Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1609

December 2:

Rampant corruption within the Russian military is exacting a heavy economic toll on the country's budget, a senior state prosecutor has warned. According to Gen. Maj. Alexander Sorochin, the deputy head of the Prosecutor's Office Committee on Investigations, military corruption cost Russia some $78.6 million during the first eight months of this year. And the situation, says Sorochin, is getting worse. "I have to admit that the number of corruption cases increased by at least 30% compared to the same period last year," Sorochin recently said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper. "The damages amounted to 2.2 billion rubles, which is enough to buy at least 30 modern T-90 main battle tanks."

Less than four months after its August war with Georgia, Russia's relations with Europe appear to be getting back to normal. RIA Novosti reports that Russia and the EU have resumed negotiations over a comprehensive cooperation treaty. The temporarily delayed deal is said to cover a wide range of issues, from energy to trade to immigration. No date has yet been set for the conclusion of the agreement, but Russian officials have expressed "optimism" about forward progress in the partnership talks.

Europe is not the only one normalizing ties with the Kremlin. NATO has also agreed to gradually resume regular contacts with Moscow, RTTN News reports. "Allies agreed on what I would qualify as a conditional and graduated reengagement with Russia," NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer has told reporters. The decision paves the way for the reactivation of the NATO-Russia Council, a consultative mechanism established in 1997, which will again begin to meet sporadically on a range of political issues.


December 3:

Russia may be suffering from the economic doldrums brought about by the global financial crisis, but at least one Russian firm is still thinking big. Gazprom, Russia's state-owned natural gas monopoly, is planning to spend some $33 billion in domestic and overseas investment in 2009, RIA Novosti reports its CEO, Alexei Miller, as saying. The money, according to Miller, could come from state coffers, which is likely to offer the Kremlin-linked firm "more attractive terms than those offered by the market." Nor is Miller worried about his firm’s financial fortunes. Despite fluctuations in the world energy market, Miller said, he expects the company's financial profile to remain "stable" and its revenues to be "sufficiently high."


December 4:

The Kremlin could soon take its "fight against extremism" online, much to the detriment of Internet freedoms in Russia. According to Vedomosti, a new legislative initiative just proposed by five members of the pro-Putin United Russia party in the Russian Duma envisions greatly expanding the powers of the country's current anti-extremism law to better combat the dissemination of extremist materials via the World-Wide Web. If passed, the initiative would give the Russian government the right to ban access to sites that are deemed offensive by authorities to Internet users within the Russian Federation.

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev is publicly pledging continuity in the domestic and foreign policy direction of the government he inherited from Vladimir Putin. “The tasks do not change," Medvedev has told reporters in comments carried by Itar-TASS. "The methods change, the tactical means change, and the style sometimes changes, but the tasks remain the same.” Medvedev has said that sees his main tasks as similar to those pursued by Putin: “to develop the success and provide for a new quality of life in the country, improve the living standards, and in the current situation to overcome the consequences of the financial crisis and strengthen the prestige of the country abroad.”