March 28:
Alexander Bastrykin, who is in charge of the Investigative Committee, the autonomous agency nominally subordinated to the Prosecutor General’s Office, has removed the head of his main investigative directorate, Dmitry Dovgy. NEWSru.com notes that Dovgy was seen as Bastrykin’s “right hand” and headed controversial criminal cases targeting Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak and Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) deputy head Lt.-Gen. Alexander Bulbov.
[Editor's Note: The arrests of Storchak and Bulbov were widely viewed as part of an ongoing Kremlin power struggle between “hardliners” who reportedly wanted President Vladimir Putin to remain in office for a third term and oppose the idea of First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as Putin’s successor, and “liberals” who reportedly back Medvedev. Bastrykin, deputy Kremlin chief of staff Igor Sechin and Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Nikolai Patrushev are said to be among the “hardliners,” while Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, FSKN chief Viktor Cherkesov and Prosecutor General Yury Chaika reportedly back Medvedev and are seen as relative “liberals.”]
March 29:
According to the Daily Telegraph, Russia has claimed it forced Britain into “a humiliating climb-down” following the announcement that Britain’s ambassador to Russia, Sir Anthony Brenton, is retiring. Interfax quoted a Russian government source as saying that Brenton’s departure shows London has capitulated in the dispute over the death in London of dissident Russian security service officer Alexander Litvinenko and abandoned hopes of extraditing Andrei Lugovoi, the Russian MP named by Scotland Yard as its main suspect in Litvinenko’s murder. “It is obvious that the British Government’s plans to replace its ambassador in Russia should be viewed in the same context,” the source was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, said in an open letter published in the Times of London on March 27th that she had told her lawyers to ask British authorities to hold a full inquest into the murder of her husband. The Russian government, she said, wants to destroy Litvinenko’s reputation and “discredit the allegations he made that the Kremlin was behind the assassination of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya and a series of apartment bombings in 1999 that was blamed on Chechen separatists.”
March 30:
Vladimir Putin will raise plans for a 64-mile tunnel running under the Bering Strait between Chukotka in Russia’s Far East and Alaska when he and President Bush meet in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on April 6th, the Sunday Times reports. Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire who is Chukotka’s governor, has placed a $150 million order for the world’s largest drill, measuring 66 feet in diameter, but denied it is linked with plans to build a tunnel connecting Russia and Alaska.
March 31:
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that President Putin will offer NATO transit rights through Russia for supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan at an upcoming NATO summit, Reuters reports. Putin will fly to Bucharest on April 3rd to attend some events at the summit and address a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council on March 4th. “We expect some interesting achievements concerning transits for the purposes of the Afghanistan mission,” Peskov told a telephone conference. “In general, we speak about the non-military transit of cargoes for the needs of the Afghanistan operation. Details will be known after the council’s meeting.”
April 1:
President Bush has again insisted that a planned missile defense system for Eastern Europe poses no threat to Russia, CNN reports. “The missile defense system is not aimed at Russia,” Bush said at a news conference in Kiev following talks with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. “It’s viewed as an anti-Russian device. Well, it’s not.”
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