Posted by Sean on October 25, 2006
Tonight I will be appearing on the radio show Open Source with Christopher Lydon. The show airs 7-8 EST. The show is also podcast for those who can’t catch the live feed. The topic is “Georgia (and Russia) Off Our Minds.” NYU Professor Stephen Cohen and Edward Lucas, the Central and Eastern European correspondent for the Economist will be guests in addition to myself. I’m told that I will be on during the last segment of the show.
Tags: Russia|Georgia|Caucasus|international relations|nationalism|xenophobia|media|radio
Posted by Sean on October 25, 2006
In the meantime, the politics of Politkovskaya’s death rumbles on. As Wally Shedd reports on his blog, Accidental Russophile, Exile editor Mark Ames has weighed in on the Western media’s sudden infatuation with Politkovskaya. Always looking for a chance to twist his pen into the sides of the American media, Ames reviews American press coverage of the murder. He also rightly asks, “Where is America’s Politkovskaya?”
If you ask me, what is most significant for us in the West about Anna Politkovskaya’s death, and her courageous life (btw, a big “fuck you” to our nationalist readers who don’t agree with this), is not so much what it says about Russia — it doesn’t say much new at all, to be honest, but instead is another chapter in an increasingly depressing story that started under Yeltsin.Rather, what is significant about her death is this: Why doesn’t America have ..read more
Posted by Sean on October 25, 2006
Kommersant reports that police investigating Anna Politkovskaya’s murder have settled on a dominant theory about who killed her. Police have descended on the Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk because they suspect that the killer is linked to former policemen there. Kommersant reporter Sergei Mashkin writes,
“Information received from Khant-Mansiiskii police was the reason why investigators from the General Prosecutor and operatives from Russian MVD Criminal Investigation Department departed [to Nizhnevartovsk]. One of the police there saw someone who looks like their former colleagues—Mayor Alexandr Prilepin and Colonel Valerii Minin. Presently there is an international search for them for crimes they committed in Chechnya.
However, the investigators have been unsuccessful in finding the mayor or the colonel. Possibly the police informant was mistaken or former colleagues warned the fugitives beforehand. As a result, the investigators had to be satisfied with interrogating Prilepin’s and Minin’s comrades and even their ..read more
