February 18:
Dmitry Medvedev has indicated that he will be running the country in the likely event he is elected president on March 2nd, and not Vladimir Putin, who has agreed to serve as Medvedev’s prime minister. “Our country was and remains a presidential republic,” Medvedev told Itogi magazine. Asked where the “center of power” will be with the president in the Kremlin and the “national leader” in the Russian White House, where the prime minister’s offices are located, Medvedev answered: “There cannot be two, or three or five (power) centers. Russia is governed by the president, and under the constitution there can be only one president.”
In the same interview, Medvedev echoed charges that the British Council, the cultural body funded by the British government, has been involved in spying in Russia. “After all, it’s known that structures financed by the state like the British Council carry out, along with socially enlightening functions, a mass of other activities that are not so widely advertised,” Medvedev told Itogi. “Among other things, they are involved in gathering information and conducting intelligence activity.” The British Council suspended operations at its offices in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg last month after Russian authorities claimed they were operating illegally and ordered them closed.
February 19:
President Vladimir Putin and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika have met in Moscow amid a drive to create an OPEC-like gas cartel, Agence France-Presse reports. “It’s extremely important that we keep in touch on energy issues, particularly since Algeria this year is chairing OPEC,” Putin told Bouteflika. According to official European Union data, Russia in 2005 accounted for 45.1 percent of the EU’s gas imports and Algeria 20.6 percent. Meanwhile, Russian newspapers report that Russian-Algerian military ties have been clouded after Algeria said it wanted to return 15 MiG-29 fighter jets bought from Russia because of their low quality.
February 20:
A Moscow court has found Yevgeny Adamov, Russia’s former nuclear energy minister who has been charged in the United States with stealing $9 million in U.S. aid intended to improve Russia’s nuclear security, guilty of embezzlement and abuse of office, the New York Times reports. Adamov and two other former Russian nuclear energy officials were accused of running an organized crime ring that stole from an American and Russian venture. The Kremlin had said that because Adamov is a Russian citizen and a former senior Russian official, Russia’s case against him takes precedence over the U.S. case. Russia has also accused the U.S. of trying to use its case to press Adamov into revealing nuclear secrets – a charge the U.S. denies.
An Uzbek man has been stabbed to death in southwestern Moscow, the fourth fatal attack on dark-skinned people in the Russian capital in the past five days, the Moscow Times reports. A law-enforcement source told Interfax that the 26-year-old victim worked as a street sweeper and a gypsy-cab driver and was the father of small children.
February 22:
President Vladimir Putin has rebuked Western countries for recognizing Kosovo’s independence, the Associated Press reports. “The Kosovo precedent is a terrifying precedent,” he told a meeting of presidents from the Commonwealth of Independent States. “It in essence is breaking open the entire system of international relations that have prevailed not just for decades but for centuries. And it without a doubt will bring on itself an entire chain of unforeseen consequences.” Governments that have recognized Kosovo “are miscalculating what they are doing,” Putin said, adding that “this is a stick with two ends and that other end will come back to knock them on the head someday.”