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Thursday, March 6, 2008 Volume 12 Number 45
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Russia
PRESIDENTIAL DECREE ESTABLISHES STATUS OF PRESIDENT-ELECTPresident Vladimir Putin has issued a decree on the new status of President-elect Dmitry Medvedev, "Kommersant" and other Russian media reported on March 6. The decree was signed on March 3, the day after the election, and was published before the final official results were released. They are expected on March 7. The presidential administration was ordered to begin working for both Putin and Medvedev, and Medvedev was officially accorded presidential-level security. The administration has also been ordered to provide Medvedev with an official residence. The daily noted that the current transition of power is unique in Russian history and that this is the first time that such a document has been required. RC GOVERNMENT BUILDING REVAMPED FOR PUTIN'S ARRIVAL Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov on March 6 is scheduled to move out of his office on the third floor of the White House, the seat of the Russian cabinet, as renovation gets under way in anticipation of the arrival of Vladimir Putin, who is expected to become prime minister in May, "Kommersant" reported the same day. The Russian-language newsweekly "Newsweek," No. 10, reported this week that the White House is undergoing major expansion, adding at least two offices to each floor. The magazine reported rumors that an office is being built on the fifth floor, next to the prime minister's office, for Viktor Zolotov, who currently heads Putin's personal security. There are also rumors that a gymnasium is being built on the same floor; Putin is an avid athlete. The magazine also reported that Sergei Sobyanin, who headed Dmitry Medvedev's presidential campaign, will remain as head of the presidential administration under Medvedev and that Vladislav Surkov, currently deputy presidential-administration head in charge of domestic politics and civil society, will also remain at his post. An unidentified source told the magazine that Medvedev might create an additional deputy presidential-administration head, in charge of legal questions and combating corruption. Analysts queried by the magazine predict that deputy presidential administration head Igor Sechin, who oversees the security agencies and has close ties with state corporations, and presidential spokesman Aleksei Gromov will not be given posts in the new administration. RC JOURNALISTS QUIT UNION TO PROTEST ADMISSION OF CHECHEN LEADER Pro-Kremlin Chechen administration head Ramzan Kadyrov has been admitted to the Russian Union of Journalists, Interfax reported on March 5. According to the report, Kadyrov was handed a union card earlier that day by Chechen Republic Nationality Policy and Press and Information Minister Shamsail Saraliyev, who cited Kadyrov's "enormous services in the establishment of Chechen journalism, a free press, and the creation of ideal circumstances for the work of the mass media." Kadyrov, who has been widely criticized for his strong-arm tactics and for overseeing a regime that is guilty of horrific human rights abuses, responded by saying that "journalists must --without looking over their shoulders, without fearing for their lives -- tell the truth and write what really is." At the same ceremony, a number of local journalists were awarded state medals for their work and several were personally given automobiles by Kadyrov. In Moscow, the reaction from many journalists was harshly negative. "Moskovsky komsomolets" journalist and Unified Russia Duma Deputy Aleksandr Minkin told Ekho Moskvy that he will quit the union. "If Ramzan Kadyrov is in the Union of Journalists, then I am not," he said. "I hope that I am not the only one to quit the union. "Novaya gazeta" Editor in Chief Dmitry Muratov has also quit the union. "I will not for a single second remain a member of the Union of Journalists of Russia if the information is confirmed that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has become a member...," Muratov wrote in his statement to the union. "I will not comment on my position. I simply categorically refuse to be in one union with cannibals." Anna Politkovskaya, a respected investigative journalist who specialized in writing about human rights abuses in Chechnya and who was murdered in Moscow in October 2006, worked for Muratov's paper. Union of Journalists Secretary Mikhail Fedotov told newsru.com that Kadyrov's admission to the union violated its charter, under which only working journalists are allowed to be members. RC RUSSIAN VOTERS COME AND GO AS THE KREMLIN SEES FIT The official voter roll for the March 2 presidential election, according to the Central Election Commission, was 107 million people, "Vedomosti" reported on March 6. This compares to 109.15 million for the December 2, 2007, State Duma elections, meaning that more than 2 million voters "disappeared" from the rolls in the intervening months. The daily speculated that the changes were made because in the legislative elections, Duma seats (and state financial assistance to parties) were determined by the number of votes a party received. On the other hand, in the presidential election, the most important factor from the Kremlin's point of view was to have as high a turnout as possible. The paper cited official figures as indicating there were 107.6 million registered voters as of June 2007, 1.5 million fewer than appeared on the lists in December of the same year. In St. Petersburg, according to official figures, the voting-age population of the city declined by 11 percent between last December and March. A recent independent statistical analysis of the December Duma elections gave compelling evidence of massive fraud to the advantage of the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party (see "RFE/RL Newsline," February 29, 2008). RC JAILED YABLOKO OFFICIAL DECLARES HUNGER STRIKE Maksim Reznik, a St. Petersburg Yabloko leader who is in custody pending trial on charges of assaulting a police officer (see "RFE/RL Newsline," March 5, 2008) has declared a hunger strike, the BBC and other media reported on March 5. The report was confirmed by Yabloko official Aleksandr Shurshev. Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky the same day appealed to the St. Petersburg court to release Reznik, saying he is willing to be personally accountable for him. Reznik's lawyer, Boris Gruzd, told the BBC his client's arrest is a result of his "political activity." The day before his arrest, Reznik appeared on local STO television and said that he and six other Yabloko activists visited seven St. Petersburg polling stations on March 2. They told officials at all seven that they were residents of Murmansk without absentee ballots, but that they wanted to vote anyway. They claimed officials at all seven stations admitted them to vote, in violation of election law. RC EU WANTS BETTER RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA Janez Jansa, the prime minister of current EU president Slovenia, said in Vilnius, Lithuania, on March 5 that he hopes that Russian President-elect Dmitry Medvedev will "have the will to improve relations with the EU," Interfax reported. Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas argued that "the EU needs to develop a joint external energy policy and internal energy links, and these issues should be among the [topics] of the upcoming EU summit." Many of the EU's newer member states, which were formerly Soviet republics or satellites, want a common EU energy policy in dealing with Russia. Those newer members object in particular to large Western European energy companies cutting individual deals with Gazprom and other Russian firms. Jansa said on March 5 that the EU needs a "consolidated position" on energy in order to strengthen its overall political role. Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, Sergei Dankvert, who heads Russian food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor, said on March 5 that "we have resumed imports of plant products from Poland, but not vegetables. We are prepared to allow imports of [other] foods, but Poland was unable to guarantee the observance of Russian control standards" for vegetables. Russia's ban on some Polish imports is widely seen as politically motivated, particularly in light of Poland's stance on the proposed U.S. missile-defense system (see "RFE/RL Newsline," February 11 and 19, 2008). PM PUTIN BIDS FAREWELL TO U.S. AMBASSADOR President Putin told departing U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns on March 5 at Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow that "the period during which you worked here [since late 2005] was not the simplest of times," newsru.com and international news agencies reported. Putin added that the two countries "have quite a few problems. But there was always the most important thing -- and I'd like to thank you for precisely this approach -- [namely a] desire to reach mutually acceptable decisions and compromises." Putin noted that "despite the existing problems and disagreements -- of which there are many -- we do share the most important thing, namely common ground on key problems, among which I would include nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and certain questions of global security." Burns replied in Russian that "despite the fact that problems have emerged from time to time between our countries, I am convinced...that working together, we gain a lot. From my point of view, it would be a huge mistake to lose sight of that fact." Burns returns to Washington to take up the third-highest position in the State Department, where he will succeed outgoing Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns. PM RUSSIAN BOMBER BUZZES U.S. AIRCRAFT CARRIER For the second time in less than a month, a Russian bomber flew over the aircraft carrier "U.S.S. Nimitz" on March 5, news agencies reported. The plane was then intercepted by U.S. F/A-18 jet fighters, which escorted it out of the area off the Korean coast, news agencies reported (see "RFE/RL Newsline," February 1 and 13, 2008). Reuters quoted unnamed U.S. military officials in Washington as saying that they do not consider the plane, which flew 610 meters above the ship, "a threat or concern." Following the previous such incident, some U.S. officials on a panel of experts argued that the Russian action was legal and "normal." Most of the experts agreed, however, that it is "not a good idea" to buzz an aircraft carrier. The Russian daily "Komsomolskaya pravda" wrote on February 13 that such incidents can often lead to unforeseen consequences, even if the pilot's actions are in keeping with accepted international practice. In Moscow on March 6, Air Force Colonel General Yury Solovyov, who is in charge of the capital's air defenses, said that those aircraft will be "modernized" by 2011 so that "they will remain technically and tactically superior to NATO planes," Interfax reported. PM PLANS TO CREATE SUPER MUNICIPALITY IN CHAVASH REPUBLIC FAIL A referendum held in the Chavash Republic on March 2 concurrently with the Russian presidential election on combining the cities of Cheboksary and Novocheboksarsk failed, "Kommersant" reported on March 6. While 75.21 percent of Cheboksary voters approved the proposed merger, which the mayors of the two cities jointly advocated in October 2007, 61.87 percent of their Novocheboksarsk counterparts rejected it. Republic head Nikolai Fyodorov, who was born and raised in one of the villages that were later subsumed into the satellite town of Novocheboksarsk, which is a center of the petrochemical industry, expressed regret at the failure, as did Chavash State Council deputy speaker Genrikh Vasilev, regnum.ru reported on March 3. Both men argued that it would only have benefited both communities. But Russian State Duma deputy Valentin Shurchanov, who heads the Communist Party's Chavash branch, branded the proposal a desperate but "cretinous" attempt by the republic's leadership to galvanize the stagnating economy, regnum.ru reported. He explained that the population of Novocheboksarsk "simply did not want to be subsumed into a gray mass." "Kommersant" on March 6 similarly quoted Chavash State Council Deputy Igor Molyakov (A Just Russia) as saying that there were no economic grounds for merging the two towns, and that residents of Novocheboksarsk were unwilling to cede the right to elect their own municipal administration. LF AUTHORITIES IN INGUSHETIA MOVE TO PREVENT 'NATIONAL CONGRESS' A large number of officials from Ingushetia's Interior Ministry and Emergency Situations Ministry descended on March 5 on a building on the outskirts of Nazran where the opposition plans to convene on March 8 an extraordinary congress of the Ingush people, inspected it, and sealed the building on the grounds that it does not meets health and safety requirements, the website ingushetiya.ru reported (see "RFE/RL Newsline," March 5, 2008). Also on March 5, two of the congress organizers, Magomed Khazbiyev and Gilani Imagozhev, were summoned to the republican prosecutor's office and informed that they do not have the right to convene a national congress as the law governing the procedures for doing so expired "long ago." Khazbiyev told ingushetiya.ru that the organizers will not postpone the congress despite the official warning. It is not yet clear, however, where it will take place. LF NALCHIK RAID SUSPECT SAYS ATTEMPT MADE TO KILL HIM Hearings resumed in Nalchik on March 5 in the trial of 58 men accused of participating in the multiple attacks on October 14, 2005, on police and security facilities in Nalchik, kavkaz-uzel.ru reported. One of the accused, Zaur Tokhov, told the court that prison officials tried to strangle him; five other defendants earlier submitted written statements that testimony they gave while under investigation was extracted as a result of, or under the threat of, torture, and that they signed that incriminating testimony in the absence of a lawyer (see "RFE/RL Newsline," October 15 and 30, 2007, and February 21, 2008). Meanwhile, the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic prosecutor's office is considering bringing legal action against lawyer Larisa Dorogova, who represents Tokhov and several other defendants, on the grounds that she purportedly insulted and threatened to kill a female prison official who refused her access to Tokhov, kavkaz-uzel.ru reported on March 3. LF
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