 RFE/RL Russia Report 02.07.2009 A review of RFE/RL reporting and analysis about domestic and foreign-policy developments in Russia.For more stories on Russia, please visit and bookmark our Russia page . |
 Will The 'Reset' Finally Begin? U.S. President Barack Obama hopes to kick-start Washington's moribund relations with Moscow when he travels to Russia for his first summit meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on July 6. But the two sides face serious divisions and few are predicting the visit will produce anything close to a breakthrough. More  Russian Soldier Requests Political Asylum In Georgia The Russian Defense Ministry has confirmed that a Russian soldier is seeking political asylum in Georgia, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More  Soviet Singer Zykina Dead At 80 Russian state television has reported that Lyudmila Zykina, one of the former Soviet Union's best-loved folksingers, has died at the age of 80. More  Calling All Informants! Is the Russian Academy of Sciences soliciting informants to expose sinister plots within its ranks to falsify Russian history? A letter to the academy's senior staff seems to suggest they are. More  Swedes Launch EU Presidency With Plea To Iran The EU's new Swedish Presidency has outlined its priorities at the start of its six months at the helm. Stockholm called on Tehran not to "polarize" itself in the wake of protests over disputed presidential elections, while calling for urgent action on the issue of climate change, one of its top priorities. More  Competing Paradigms On Russian-EU Cooperation If Russia seeks real internal economic development – development that is stable and sustainable and can serve as a device for Russia’s reassertion into the wider world – then it needs to exploit the strong Western market for its oil and gas. Cooperation will be needed to achieve the Kremlin’s wider aims. More  Requiem For Andropovism Members of Vladimir Putin's inner circle have long viewed Yury Andropov's brief rule as the path not taken, the great "what if," the missed opportunity. They also saw Andropov's vision of "authoritarian modernization" as a model for governance. Are we now seeing the logical conclusion of Andropov's legacy? More  Russian Opposition Activist Dies In Prison A member of the opposition movement Other Russia has died in prison after reportedly falling from a window, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More  Russia, Azerbaijan Make Energy Breakthrough A deal to restart the flow of Azerbaijani gas to Russia, beginning in January 2010, represents a breakthrough as both Moscow and the European Union court Baku in hopes of tapping its vast gas deposits to fuel favored pipeline projects to Europe. More  South Ossetian Authorities Target Opposition Financier In the month that has elapsed since the flawed parliamentary elections that yielded a new legislature subservient to President Eduard Kokoity, the South Ossetian authorities have taken further steps aimed at bolstering his position. More  Russian Investigative Journalist Dies Of Head Wounds The editor in chief of an independent newspaper in southern Russia has died from injuries he sustained in an attack in April. More  Circassians Fear Adygeya May Become The Next Nalchik Participants at the congress Maikop of the Circassian public movement Adyghe Khase have expressed concern that ongoing police reprisals against young Muslims in towns close to the administrative border with Krasnodar Krai could drive some of the victims to join the Islamic underground. More  Russian Prosecutor Gets Nine Years For Bribery A former Russian prosecutor who led a politically charged corruption investigation has been sentenced to nine years in prison for taking a bribe, a court official said. More  Luck Runs Out For Russian Casinos, Gaming Halls An industry is closing up shop in Russia. At the stroke of midnight, all the casinos and slot-machine arcades across the country will close, and gambling will be permitted only in four Las Vegas-style zones decreed by the Kremlin. The only problem is there is nothing in these zones yet. More  Wexler Says U.S.-Russia Relations 'Not Zero-Sum Game' U.S. Congressman Robert Wexler (Democrat, Florida) was in the Czech Republic this week to attend an international conference on the assets of Holocaust victims. During his time in the Czech capital, Prague, Wexler visited RFE/RL's headquarters, where he sat down for a broad-ranging interview with correspondent Gregory Feifer. More  Will Moscow Be Constrained To Cede The North Caucasus To Ramzan Kadyrov? In light of Ramzan Kadyrov's megalomaniac tendencies, his clear ambition to assume control of the "power" agencies in Ingushetia, and possibly also other North Caucasus republics, in effect relegating republic heads to mere economic managers while creaming off for his own purposes a chunk of the subsidies those republics receive from the federal center, is alarming. Any additional powers that Moscow formally bestows on him cannot be simply annulled if/when the crisis that served as the rationale for granting them in the first place is resolved. More  Frictions Fuel Fears Of New Conflict As Western countries strive to mend ties with Moscow badly frayed during Russia's brief war with Georgia, there are growing fears over a possible new conflict. A week ahead of a summit meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents, the Kremlin is refusing to allow international monitors into the conflict area and holding major military exercises north of the Georgian border. More  North Caucasus Resistance Extends War Into Cyberspace For years, the ideologues of the Chechen resistance have used the Internet to communicate their ideas and their military successes in the ongoing fight against Russia to a broader audience both within Russia and abroad. Over the past 10 days, however, the resistance has gone one step further, hacking and temporarily disabling official sites in Daghestan and Chechnya and posting on them statements of responsibility for attacks on senior officials in Daghestan and Ingushetia. More  Moscow Plays It Smart In Moldova, As Others Dither Moscow has promised Moldova $500 million in the run-up to repeat parliamentary elections after acting President Vladimir Voronin assured the Kremlin there's no place for "color revolutions" and foreign meddling. But anyone who thinks Voronin's latest turn to the east portends a permanent shift should take a close look at recent history. More  Ex-President Aushev 'Ready' To Lead Ingushetia As tensions rose in Ingushetia, ex-President Ruslan Aushev said he was ready to assume temporary leadership while current president recovered from injuries suffered from an assassination attempt. He was just the region's latest prominent figure to offer his help, as the Kremlin remained silent. More  Police Crime Wave Sparks Talk Of Reform In Russia Police in Russia have never enjoyed much respect. But their reputation has sunk to a new low after a Moscow district chief went on a shooting rampage in a supermarket. The question many Russians are asking is: Can anything be done about the culture of impunity among Russia's police? More  The Intellectual And The Propagandist Brave public intellectuals like Evgeny Gontmakher and Igor Yurgens are risking their careers by chipping away at the philosophical justification for Russia's authoritarian regime. This may all come to nothing. But it could potentially change Russia's internal political narrative into something closer resembling the truth. More  Karachayevo-Cherkessia Parliament Rejects United Russia's Proposed Senatorial Candidate Fourteen members of the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction in the Karachayevo-Cherkessia Republic (KChR) parliament have been reprimanded for rejecting the candidate proposed by the presidium of United Russia's General Council to represent the KChR in the Federation Council. More  Moscow Film Festival -- A Celebration Of Obedience Cinema -- including the recent 31st Moscow International Film Festival -- is one of the cornerstones of the Russian power vertical. How can a film festival with hundreds of foreign stars and thousands of viewers and guests buttress state policy, you may ask. Apparently, it is less difficult than it seems. More  Managing The Chill Germany could aid U.S. efforts to "reset" relations with Russia. But Berlin and Washington might first need to patch up disagreements over the global financial crisis, Guantanamo detainees, and other issues. Enter Angela Merkel. More  Chechen Leader Seeks To Strong-Arm Ingush Leadership Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov traveled unannounced on June 24 to Magas, where he announced that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has tasked him with coordinating all counterterror activities in both Chechnya and Ingushetia following the assassination attempt on Ingushetian President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov two days earlier. More  Kadyrov Vows To Wipe Out Islamic Militants In an interview with the TV station Vesti-24 on June 23, one day after the assassination attempt on Ingushetian President Yunusbek Yevkurov, Ramzan Kadyrov vowed -- again -- to intensify the combined efforts of Chechen and Ingushetian Interior Ministry forces to wipe out "terrorists." More  A Fight To Preserve Georgian-Abkhaz Heritage Georgia's separatist Abkhazia has asserted its right to statehood, but a key aspect of its heritage is missing: language. Few Abkhaz have mastered their own language, preferring to use Russian. One exception is Lela Avidzba. Half-Abkhaz and half-Georgian, she's working to promote the use of the Abkhaz language. More  Russian Standardized Exams Fail Public Test Russian schoolchildren all over the country have just completed the first Unified State Exam, or EGE, a new end-of-school series of standardized tests that academics and students say is damaging the country's academic standards. More  Cops, Crime, And The Crisis Is Russia on the verge of a massive crime wave? Some analysts certainly think so. In most countries, when an economy goes in the tank, crime rate tends to spike. But as political analyst Andrei Ryabov writes in "Vedomosti" this week, the well-established correlation between economic deprivation and crime takes on added -- and potentially sinister -- dimensions in Russia. More  Zoological Pen-Mates Gather To Sniff, Shake Paws Writers' festivals are gatherings of moles and bears who every so often crawl out of their burrows and lairs to engage in a round of mutual paw-shaking, and the prestigious annual Prague International Writers' Festival, which just ended, is no exception. More  National Republics Resist Moscow's Demands Three of the four republics the Russian Constitutional Court has ordered to drop references in their constitutions to republic sovereignty and citizenship are dragging their feet. That reluctance reflects both the importance of these terms to many non-Russians, and the calculation that resistance to the center could yield dividends. More  U.S., Georgia Hold First Talks Of Strategic Partnership The United States has held its first bilateral meetings with a delegation from Georgia under the auspices of the new U.S.-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership, with both sides expressing satisfaction with the progress made in working groups. More  Attack Against President Latest In Troubling Trend A resistance website reported the attack on Ingushetia President Yunusbek Yevkurov two hours after it occurred, but no one has claimed responsibility. However, its timing and the modus operandi suggest it was the work of the North Caucasus resistance. More  Still Plagued By Violence On the night of June 21, 2004, hundreds of armed Chechen rebels stormed the southern Russian city of Nazran, leaving a trail of destruction and death in their wake. The raid alarmed the Kremlin, which had boasted of bringing stability to the North Caucasus after a decade of war with Chechen separatists. Five years later, Moscow has done little to contain militancy from spreading through the region. More  Russia's Hyperactive Ideologist Deputy Kremlin Chief of Staff Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin's chief ideologist, says Russia's "sovereign democracy" has matured, is stable, and needs to develop. He also called on United Russia to cooperate with other parties. United Russia, however, says it has other ideas. More  Five Years Later, Repercussions Still Reverberate The multiple attacks on the Interior Ministry headquarters and other police buildings in Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia, five years ago constituted a significant milestone in the evolution of the Chechen resistance into a pan-Caucasus Islamic movement uniting young Muslims alienated by official corruption and arbitrary police brutality. More |
