Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1569

June 18:

The Prosecutor General’s Office has announced that the investigation into the October 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya has been completed, Radio Free Europe reports. Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police officer, and Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, brothers hailing from Chechnya, have been charged with her murder. Still, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said the suspected triggerman remains at large and under investigation. Sergei Sokolov, deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked, said only one part of the investigation into her murder has been completed and that a separate inquiry has been launched to uncover those who commissioned it.

Estonia and Latvia have criticized Russia’s decision to lift visa requirements for former Soviet citizens residing in those countries, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports. Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said that allowing visa-free travel to Russia for former Soviet citizens living in Estonia is aimed at slowing down naturalization. On June 17th, President Dmitry Medvedev abolished visa controls for around 400,000 Russian speakers living in Estonia and Latvia, who have not taken up citizenship of the two Baltic nations.

Igor Yurgens, chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Development, a think tank advising President Dmitry Medvedev, has told Reuters that a “silent war” is going on between Medvedev and hardliners opposed to his liberal reform agenda. “If (Medvedev) doesn’t build a coalition in this struggle, he will lose, like some of the previous reformers in Russian history,” said Yurgens, who is also First Vice-President at Moscow investment bank Renaissance Capital. Without naming names, Yurgens described the hardliners as a group “which will always try to control assets, to put their own people in and to be on top of the commanding heights of the economy because they don’t trust the market, they don’t trust liberals and they don’t trust the West.”

Roman Kupchinsky, the former director of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service who is now a partner in the risk analysis firm AZEast Group, has argued in a Moscow Times op-ed that Dmitry Medvedev, while serving as chairman of Gazprom, must have known that the natural gas monopoly has been accused of maintaining ties with organized crime through the Swiss-based intermediary company RosUkrEnergo. “Did he read the reports that Semyon Mogilevich, who was arrested in Moscow in January on tax-evasion charges and is on the FBI’s wanted list on charges of defrauding investors, was supposedly linked to RosUkrEnergo?” asks Kupchinsky, who recently testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the issue.


June 20:

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned against the use of force on Iran, stating that there is no proof it is trying to build nuclear weapons and that it should be engaged in dialogue and encouraged to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency. AP reports that Lavrov made the statement when asked to comment on an Israeli Cabinet member’s statement earlier this month that Israel could attack Iran if it does not halt its nuclear program. “I hope the actual actions would be based on international law,” Lavrov said. “And international law clearly protects Iran’s and anyone else’s territorial integrity.”


June 21:

President Medvedev has said that Russia will not permit provocative actions against Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region, NEWSru.com reports. “They are stationed on Georgian territory in accordance with an international agreement and are conducting themselves with dignity,” he said. On June 17th, Georgian police detained a group of Russian soldiers they said were transporting weapons without permission. The soldiers were subsequently released. Still, Medvedev said Russia and Georgia should settle their differences through negotiations.