December 13:
Russia and the United States are quietly working together to combat “net crime.” According to London’s Guardian newspaper, officials from Russia, the U.S. and the United Nations have held a series of secret meetings in recent weeks to discuss global Internet security and coordinate efforts to combat cybercrime. The contacts were reportedly initiated following a string of major cybercrime and cyberterrorism incidents in recent years – incidents that have created newfound consensus in Moscow and Washington about the need for collaboration. "Both sides are making positive noises," James Lewis of the Centre for Strategic & International Studies tells the Guardian. "We've never seen that before."
[Editor’s Note: While this new area of U.S.-Russian collaboration is unquestionably positive, it bears noting that Russia also has played a far less constructive role in the cybersecurity field in recent years. The Russian government has been accused of directly or indirectly coordinating cyberattacks against Estonia in 2007 and Georgia during last year’s war. In fact, according to a recent report in the London Telegraph, Russia and China cumulatively constitute the most severe cybersecurity threat facing England, with cyber attacks against British targets an “every day” occurrence.]
December 16:
The Wall Street Journal reports that Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has sacked a top Moscow police official following allegations of abuse of power. The official, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Mikhailkin, has been accused by Hermitage Capital of being a key figure in the quasi-official persecution campaigned that has dogged the embattled investment group. Although no official explanation has been provided for Mikhailkin’s removal, it follows on the heels of the November death in prison of Hermitage attorney Sergei Magnitsky, who had been serving time for charges connected with the government’s probe of Hermitage. According to the Journal, a number of prison officials have been sacked as a result of Magnitsky’s death, the official cause of which is still being investigated.
December 17:
Corruption in Russia has skyrocketed over the past year, a top Russian legal official has said. The Itar-TASS news agency reports the country’s Deputy Prosecutor General, Alexander Buxman, as saying that the number of known cases of corruption jumped by some 11 percent from 2008 to 2009. "In the first nine months of this year, almost 38,000 corruption-related crimes were exposed; bribe-taking was up 6 percent to 11,800. The courts reviewed 806 criminal cases against federal and local officials, including 128 cases against heads of municipalities, 179 against heads of local administrations, and 21 against heads and deputy heads of executive bodies," Buksman has told participants at a legal seminar in the Moscow Region’s Istra District.
December 22:
The majority of Russians are still nostalgic for the USSR, and see the Soviet Union’s dissolution as a negative event, the results of a new poll show. Pravda reports that, according to the findings of a recent survey carried out by the independent Levada Center, some 60 percent of Russians polled articulated regret at the USSR’s demise – echoing prime minister Vladimir Putin’s famous comment that the end of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” The number of Russians who pine for the Soviet Union, moreover, does not seem to be declining appreciably; when surveyed in the year 2000, 75 percent of respondents expressed the same opinion.
[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.]
December 23:
Years of international experience with, and knowledge of, Russian organized crime structures are misguided or simply wrong, a top Russian law enforcement official has insisted. "The notion of mafia implies connections with political and government structures, I believe there is no Russian mafia abroad in this sense," Timur Lakhonin, the head of the Russian National Central Bureau of Interpol, has told Interfax in an interview. "Certainly, there is crime involving our former compatriots abroad," Lakhonin admitted. But, according to him, there is “no data” indicating that organized criminal syndicates involving former Russians exist abroad at all.
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