March 24:
President Vladimir Putin has asked Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to support Russian energy investment while the head of Russian oil major Lukoil, Vagit Alekperov, held talks in Baghdad to develop Iraq’s West Qurna-2 oil field, Bloomberg News reports. “Our companies are ready to increase their contribution to the revival and modernization of Iraq’s infrastructure, especially in the energy and oil sectors,” Putin said in a letter to the Iraqi prime minister, specifically citing West Qurna-2 and the reconstruction of a pipeline linking Kirkuk in northern Iraq with the Syrian port of Banias.
According to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, opposition to Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov is growing within the military. The newspaper reports that reforms launched by Serdyukov, including the privatization of military installations and a “significant reduction” in the size of the Defense Ministry’s central apparatus and other ministry structures, triggered the opposition. “Thus far, the form of the protest is quiet: many officers and generals plan to write or have already submitted requests for transfer to the reserves,” the newspaper writes, claiming that Yury Baluyevsky, chief of the General Staff, is among them.
President Vladimir Putin has ordered humanitarian aid to be sent to Kosovo’s ethnic Serb enclaves but said it should be done “without political coloration” and “without regard to nationality,” Polit.ru reports. According to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Serbia’s government asked Moscow for the aid, citing a deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Kosovo’s Serb-populated areas.
In an interview with the Financial Times, President-elect Dmitry Medvedev has discussed his partnership with Vladimir Putin, who has agreed to serve as his prime minister. Asked who will “have the last word,” Medvedev said that according to Russia’s constitution, the president “sets out the main directions of domestic and foreign policy,” is the commander in chief, “guarantor of rights and freedoms of Russian citizens” and “makes key decisions on forming the executive,” while the government, led by the prime minister, “implements all economic activities, adopting the most important decisions in the economy.” Russia, he said, is “a presidential republic with a strong executive authority.”
March 25:
According to the Associated Press, Russian authorities have reopened an investigation into the death of Yury Shchekochikhin, the State Duma deputy and Novaya Gazeta deputy editor who died in 2003 after a brief, mysterious ailment that caused him to lose his hair and suffer severe skin problems. Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin reversed a Moscow district investigator’s decision to shelve an inquiry into the death. While a forensic examination attributed the immediate cause of Shchekochikhin’s death to an allergic reaction to medication and food additives, friends and associates have said they suspect he was poisoned, possibly by radiation.
[Editor’s Note: As AP notes, Shchekochikhin was a member of an independent commission investigating allegations that the Federal Security Service (FSB) was behind the 1999 apartment building bombings that served as a catalyst for Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, to lead Russia into a new war against Chechen rebels. Shchekochikhin also probed the Tri Kita case, involving alleged money laundering by senior FSB officials.]
March 26:
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has said that the G-8 should be “a club of leading market democracies” and thus include Brazil and India but exclude Russia. “Rather than tolerate Russia’s nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization’s doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom,” the presidential candidate said in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, according to a transcript.