November 1:
No matter who becomes the next president of the United States, Washington is likely to continue to apply ever greater pressure on the Kremlin – but the reasons why may differ. That was the conclusion of Russian experts at an October 31st press conference on "Russia's Choice: Obama or McCain?" covered by the news website utro.ru. Obama, experts pointed out, is likely to focus more critically than the current U.S. administration on internal conditions within Russia, elevating the status of issues such as political pluralism and freedom of speech in the foreign policy discourse between the two countries. But if he is elected president, McCain could erect a "sanitary cordon" around Russia, and expand U.S. influence in the "post-Soviet space" – steps that participating experts, including International Institute for Political Expertise head Yevgeny Minchenko and Duma Deputy Andrei Kokoshin, see as potentially much more dangerous for Russia.
November 4:
Police in Moscow have clashed with ultranationalist protesters as part of demonstrations on Russia's National Unity day. According to the International Herald Tribune, some five hundred people were detained as part of the "unauthorized" protests, which were organized in part by the Russian Movement Against Illegal Immigration. The clashes come against a backdrop of rising xenophobic sentiment in Russia; the Moscow Human Rights Bureau reports that 113 people were killed and 340 wounded in xenophobic crimes during the first ten months of this year, a fifty percent increase over 2007 figures.
November 5:
Less than a day after the election of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has dramatically raised the stakes in the stand-off between Washington and Moscow over the emerging U.S. missile defense system in Europe, the Agence France Presse reports. "Iskander missile systems will be deployed in the Kaliningrad region to neutralise the missile defence system," Medvedev announced in his first ever State of the Nation address. "There will also be radio-electronic neutralisation of the new US missile defence installations from the Kaliningrad region," he added during his nationally televised remarks.
November 6:
Could Vladimir Putin return to the Russian presidency? Speculation over the possibility has abounded in the wake of current Russian president Dmitry Medvedev's State of the Nation address, in which the Russian head of state briefly discussed the possibility of altering Russia's constitution to extend presidential terms from four to six years. The New York Times reports that Medvedev's comments have sparked theories in the Russian press that Medvedev could be paving the way for Putin's return to the country's top political post. Medvedev was hand-picked by Putin “to carry out the necessary constitutional changes and unpopular reforms for Putin to then return to the Kremlin for longer,” the Russian newspaper Vedemosti has mused, adding that Medvedev may resign next year and call for new presidential elections.
A suspected suicide bombing has rocked the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz, the Agence France Presse reports. According to investigators, the blast took place aboard a minibus in a market in the North Ossetian city, and was perpetrated by a female suicide bomber. No group has yet claimed credit for the blast.