November 1:
One year after former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium 210 in London, his widow, Marina Litvinenko, has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of stalling Britain’s probe into her husband’s death and making suspect Andrei Lugovoi a “national hero,” Agence France-Presse reports. Meanwhile, Lugovoi, who is running in December’s State Duma elections as a candidate from Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party, told reporters in Moscow he had nothing do with the murder and accused Britain’s MI-6 foreign intelligence service of trying to “sideline an objective investigation.” Mrs. Litvinenko has dismissed claims by Lugovoi and Britain’s Daily Mail that her husband was an MI-6 agent.
November 4:
The Associated Press reports that about 5,000 nationalists waving banners reading “Russians, stand up,” “Russian order or war,” and "Tolerance is AIDS,” have turned out for the Russian March, held for the third year on National Unity Day, a holiday the Kremlin created in 2005 to replace the traditional November 7th celebration of the 1917 Bolshevik rise to power. Preston Wiginton, a white supremacist from Texas, addressed the nationalist rally. Pro-Kremlin youth groups and the liberal “Yabloko” party also held rallies, in part to counter the nationalist march. Thousands of pro-Kremlin youth activists marched through central Moscow and gathered near Red Square to sew together a “blanket of peace,” symbolizing harmony among Russia’s numerous ethnic groups.
Meanwhile, President Putin, who celebrated National Unity Day by laying flowers at the monument to Moscow’s 17th century liberators, told the military cadets and pro-Kremlin youth group members who accompanied him: “Some believe that we are too lucky to possess so much natural wealth, which they say must be divided. These people have lost their mind.”
Russian Air Force spokesman Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky has categorically denied claims that Russia aircraft violated Georgian airspace, NEWSru.com reports. A spokesman of the Georgian Defense Ministry’s press service said earlier today that three Su-24 attack aircraft penetrated 3-4 kilometers into Georgian territory.
November 6:
The New Times reports that the state-owned VTsIOM polling agency is working totally under the control of the presidential administration. VTsIOM’s pollsters are “ready to interpret the figures the way the curators from the presidential administration demand, which on the threshold of the parliamentary and presidential elections acquires a particular value,” the weekly writes. “The reward for obedience – de facto privatization of a state institution, the chance to make budget money one’s own, evade taxes and move money offshore.”
November 7:
Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, Britain’s counterintelligence service, has said that Russian spies are still highly active in Britain, diverting the British intelligence community’s resources away from fighting terrorists, London’s Telegraph reports. ”This year, yet again, there have been high levels of covert activity by foreign intelligence organizations in our country,” he said. “Since the end of the Cold War we have seen no decrease in the numbers of undeclared Russian intelligence officers in the UK - at the Russian Embassy and associated organizations conducting covert activity in this country.”
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has charged that “high ranking official in Russian special services” are behind opposition demonstrations in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and said several Russian diplomats would be expelled from Georgia for engaging in “espionage,” the BBC reports. Russia’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the Georgian president’s accusations as a “politically irresponsible provocation” and vowed an “appropriate response.” Meanwhile, police used tear gas and water cannon against several thousand protesters in Tbilisi, where Saakashvili imposed a state of emergency. Saakashvili’s opponents, who accuse him of corruption and of not doing enough to tackle poverty, are demanding his resignation and fresh presidential elections.
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