July 4:
Britain has granted political asylum to Andrei Sidelnikov, a Russian dissident who met former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Alexander Litvinenko in a cafe two days before he was poisoned in London. The Guardian reports that Sidelnikov, who heads the small "Pora" opposition movement and is the latest high-profile Kremlin opponent to receive asylum in Britain, had told officials his life would be in danger if he remained in Russia. “I’m feeling very good,” he told the British newspaper. “This means that the British government understands that there are no freedoms and rights in Russia. I’m very grateful. A lot of people in Russia are in danger.”
Meanwhile, Russia’s ambassador to Britain, Yury Fedotov, criticized London’s willingness to grant asylum to Russian government critics, who also include the former oligarch Boris Berezovsky and the Chechen separatist leader Akhmad Zakeyev. Fedotov said Russian prosecutors have sent 20 requests asking for their extradition. “Unfortunately we have not received a reasonable reply from London,” he told Interfax. “Naturally, this is not having a positive effect on the general atmosphere of Russian-British relations.”
July 5:
BP has sued its Russian partners in the TNK-BP joint venture to recover a $370 million debt, the Wall Street Journal reports. The debt stems from back-tax claims predating the creation of TNK-BP against one of the companies that the Russian partners put into TNK-BP when it was set up in 2003. A representative of the Russian shareholders said they view the amount BP is claiming as “inflated” and will fight the suit. This latest dispute comes amid conflict in which BP has accused its Russian partners of trying to take over TNK-BP by stealth while the Russians have accused BP of mismanagement. The Daily Telegraph reported on July 3rd that BP executives working at TNK-BP had already begun leaving the country after dozens of staff were denied work permits.
July 6:
President Dmitry Medvedev has held a meeting with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, Regions.ru reports. The two leaders discussed, among other things, cooperation in the fuel-energy and nuclear energy sectors, as well as in space exploration. Before arriving in Kazakhstan, Medvedev visited two other major Caspian Basin energy producers, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. His next stop is Toyako, Japan, where he will attend the G8 summit.
Presidents George W. Bush and Dmitry Medvedev have held their first face-to-face meeting since Medvedev took the reins from Vladimir Putin in May, Agence France-Presse reports. Following the meeting, which took place on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Toyako, Japan, Medvedev highlighted U.S.-Russian cooperation in diplomatic efforts to resolve nuclear disputes with Iran and North Korea, but added that there are “topics on which we diverge, such as the missile shield and European matters.” Still, he said there are “possibilities for agreement” on those issues. Bush, for his part, said that while there are “some areas of disagreement,” there are also “areas where I know we can work together for the common good.” Bush added that he found Medvedev to be “a smart guy who understood the issues very well.”
July 7:
A court in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic located nearly a thousand miles north of Moscow, has given a one-year suspended prison sentence to Savva Terentyev, a local musician and blogger who wrote in an Internet posting last year that police are “scum” who should be burned alive. According to Gazeta.ru, prosecutors charged Terentyev with inciting hatred against a social group. Terentyev, meanwhile, told Ekho Moskvy radio that he is innocent of the charges and will appeal the verdict.