![[ rfe/rl logo ]](/images/new/article-logo.gif){kind=logo}
| News & Analysis I RFE/RL Newsline® I Reports I Specials I RFE/RL Pressroom |
| About RFE/RL I Subscribe I Listen I RFE/RL Languages I Job Opportunities I Search I Site Map I |
|
|
||
|
|
|
Monday, September 24, 2007 Volume 11 Number 177
previous issue
| next issue 
Russia
A JUST RUSSIA HOLDS PREELECTION CONGRESS...The left-leaning pro-Kremlin A Just Russia party held its national preelection congress in Moscow on September 23, RFE/RL's Russian Service reported. The party's list of candidates for the December 2 Duma elections will be headed by party leader and Federation Council Chairman Sergei Mironov. Duma Deputy Svetlana Goryacheva (formerly Communist, now independent) will hold the second spot and A Just Russia youth-wing leader Sergei Shargunov (formerly of Rodina) will round out the top three. The party's congress was attended by about 25 State Duma deputies, including Valentin Varennikov, who was a member of the group that tried to carry out a coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, and 16 members of the Federation Council. President Vladimir Putin did not participate in the congress, but Mironov told delegates he spoke with Putin the evening before by telephone and that Putin asked Mironov to convey his greetings to the assembly. RC ...AS DO AGRARIAN PARTY, SPS The Agrarian Party held its national preelection congress on September 22, RFE/RL's Russian Service reported. The party's list of candidates for the Duma elections will be headed by party leader Vladimir Plotnikov, Vologda Oblast dairy farmer Nina Brusnikova, and former Communist Party activist Vasily Shandybin. The party's election platform differs little from its 2003 platform, focusing on land-ownership issues and the need to reduce imports of foreign foodstuffs. The Communist Party also held its preelection congress on September 22 (see "RFE/RL Newsline," September 21, 2007) and ratified the party's program, "Seven Steps To A Worthy Future." The liberal Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) held its congress on September 21 (see "RFE/RL Newsline," September 20, 2007), RFE/RL reported. Party leader Nikita Belykh, citing the party's successes in legislative elections in several regions, told delegates SPS is the only liberal party capable of entering the next Duma. He said the party intends to campaign actively against Unified Russia. SPS Political Council member Boris Nemtsov on the eve of the congress participated in a televised debate show on NTV with nationalist author Aleksandr Prokhanov. Nemtsov charged that NTV managers manipulated the viewer voting after results from the Far East showed that Nemtsov was going to "win" the debate. "What exactly they did, I don't know," Nemtsov said. "There are various versions on that. But the fact remains that we won from the Urals to the Far East, but in the center of Russia, for some reason, we lost." Nemtsov told "Nezavisimaya gazeta" that the SPS is experiencing "major problems with financing." RC KASYANOV ELECTED HEAD OF NEW LIBERAL MOVEMENT Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who intends to run for president in March 2008, was named the leader of a new political movement, People for Democracy and Justice, on September 23, RFE/RL's Russian Service reported. Kasyanov also heads the unregistered People's Democratic Union party. The movement's congress was held at a resort outside of Moscow that was blockaded by demonstrators from the pro-Kremlin Nashi and Young Russia groups (see "RFE/RL Newsline," September 21, 2007). Kasyanov told delegates his People's Democratic Union party will submit its registration documents to the Justice Ministry in December, to emphasize its contempt for the December 2 Duma elections. He repeated his call to Yabloko and the SPS to boycott the elections and concentrate on the presidential election in March. He repeated his hope that all Russia's liberal parties will be able to unite around a single candidate in that election. RC GREAT RUSSIA PARTY AGAIN REFUSED REGISTRATION The Federal Registration Service on September 24 refused for a second time to register the leftist Great Russia party, Interfax reported. The party was first rejected in July. Party leader and Duma Deputy Andrei Savelev was quoted as saying he learned of the rejection from a notice on the service's website, and he pledged that Great Russia will submit a third application. He said the Federal Registration Service provided no reason for either the first or the second rejection. The Great Russia party has agreed to participate in the Duma elections together with the registered Patriots of Russia party (see "RFE/RL Newsline," September 13, 2007). RC STATE TAKES CONTROL OF MAJOR NUCLEAR-ENERGY-EQUIPMENT PRODUCER The Podolsk electrical engineering firm, Russia's largest producer of civilian nuclear-power reactors, has been returned to state control, "Izvestia" reported on September 24. Federal Atomic Energy Agency head Sergei Kiriyenko told the daily that a controlling packet of shares in the strategic firm has been transferred to a state company called Energomashinostroitelnyi alyans -- Atom. Kiriyenko said the firm is "a monopoly producer of key blocks of equipment for nuclear power stations." He said the firm plans to increase its production by a factor of four in the medium-term future. In recent years, Podolsk has supplied equipment for new reactor construction in China, India, and Iran. RC GERMAN MINISTER CRITICIZES PUTIN FOR SUSPENDING CFE TREATY German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in an interview with Deutsche Welle in Bonn on September 21 that President Putin's announcement in April that Russia intends to "suspend" its compliance with the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty "calls into question the carefully constructed structures of disarmament, which took decades to develop" (see "RFE/RL Newsline," April 26 and September 13, 17, 19, and 20, 2007). Steinmeier added that his government is trying to "bring reason back into the international...community and has therefore invited all states involved in the treaty to [come to] Berlin to discuss once again how this...system can be rescued. Russia has agreed to come. That is, in any event, a step [forward]." Asked if he is optimistic about the outcome of the gathering, Steinmeier replied that "optimism is not the only factor that motivates people." It is rare for Steinmeier, who belongs to former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party (SPD), to criticize Russia in public. He criticized Russian policy in the Arctic region while on a visit to the Norwegian Arctic island of Spitzbergen on August 28, but did not mention Putin by name on that occasion (see "RFE/RL Newsline," August 29, 2007). PM FOREIGN MINISTER PLEDGES 'COUNTERACTION' TO U.S. MISSILE DEFENSE Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with state-run television on September 21 that the real reason the United States wants a missile-defense system in Central Europe is not to defend Europe from Iranian missiles but to spy on Russia, news agencies reported (see "RFE/RL Newsline," September 17 and 19, 2007). He argued that the reason U.S. officials reject President Putin's offer of a Russian-operated radar station in Qabala (Gabala), Azerbaijan, as a substitute is that the Azeri site cannot be used for monitoring activities in Russia. Lavrov said that "when our American partners say that Gabala cannot be an alternative to a radar station in the Czech Republic, I understand them, because the Gabala radar cannot see Russian territory from its western borders to the Urals.... A radar station in the Czech Republic can." He added that "any action naturally calls for a counteraction.... This is the obligation of militaries, the obligation for the commander-in-chief to guarantee the maximally effective answer to any threat." Lavrov said that "we see a threat and are preparing a response to it. And this certainly will stimulate the scientists on that side of the ocean, the military-industrial complex, to build some sort of more effective type of weapons. But our guys also won't be sitting on their hands." Russian officials previously stressed that Russia's response would be "asymmetric," because Moscow has no intention of being drawn into a new arms race (see "RFE/RL Newsline," February 22 and April 27, 2007). U.S. officials and some independent Russian military analysts maintain that Qabala is physically too close to Iran to be effective and is technically obsolete. PM FORMER FRENCH AND GERMAN LEADERS VISIT PUTIN Former French President Jacques Chirac and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder arrived in Sochi on September 23 on private visits at President Putin's invitation, Interfax reported. The two men were close partners of Putin's in their final years in office, particularly after 2003, when the three joined in active opposition to U.S. policy in Iraq. Putin has less cordial relations with their respective successors. PM RUSSIA IS 'NOT SCARED' BY POSSIBLE KOREAN UNIFICATION Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Losyukov said that a possible unified Korea "would not be an [overly] large entity in the region with a significant potential," the daily "Vremya novostei" reported on September 24. He added that Korean unification "does not scare Russia.... We would look at this as the emergence of a new and rather large neighbor with whom we could have normal relations, not as a threat." He added, however, that Korean unification would mean "a serious change for the United States, which has a strong presence in the south. The question is what sort of policies the new state would choose." Losyukov said that it is unlikely that Russia will join in any international effort to build a light-water nuclear reactor in North Korea as part of a possible package settlement to persuade Pyongyang to give up its own nuclear program. He implied that North Korea has refused to cooperate with Russia on such matters in the past. PM MILITANT KILLED IN INGUSHETIA Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service (FSB) units backed by armor launched a search operation on September 21 near the village of Ali-Yurt, southeast of Nazran, after unidentified militants opened fire earlier that day on the outskirts of Nazran on a vehicle in which FSB personnel were traveling, kavkaz-uzel.ru reported. One militant was killed and an unspecified number of FSB personnel were wounded in the fighting. On September 22, Suleiman Vagapov, who is deputy presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, said that the security forces are successfully combating "banditry" in Ingushetia and the situation there will stabilize "soon," kavkaz-uzel.ru reported. Meanwhile, Gypsies (Tsygane) are leaving the village of Ordjonikidzevskaya in Sunzha Raion where three members of a Gypsy family were found shot dead two weeks ago, kavkaz-uzel.ru reported on September 22, quoting the human-rights center Memorial (see "RFE/RL Newsline," September 11, 2007). Ingush villagers in Ordjonikidzevskaya are reportedly guarding the homes of ethnic Russian families in the hope of preventing further killings. LF FORMER CHECHEN OFFICIAL CHARGED IN POLITKOVSKAYA KILLING The prosecution has formally charged Shamil Burayev, the former pro-Moscow head of Chechnya's Achkhoi-Martan Raion, with being an accessory to the murder in October 2006 of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Burayev's lawyer Pyotr Kazakov told kavkaz-uzel.ru on September 21. Burayev is charged with having sought to obtain from former FSB Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Ryaguzov the address of the apartment Politkovskaya rented in Moscow and to have passed that address to several other suspects, including three Moscow-based Chechen brothers, Tamerlan, Djabrail, and Ibragim Makhmudov (see "RFE/RL Newsline," August 28, 2007). Burayev claims he is innocent, and several prominent Moscow-based Chechens and a former head of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration have expressed serious doubts that he was involved in Politkovskaya's killing (see "RFE/RL Newsline," September 17 and 18, 2007). LF CHECHEN INTERIOR MINISTER DISCOUNTS MILITANT INVOLVEMENT IN TRAIN BOMBING The radical Riyadus Salikhiin group created by field commander Shamil Basayev has been destroyed, and for that reason could not have carried out the August 12 bombing of the Neva Express train, RIA Novosti quoted pro-Moscow Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov as saying on September 22. On August 15, a man claiming to represent Riyadus Salikhiin claimed responsibility for the bombing in a telephone call to RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service (see "RFE/RL Newsline," August 16, 2007). On September 10, the Chechen resistance website kavkazcenter.com posted an analogous claim of responsibility that it received on August 16, noting that it received independent confirmation only on September 9 that the e-mail indeed originated with a person close to Riyadus Salikhiin. On September 21, police searched the homes of at least three Chechens living in the town of Chudovo in Novgorod Oblast in connection with the ongoing investigation into the bombing, kavkaz-uzel.ru reported on September 22. LF
|
|
|
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty © <%= year(now) %> RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Contact us: web@rferl.org
|
![[E-mail this page to a friend]](/images/newsline/email-icon.gif){kind=icon}