Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1564

May 30:

On his first trip abroad as prime minister, Vladimir Putin has met with Jacques Chirac in Paris, Agence France-Presse reports. Putin told the former French president that ties between France and Russia are “expanding very well” and thanked him for “the solid foundation you created for this,” while Chirac expressed his “very deep friendship” for Putin. “My esteem comes from the remarkable manner in which you governed affairs in Russia,” Chirac told him. “These 10 years have been, unquestionably, great years for Russia.” Chirac will soon travel to Moscow to receive Russia’s highest state prize for his efforts to consolidate Franco-Russian relations.

A survey conducted last year found that Russians are not sold on a free market economy, Gallup Polls reports. Asked in August 2007 whether the creation of a free market economy that is largely free from state control is right or wrong for their country’s future, 41 percent of the Russian respondents said it is wrong, 35 percent said it is right and 24 percent said they did not know or refused to answer. Still, there was more support among Russians for the free market last year than in 2006, when 44 percent said it was wrong, 32 percent said it was right and 24 percent said they did not know or refused to answer.


May 31:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has suggested that President Dmitry Medvedev may pardon Mikhail Khodorkovsky despite the fact that the jailed Yukos oil company founder, according to Putin, committed crimes, NEWSru.com reports. “If the law allows it, then there are no obstacles to it,” Putin told the France’s Le Monde. Asked how he would respond if Medvedev asked for his opinion about pardoning Khodorkovsky, Putin said: “I would respond that it is a decision he should make independently. But, in any case, I, when I was president, and he today, must be guided by Russian law.” Still, Putin claimed Khodorkovsky “violated the law repeatedly and crudely” and was part of a group that committed not only economic crimes, but was behind more than one murder.

In the same interview with Le Monde, Putin said he does not think Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons, NEWSru.com reports. “We have no basis to think so,” he told the French newspaper, adding that the Iranians are a proud and independent people seeking to realize their legal rights, including in the area of peaceful nuclear technologies. “I must say that from the formal legal point of view Iran has not violated anything so far,” he said. “It has the right even to enrich (uranium).”


June 1:

The United States has expressed dismay over the deployment of additional Russian troops to Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, Reuters reports. Georgia accused Moscow of trying to annex Abkhazia after Russia sent unarmed troops to rebuild a railway there. Russia called the deployment “humanitarian aid.” “The United States is dismayed by Russia’s Defense Ministry announcement on May 31 that it intends to send more military forces, including railroad construction troops, into the Georgian region of Abkhazia without the consent of the Georgian government,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement, adding that Washington has expressed its concerns to Moscow.


June 2:

President Dmitry Medvedev has criticized draft amendments to Russia’s law on the mass media that would have given courts the power to shut down media outlets accused of libel, effectively scuttling the proposed changes. Citing the press service of the presidential administration, RosBusinessConsulting reports that Medvedev said the proposed amendments, among other things, could create obstacles to the media’s “normal functioning.”