Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1526

January 16:

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has called Russia’s behavior toward the British Council, which acts as the British Embassy’s cultural arm, “reprehensible” and “not worthy of a great country,” the Financial Times reports. “Russia’s actions therefore raise serious questions about her observance of international law, as well as about the standards of behavior she is prepared to adopt towards her own citizens,” Miliband added. The council has temporarily halted its work in Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg after the Federal Security Service (FSB) summoned Russian council staffers in those two cities for questioning. On January 15th, Stephen Kinnock, head of the British Council’s St. Petersburg operation, was detained by Russian police over a traffic violation.


January 17:

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev, has dismissed fears that the Kremlin will nationalize the country’s economy, Reuters reports. “We have come to create state corporations in some priority fields, but that doesn’t mean a change of course or the renunciation of a market economy, not in the least,” the first deputy prime minister told reporters in Chelyabinsk. “Desire by the state to grab everything for itself as a rule leads to a crash.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has said that Russia and Israel “have a common understanding that Iran should not have nuclear weapons” but called on Moscow to “demonstrate firmness” in relation to Iran’s nuclear program, Agence France-Presse reports. “We think this common understanding should be moved to the level of genuine action,” Livni told journalists after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Lavrov promised “firmness” against Iran but said there is “no rational alternative” to a diplomatic solution. Russian news agencies quoted Livni as warning that Russian deliveries of nuclear fuel to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, which started last month, may serve Iran’s “military goals.”


January 18:

Russia’s military announced plans to stage a parade of ballistic missiles, tanks and platoons of soldiers this May through Red Square, reviving, as the Washington Times notes, “yet another iconic image from Soviet days.” The display of military hardware, the first of its kind since 1990, will be held May 9th, the day Russians mark the victory over Germany in World War II, and could coincide with Dmitry Medvedev’s inauguration as Russia’s new president.

President Putin has endorsed a plan by a prominent Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, to set up a think tank with monitoring offices in New York and Paris to study the U.S. and French political systems and “recommend improvements,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Kucherena said the new think tank would provide “constructive” criticism, scrutinizing U.S. election laws, the state of human rights, race relations and the American response to terrorism - all of which, he said, raise troubling questions. “The U.S. election system is intriguing,” he said. “In a country with such a democratic history it’s interesting that the outcome is decided by the electoral college and not by the people.”


January 19:

NEWSru.com reports that 25 percent of respondents in a poll conducted by the independent Levada Center said they believe Russia’s special services were involved in the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, up from the 18 percent who gave that answer in a poll conducted year ago. Twenty-seven percent also said they believe Russia’s special services were involved in the radiation poisoning death of ex-Federal Security Service colonel Alexander Litvinenko – the same number as a year ago.

[Editor’s Note: Given the effect of Russia’s increasingly authoritarian political climate on pollsters and respondents alike, the results of public opinion surveys in Russia should be viewed with some caution.]