Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1568

June 14:

Spanish police say they have dismantled a Russian mafia group operating in Spain, making 20 arrests and recovering a painting believed to be by Spanish artist Salvador Dali, Agence France-Presse reports. Police also seized about 200,000 euros ($307,000) in cash and several luxury cars in an anti-mafia sweep that took place simultaneously in several locations, from the island of Majorca to Malaga in the south and Valencia to the east. Twenty people, including an alleged Russian mafia boss Gennadios Petrov, were arrested in the operation that involved some 400 police officers. In addition, bank accounts totaling 12 million euros were frozen.

Spanish police said the Russian mafia group was “one of the four biggest in the world” and used Spain as a home for its top leaders and for money-laundering its gains from illegal activities in Russia and other former Soviet states.


June 16:

Thirty Chechen rebels have attacked a convoy of vehicles of the republic’s Federal Security Service (FSB) branch, killing three officers and wounding five, NEWSru.com reports. The attack took place near the village of Chishki in Chechnya’s Urus-Martan district. The incident was the latest in a series of recent rebel attacks in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus. At least 25 armed rebels raided the village of Benoi-Vedeno in Chechnya on June 12th, killing three locals and burning several houses, while a bomb blast in a café in Grozny, the Chechen capital, on June 10th injured eight policemen and four other people. Several people were also killed in blasts in the neighboring republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan, Reuters reported on June 13th.

At least 75 percent of respondents in a poll by Bashkirova & Partners have said they are proud of Russia’s history, culture, and scientific achievements, Angus Reid Global Monitor reports. Additionally, 60.7 percent of respondents expressed pride in Russia’s armed forces and 55.6 percent said they are proud of Russia’s influence in global affairs. However, only 40.5 percent of respondents said they are proud of Russia’s economic achievements and only 37 percent said they are proud of the state of Russian democracy.

[Editor’s Note: Given the effect of Russia’s increasingly authoritarian political climate on pollsters and respondents alike, the results of public opinion surveys in Russia should be viewed with some caution.]

Russia is set to open a new facility to continue destroying its arsenal of chemical weapons as part of its drive to eliminate all such weapons by 2012, Reuters reports. Located near Leonidovka in the central Penza region, around 550 kilometers (350 miles) southeast of Moscow, it is the sixth of seven such facilities Russia plans to build. The new Leonidovka facility will hold 6,885 metric tons of VX, sarin and soman nerve agents, about 17 percent of Russia’s declared chemical weapons stockpile.


June 18:

The Federation Council, the upper chamber of Russia’s parliament, has ratified an inter-governmental agreement with Syria on settling $3.6 billion in Soviet-era debt to Russia. As Regions.ru reports, Syria will repay $1.5 billion in convertible currency over a decade and make a one-time payment of $2.11 billion in Syrian pounds. In 2005, Russia agreed to write off 73 percent of Syria’s Soviet-era debt, which totaled around $14.5 billion.

Georgian police have detained 14 Russian peacekeepers near Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, the Washington Post reports. A senior official in Georgia’s Interior Ministry claimed the troops were transporting 20 anti-tank missiles. “We had not been informed about this, and they were not permitted by us to bring these weapons onto our territory,” the official said. Russia has denied the allegation.