January 19:
The New Times magazine has vowed to sue any Russian official who takes responsibility for preventing its correspondent Natalya Morar from entering Russia, Kommersant reports. Morar, a Moldovan citizen, was denied entry to Russia last month by border guards at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, who said they were acting on the basis of a decision taken by the central apparatus of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Before joining The New Times as a correspondent, Morar was co-chair of the “Da!” opposition youth group and press secretary for The Other Russia opposition coalition.According to Kommersant, The New Times believes that the Directorate of Counterintelligence Support to the Financial System (Directorate K) of the FSB’s Economic Security Service may have been involved in barring Morar from Russia, given that that service’s chief, Alexander Bortnikov, figured in an investigative piece she wrote about an alleged scheme by Russian officials to transfer money to the West via a Russian bank, Diskont, and Austria’s Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich.
Russian armed forces chief-of-staff Gen. Yury Baluyevsky has said that Russia will, if necessary, use nuclear weapons for preventive strikes, NEWSru.com reports. “We don’t plan to attack anyone, but we believe it is necessary for all of our partners to know that the armed forces will be employed, including preventively and with the use of nuclear weapons, to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and its allies in cases stipulated in the Russian Federation’s doctrinal documents,” Baluyevsky told a conference in Moscow.
January 21:
According to the income and property declaration Dmitry Medvedev submitted to the Central Election Commission, Russia’s likely next president does not have a car of his own, Reuters reports. Medvedev received about $71,000 in annual pay over the past four years, but the only car in his household is a 1999 Volkswagen Golf car owned by his wife, Svetlana. Medvedev also declared a 367.8 square meter (3,959 square foot) apartment in Moscow and a 4,700 square meter plot of land outside Moscow. He also has savings of 2.74 million rubles ($111,200), while his wife has only one bank account, with a balance of 380.2 rubles (around $15). Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister, is also chairman of Gazprom, which earned around $13 billion in profits in 2006.
January 22:
Dmitry Medvedev has put forward what are likely to be the themes of his presidential election campaign in an address to the All-Russian Civic Forum, a gathering of civil society groups and non-governmental organizations held in Moscow under the auspices of the Kremlin-appointed Public Chamber. According to transcript of the speech posted on the website of the president’s council for priority national projects, Medvedev said that an “open civic dialogue is extremely important for our society” and that Russia must have “influential and independent mass media.” He also condemned “legal nihilism” in Russia, including “corruption in the power bodies,” which, he said, exists on a “huge scale,” adding that the fight against corruption must become a “national program.”
January 23:
Four days after signing a major pipeline deal with Bulgaria, the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom has agreed to buy a 51 percent stake in NIS, the Serbian state-owned oil company, for $600 million, the New York Times reports. Gazprom will also put about $725 million toward modernizing Serbia’s energy infrastructure. The deal, which is yet another blow to the European Union’s ambitions to build its own 2,000-mile pipeline to bring gas to Europe from Iran and Azerbaijan via Turkey, will also allow Moscow to send more natural gas to Europe through its South Stream pipeline.