Daily Archives: November 29, 2005

Let me see if I get this straight. Prominent Kazakh opposition member, Zamanbek Nurkadilov, is found dead with two gunshots to the chest and one to the head and it’s ruled a suicide!? I mean forget the fact that shooting oneself in the chest not once but twice and then turning the gun to your own dome seems utterly impossible, this is what an investigation into his death has concluded. Opposition leaders are correctly calling his death a “political assassination.” And this all important caveat supports such a claim: Nurkadilov was about to make a “bombshell” announcement about sitting President and election frontrunner Nursultan Nazarbayev’s involvement in corruption. Sounds like the Kazakh Presidential elections, which are next week, are getting off to a rather predictable start.

You haven’t seen Moscow until you’ve taken the metro. Despite its need for modernization, the system is flawless. You can be almost anywhere in the city in 45 minutes. The stations are palaces. The metro is such a part of Moscow culture and aesthetics it is hard to imagine going there and not take it. Not so, however, for many government officials and Novye russkye who have taken to car culture to avoid the swarthy hordes that dwell underground.

Moscow Times editor Mark Teeter tells us that the descent into Moscow’s underworld can cause surprise even shock to these officials and New Russians. Take the chairman of the Federation Council, Sergei Mironov for example, who one day decided to ditch his limo for a ride on the wild side of Moscow life. According to the Izvestia article Teeter cites, Mironov was “shocked ..read more