December 14:
The Moscow City Court is set to retry two Chechens accused of murdering U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov, Reuters reports. In May 2006, a jury acquitted the two men, Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev, of murdering Klebnikov, the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, who was shot dead near his Moscow office in 2004. Prosecutors said the trial was flawed and appealed for a retrial, but the retrial was suspended in March after Dukuzov disappeared. Dukuzov’s court-appointed lawyer, Alexander Chernov, said he has had no contact with his client and did not know if he would turn up.
December 15:
A member of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP), Artem Basyrov, is being held in a psychiatric hospital in the central Russian republic of Mari El, the Independent reports. According to the British newspaper, the 20-year-old activist was seized on November 23rd, the day before a protest organized by The Other Russia opposition coalition, which includes the NBP. Police claimed that Basyrov, who had also run for the local legislature as an Other Russia candidate, had assaulted a girl, and a local psychiatric board, agreeing with the police, said that he was suffering from a mental illness.
Russian armed forces chief-of-staff Gen.Yury Baluyevsky has warned that the launch of interceptor missiles the U.S. plans to deploy in Poland could trigger a Russian missile strike, Agence France Presse reports. “We are talking about the possibility of a retaliatory strike being triggered by the mistaken classification of an interceptor missile launch,” Baluyevsky told a press conference, adding that Russia’s defenses were controlled by an automatic system. “If we assume that Iran does try to launch a missile against the United States... then interceptor missiles from Poland would fly in the direction of Russia. I don’t mean to scare anyone but this isn’t a scare story... It’s a technical detail that could affect the military stability of the world.”
December 16:
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has criticized Russian armed forces chief-of-staff Gen. Yury Baluyevsky’s warning of possible retaliation if U.S. interceptor missiles planned for deployment in Poland are ever fired, Agence France Presse reports. “This kind of declaration is unacceptable,” Tusk told Poland’s private TVN television channel, adding that “no declaration of this kind will influence Polish-American negotiations” on U.S. plans to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland. On December 15th, Czech foreign ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalova told the CTK news agency Baluyevsky’s comments were “unacceptable, even unimaginable in the democratic world.”
December 17:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s invitation to serve as prime minister if Medvedev wins Russia’s presidential election next March 2nd, MIGnews.com reports. “If the citizens of Russia express confidence in Dmitry Medvedev and elect him their new president, I am ready to continue our joint work as prime minister without changing the distribution of powers” between the president and prime minister, Putin told a United Russia party congress in Moscow.
December 19:
Time magazine has named Vladimir Putin its “Person of the Year,” the Associated Press reports. Time managing editor Richard Stengel cited the Russian president’s “extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability.” The magazine noted that “Person of the Year” is not an honor or endorsement but recognition of leadership that shapes the world. “He’s the new czar of Russia and he’s dangerous in the sense that he doesn’t care about civil liberties, he doesn’t care about free speech,” said Stengel. But Time said that in prizing stability over freedom, Putin has made Russia powerful again and beholden to no nation.
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