February 26:
The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office has filed criminal charges against veteran human rights campaigner Lev Ponomarev for slandering Federal Prison Service chief Yury Kalinin, Kommersant reports. The charges stem from an interview Ponomarev gave to the Regnum news agency in November 2006 in which he called Kalinin the author of a “sadistic system.” Kommersant notes that Kalinin already sued Ponomarev and that a Moscow court in April 2007 ordered Ponomarev and Regnum to issue a retraction.
The slander charges against Lev Ponomarev may stem from his recent visit to the United States to highlight human rights abuses in Russia. He was cited on February 12th by Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, who wrote that there are now about 50 “pytochnye kolonii,” or torture colonies, among the roughly 700 colonies that house the bulk of Russia’s convict population, and that these facilities are fast approaching the Soviet Gulag “in terms of sheer cruelty.”
February 27:
Natalya Morar, a Moldovan journalist who works for the independent Russian magazine New Times, has been denied entry into Russia on the grounds she is a threat to national security. The BBC reports that Morar, who has lived in Moscow for six years and was first refused entry to Russia last December, was on this occasion involved in a stand-off at a Moscow airport but subsequently agreed to return to Moldova. Morar has written extensively about high-level corruption, including a two-part series in May 2007 about a money-laundering operation allegedly involving Austria’s Raiffeisen Zentralbank (RZB), Russia’s Diskont Bank, Kremlin-controlled oil companies and the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Russia’s likely next president, Dmitry Medvedev, has appealed directly to voters to back him in the March 2nd election, Reuters reports. “We have many problems that have not been resolved,” he said in an address broadcast on state television. “The country must move forward. For that we need political stability, for that we need every day to improve peoples’ lives, to develop the economy, reliably protect Russia’s sovereignty and defend the rights of our citizens. We know how to make the country a success. We can do that. And I am sure that is how it will be.”
February 29:
The Guardian reports that the Kremlin is planning to falsify the results of the March 2nd presidential election. While local officials have been told they need to secure a voter turnout of 68 percent to 70 percent, with around 72 percent casting votes for Dmitry Medvedev, independent analysts believe the real turnout will only be between 25 percent and 50 percent. Citing “diplomats and other independent sources,” the British newspaper reports that the Kremlin is planning to “bridge the gap” using “widespread fraud,” with local election officials and regional officials “preparing to stuff ballot boxes once the polls have closed with unused ballots” and also to give Russia’s Central Election Commission “inflated tallies.”
“Additionally, public sector workers including teachers, students, and doctors have been told to vote on Sunday or risk losing their jobs or university places,” the Guardian writes. “Parents have even been warned at parents’ meetings that if they fail to turn up their children might suffer at school.” On February 26th, Amnesty International released a report detailing what it called “a clampdown on the freedoms of assembly and expression in the run-up to parliamentary and presidential elections in the Russian Federation.”
March 2:
Russians have gone to the polls to elect a new president. According to NEWSru.com, preliminary results show Dmitry Medvedev with 69.54 percent of the vote, obviating the need for a runoff, and a voter turnout of 67.7 percent.
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