Daily Archives: December 7, 2006

Duat, who runs Ufa Blog (which seems to have mysteriously disappeared), sent me an email last week with the story about the how the murderers of Aleksandr Riukhin, an anti-fascist activist who was murdered in Moscow earlier this year, were convicted of “hooliganism.”

On 16 April, Riukhin and a friend, one T., were leaving an anti-fascist concert, when six skinheads attacked them near the Domodedovo metro. Riukhin died from several stabs to the chest and head, while T. received wounds to the legs and arms. The police arrested three of the skins in the summer, while the others became the subjects of an “international search.” It is suspected that the three fled to Kiev by train. According to the case, which was elaborated in a Live Journal post, the investigator “decided to ignore the majority of facts that confirm intentional character ..read more

Yegor Gaidar was released from a Moscow hospital late Monday. Doctors are left baffled as to what caused his sudden illness on 24 November. But they concluded that Gaidar’s illness was the “effect of some toxic factor” but refrained from calling it poisoning. The reason of such undecided attitude of medical authority was failure to determine the nature of the substance,” reports Kommersant.

There has been much speculation over whether Gaidar was indeed poisoned or not. I’ve shared much of it, figuring that his illness was too coincidental and the fact that much of the media was at pains to connect Gaidar’s illness to Litvinenko’s raised too many red flags. This is still happening by the way. Every article about Gaidar mentions Litvinenko and the Kremlin’s possible involvement in both. I think that Russia Blog asks a pertinent question in ..read more