September 21:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has charged that U.S. meddling in Eastern Europe will curb the region’s independence and bring the same “heartburn” caused by the Soviet Union’s occupation during the Cold War, Bloomberg News reports. During a meeting with foreign academics and journalists on September 14th, a transcript of which was posted on Kremlin’s website on September 20th, Putin claimed that in some Eastern European countries, the U.S. ambassador “approves not only the candidate for the minister for defense, but also lower-level functionaries.” He did not name the countries.
September 24:
President Putin has approved a list of cabinet members picked by his new prime minister, Viktor Zubkov. According to NEWSru.com, only three ministers have lost their posts: Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref has been replaced by his first deputy, Elvira Nabiullina; Health Minister Mikhail Zurabov has been replaced by Tatyana Golikova, a Finance Ministry official and wife of Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko; and Regional Development Minister Vladimir Yakovlev has been replaced by Dmitry Kozak, presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District. Putin refused to accept the resignation of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, who is Zubkov’s son-in-law.
Putin also promoted Alexei Kudrin, who will be a deputy prime minister while remaining finance minister. Kudrin’s promotion, along with the firing of two other perceived free-market reformers, Gref and Zubkov, has made the cabinet reshuffle something of a Rorschach test for Western observers. Indeed, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper headlined its article on the changes, “Vladimir Putin purges cabinet of last reformers,” while Britain’s Financial Times headlined its article, “Reformers gain in Russia.” Meanwhile, the two men viewed as the frontrunners to succeed Putin as president, Sergei Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev, will keep their positions as first deputy prime ministers.
September 25:
Members of the pro-Kremlin youth group “Nashi” (Ours) have begun street patrols alongside police in Moscow to “keep order” ahead of parliamentary elections in December. According to the Times of London, organizers have made clear that their aim is to counter opponents of President Putin. Around 200 "Nashi" activists have undergone training and donned red armbands as druzhniki, the Soviet-era term for volunteer corps, and “Nashi” says it plans to have 5,000 members patrolling Moscow during the elections, with more in other cities. Ilya Yashin, head of the liberal “Yabloko” party’s youth wing, called this “very dangerous.” “When young, lively people are politically indoctrinated and given the backing of the state, they feel invincible,” he told the Moscow Times.
Police are investigating a possible murder attempt against Sergei Zlobin, Russia’s first Formula One driver, following an explosion in his car, the Moscow Times reports. Zlobin, a test driver for the Minardi Formula One racing team during the 2003 season, escaped the blast in the Russian capital with minor injuries. Earlier this month, a bomb exploded under the driver’s seat of a car in central Moscow, seriously wounding a local businessman. SMI.ru on September 11th quoted police as saying the earlier bombing was most likely “criminal” in nature.
September 26:
Prosecutors are accusing Andrei Piontkovsky, a political commentator and visiting scholar at Washington’s Hudson Institute, of inciting violence against Russians, Jews and Americans, and insulting and stirring feelings of inferiority in all three groups, the Washington Post reports. On September 25th, a Moscow district court began hearing arguments that two of Piontkovsky’s books are “extremist” under a law ostensibly designed to stamp out racism and xenophobia. “Stalin’s prosecutors were sophisticated intellectuals compared to these people,” Piontkovsky said outside the court. “And isn’t it also wonderful that the Russian government has begun to protect the feelings of Americans?”
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