The Russia Blog
The entire Russian cabinet, including its Prime Minister has just resigned. A new PM hasn’t been chosen yet, but I’d be surprised if the announcement of Putin’s designated ‘heir’ isn’t imminent.
Especially when Putin gives quotes like this:
“The country is nearing parliamentary elections to be followed by presidential elections… We all need to think together about
In a must read article, Global Voices reports on some of the fractures in the broad Russian opposition.
Maria Gaidar was prevented from addressing the crowd by, allegedly, Eduard Limonov, leader of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) and Garry Kasparov’s close ally in the Other Russia anti-government coalition.
The article goes on to translate… Read the rest
A couple of stories have come out this week, saying that The Other Russia, an umbrella group of opposition parties, are meeting soon to pick a unified Presidential candidate to oppose any Kremlin-backed candidate in the March 2008.
The Guardian say they will be meeting in March. Garry Kasparaov, however, says they’re meeting… Read the rest
In a report that will surprise many, former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar has concluded that he was poisoned by enemies of Russia:
Most likely [...] some obvious or hidden adversaries of the Russian authorities stand behind the scenes of this event, those who are interested in further radical deterioration of relations between
Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov has all but declared his intention to run for the Presidency in 2008. The Moscow Times reports a speech he gave on Monday:
“The party elected me leader, and as the leader I must carry out the party’s assignment to run for president,” Zyuganov said at a news conference where
If you thought that the demise of the Soviet Union meant the demise of closed, or secret cities, then you’d be wrong. Today, it is thought that there are up to forty closed cities (also referred as ZATO’s, or Zakrytye Administrativno-Territorial’nye Obrazovaniia) in Russia, although the Russian government will only confirm the existence of ten.… Read the rest
Vladimir Putin once again managed to throw Kremlin watchers into a tizz, by giving another cryptic answer to the question of what he intends to do in 2008 when his second term as President runs out.
Asked if there should be a referendum about whether he should run for a third term, Putin replied:… Read the rest
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former Yukos boss and now full-time jailbird, has been pretty busy over the past couple of weeks. Yesterday saw the beginning of an appeal against his conviction for tax fraud and, predictably, the day ended in farce.
Cast your minds back to the original trial, earlier this year, and you’ll remember… Read the rest
Jailed Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky has announced that he is considering standing for election to the State Duma in an upcoming by-election.
"I am absolutely confident that they will not allow me to run. But if I receive letters from people whose opinions are important for me, I will agree, even being aware of
CXW posts some amusing speculation about who might become Russia’s next President at registan.net and comes up with a surprising candidate – Boris Yeltsin.
WTF? Well, quoting Sergei Markov in RIA Novosti:
"Oligarchs, who made a pile during Yeltsin’s tenure, dream of revanche. They are in the same boat with
Check out A Fistful of Euros for a huge (and I mean HUGE) and in depth discussion of Russia’s demographics, particularly it’s rapidly decreasing population. A wide-ranging discussion, it covers scientific theories (complete with scary equations), the impact on Russia itself, and the potential impact on Russia’s neighbours. This is the paragraph that kicked off… Read the rest
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov is the subject of a criminal investigation over an illegal property purchase. Kasyanov, who was Prime Minister through almost all of Putin’s first term, has been strongly critical of Putin during this last year, and is perhaps the most credible ‘opposition’ figure to emerge so far as a candidate… Read the rest
President Vladimir Putin presented his annual State of the Nation address yesterday( transcript here). The content of the address has been somewhat obscured by the rather inflammatory ‘money’ quote:
"Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century."
Understandably, this has upset… Read the rest
Pavel Felgenhauer’s always excellent defense column in the Moscow Times notes that the army is dissatisfied with Russia’s government:
Last week, newspapers discussed the results of secret opinion polls made by the Defense Ministry and leaked to the press. The Kremlin is deeply unpopular among military men, and only 20
Residents of three Siberian regions voted overwhelmingly this weekend to merge into one super-region.
The new region, made up of Krasnoyarsk, Evenki and Taimyr, will be six times the population of Germany, but with a population of only three million.
Some 92 percent of voters in the Krasnoyarsk region, a vast
Anatoly Trofimov, a former Colonel-General who headed the FSB’s Moscow region during the Yeltsin presidency, was assassinated on Sunday. His wife died in hospital today of her injuries.
The most widely circulated motivation for his killing is his business dealings – he controlled a number of security firms, a notably dangerous industry in… Read the rest
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is to use text messaging (SMS) to reach out to young people in Russia.
At a party plenary meeting outside Moscow that focused on propaganda – a word that in Russia evokes images of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution – the party’s first deputy chairman,
Garry Kasparov, probably the greatest chess player in the history of the game, has announced his retirement from professional competition. He now plans to focus his considerable energies on Russian politics through his involvement in Committee 2008.
Kasparov has dominated global chess for 20 years, first winning the world championship in an epic match with… Read the rest
Lyndon at Scraps of Moscow reflects on the role of the Communist Party in Russia today. It has been the organising force behind many of the recent anti-Putin protests that have swept across the length and breadth of Russia, and is, to all extents and purposes, the only effective opposition party in Russia today:
Note (26/1/05): Two corrections have been made in italics to this post in response to Alexei’s comments below.
19 MPs – including members of the pro-Putin opposition (oops) Rodina party - and 500 academics and public figures signed a letter this weekend calling for the government to close every single Jewish organisation in Russia. The… Read the rest
