April 11:
Commenting on Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vladimir Ogryzko’s forthcoming visit to Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said that the “line of Ukrainian leadership towards NATO integration” is a stumbling block in Russian-Ukrainian relations, Kommersant.com reports. “The emergence of a powerful military bloc on our borders will be taken by Russia as a direct threat to security,” Kamynin said, adding that claims “this process isn’t directed against Russia cannot satisfy us.”
April 13:
The commander of the Russian air force’s special command troops, Col.-Gen. Yury Solovyov, has said that the new S-400 Triumf missile defense system could soon be in service in Russian regiments, United Press International reports. “We hope to receive this system in July-August 2008, test it and then put it on combat duty,” Itar-Tass quoted Solovyov as saying. “Permanent combat readiness regiments will be the first to be re-equipped with new air defense missile systems.” He added that the S-400 is expected to surpass the current S-300 system in terms of “jamming vulnerability, handling channels and the firing at high-speed targets.” The S-400 was designed specifically to target stealth aircraft and fast warheads, along with short-range and cruise missiles.
The deputy chairman of Ingushetia’s Supreme Court, Khasan Yandiyev, has been assassinated, NEWSru.com reports. A local law-enforcement source told RIA Novosti that unidentified attackers in the city of Karabulak fired on Yandiyev’s Mercedes at point-blank range. Insurgent attacks have increased in Ingushetia as they have decreased in neighboring Chechnya, where the republic’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been imposing centralized autocratic rule.
April 15:
The Associated Press reports that Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin has dismissed as “pure and simple fabrication” a British newspaper report that Russia threatened to block a second term for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The Times of London reported on April 11th that Ban was mounting “a charm offensive” on a three-day visit to Moscow after Russia threatened to block him from serving a second term as secretary-general because of his stand on Kosovo. Churkin told reporters that Russia was not “entirely happy” about Ban’s stand on Kosovo but vehemently denied it had any bearing on Ban’s future as U.N. chief.
President Vladimir Putin has directed his cabinet to regularize relations with the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Grani.ru reports. According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Putin’s order is aimed, among other things, at carrying out Russia’s declared policy of rendering “material aid” to the populations of the two republics and the Russian citizens living in them. The president of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, welcomed Putin’s initiative as “a courageous and decisive step” that opens up the possibility of Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s integration into Russia.
President Putin has agreed to head the ruling United Russia party in what Agence France-Presse calls “a significant shift of the political landscape three weeks before he hands power to successor Dmitry Medvedev.” Putin also confirmed he would become prime minister under Medvedev. “With gratitude I accept the proposal of the party members and their leadership,” he told a United Russia party congress after being urged to take the party leadership post. “I am ready to take on the additional responsibility and head United Russia.”
Mark Urnov, an analyst at the Expertise think tank, told AFP that Putin’s agreement to leader Unified Russia represented a victory by that “part of the political elite that did not want, or feared to see the departure of Putin.” “All of Putin's entourage will remain in the key posts,” Urnov predicted. “There will be no separation of the state from the economy, no real fight against corruption. Stagnation lies ahead.”
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