August 22:
After nearly twenty years of stalled negotiations, Russia became the 156th member of the World Trade Organization. Voice of America reports that with its entrance into the group, Russian leaders agreed to lower key tariffs, open trade in its 11 service-sectors, including its banking and insurance industries. The Russian Federation is one of the last major economies to join the organization, and will reportedly be joined by Vanuatu, which is set to become the 157th WTO member.
August 24:
President Putin blamed local officials for the recent outbreaks of violence by what he characterized as nationalists “taking advantage of democratic freedoms to gain influence in a country with a fragile mix of ethnic groups.” The skirmishes, he said, were “primarily the result of the inaction of law enforcement organs and irresponsibility of bureaucrats.” According to Reuters, the most recent skirmishes saw nationalist soccer fans in Moscow and St. Petersburg attack supporters of a team from the North Caucasus province of Dagestan. “We do not have the right to ignore any negative tendencies which arise in this sphere,” Putin concluded in his speech to the Council on Inter-Ethnic Relations. “It is important to confront their dangerous influence.”
August 27:
The environmental activist group Greenpeace is proving a roadblock in the Kremlin’s Arctic ambitions. Two separate incidents in the last week resulted in the organization’s members disrupting state-owned oil company Gazprom’s efforts in the region, first by climbing a floating oil rig in the Pechora Sea. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports the latest incident saw fourteen activists chain themselves to a ship carrying oil workers to the company’s first Arctic oil production base. The group is adamant that drilling in the Arctic could have “disastrous consequences” because of the region’s extreme conditions and the inability of current technology to handle a possible spill.
August 28:
On the same day that Russian President Putin called for an end to religious violence in Russia’s Muslim provinces, a woman suicide bomber killed a popular Sufi Muslim cleric and six of his followers. Like the deputy mufti assassinated in Tatarstan last month, Reuters reports that Said Atsayev was an opponent of militant Islam. The murder is the latest in a string of attacks among Russia’s Muslim followers. For his part, Putin called for unity among Russian citizens, warning that “Terrorists, bandits, whatever ideological slogans they use...want to achieve only one thing: to sow hatred and fear,” and vowing that “We will not allow anyone to tear our country apart by exploiting ethnic and religious differences.”
August 29:
For the first time, the Russian Parliament is set to expel one of its members for corruption. The legislator, however, is one of President Putin’s most vocal critics, and insists the move is a Kremlin plot. Gennady Gudkov, Bloomberg reports, is a former member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, and a current member of the opposition Fair Russia party. He is accused of setting up and running a business while serving in the Duma, a rule ignored by most Duma officials. Opposition members countered by releasing a list of 13 United Russia members who also allegedly ran private businesses while serving in the Duma. “It is clear that if Gudkov is stripped of his mandate, the same should happen to members of United Russia,” said the leader of the opposition party Yabloko. “Otherwise this is selective use of the law.” United Russia maintains that there is no illegal activity among its members.
August 30:
The dramatic rise in violence by extremist Muslims prompted several analysts to predict the spread of tensions across Russia’s southern regions. Seventy-eight people were killed in July in the North Caucasus, reports Voice of America; two-thirds of them were killed in Dagestan, which emerged as the center of unrest in the region after the separatist clashes in Chechnya in the late 2000s. “There is an increasing threat that we will really see a Muslim civil war,” warned Mark Galeotti, a Russian security specialist at New York University. “[N]ot just in Dagestan, but across the North Caucasus.” He noted that violence wins publicity for the cause of extremists, adding, “This acts as one of the ways for them to get their message out. Terrorism is, after all, almost always a communicative event.”