Politics, Government, Protests, Elections
(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – October 29, 2013 – Jake Rudnitsky) One hundred days before the start of the most expensive Winter Olympics, President Vladimir Putin’s $48 billion vision of a newly empowered Russia rests in the hands and shovels of laborers working around the clock. Construction continues on the main stadium, hotels and athlete housing for the Feb. 7-23 Winter […]
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(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 10, Issue 193 – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – Roger McDermott – October 29, 2013) As the anniversary approaches in November 2013, marking one year since President Vladimir Putin sacked Anatoly Serdyukov and appointed Sergei Shoigu as Russia’s defense minister, evidence is mounting to indicate that the change may not herald better times for the military. […]
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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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NOVO-OGARYOVO. Oct 28 (Interfax) – Sergei Katyrin, the head of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has suggested to President Vladimir Putin that the BRICS countries should consolidate their efforts in defending their positions in the World Trade Organization (WTO). “We consider the possibility of working together with BRICS. Separately, we probably do not exceed the leading countries or […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 25 (Interfax) – Russians are quite well-aware of the Noble Prize but only one in five follows news about it, sociologists said. According to the poll held by the Public Opinion Foundation in 43 Russian regions, 44% of 1,500 respondents are aware that the Noble [sic] Prize exists, other 42% heard about it, while 10% learnt about the […]
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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 News – themoscownews.com – October 29, 2013) An increasing number of Russians are tired of year-round daylight savings time, a recent survey shows. According to a poll released on Tuesday by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research, just 32 percent of Russians approve of not having to set clocks back an hour each fall, down from 73 percent […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 28, 2013) Russian nationalists and others have regularly criticized Vladimir Putin for building an economy and hence a state that relies on the export of raw materials rather than the development of industry and investment in human capital. But now two of them have stepped up this attack and argued that […]
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From: Jeff Yarborough <jeff.yarborough@opensocietyfoundations.org> Subject: Eurasia Director postion Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 The Open Society Foundations are currently searching for a Director to lead our Eurasia Programs. The link to position is here: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/jobs/director-eurasia-programs Jeff Yarborough | Russia Project | Open Society Foundations | T: 212-548-0128 |F: 646-557-2473 | jeff.yarborough@opensocietyfoundations.org
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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 presidential chief-of-staff Sergei Ivanov has called on the municipal authorities to cooperate with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) instead of shunning them. “You should not be afraid of NGOs. Rather, you ought to work together with them,” Ivanov said at a meeting of city mayors and city managers on Thursday. Practice shows that the municipal authorities […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Protopope Dimitry Smirnov, the head of the patriarch’s commission on family and protection of mothers and children, believes that democracy is based on lies. “It’s just a lie. Communist is also a lie, but Communism has religious features. Communism seems to take a lot from true religions. The Communists have their own teaching, their own […]
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(Interfax – Snegiri, Moscow Region – October 24, 2013) The Kremlin receives in a positive key the signal from the parliamentary opposition, which is calling for giving priority to ensuring the security of the state and does not support “orange forces” (reference to Ukrainian orange revolution which is seen as backed by the West), according to the head of the […]
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SNEGIRI, Moscow region. Oct 24 (Interfax) – The Kremlin has welcomed the parliamentary opposition’s signal indicating its support for national security as a priority and its refusal to back so-called “orange forces”, director of the president’s homeland security directorate Oleg Morozov said. “We have heard the signal sent by the parliamentary systemic opposition, as it is called today, which really […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Andrey Vaganov, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, special to RBTH – October 25, 2013) A recently passed law on reforming the Russian Academy of Sciences is aimed at segregating scientific research from academic property management. The government argues the move will free science of an irrelevant burden. Academics, for their part, are convinced […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Forty percent of the respondents surveyed by the Public Opinion Foundation believe Russia has political opposition, 30% believe it does not, and the others were undecided. The poll was conducted in 43 regions of Russia in mid October. It surveys 1,500 respondents. Only 4% of those who believe Russia has political opposition believe it has […]
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SNEGIRI, Moscow region. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Russian electoral authorities, including the Central Election Commission (CEC), have managed to minimize the number of situations where potential candidates are banned from running in elections for no discernable reason, head of the Russian president’s homeland policy directorate Oleg Morozov said. “I would like to thank our colleagues from the CEC and you […]
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MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Vyacheslav Volodin, first deputy head of the presidential administration said he disagrees with the fact that a single voting day, the second Sunday of September this year, was the cause of low voter turnout. “I disagree that September 8 is a day that does not give a high voter turnout,” Volodin said at a meeting […]
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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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MOSCOW, October 24 (RIA Novosti) Russian investigators will not open a criminal case into allegations by jailed feminist punk rocker Nadezhda Tolokonnikova that a prison official threatened to kill her, a spokesperson for the Investigative Committee said Thursday. “A decision has been taken not to open a criminal case because no crime was committed,” said Natalya Afanasieva, a spokeswoman […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Natalya Krainova – October 24, 2013) Government officials, lawmakers and education officials will finalize changes to the way history is taught in schools by Nov. 1, State Duma Deputy Speaker Lyudmila Shvetsova said Wednesday outside a roundtable discussing new state textbooks. New textbooks teaching children of various age groups a consensus opinion about historical events […]
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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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(Kremlin.ru – October 23, 2013) Vladimir Putin spoke at a training seminar for mayors of Russian cities. The event, which took place under the Presidential Executive Office’s aegis, focused on domestic policy issues and modern effective management principles. Excerpts from the speech at the Mayors’ Conference and Seminar PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, colleagues. Today, we are meeting […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 23, 2013) The failures of Russia today are connected with the fact that everyone in it including the authorities, the population, the church and those separate from the church remain in a cultural sense “Soviet people” with all “the complexes” that entails, according to Academician Yury Pivovarov Pivovarov, director […]
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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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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Yaroslava Kiryukhina, RBTH – October 23, 2013) Just several months after granting temporary asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Russia prepares to implement electronic surveillance that looks similar to the infamous PRISM. But is it actually the same? Russia’s Communications Ministry has drafted an order that would require Internet providers to install monitoring […]
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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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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – October 23, 2013) Police have uncovered some 2,000 apartments housing illegal migrants in the southern Moscow district of Biryulyovo, where nationalist riots broke out earlier this month over the stabbing death of a Russian by a suspected foreigner. The figures were the latest in an ongoing crackdown on migrants in the wake […]
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UFA, October 22 (RIA Novosti) President Vladimir Putin signed a law Tuesday giving local authorities more responsibility for handling relations between ethnic communities in a sign the government is growing nervous at evidence of a surge in nationalist-tinged discontent. Speaking at the Interethnic Relations Council in the Urals town of Ufa, Putin lashed out at local governments for what […]
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(Interfax – October 21, 2013) Russia’s representative at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has welcomed the court’s ruling on Russia’s handling of its investigation into the 1940 Katyn massacre of more than 20,000 Polish prisoners-of-war by the Soviet secret police, the privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 21 October. Earlier in the day the ECHR ruled […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Sergei Markedonov, special to RBTH – October 22, 2013) The author is a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Migration policies and xenophobia in Russia are at the forefront of political discussion in the wake of the riots in Biryulyovo. Riots in Moscow’s West Biryulyovo have […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – October 22, 2013) A bill submitted to the State Duma on Tuesday could add NGOs engaged in the fight with illegal immigration to the list of organizations that the government is authorized to support. The law currently sanctions government aid for organizations involved in 12 areas of social work, such as disaster […]
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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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(Government.ru – October 21, 2013) The FIAC discussed technical regulation issues, the lifting of administrative obstacles, improving customs legislation for investors, the development of the banking sector and financial markets in Russia, trade and the consumer sector, as well as innovations-based development. Dmitry Medvedev’s introductory remarks Transcript: Dmitry Medvedev: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, colleagues. It has become a good […]
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MOSCOW, October 21 (RIA Novosti) Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off Monday on the introduction of stiffer penalties for smoking in public as the government continues in its battle to improve health standards in the country. The law sets fines of up to 3,000 rubles ($94) for smoking in public places designated as no smoking areas. The steepest fines […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 21, 2013) The introduction of the widely discussed new real estate tax that is set to replace the old system of levying fees on property with a market-oriented approach will not take place until 2015, a news report said. The bill was submitted to the government in August, but needs to be revised and […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, October 21, 2013) Because Vladimir Putin has reversed the steps Boris Yeltsin took in the direction of federalization and has been able to restore “the empire in the most petty details,” the Russian Federation “inevitably faces” the same fate that the USSR met with in 1991, according to a Russian analyst. In […]
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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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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Marina Obrazkova, RBTH – October 22, 2013) Russia may have to review its immigration policy in the wake of mass protests and rioting in Moscow. Last week, the southern Moscow district of Biryulevo was gripped by mass protests; the protesters demanded changes to Russian immigration policy. An RBTH correspondent looks at why the […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 21, 2013) Orhan Zeynalov was driven by hooliganism when he murdered resident of Moscow’s Biryulyovo district Yegor Shcherbakov, the Russian Investigative Committee said. “Zeynalov has been charged with committing a murder driven by hooliganism,” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax on Friday. According to investigators’ information, “Zeynalov denies the charges brought against him, and, as […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Henry Meyer and Ilya Arkhipov – October 22, 2013) Russian investigators probed yesterday’s suicide bombing that killed six bus passengers in Volgograd as the southern region was placed on high alert hours before President Vladimir Putin met Muslim clerics. The suspected female suicide bomber arrived from the capital of the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan, disembarking […]
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(Institute of Modern Russia – http://imrussia.org – Olga Khvostunova – October 15, 2013) Oil price fluctuations that exceed $100 per barrel create comfortable conditions for Russia’s economy, as its budget is balanced at around $90 per barrel. Further escalation of the situation in the Middle East could bring oil prices up, seemingly playing into the Russian government’s hands. But according […]
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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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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 19, 2013) The Russian Communist Party intends to more actively involve migrants in protest rallies “to strengthen the international component of the protest movement,” a draft decree the Central Committee of the Communist Party is expected to adopt at a plenum held in the village of Moskovsky on Saturday says. The Central Committee’s departments on nationalities […]
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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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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – October 21, 2013) Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has said that he conferred with President Vladimir Putin about the decision to allow opposition leader Alexei Navalny to participate in the mayoral election on Sept. 8, confirming widespread speculations at the time. Putin and First Deputy Chief of Staff Vyacheslav Volodin “had a positive attitude […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, October 21, 2013) The time has come for the federal government to hand additional powers over to the regions, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov told a world economic forum in Moscow. “It’s time indeed to transfer additional powers to the regions,” he said. “Certain financial resources could also be additionally provided to the municipal level,” he […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, October 19, 2013) While opening an international competition in Russia’s second largest city St. Petersburg on Friday, President Vladimir Putin, an avid judoist, called martial arts “a philosophy” that helps people to gain confidence in themselves. During his opening speech at the World Combat Games 2013, Putin, a judo black belt, said martial arts were, […]
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