December 27:
Vedomosti reports that 79 percent of respondents in a recent poll conducted by the independent Levada Center said they would vote for First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev if presidential elections were held today. That result is higher than the share of the vote President Vladimir Putin received in the 2004 election (71.31 percent). A poll earlier this month found that only 35 percent would vote for Medvedev, but his support began rising significantly after December 10th, when Putin publicly backed Medvedev’s candidacy.
[Editor’s Note: Given the effect of Russia’s increasingly authoritarian political climate on pollsters and respondents alike, the results of public opinion surveys in Russia should be viewed with some caution.]
A military court in Rostov-on-Don has convicted two Russian Interior Ministry officers of killing three Chechen construction workers in January 2003, the Associated Press reports. Lt. Yevgeny Khudyakov and Lt. Sergei Arakcheyev were sentenced to 17 and 15 years in prison, respectively. Khudyakov failed to show up for the verdict and the court said police would soon start a nationwide search for him. According to court papers, the two were manning a checkpoint outside Grozny, the Chechen capital, when they forced the victims out of their truck, ordered them to lie on the ground and shot them dead. The bodies were then doused in fuel and set on fire. Civilian juries twice acquitted Khudyakov and Arakcheyev, but the Supreme Court’s military branch annulled the verdicts and sent the case to the military court at the request of Chechnya’s Moscow-backed provincial government.
Rostekhnologii head Sergei Chemezov has said that Russia’s arms exports could reach $7.5 billion in 2008, RIA Novosti reports. Chemezov noted that Russia’s arms exports exceeded $7 billion this year, up from $5.3 billion in 2006.
[Editor’s Note: In November, President Putin signed legislation creating Rostekhnologii, a new state corporation that takes over the state arms trade monopoly Rosoboronexport and its assets, including VSMPO-Avisma, one of the world’s main producers of titanium, the AvtoVAZ car manufacturer, and several arms manufacturers.]
The Bush administration has expressed concern over Iran’s announcement that Russia will supply the Islamic Republic with units of the S-300 air missile defense system, Agence France-Presse reports. “We have ongoing concerns about the prospective sale of such weapons to Iran and other countries of concern,” said Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman. Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar announced that Russia will deliver the S-300 but said the delivery date would be revealed later. Moscow has not confirmed the sale.
December 28:
Economists polled by Reuters have said that Russia’s economy shows signs of overheating and may slow in 2008, with the gross domestic product growing by 6.7 percent in 2008, down from 7.6 percent this year. “The economy bears all the hallmarks of overheating, which brings the danger of a sharp slowdown in the future,” said Alexander Morozov, economist at HSBC. President Putin said on December 27th that lowering inflation should be “one of the main goals for 2008.” Russia’s inflation rate for 2007 is expected to reach 12 percent, four percentage points above the initial target.
December 30:
Interfax, citing the Kremlin press service, reports that President Putin has sent a “message of greetings” to President Bush stressing the importance of Russian-American cooperation. “I highly appraise your personal commitment to strengthening mutual understanding between Russia and the United States,” Putin wrote to Bush, adding that their meetings last year “confirmed yet again how important cooperation is in forging constructive approaches that meet the interests of our two countries and of the world community as a whole.”