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Kremlin Follows the Money Trail
By Sean at 24 April, 2007, 5:04 pm
Fallout from the Dissenters’ March continues. First, the three MVD officers charged with ensuring “order” during the protest have all received promotions. Putin signed a decree yesterday that promoted Vyacheslav Kozlov to deputy chief of Moscow GUVD, Arkady Gostev as head of the Department for Securing Public Order at Moscow GUVD, and Vyacheslav [...]
Read More >>The Hammer and Sickle Stays
By Sean at 24 April, 2007, 4:40 pm
United Russia and Putin disagree? Sure it’s nothing major, but Putin shot down the proposal to eliminate the hammer and sickle from Russia’s WWII Victory Banner. As Kommersant reports:
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the leaders of veteran organizations in the Kremlin on Friday to discuss the implementation of his decree on [...]
Read More >>Putin the Traumatic
By Sean at 23 April, 2007, 6:16 pm
Are Putin and his cohort afflicted with trauma? This is the question Richard Lourie poses in an interesting column in the Moscow Times. Lourie rhetorically asks, why does an administration with 70 percent approval use such force against a small and politically insignificant opposition. Was it yet another sign of the “turn [...]
Read More >>Boris Yeltsin Dead at 76
By Sean at 23 April, 2007, 4:54 pm
Boris Nikolaievich Yelstin is dead. Many are sure to evaluate his legacy over the coming days and years. Almost universally hailed as “democratic” in the West, Yeltsin’s rule was a complicated mix of democracy, authoritarianism, oligarchy, theft, corruption, crime, and gangster capitalism. It was a time of hope and fear for the [...]
Read More >>Unfair Yet Balanced
By Sean at 21 April, 2007, 4:28 pm
The Russian elite’s control over the Russian media marches on. The NY Times is reporting that media executives who are Kremlin allies are instituting a “50 percent” rule on news reporting. The bosses at the Russian News Service have told their journalists that “at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be [...]
Read More >>David Johnson in the Moscow News
By Sean at 20 April, 2007, 3:01 pm
Since the merits of David Johnson and his, in my opinion, indispensable Johnson’s Russia List is such a hot topic of debate, I point readers to his interview in the Moscow News. It is rare that we actually hear what the man behind JRL actually thinks about Russia. Most of the time critics [...]
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