Posts by Andy
I’m absolutely baffled by the story coming out of this week of a 20 million rouble ($660,000) lawsuit involving Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian church, and Yury Shevchenko, a former Russian health minister. The basic story is pretty straightforward, but so odd that there must be something going on below the surface that [...]
Around 10,000 people attended a rally on Moscow’s Novy Arbat Street on March 10, demonstrating their opposition to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President-elect. This weekend’s rally was smaller than many of the protests seen in Moscow recently. Rally organizers put attendance at around 25,000, but police estimates said the crowd was closer to 10,000 in size. [...]
After all the fuss, Putin actually won the Russian Presidential Election pretty comfortably. As I write this, 99.3% of the votes have been counted, and Putin got 63.75% of them and his nearest challenger (Gennady Zyuganov, of course) scored a mere 17.19%. There’s a lot to think about after the election, and I thought I’d [...]
Dmitry Medvedev has submitted a draft law proposing the formation of new electoral districts to the Russian State Duma. However, his initiative comes amid signs that his ambitious proposals for electoral reform may be coming up against sustained opposition within the Duma. 225 new electoral districts The draft law is the latest of a series [...]
Moscow is gearing itself up for more protests and rallies on 23 February. Approval has already been given for two large rallies – one pro-Putin and one pro-Communist – and decisions are due shortly on a number of other rallies. What are the political parties doing? The Communists have scored a bit of a coup [...]
If you’ve been grumbling about Russia’s elections, spare a thought for those poor unfortunate souls in the democractic wasteland that is Turkmenistan. For they have apparently re-elected Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov as their President with a spectacular 97% of the vote, based on a 96% turnout. The result is a dramatic improvement on Berdimuhamedov’s performance in the [...]
After an overlong hiatus, it’s time to get back to publishing my weekly roundup of the best posts of the week from around the Russia blogs. No need for long introductions – click through to discover the best of the past seven days.
Alla Dzhioyeva, who claimed victory in the disputed South Ossetian Presidential elections, has been hospitalised after suffering a small stroke. The circumstances surrounding her hospitalization are confused and, many of her supporters believe, suspicious. Their suspicions have been aroused by the timing of her hospitalization – less than 24 hours before her planned (and unauthorised) [...]
After 20 years of hard work, Russian scientists this week announced that they had drilled through 2.2 miles of Antarctic ice and finally reached the subglacial Lake Vostok. A breathlessly excited Alexander Yelagin, head of the Russian Vostok mission, told reporters that “An event that has been keeping the world scientific community on tenterhooks for [...]
Saturday saw Muscovites take to the streets in a duelling pair of rallies expressing both support and opposition for Vladimir Putin and his campaign to return to the Russian Presidency. The rallies attracted between 75,000 and 200,000 people in total, but no-one really knows for sure how many attended. With all the different claims and [...]