RFE/RL Russia Report
10/23/2009 4:15:39 PM
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 .
Moscow Precinct Recount Reveals Vote-Count Errors An official recount of votes in one precinct from the October 11 Moscow City Duma elections has given 16 votes to the liberal opposition Yabloko party, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More
Muscovites Commemorate Dubrovka Hostage Victims Muscovites are commemorating victims of the 2002 "Nord-Ost" hostage crisis and storming by Russian security forces of the Dubrovka Theater, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More
More Than 1,000 Swine-Flu Cases Registered In Russia The number of the registered swine-flu patients in Russia is now over 1,000, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More
Can Serbia Strengthen Russia's Hand? For over a year, Russia has pushed for a new European security body to replace groups like NATO and the OSCE. Moscow appeared to seek a European foothold for its initiative this week when President Dmitry Medvedev told counterparts in Serbia they would be part of the security deal. More
Albright Says Russia Still Concerned With NATO Madeleine Albright, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of state under former President Bill Clinton, told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Russia continues to view NATO as a hostile alliance, two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. More
For Central Europe, A Call To Look Eastward U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, speaking in Romania, has called on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that broke free of communism 20 years ago to help guide other fledgling democracies toward stability. More
Gorbachev Criticizes Ruling United Russia Party In an exclusive interview with RFE/RL's Russia Service, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev criticized the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, which he blamed for fraud in regional elections earlier this month. Widespread allegations of serious violations prompted general outrage and calls to reform the country's authoritarian political system. Gorbachev also discussed U.S. President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize and his own role in history. More
Russian Rights Group Wins Sakharov Prize Russia's embattled Memorial human rights group has won the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The prestigious honor comes as the group fights a lawsuit filed by Chechnya's powerful leader Ramzan Kadyrov related to the murder of one of Memorial's activists. More
A New Nexus Between Drugs, Crime, And Terrorism The world's deadliest drug -- heroin -- is killing 30,000 to 40,000 Russians every year. Where is it coming from? Afghanistan. By way of? Central Asia. A new United Nations report examines these and other drug-related developments in unprecedented depth. More
Russian Duma Speaker Says No Need For Recount Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the Russian State Duma and a leader of the ruling United Russia party, says a recount of the votes of the nationwide local elections held on October 11 would not significantly increase the vote for the country's other parties. More
Russian Soldier Tries To Commit Suicide
A soldier tried to commit suicide in a military unit in Kamenka, near St. Petersburg, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More
A soldier tried to commit suicide in a military unit in Kamenka, near St. Petersburg, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports. More
Clinton Urges Commitment To Nuclear-Free World In April, U.S. President Barack Obama said in a speech in Prague that his administration had begun work on an effort to eliminate nuclear weapons from the world's arsenals. In Washington on October 21, Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, followed up by urging stronger UN authority to crack down on proliferators. More
Havel Expects Biden To Reassure Region As U.S. Vice President Joe Biden begins his travels through Central Europe, arguably the region's loudest voice for strong trans-Atlantic ties, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, is up-front with RFE/RL about what he expects to hear: a clear vision of American policy for the region. More
The Right And The Power Those two words arguably sum up Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Serbia on October 20: the "right" being a reference to Serbian nationalism, and the "power" representing Russia's considerable ownership and other ties to Balkan fuel and electricity. More
Ingushetian Parliament Endorses Russian As Prime Minister Ingushetia's parliament voted on October 20 with only two abstentions to approve republican Security Council Secretary Aleksei Vorobyov as prime minister. More
Karachayevo-Cherkessia President Suffers Two Tactical Defeats On October 14, Karachayevo-Cherkessia Republic (KChR) President Boris Ebzeyev suffered his second tactical defeat within the space of a week when the republic's parliament rejected for the fourth time his proposed candidate to represent the republic in the Federation Council. More
Cash-Strapped Science Looks To Government Support Russia came away empty-handed from the Nobel science prizes this month for the sixth year in a row. The lack of recognition of this former powerhouse of scientific achievement is prompting soul-searching about the dire state of Russian science. More
Gorbachev Calls Local Elections A Sham The man who initiated the first competitive elections in the Soviet Union two decades ago has slammed Russia's most recent vote as a sham. More
Daghestan's Moscow Representative Denies Advocating Death Squads Gadji Makhachev, who is Daghestan's formal representative in Moscow, issued a statement on October 18 distancing himself from comments he was quoted as having made at a roundtable discussion in Moscow two days earlier of the repeated incursions into Daghestan by Chechen militants in the summer of 1999. More
Dmitry Medvedev's Theater Of The Absurd The parties that stormed out of the State Duma in protest last week cannot possibly have believed Dmitry Medvedev would respond any differently than Vladimir Putin would have. So far in his term, Medvedev has not made a single statement that required courage, or taken a single step that could have upset the status quo. More
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Still Divides Europe Seventy years after the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the role the accord played in triggering World War II and dividing Europe remains the subject of intense debate. Opinion is split even among academics and politicians who agree throwing light on Soviet crimes is an essential part of healing Europe's historical wounds. More
Russian Voter Fraud Caught On Tape Allegations of fraud in Russia's municipal elections continue to pile up. And several undercover videos that have surfaced on the Internet now add weight to the charges. One of the most compelling was shot by Aleksandr Tsivenko, an election observer at a polling station in the city of Azov. More
The Numbers Game After the December 2007 Duma elections and March 2008 presidential election (hello, Dmitry Medvedev!), some intrepid Russian bloggers and independent election observers performed some heroic work to highlight the extent of the election fraud in Russia. I wrote about their work here, paying particular attention to some meticulous statistical analysis that was done. If you want the full story, get a copy of “The Forensics Of Election Fraud” by U.S.-based professors Mikhail Maygkov and Peter Ordeshook and Dmitry Shakin of Moscow’s Academy of National Economy. More
Obama 'Owes' Yes-We-Can Slogan To Tatar President There was a funny scene during Hillary Clinton's visit to the Russian republic of Tatarstan. More
Russian Parliament Standoff Nears End Legislators who stormed out of Russia's parliament on October 14 to protest allegations of electoral fraud have begun to return. As evidence of voting violations increases, many believe the speed at which the standoff is dissipating indicates it was no real protest, but prompted by political infighting among pro-Kremlin groups. More
Who You Gonna Call? The scandal in the Duma this week, ironically (and, perhaps, brilliantly), has distracted attention away from the reason for the walkout – the massive and shameless fraud carried out in the October 11 regional elections. More
Moscow Pushes For Formal Cooperation Between UN, CSTO The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) hopes to sign an agreement within 18 months with the UN that will allow the CSTO to act beyond its borders in future joint peacekeeping and counterterrorist operations. The planned agreement and the timescale for its implementation will have important policy implications for NATO and confirms the growing importance that the Kremlin attaches to using the CSTO as a foreign-policy tool. More
The Revolution Will Be Stage-Managed There are more than a few signs out there that yesterday's walkout of the State Duma by the so-called loyal opposition was a stage managed affair that was given a green light at the very highest levels. More
Someone In The Duma Is Putting On A Show When one sees a mass of deputies quitting the hall to protest dishonest elections, one's heart swells and the mind races. But then one remembers one vital point: Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky is no oppositionist. More
More To Clinton's Kazan Visit Than Meets The Eye?
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concluded her recent visit to Russia by traveling to the Volga city of Kazan. But why Kazan? Aside from the publicly offered reasons -- reaching out to Russia outside Moscow and taking a closer look at Tatarstan's reputed ethnic and religious harmony -- Rim Gilfanov, director of RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service, discusses some of the other motivations some have said could be behind the visit. More
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concluded her recent visit to Russia by traveling to the Volga city of Kazan. But why Kazan? Aside from the publicly offered reasons -- reaching out to Russia outside Moscow and taking a closer look at Tatarstan's reputed ethnic and religious harmony -- Rim Gilfanov, director of RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service, discusses some of the other motivations some have said could be behind the visit. More
Analysts Scratch Their Heads The events in the Duma yesterday and today have naturally given birth to considerable speculation. Nothing in Russia, of course, is what it appears to be. It couldn’t be that elections were massively falsified and people are justifiably outraged about it. That would be too simple. More
The Unlikely Pirates The disappearance of a cargo ship in European waters last summer prompted international speculation about a secret Russian arms sale to the Middle East gone bad. Perhaps nowhere have the mystery's repercussions been felt more keenly than in Estonia, home of most of the men Moscow accuses of hijacking the vessel. More
Asia Pop, Your Time Has Come Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed to Chinese and Central Asian leaders on Wednesday holding a joint song competition called "Intervision" to rival the Eurovision Song Contest.
