June 29:
Reuters’ Russian-language edition quotes Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as saying that in his capacity as leader of the Russian parliament’s dominant party, United Russia, he may continue to hold live televised call-in shows like those he conducted as president. “I think it’s possible to use the experience of direct television lines,” Putin told members of United Russia’s parliamentary faction. United Russia deputies, meanwhile, proposed creating a national network of special reception areas where people could go to appeal to Putin. Reuters noted that while Dmitry Medvedev replaced Putin as Russian president in May, Putin is demonstrating that he is seeking to retain control over the country’s political life.
A communications ministry official has said that Russia will be able to create its first Internet addresses using the Cyrillic alphabet next year. Vladimir Vassiliev told Interfax that Russia, which currently uses two top-level domain names, .ru and .su, will be able to create a third in Cyrillic by the second quarter of 2009. President Dmitry Medvedev, an Internet enthusiast, said earlier this month that it is very important for Russia to have domain names in Cyrillic, mainly to reinforce the Russian language’s role in the world. According to the communications ministry, Russia had 35 million Internet users - about 24 percent of the population - at the end of last year and could have 46 million users by the end of 2008.
In the latest sign that violence in Russia’s restive North Caucasus is increasing, three police officers and three civilians have been killed in two separate clashes with rebels in Chechnya. Citing RIA Novosti, United Press International reports that in the first incident, a police officer and a civilian were killed when suspected militants opened fire on a police station in Chechnya’s Vedeno district. In a separate attack, another two police officers and two civilians were killed in an ambush in Chechnya’s Shatoi district.
July 1:
The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office has confirmed that new charges have been brought against ex-Yukos oil company head Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev, who are already serving eight-year prison terms on fraud and tax evasion charges. According to NEWSru.com, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are accused of stealing nearly 350,000 tons of oil from Yukos and its affiliates and of laundering 487 billion rubles ($20.7 billion) and $7.5 billion from oil sold between 1998 and 2004.
On June 30th, Reuters quoted Khodorkovsky’s legal team as saying that they believed the new charges were a recycled version of money laundering charges that prosecutors had been preparing to try him on for over a year. Khodorkovsky’s international lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, called the charges “absurd” and “entirely political.” Still, Bloomberg News quotes lawyers for Khodorkovsky as saying that the new charges carry a maximum sentence of 22 ½ years.
Russian prosecutors have charged a skinhead gang led by two teenagers with the murders of 20 people in a series of racist attacks in Moscow, the Guardian reports. According to the British newspaper, prosecutors said they had charged nine people aged between 17 and 22 with the murders and identified the ringleaders as Artur Ryno, an art student, and Pavel Skachevsky. Ryno, who was arrested after allegedly stabbing to death an Armenian businessman in April 2007, told police he had killed more than 30 people, adding that “the city needed to be cleaned” of foreigners who “oppressed Russians.” Another gang member was a 22-year-old woman who allegedly videotaped an attack on one of the victims - a student from Azerbaijan who was severely beaten but survived.