev said that evaluating the […]
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KOSTROMA, October 29 (RIA Novosti) A Russian rights organization that promoted public initiatives said Tuesday that it was suspending operations because it is unable to pay a $9,000 fine imposed for failing to register as a “foreign agent.” The NGO, based in the central Kostroma Region, said it was able to raise 100,000 rubles ($3,000) to pay a fine […]
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MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) Russian lawmakers will consider letting people who have been convicted for serious crimes run in elections, on the condition that voters are told about their criminal records. “As it turns out, people’s rights are affected, even though they’ve already been punished,” state lawmaker Sergei Ivanov of the nationalist LDPR party and author of the […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – The leaders of Russian human rights organizations believe a broad amnesty timed with the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution will help establish effective dialogue between the authorities and civil society. “Will the authorities find the energy to build relations with civil society again” The best way out of this deadlock would be broad amnesty, […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Russian business ombudsman Boris Titov said that the one-time migration amnesty that he has proposed would allow legalization of labor in the migration market and would bring 74 billion rubles to the treasury. “We propose a one-time amnesty for those who already are working in Russia on the condition of concluding a labor agreement and […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Gleb Fedorov, RBTH – October 24, 2013) Business ombudsman Boris Titov tells RBTH why Russia needs an economic amnesty and how to improve the country’s business climate. Boris Titov, owner of Russia’s largest champagne producer, is no stranger to pressure from officials. Now, in the position of Presidential Ombudsman for Entrepreneurs’ Rights, he […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Lev Gudkov – October 22, 2013) Lev Gudkov is a Russian sociologist, director of the analytical Levada Center and editor-in-chief of the journal The Russian Public Opinion Herald. He is the author of numerous books and articles on sociology and inter-ethnic relations in Russia. Cynicism, originally a philosophy in ancient Greece, is now the prevailing mood in Putinist […]
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(Interfax – October 24, 2013) The number of Russians who claim that the police are one of the worst corrupt authorities has declined over the past year, a source from the Russian Interior Ministry told Interfax, referring to a Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM) poll. “Currently, this opinion is expressed by 19 percent of the respondents. The indicator stood […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Vladimir Goryachev and Christopher Brennan – October 24, 2013) The Investigative Committee said it had dropped the piracy charges against 30 people who were on board Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise ship, replacing them with accusations of hooliganism. If convicted of the new charges, the 28 activists and two journalists who were taken into custody in September […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 23 (Interfax) – Russians believe that the degree of corruption in Russia as a whole remains high with the local authorities being the most corruption-ridden sphere, sociologists tell Interfax. Studies conducted by VTsIOM public opinion center over the years indicate that presently 80% of respondents find the current degree of corruption high while last year the opinion was […]
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(RIA Novosti – October 21, 2013) The Russian presidential human rights council has sent a letter to Prosecutor-General Yuriy Chayka, asking for checks on NGOs to be suspended until a complaint about the law “On foreign agents” is considered in the Constitutional Court, council head Mikhail Fedotov told state news agency RIA Novosti on 21 October. “Today we sent a […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 21, 2013) A Russian telecommunications giant has slammed government plans to give security services complete access to all Internet traffic by the middle of 2014, calling them unconstitutional, Kommersant newspaper reported Monday. The daily cited a letter submitted by mobile operator Vimpelcom to the Press and Communications Ministry as saying the proposed legislation violated fundamental […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg – October 19, 2013) The Russian presidential human rights council has presented Vladimir Putin with its proposal for a sweeping prison amnesty to mark the 20th anniversary of the country’s adoption of its post-Soviet constitution. Up to one-quarter of the country’s inmates could walk free under the amnesty. Who initiated the planned amnesty? Russian […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova, Acting Editor-in-Chief, October 18, 2013) The weekly sweeps targeting illegal migrants in Moscow are certainly an ambitious project. It’s just too bad that they won’t do much good. The police plan on going door-to-door, to find out exactly where and from whom that migrants are renting living space, according to Moscow Police Chief […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Natalya Krainova – October 21, 2013) In the latest step by authorities to fight unlawful immigration following an anti-migrant riot earlier this month, the city’s police chief said that Moscow police will raid apartments reportedly occupied by illegal migrants every Friday until the end of the year. The initiative, announced by top cop Anatoly Yakunin […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Daniil Kislov – October 17, 2013) Daniil Kislov is a poet, journalist and essayist from Uzbekistan. He currently lives in Moscow. He is the main editor of the online news portal Fergana News. An ethnic Russian is killed at a Moscow street market, supposedly by a migrant from the Caucasus; the ensuing riot by nationalist extremists leaves one […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 18, 2013) Russian companies have been handed middling ratings in an appraisal of 100 companies from 16 emerging markets released by Transparency International. Including six Russian companies metal giants RusAl, Norilsk Nikel Evraz and Severstal, together with energy majors Gazprom and LUKoil on three separate scores, the survey, which was released on […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – October 18, 2013) International pressure on Russia over the arrest of Greenpeace activists mounted Thursday as 11 Nobel Peace Prize winners urged President Vladimir Putin to drop the piracy charges against them. The 11 laureates made such an appeal in a letter sent to the Russian president, Greenpeace said. The letter, which […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Sam Skove – October 18, 2013) When Nuri Katz, founder of investment firm Apex Capital, heads for the customs gate, he gets to decide which of his three passports to use – a privilege that his Russian clients would pay up to 5 million euros to enjoy. Katz is in the citizenship-by-investment business. Select […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 17, 2013) New Audit Chamber Chairman Tatiana Golikova says she plans to use her experience as a financier when planning changes to the work of the chamber. “I think there will be changes. If only because I have been professionally engaged in finance all my life and I have my own opinion on what to look […]
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(Interfax – BAKU, October 17, 2013) Azerbaijan’s Embassy in Moscow has lodged a protest with the Russian Foreign Ministry over what it called violations of the rights of Azeri native Orkhan Zeynalov, who is suspected of killing ethnic Russian man Yegor Shcherbakov in the Biryulyovo district in southern Moscow. “The brutal detention and brutal treatment of Orkhan Zeynalov, whom they […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg and Arifa Kazimova – October 16, 2013) Footage detailing the heavy-handed arrest of an Azerbaijani native suspected of killing a Russian man in Moscow has escalated mounting ethnic tensions between the two nations. Russian police detained Orkhan Zeynalov on October 15 on suspicion of fatally stabbing a 25-year-old ethnic Russian man, Yegor Shcherbakov, in […]
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(Interfax – October 16, 2013) Anti-Kremlin protesters prosecuted in the so-called “Bolotnaya case” could be freed under the amnesty proposed by the Human Rights Council (HRC) under the Russian president, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 16 October. The draft submitted to President Vladimir Putin specifically mentions people who “took part or were convicted for taking part in public […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – October 16, 2013) A court last week ordered activist Mikhail Kosenko to undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment for attacking a riot police officer during the May 6, 2012 protest rally on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. The ruling sparked concerns among rights activists that Soviet-era punitive psychiatry, when dissidents were found to […]
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(Interfax – October 16, 2013) Russian party leaders have for the most part welcomed the commutation of opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner Aleksey Navalnyy’s sentence to a suspended one, on appeal, on 16 October. In reaction sampled by the Russian news agency Interfax, Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, of the nationalist Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), stood out, with his call for a […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – October 17, 2013) The Azeri suspect in a deadly stabbing that triggered an anti-migrant riot in Moscow’s Biryulyovo district has confessed to the killing and requested an interpreter for his case, saying he “forgot Russian,” investigators said Wednesday. The news of the apparent language barrier further emphasizes the ethnic dimension of the […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 16, 2013) Russia is drafting changes to the law that will bar foreigners from owning or renting real estate in the country without official permission, a state-owned newspaper said Wednesday. The Economic Development Ministry told Rossiiskaya Gazeta that it is in consultation about the legislation with law enforcement and migration agencies including the Federal Security […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 16, 2013) The Kremlin’s moves against the principles of the Russian Constitution and basic human rights are currently coming at such a rapid pace that it is difficult to keep up with its assault on what remains of democracy in that country. This week alone featured three initiatives that are particularly […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – October 16, 2013) Police on Tuesday detained the suspect in a killing that provoked a wave of ethnically charged riots in Moscow’s Western Biryulyovo district on Sunday. The alleged murderer, Orkhan Zeinalov, 30, who came to Moscow more than 10 years ago from the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, was detained 100 […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Lyudmila Nazdracheva, Special to RBTH – October 16, 2013) Russia has the highest divorce rate in the world, but the causes and consequence of broken marriages aren’t surprising. When Valery Lepekhin’s boss got on his nerves one too many times, he punched him in the eye. Lepekhin was fired, but he felt like […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 15, 2013) Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday approved the third and final reading of a bill toughening the country’s anti-smoking legislation by introducing fines for smoking in public and encouraging minors to smoke. The bill is part of broader anti-smoking legislation that came into force in June. It sets fines of up to […]
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(Interfax – October 16, 2013) Prominent opposition activist and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, whom the Kirov Regional Court gave a five-year suspended prison sentence on Wednesday for embezzlement of assets belonging to the state-run timber company Kirovles, may be subject to the amnesty that the State Duma is expected to announce soon, Russian Presidential Human Rights Council head Mikhail Fedotov […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 15, 2013) President Vladimir Putin has submitted to the State Duma a bill that would restore the right of investigators to open tax fraud cases without a request from the tax authorities a move that critics fear could lead to a renewed persecution of business executives, a news report said Tuesday. If approved, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 15, 2013) State Duma deputies are calling for changes to the proposal prison amnesty that could benefit prominent convicts like former oil tycoon Khodorkovsky. State Duma deputies want to make changes to the broad amnesty proposal drafted by the Kremlin’s human rights council for the 20th anniversary of the Constitution, and are working on […]
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(RIA Novosti – October 14, 2013) Russia’s immigration laws do not need to be tightened, the country’s top migration official said on 14 October, in the wake of protests and rioting sparked off by the killing in Moscow of an ethnic Russian, allegedly by an immigrant from the Caucasus. Despite the unrest, Konstantin Romodanovskiy, head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 15, 2013) Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny has said he does not expect the Kirov Regional Court to acquit him as it hears an appeal contesting Navalny’s embezzlement conviction on October 16. “I will be given a real or a suspended prison sentence, but I will not be acquitted,” he told the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. However, […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Tom Balmforth – MOSCOW, October 14, 2013) Moscow’s migrant workers have seen this story before and they believe they have reason to be afraid. When an unidentified man — believed to be from the Caucasus — stabbed and killed a young ethnic Russian on October 10, triggering the capital’s worst ethnic riots in three years, police […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 14, 2013) Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, said the police officers ‘ actions during riots in the Moscow district Western Biryulyovo were right. “In this case, what has occurred should be classified as hooliganism. It truly was hooliganism, and the law enforcement agencies should punish the perpetrators,” Alekseyeva told Interfax on Monday. […]
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(RIA Novosti – Natalia Antonova, Acting Editor-in-Chief of The Moscow News – October 15, 2013) There is a kind of sad poetry to Moscow’s working class neighborhoods. The box-like Khrushchev-era buildings that seem like gigantic children’s toys rather than real housing, the hilariously poor grammar on thousands of tacked up advertisements, the cracked pavement, the whispering trees, and the stars […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – October 15, 2013) Surrounded by railroads, industrial estates and giant cooling towers from a local thermal plant, the Western Biryulyovo district where riots broke out Sunday oozes its own sense of disunion from the rest of Moscow and residents say it has become a hostage to its own growing marginalization. “If […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Oleg Sukhov – October 15, 2013) In response to a violent race riot in southern Moscow over the weekend, federal and city authorities announced new measures to fight illegal immigration and detained about 1,200 migrants at a vegetable storage facility that had been attacked by rioters Sunday. With these actions, the government took a first […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Jeremy Hodges – October 14, 2013) Hermitage Capital Management founder William Browder won the dismissal of a U.K. libel case filed by a former Russian policeman accused of playing a part in the 2009 death of legal and tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky. Judge Peregrine Simon ruled that the U.K. wasn’t the right jurisdiction for the ex-policeman, […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 14, 2013) Almost one-quarter of government spending in Russia is to become classified within the next three years, according to findings by a Moscow research institute that will raise concerns of decreasing economic transparency in a country already plagued by corruption. Vedomosti business daily said in a report Monday, citing a study by the […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 14, 2013) The ethnic violence in Moscow’s Biryulevo district over the weekend is only the latest pogrom to have occurred in the Russian capital since Vladimir Putin became president, something that all those who are following this rapidly developing story need to keep in mind to comprehend what this latest clash. […]
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[Video here http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131014/184131781/380-Held-Overnight-After-Anti-Migrant-Riot-in-Moscow-Suburb.html] (RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 14, 2013) Russian police said Monday that 1,200 people had been detained at a vegetable warehouse in a Moscow suburb that was one of the main targets of anti-migrant rioters during a night of violent clashes in the area. Helicopters and over a thousand police officers were dispatched to Biryulyovo in […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 11, 2013) The amnesty campaign meant to mark the 20th anniversary of Russia’s constitution should apply to the suspects in the Bolotnaya Square clashes case, the Greenpeace activists detained onboard the vessel Arctic Sunrise and former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the For Human Rights organization said in an address published on its website on Thursday. “A […]
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