Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1500

September 26:

Two Russian human rights groups have accused Russian law enforcement agencies of hunting down and illegally repatriating Uzbek and Chinese political refugees. According to Reuters, Memorial and the Civic Assistance Committee said in a report that the Federal Security Service (FSB) is using the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to create a unified search list for treaty-member police agencies. “In the last two years, religious and political refugees from Uzbekistan living peaceably on Russian territory for 8 to 10 years have been actively hunted and sent back,” said Elena Ryabinina, Memorial’s Central Asia refugee aid director. She also said Russian authorities have begun extraditing members of China’s “Falun Gong” as part of the single-search list for SCO member states.

Transparency International has ranked Russia 143rd on its annual corruption perceptions index, down from 121st place last year, NEWSru.com reports. Russia tied with Gambia, Indonesia and Togo in terms of its perceived level of corruption. Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar and Somalia were deemed the world’s most corrupt countries (sharing 179th place), just ahead of Iraq (178th), Haiti (177th) and Uzbekistan (175th). Denmark, Finland and New Zealand were deemed the cleanest (tied for first place), just ahead of Singapore and Sweden (tied for fourth place).

Meanwhile, a newly released World Bank survey has found that the flood of petrodollars into Russia’s economy is stifling reforms, with Russia falling behind China in terms of the ease of doing business. According to the Moscow Times, the survey ranked Russia 106th out of 178 countries for ease of doing business. Russia dropped 10 places from 2006, while China rose 10 places to 83.


September 27:

The commander of Russia’s space troops, Col.-Gen. Vladimir Popovkin, has said that Russia will take “appropriate measures” if weapons are deployed in space, RIA Novosti reports. “If any country deploys weapons in space, then the laws of armed warfare are such that retaliatory weapons will appear,” he told reporters in Moscow. Russia and China, he said, have drafted a declaration on the non-deployment of weapons in space and sent it to the UN. “It is necessary to establish the rules of the game in space,” he said, adding that deploying weapons in space could have unpredictable consequences, including “a sizable war.” Popovkin also said that Russia has an “uninterrupted” missile attack warning system that runs along its entire perimeter.

Georgian officials have refused to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the United Nations over a September 20th clash between Georgian security forces and Russian troops in Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia in which two Russian officers were killed, Moscow News reports. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has accused Russia of conducting a “law enforcement operation” on Georgian territory. “One has to wonder - what was a vice-colonel of the Russian military doing in the Georgian forests, organizing and leading a group of armed insurgents on a mission of terror?” Reuters quoted Saakashvili as saying during a UN General Assembly session on September 26th.


September 28:

Vladimir Gromov, deputy forensic chief in the Sverdlovsk region, has said there is a “high degree of probability” that bones found recently near the Russian city of Yekaterinburg are those a daughter and son of Czar Nicholas II – the Crown Prince Alexei and Princess Maria. According to the Associated Press, the bones were found by archaeologists in a burned field near Yekaterinburg, where Czar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children were held prisoner by the Bolsheviks and then shot in 1918. On September 26th, First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman ruled that members of Russia’s last czar should not be considered victims of political repression.