Politics, Government, Protests, Elections
(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Nathan Gray – April 15, 2013) One of the most famous and secretive features of the Soviet Union, closed cities – known today in Russian as ZATOs – still dot the country, though in far fewer numbers than during the Cold War. The cities, which numbered upward of 100 throughout the different republics in the […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – By Irina Granik, Moskovskiye Novosti – April 15, 2013) Analysts call for reform of state institutions, while the government demands action from private and state companies The forecast for socio-economic development of the country through 2030, recently published by the government, has come straight into the depths of discussions flaring up in connection with the […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, April 17 , 2013) Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday he would offer a state prize for anyone who could find a method of ridding the Russian economy of its dependence on raw materials in the next few years. “I cannot but agree with you that the raw materials model … has driven our […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Julia Reed in Moscow – April 17, 2013) “A case against Navalny is a case against all of us,” insist the friends and supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is due to go on trial for corruption in the regional city of Kirov on April 17. Unfortunately, many other Russians appear not to […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, April 16, 2013) Opposition representative Aleksandr Navalnyy has published his income declaration for the year 2012, according to which his income from his work as a lawyer amounted to nearly R7.5m (about 183,000 dollars). Navalnyy posted his declaration on his webpage in Live Journal (http://navalny.livejournal.com/789792.html). According to the documents, the income from his activities as a lawyer […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Winning – April 17, 2013) The State Duma on Tuesday passed in a first reading a bill that would reintroduce a mixed voting system for parliamentary elections, despite a heated argument on the Duma floor that it favors pro-Kremlin forces. In voting late Tuesday afternoon, 296 lawmakers voted in favor of the bill, 148 […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, April 17, 2013) A website leaked a video on Wednesday showing President Vladimir Putin apparently criticizing senior politicians at a meeting with ministers and governors the previous day, just hours before Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev addressed the Russian parliament. The video of the meeting on housing issues, published by Russia’s Life News website, shows Putin asking […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 17, 2013) Moscow Times reporter Anatoly Medetsky is providing a live blog of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s visit at noon to the State Duma, where he will recap the Cabinet’s activities for the past year and offer an account of his upcoming plans. 3:45 p.m.: Medvedev wrapped up his Duma appearance after a closing […]
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(RIA Novosti, MOSCOW, April 17, 2013) The number of corruption related crimes recorded in Russia rose by almost 25 percent in 2012, according to a report by the Prosecutor General’s Office submitted to parliament on Wednesday. A total of 49,513 such crimes were registered last year, compared to 40,407 in 2011, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said. Over 13,500 individuals […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 15, 2013) The official portals of the Gorky Park (www.park-gorkogo.com) and Sokolniki Park (www.park.sokolniki.com) have opened the Hyde Park division, which are accepting applications to hold public rallies. The Gorky Park portal says that the site to hold public rallies can take up to 2,000 people. Public meetings can take place between 7 a.m. and 10 […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg – April 15, 2013) A helmeted policeman drags a woman down a barricaded street, one arm tightly locked around her neck. Dozens of riot police in full gear look on as the young woman, wearing a short black dress, gasps for air. The scene is captured in a dramatic snapshot taken at a sanctioned […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, April 16, 2013) Pavel Chikov, a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, said on Monday that a clear set of rules for inspections of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is required. “There are no rules for prosecutors’ checks. In my opinion, this is the main lesson that we should learn from all these […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW. April 15, 2013) The information on the multi-billion funding of non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Russia coming from abroad voiced by the president only partially refers to the NGOs whose activities are controlled by the Justice Ministry. “Of course, not all NGOs that are reported by banks to receive such funding according to the NGO legal status belong […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, April 15, 2013) The Interior Ministry has received no complaints against police with regard to checks of non-commercial organizations, Deputy Minister Mikhail Vanichkin has said. “Since the start of the checks, there has not been a single complaint to date from heads of non-commercial organizations against the actions of the police,” Vanichkin told a special meeting of […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, April 16, 2013) Russian prosecutors have opened a case against a regional non-governmental organization accused of not registering as a “foreign agent” in the wake of a wave of inspections of NGOs, a rights group reported on Tuesday. Alexander Zamaryanov, director of the Kostroma Public Initiatives Support Center, is suspected of being involved in political […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Mikhail Loginov – April 15, 2013) Mikhail Loginov is a journalist and novelist based in St Petersburg. He is the author of the recently published bestselling political thriller “Battle for Kremlin”. Broadcaster Vladimir Posner’s ‘slip of the tongue’, calling Russia’s parliament the Dura (fool) instead of the Duma, added yet another slur to the already emasculated body. A […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, April 15, 2013) Only 4 per cent of Russian do not care what incomes State Duma deputies have, while the vast majority (92 per cent) would like to know this and therefore support the use of such measures as mandatory declaration of incomes and spending for the elected representatives of the people. Some 90 per cent of […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 15, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-russians-want.html) In January 1917, Lenin thought that he and members of the older generation of revolutionaries might not live to see a revolution but by the end of that year, he and the Bolsheviks were in power in Petrograd. Now, the Russian opposition believes that there must be […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW. April 12, 2013) The rare Siberian cranes that took a migration flight with President Vladimir Putin’s motorized deltaplane in the autumn of 2012, have not reintegrated with the wild over diplomats’ failure to come to terms on their hibernation in Uzbekistan, Vedomosti wrote on Friday citing the Flight of Hope project director, Alexander Sorokin. “Uzbekistan’s border service […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 15. 2013) Days before the much-anticipated trial of opposition leader Alexei Navalny is scheduled to begin, an Investigative Committee spokesman has suggested that Navalny’s constant criticism of the government caused investigators to “accelerate” work on the case against him. When someone “uses all his energy to bring attention to himself” and “provokes the government,” […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW. April 15, 2013) Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov does not see any conditions for the cooperation of the head of state with what is known as the irreconcilable opposition so far. “Largely this depends on the extent to which the irreconcilable opposition will be able to generate a more or less constructive agenda. Unfortunately, so far we […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 15, 2013) Income declarations for 2012 for the president, members of the presidential administration, government officials and Federation Council officials were published on Friday, showing revenues that ranged from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of rubles, and from one to several pieces of real estate. In the overall picture, President Vladimir Putin […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 13, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-alienation-of-russian.html) A major reason for the destruction of the Russian Empire in 1917 and of the Soviet Union in 1991, a Moscow historian says, was “the alienation that existed between the state and the Russian people,” a shortcoming that unfortunately the Russian Federation has not yet overcome with […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW. April 15, 2013) Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev have agreed to have a special meeting with the economic block of the government, members of the Kremlin administration and experts to discuss prospects of the Russian economy amid the global negative tendencies on the world market. Medvedev said at a meeting with Putin at […]
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(Interfax – April 15, 2013) Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that the information about the foreign funding of non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Russia recently disclosed by President Vladimir Putin is reliable. “There is not the slightest reason to doubt the reliability of the said figures,” Peskov said on a Sunday night current events show on Russia 1 channel. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 15, 2013) Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Sunday described Vladimir Putin as a “fierce” defender of Russia’s national interests but also a “master of compromise” while commenting on everything from the opposition movement to escalating tensions with the U.S. Peskov’s comments, made on the state-owned Rossia 1 television channel on Sunday night, come amid […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – April 12, 2013) The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private foundation based in Washington, D.C., that provides grants and other support to organizations around the world that promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. The NED’s senior director for Europe, Rodger Potocki, recently visited RFE/RL’s broadcast center in Prague and spoke with […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Michael Bohm – April 12, 2013) Michael Bohm is opinion page editor of The Moscow Times. State Duma Deputy Alexei Mitrofanov, who heads the Duma committee regulating the media, came up with a new idea two weeks ago to fight the Kremlin’s battle against “insulting speech” aimed at politicians: increase the fines against media outlets […]
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(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 10, Issue 68 – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – Pavel Felgenhauer – April 11, 2013) Since last March, Russian and international human rights organizations – including such prominent ones as Memorial, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Transparency International and others – have been harassed by Russian law enforcement and tax authorities, had their premises searched all […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Richard Sakwa – April 10, 2013) Richard Sakwa is professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent, England. Among his books are Putin: Russia’s Choice (Routledge, 2nd edition, 2007) and Russian Politics and Society (Routledge, 4th edition, 2008) Alexandr Bastrykin, head of Russia’s influential Investigative Committee, is one of the most powerful individuals in the […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Olga Tanas & Scott Rose – April 12, 2013) Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and his wife, the second-biggest earners among families of Cabinet members, plan to move their assets under Russian jurisdiction to comply with new restrictions. Shuvalov and his wife Olga are planning to shift their foreign holdings, Alexander Machevsky, a spokesman […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 11, 2013) Russian state officials, reporting their income and expenses exceeding joint income of their families for three years, will have to declare foreign bank accounts and securities kept not only in foreign banks but in banks of the Customs Union and the CIS as well, aide of the Russian State Presidential Legal Directorate, Valentin Mikhailov, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Winning – April 12, 2013) Russian society is disillusioned with the wayward anti-Kremlin protest movement, and the center-left Just Russia party will not pander to self-proclaimed opposition leaders, the party’s chairman said Thursday. “An atmosphere of disillusionment predominates in society today, not only disillusionment with the ruling regime but also with the so-called protest […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Georgy Bovt, special to RBTH – April 12, 2013) Georgy Bovt is a prominent Russian columnist and political expert. The Russian anti-corruption campaign gains momentum. Will the Russian public be in favor of even stronger measures? Russia’s anti-corruption campaign looks like an attempt to “nationalize” the state elite by increasing their stakes […]
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(opendemocracy.net – Sergei Guriev – April 11, 2013) Sergei Guriev is a Morgan Stanley Professor of Economics and a Rector at the New Economic School (NES) in Moscow. Russia’s Byzantine system of government has long been a rich subject for study. Could it change? Might it suddenly have to? Possibly, but there are so many vested interests and the upheaval […]
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(RIA Novosti, MOSCOW, April 12, 2013) Russian election watchdog Golos (Vote, or Voice) has been given notice to vacate its office in Moscow with no explanation, the non-governmental organization’s deputy director Grigory Melkonyants told RIA Novosti on Friday. “Our rental contract is still valid, but the new lessor has informed us they are breaking the contract ahead of its […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 11, 2013) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has branded the U.S. Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act as a manifestation of “the Russophobia that is traditionally present” in U.S. Congress. One of the architects of the Magnitsky act was Hermitage Capital investment fund chief executive William Browder, who “illegally hoarded a large fortune in the […]
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(RIA Novosti – ULAN-UDE, April 11, 2013) The Kremlin favors the idea of adopting a law protecting the religious feelings of Russian citizens, the Russian presidential spokesman said Thursday. Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, passed the bill in the first reading on Tuesday. “The Kremlin supports the idea of the law, and the wording of the […]
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(RIA Novosti – Alexey Eremenko – MOSCOW, April 11, 2013) The list of suspects in the controversial investigation into last year’s riots at an anti-Kremlin rally in Moscow is much longer than previously announced, an opposition website said on Thursday. The Investigative Committee currently has 86 suspects in addition to the 26 people already arrested, charged or convicted over […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 10, 2103) Corrupt businessmen and officials may take advantage of social discontent for resisting anti-corruption efforts of the authorities, National Anti-Corruption Committee Chairman, member of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights Kirill Kabanov told a Wednesday press conference in Moscow. “I think there are fears that certain negative processes may […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 11, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-russia-needs-radical.html) Mikhail Gorbachev’s call for a new perestroika has sparked a discussion which rests on the idea that “if the medicine (perestroika) would kill the cancer patient (Russia in its current state), then it is necessary to put up with the cancer as long as possible,” according to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – April 11, 2013) The number 303 stood Wednesday on a digital clock on Manezh Square that counts down the days to the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and President Vladimir Putin is watching it closely as the government races to make the final preparations for the Games. But that clock may be counting down […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, April 11, 2103) A majority of Russians do not want Vladimir Putin to run for president again in 2018 when his third term ends, according to a new survey. A total of 55 percent of Russians want a completely new leader, while 22 percent said they would like Putin to be reelected to the post […]
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(opendemocracy.net – April 8, 2013 – Pavel Usanov) Pavel Usanov is head of the Hayek Institute for Economy and Law in St. Petersburg and Reader at the Higher School of Economics. Cyprus’s monetary crisis has drawn international attention to the island’s role as a tax haven and money laundry for Russia’s rich. Meanwhile, Putin has announced a crackdown at home […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, April 9, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-putins-commitment-to.html) A report by the Inter-Regional Association of Young Political Scientists notes that Vladimir Putin has changed his language to reflect is “commitment to stability above everything else,” a conclusion that one Moscow commentator suggests fails to capture just how dangerous Putin’s position is for Russia as a […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, April 10, 2013) The punishment for those found guilty of corruption should be as severe as for treason, Kirill Kabanov, head of Russia’s National Anti-Corruption Committee independent watchdog said on Wednesday. “We believe the penalty for corrupt activities should be equal to that in place for treason,” said Kabanov, who is also director of the […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 9, 2013) Mortality rates in Moscow have declined by practically every parameter thanks to the modernization of city healthcare in 2011-2012, city health department head Georgy Golukhov said at a city government meeting on Tuesday. “The death rate from external causes decreased by 25% in the reporting period; the death rate from respiratory disorders went down […]
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(Kremlin.ru – April 8, 2013 – Amsterdam) QUESTION: If you don’t mind, I will depart somewhat from the issues of the Russian-Dutch relations. Today, as you must know, we have received the sad news of Margaret Thatcher’s death. Can you tell us your opinion of the former Prime Minister’s contribution to building modern Europe and strengthening European security? VLADIMIR PUTIN: […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 10, 2013) Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will face withering criticism and calls to fire at least one minister when he delivers his first address on the work of his Cabinet to the State Duma next week. Medvedev is scheduled to speak in the Duma on April 17, and he also will meet with the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Winning – April 10, 2013) The State Duma on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed in a first reading a contentious bill that would radically toughen penalties for those who offend believers’ feelings or desecrate relics and places of worship. Supporters of the legislation say it aims to safeguard traditional Russian values, which they say are under […]
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