July 27:
Russia has announced plans to revive its navy by building several aircraft carriers and improving its fleet of nuclear submarines, Reuters reports. A navy commander, Vladimir Vysotsky, told RIA Novosti during Navy Day festivities in St. Petersburg that five or six aircraft carrier battle groups will be built in the near future. “We call this a sea-borne aircraft carrier system that will be based on the Northern and Pacific fleets,” he said. “The creation of such systems will begin after 2012.”
July 28:
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has again attacked Mechel, one of Russia’s largest coal and steel companies. Putin, who earlier accused Mechel of selling coking coal, a component used in steelmaking, to domestic customers at twice the price it was selling it for abroad, has now accused it of exporting raw material through offshore companies at prices four times lower than those in the domestic market. “It’s a reduction of the tax base inside the country, tax evasion; it’s the creation of a deficit in the domestic market, which means an increase in the price of metallurgical products,” Gazeta.ru quotes him as saying. Putin’s comments about Mechel, like his earlier ones, have caused the company’s shares - and Russia’s stock markets generally - to tank.
Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin has said that the number of hate crimes committed in Moscow has increased six-fold this year compared to the same period last year, the Moscow Times reports. The authorities registered 73 hate crimes in Moscow in the first six months of this year. Bastrykin said that while the total number of crimes registered in Russia has shrunk by nine percent, “crimes of an extremist nature are increasing year after year.” This trend, he said, must be halted with “decisive and systematic efforts.”
As the Moscow Times notes, the Moscow branch of the Investigative Committee has opened two criminal cases involving hate crimes, one involving 12 racially motivated murders. According to the Investigative Committee, seven ultranationalists are suspected in at least 21 racially motivated murders.
July 29:
An unnamed Russian diplomat has said that U.S.-Russian relations could become seriously complicated and even be broken off completely after the U.S. presidential election, NEWSru.com reports. “We are ready for any development of the situation,” the official told reporters, adding that Russia “can afford to have no relations at all with one or another partner if that’s what they want.” According to NEWSru.com, the diplomat was reacting to the latest call by the Republican Party’s likely presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, for a harder line towards Russia, including its expulsion from the G8. Russia, said the diplomat, will closely watch the winner of the U.S. presidential election, whether it is McCain or his likely opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.
Sergei Kislyak, a deputy foreign minister and Russia’s point main in the dispute over U.S. plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe, has been named to be Russia’s new ambassador to Washington, the Associated Press reports. Kislyak has also led Russia’s delegation to the six-nation talks aimed at getting Iran to stop enriching and reprocessing uranium.
July 31:
President Dmitry Medvedev has said that Russia’s “law enforcement and state institutions” should stop “terrifying” business, Agence France-Presse reports. “We need to have a good investment climate in this country,” he told ministers at a meeting broadcast on state television. Medvedev emphasized his warning to take the pressure off business by saying: “You can consider that the signal has been given.” He added, however, that Russian companies should respect the law and that some of their tax reduction strategies are “monstrous” and “unacceptable.”
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