Monthly Archives: April 2009

Anti-racist activists finally have a reason to mildly celebrate.  Today, Russian xenophobe Aleksandr Belov was sentenced to six months in a penal colony for violating Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Inciting hate and enmity as well as the debasement of human dignity”). The case stems from the Russian March in fall 2007 where Belov goaded protesters “to chant anti-Semitic and anti-government slogans.”

People were wondering whether Belov would serve any time at all. The authorities were apparently afraid that jail time would turn Belov into a martyr.

Belov’s sentencing also led to his resignation as leader of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), Russia’s largest ultranationalist movement.  According to Belov, he was forced to resign because  if he was convicted while serving as DPNI’s leader, the organization would have been banned as extremist.  “I do not want to let my brothers-in-arms down. I’m sure that they will never denounce me. ..read more

The results of the mayoral election in Sochi were as expected.  United Russia’s candidate Anatoly Pakhomov won.  No repeat of  the Murmansk mayoral contest allowed. The losers, Solidarity’s Boris Nemtsov and the Communist Party candidate Yuri Dzaganiya, have already charged massive fraud, dirty campaign tricks, and use of a variety “administrative resources” to hoist Pakhomov to victory.  Both candidates were systematically barred from local television, their billboards removed, and campaign literature confiscated.  Local Sochi tv even smeared poor Nemtsov with a 20 minute film claiming he was a South Korean spy. And what dastardly plot was he hatching for the east Asian nation? Conspiring to move the Olympics to Seoul.  As if.

Early voting served as the perfect opportunity for stuffing the box in favor of Pakhmonov. And if that wasn’t enough to tip the balance, then mobile poll buses were dispatched to the Abkhaz border.  Last week, Sochi’s ..read more

In the last few weeks, Georgia has sprung back into the news.  Protesters are calling for Saakashvili to resign as more and more people have become disillusioned with the six year old Rose Revolution. Russia is threatening to pull out of a NATO meeting to protest military training exercises outside of Tbilisi, while some are speculating that Russia’s own military exercises near South Ossetia might signal that it’s ready to occupy the Caucasian country if political tensions escalate or if they’re provoked.

Georgian officials are claiming to have prevented one possible provocation this past week when they stopped 20 Nashi activists from “provoking incidents” at the Georgian-South Ossetian demarcation line.  The Georgian MVD detained Aleksander Kuznetsov, a Nashi commissar who claimed during his recorded interrogation that he was seeking to get to Tbilisi to hold a Nashi action to support of the opposition. Keznetsov’s detention has infuriated Russian officials.  Andrei Nesterenko, ..read more

Yesterday, President Dmitry Medvedev declared the Chechen War to be officially over, bringing end to the ten year Second Chechen War. As many point out open conflict has all but ceased since 2007, as Moscow’s Chechenization policy placed the republic in the hands of its proxy Ramzan Kadyrov, who gradually replaced Russian security operations with his own forces.

Still a lot of questions remain.  Many wonder what the ending of the so-called “zone of counter terrorist operations” will exactly mean on the ground.  Will it mean an end to the all the pretexts of the operations: restricted civilian movement, the limitations on journalists and human rights workers, the restrictions on Internet and cell phone use by the secret services, and most importantly the arbitrary “anti-terrorist” raids of households?  One wonders if Russia’s final relinquishing of “anti-terror” operations to Kadyrov means exchanging one form of state terror for another.  As Dmitry Babich ..read more

I don’t claim much knowledge on the intricacies of the explosive situation in Moldova.  For anyone who has been asleep the last few days, Moldovan students are attempting their own “colored revolution.”  On Tuesday, over 10,000 students ransacked the Moldovan Parliament demanding new elections after a Communist Party electoral victory on Sunday.  The Communists won around 50 percent of the electoral, beating out their fractious liberal rivals, and claimed a super majority of 60 seats in Moldova’s 101 seat parliament. The students claim mass vote falsification. But unlike the innocuous colors of orange, tulip, and rose, the Moldovan youth appears to favor blood red.

Anyone interested in unfolding events from a variety of sources should check out Scraps of Moscow.  Lyndon’s knowledge of Moldova is impeccable.

For an breakdown of why the Communists won, see Vladimir Socor’s “Ten Reasons Why the Communist Party Won Moldova’s Elections Again” from the Eurasian Daily Monitor. ..read more