Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1524

January 7:

Russia has denounced Georgia’s January 5th presidential election as fraudulent, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports. Preliminary results give President Mikheil Saakashvili just over 50 percent of the vote - the minimum required to win in the first round of voting. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observer mission called the election largely free and fair, despite violations, with its senior observer, U.S. Representative Alcee Hastings (Democrat, Florida), terming the vote a “triumphant step” toward democracy. Russia’s Foreign Ministry, however, has alleged a raft of violations, including “widespread use of administrative resources” and “blatant pressure on the opposition candidates,” and called Hastings’ comments “superficial.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said Poland wants talks with Germany and Russia over a Baltic Sea gas pipeline project steered by Gazprom, Agence France-Presse reports. The Nord Stream consortium, of which Gazprom controls 51-percent, agreed in 2005 to build a 740-mile undersea pipeline from Russia to Germany. “We need to understand why the Russians are holding out for this project under the Baltic, which is three times more expensive than a gas pipeline crossing Poland, and what the conditions would be for changing it,” Tusk told the Polish edition of Newsweek magazine. As AFP notes, Warsaw fears an underwater route will enable Gazprom to cut off supplies to Poland without hurting its Western European customers.


January 8:

According to grani.ru, a reporter for the newspaper Gazeta, Artyom Skoropadsky, has been beaten up in Moscow. Skoropadsky said he was attacked near his apartment building. “A young man called to me, and I turned around,” he told Ekho Moskvy radio. “He hit me several times and ran away without attempting to take my money or cell phone.” Skoropadsky has covered demonstrations by The Other Russia opposition coalition and the presidential campaign of former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, a Kremlin critic. A 17-year-old activist with The Other Russia, Maria Koleda, was severely beaten by unknown assailants in Moscow on January 5th, NEWSru.com reported.

The director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute, Lev Zelyony, has said Russia may be able to put a man on Mars in 15 years, izvestia.ru reports. “For Russia, it is a priority... and realistic to be first in landing a cosmonaut on Mars,” he said. “This problem is economically and technically solvable.” According to Zelyony, if preparations are started soon Russia could land cosmonauts on Mars during the period of 2023-2025.


January 9:

Russia’s largest automaker, AvtoVAZ, increased its sales in Russia to 663,500 cars last year, a 6.2 percent increase over 2006, Interfax reports. AvtoVAZ sold 62,800 cars in Russia in December 2007, a 26.4 percent increase compared with December 2006.


January 10:

The Russian government has approved a draft law to join the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and plans to ban all cigarette advertising within five years, Reuters reports, citing RIA Novosti. Russia is Europe’s biggest cigarette market and generates significant profits for tobacco companies that have struggled to break into China, the world’s biggest market. Russia trails China and the United States in annual sales but is larger than Japan, the fourth-largest world market.


January 11:

Russia’s newly-appointed ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has denounced the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which limits the deployment of heavy weaponry between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains, as “colonial.” “As far as the CFE Treaty is concerned, the question here is one of liberating this sphere, I would say, from colonial dependence in issues of security,” he told the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Russia last month suspended adherence to the CFE Treaty.