July 1:
The publisher of the New Times has asked President Dmitry Medvedev to grant Russian citizenship to Natalya Morar, a Moldovan writer for the weekly who has been barred from entering Russia. As the Moscow Times notes, Morar was refused entry into Russia in December just days after publishing a story claiming the Kremlin used a secret multimillion-dollar fund to finance parties during the State Duma elections. Authorities later said she was denied entry because she was a threat to national security. The New Times’ publisher, Irena Lesnevskaya, asked Medvedev in an open letter to give Morar a passport and “put an end to this lawlessness,” saying this “would really prove that [your promise to] fight legal nihilism and corruption are not just words.”
July 2:
President Dmitry Medvedev has dismissed U.S. criticism of Russia’s record on democracy and human rights, the International Herald Tribune reports. Asked by foreign journalists about U.S. Senator John McCain’s call to bar Russia from the Group of Eight because of its record on democracy, Medvedev said the G8 exists “not because someone likes or dislikes it,” but because its members are “the biggest world economies and the most serious players from the foreign policy point of view,” and that any attempt to restrict “anyone in this capacity” would “damage the entire world order.” Medvedev added that if the U.S. wants to overcome what is “essentially a depression” in its domestic economic market, it should conduct “a pragmatic policy inside the country and abroad.” The IHT notes that Medvedev made his comments just a day after U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was in Moscow appealing for Russian investment in the United States.
Aleksandr Kanshin, chairman of the Public Chamber’s Commission for Veterans, Servicemen and their Families, has said that up to 30 percent of the state’s funds earmarked for the country’s “power structures” – meaning the military, security and law-enforcement agencies – are lost each year due to kickbacks and the “services” of middlemen, Interfax reports. Kanshin said that 565 officials from the “power structures” were prosecuted for various crimes last year, including 224 officers prosecuted for corruption, among them 16 generals and 180 colonels.
July 3:
A poll by the independent Levada Center has found that half of Russia’s emerging middle class do not believe in the stability delivered by former President Vladimir Putin, fear a crisis may loom and would like to emigrate, Reuters reports. “Those who should be grateful are not very grateful, but the situation is very fragile, very unstable and they fear it could end very soon and this is why they are thinking about leaving the country,” Levada Center analyst Denis Volkov told the news agency.
[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.]
July 4:
The Times of London reports that Britain’s security services have identified Russia as the third most serious threat facing the country, with only al-Qaeda terrorism and Iranian nuclear proliferation greater menaces to Britain’s safety. Separately, the newspaper reports that Alex Allan, who as chairman of the Cabinet Office Joint Intelligence Committee is the British government’s top intelligence adviser, has been unconscious in the hospital for four days after collapsing at his home. While the Sun newspaper quotes “security experts” as saying Allan may have been an assassination target of “the Russians or al-Qaeda,” the Times cites “authoritative Whitehall sources” as ruling out that he was deliberately poisoned.
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