September 22:
Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports that the Russian Orthodox Church has said in a statement that it is “appalled” by a proposal to return the statue of Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky to its old location outside the headquarters of the KGB’s successor organization, the Federal Security Service (FSB), in central Moscow. On September 18th, Vladimir Kolesnikov, a former deputy prosecutor general who is a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction in the State Duma, urged the Duma’s Security Committee to support returning the Dzerzhinsky statue to its old spot. According to Kommersant, Kolesnikov’s proposal was applauded by fellow Security Committee members and received backing from other Duma factions.
September 23:
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said that it has no intention of unilaterally redrawing its borders in the Arctic to give it a larger chunk of the region’s mineral wealth, Reuters reports. Last week, President Dmitry Medvedev ordered his officials to draft a law setting out Russia’s Arctic borders, after which Canada said it was concerned the Kremlin might be preparing to take unilateral action.
Transparency International has ranked Russia 147th out of 180 countries in its annual Corruption Perception Index, tied with Bangladesh, Kenya and Syria. The Berlin-based anti-corruption group deemed Russia more corrupt than Kazakhstan (145th place) and Ukraine (134th) and less corrupt than Belarus and Tajikistan (tied for 151st), Azerbaijan (158th), and Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (tied for 166th). Somalia was ranked the world’s most corrupt country while Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden, which tied for first place, were deemed the world’s least corrupt nations.
September 24:
Ruslan Yamadayev, a former State Duma deputy from Chechnya, has been shot to death in central Moscow. A passenger in Yamadayev’s Mercedes – reportedly Sergei Kizyun, Chechnya’s former military commandant – was seriously wounded in the attack. As NEWSru.com notes, Ruslan Yamadayev’s brother, Sulim, who until recently commanded a GRU (Russian military intelligence) special forces battalion, had come into conflict with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Ekho Moskvy radio quoted another Yamadayev brother, Isa, as saying he had information that Kadyrov aims to eliminate the entire Yamadayev clan. Like Kadyrov, both Ruslan and Sulim Yamadayev received the Hero of Russia award.
[Editor’s Note: Another Kadyrov opponent, Movladi Baisarov, the former head of an FSB special forces unit, was shot to death by Chechen security agents in Moscow in November 2006.]
September 25:
President Dmitry Medvedev and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have met amid what the Kremlin described as efforts to forge a “solid counterweight” to the United States, Agence France-Presse reports. According to AFP, Medvedev and Chavez smiled and clapped as senior officials signed two deals which Russia’s energy minister said would lead to “tens of billions of dollars” of investment in Venezuelan oil and gas fields.
The Associated Press reports that Chavez also met with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who said Latin America “is becoming a noticeable link in the chain of the multi-polar world that is forming” and that Russia “will pay more and more attention to this vector of our economic and foreign policy.” On September 22nd, the Russian navy’s nuclear-powered Peter the Great cruiser and three other ships set off for Venezuela to conduct joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan navy.
September 28:
Deputy Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin, who also chairs the presidium of the president’s Anti-Corruption Council, has said that corruption in Russia has reached intolerable proportions in Russia, Vesti.ru reports. He said that while corruption is not unique to Russia, it has become a “habitual and customary phenomenon contrary to the interests of state and society.”
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