January 29:
Mikhail Gorbachev has said that “something is wrong” with Russia’s elections and that its electoral system “needs a major adjustment,” the New York Times reports. The last Soviet leader told Interfax that the result of the upcoming Russian presidential election was “predictable from the outset” and “predetermined by the enormous role that Vladimir Putin played.” Implicitly criticizing Kremlin-led reforms that ended direct popular elections for the country’s governors, Gorbachev also said “the issue concerning governors’ elections should also be raised so that people are able to take a more active part in social and political life.”
January 30:
President Putin has ordered the Federal Security Service (FSB) “to strengthen work for the timely receipt of information about attempts to interfere in our internal affairs,” adding that this is “especially important taking the presidential elections into account,” NEWSru.com reports. “Our country is a sovereign state and we will not permit the course of the election campaign to be adjusted by anyone from the outside,” Putin said.
Police investigators have charged Semyon Mogilevich, the reputed international crime boss who was living freely near Moscow until his January 23rd arrest, with tax evasion, the Associated Press reports. According to AP, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has said she suspects Mogilevich was linked to RosUkrEnergo, the Swiss-registered company that is owned jointly by Gazprom and two Ukrainian businessmen and has a monopoly on gas sales to Ukraine and supplies gas to Europe.
The Associated Press quotes Vladimir Milov, president of the Institute of Energy Policy, as saying that Mogilevich was “most likely” arrested to protect President Putin’s chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev, who chairs the board of Gazprom, the state gas monopoly, by removing “an undesirable witness to all the various suspicious operations connected to RosUkrEnergo.”
January 31:
According to the Telegraph, Vladimir Putin, who has agreed to serve as prime minister under his likely presidential successor Dmitry Medvedev, may step down as prime minister to head Gazprom. “The power of the prime minister is limited,” the British newspaper quotes political analyst Leonid Radzikhovsky as saying. “The special services are not subordinate to the prime minister, neither is TV. Common sense suggests that it would be beneficial for Putin to leave the post of prime-minister and head Gazprom.”
Exposing a “hidden battle” inside Russia’s ruling elite, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has publicly called for a change in foreign policy, Britain’s Independent reports. “In the nearest future we need to change our foreign policy goals to guarantee stable investment,” Kudrin told a Moscow investment forum. Anatoly Chubais, who heads United Energy Systems, the state electricity monopoly, has concurred. “We really need to think about how much our foreign policy costs our economy,” Chubais said, adding that aggressive behavior in foreign policy is scaring off foreign investment. According to the Independent, Kudrin is seen as a liberal and an ally of Putin’s anointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev.
February 1:
Russia’s likely next leader “may well soften Moscow’s bare-knuckle approach to international relations,” Agence France-Presse reports. In his first major speech as a presidential candidate on January 22nd, Dmitry Medvedev said: “Why do they fear us? The answer in my opinion is banal: in part it is simply not clear to them where Russia is going. All these fears persist today and we must continue to explain our plans openly and clearly.” Still, Viktor Kremenyuk of the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow said that while Medvedev is “a manager, not a security services man,” Russia’s “top managers learn to defend their interests and they’re ready to do that by any means, even if this means harming relations with the West.”