October 9:
Jailed Yukos oil company founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent into solitary confinement for 12 days after giving a written interview to the Russian edition of Esquire magazine, Sky News reports. Lawyers for Khodorkovsky, who is serving a prison term in Siberia’s Chita region on charges of tax evasion and fraud, said his jailers accused him of sending and receiving letters in violation of regulations. The lawyers said in a statement posted on the Khodorkovsky.ru website that Khodorkovsky neither wrote nor received “illegal letters” and has again become a victim of “blatant illegal acts” by Chita prison authorities.
October 10:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said that President Dmitry Medvedev will pay an official visit to Venezuela in late November, RIA Novosti reports. “Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will visit Venezuela right after regional and municipal elections slated for November 23rd and it will be a great honor to receive him,” he said. Chavez, who visited Russia in late September and met with Medvedev, said Medvedev’s visit will focus on important bilateral issues, including plans for the formation of a Venezuelan-Russian bank and an international oil bank.
With the global financial crisis raising fears over Russia’s banking system, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced bank deposit guarantees will be extended to 100 percent of the first 700,000 rubles ($26,760), NEWSru.com reports. According to RIA Novosti, Putin also said that the government will allocate up to 175 billion rubles ($6.7 billion) to buy up Russian stocks before the end of the year and a similar amount to purchase domestic stocks next year. Russia’s stock market has lost $615 billion in value since May.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has said that Russia has not fully complied with the terms of a ceasefire in Georgia, Reuters reports. Moscow pulled troops out of “buffer zones” around the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia before the October 10th deadline stipulated in the French-brokered ceasefire. However, Georgia charges that Moscow has not fully complied because Russian soldiers remain in the two separatist regions. Asked in the Georgian town of Gori, near South Ossetia, if Russia had honored the ceasefire deal, Kouchner told reporters: “I think so, but partly... This is not perfect. It’s just the beginning. This is not the end.”
Meanwhile, a Reuters correspondent in South Ossetia reports that Russian troops near the village of Java have built a garrison of brick and concrete, signaling that Russia “has no intention of leaving here any time soon.”
October 12:
President Dmitry Medvedev has observed a test launch of a Topol intercontinental ballistic missile in northern Russia, UPI reports. Citing RIA Novosti, the news agency reports that Medvedev earlier observed Russia’s northern fleet conduct military exercises in the Barents Sea, including a test of the Sineva ballistic missile that flew a record 7,170 miles.
October 13:
State Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Konstantin Kosachyov has said that while the Georgia conflict has reduced hopes that a Barack Obama presidency could help mend U.S.-Russian ties, the Democratic candidate would still be a better partner for Moscow than his Republican rival, John McCain. Kosachyov told the Moscow Times that both men had taken “a very hard stance” on the Georgia conflict, referring to the recent presidential debate in which Obama said Moscow had engaged in “evil” behavior in the conflict and McCain said Russia was “maybe” an evil empire. But Kosachyov said Obama, unlike McCain, is free of a Cold War mindset and less committed to a missile defense system in Eastern Europe and thus is Russia’s preferred candidate.