April 14:
Russia’s ruling party has weighed in in favor of its desired candidate for the 2012 presidential election, and its pick isn’t current president Dmitry Medvedev. “United Russia will orient itself on its leader Vladimir Putin," Yuri Shuvalov, deputy secretary of the presidium of the party's General Council, has told reporters in comments carried by Reuters. The announcement confirms suspicion that the political machine erected by Putin over the past decade remains firmly in the current prime minister’s grasp – notwithstanding the fact that Medvedev himself is a member of United Russia, and was its pick for the last election, in which Putin was ineligible to run for Russia’s top post.
European efforts to diversify its sources of energy (and by extension reduce its dependence on Russia) are rubbing the Kremlin the wrong way. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, during a visit to Brussels earlier this year, publicly aired his opposition to the EU’s so-called “third energy package,” which stipulates that – among other things – “energy companies operating in Europe must separate the production side of their business from their distribution networks.” The provision appears to be aimed at breaking up “anticompetitive” behavior on the part of large energy multinationals, including those of Russia, but Putin has warned that the package – which went into effect April 1st – could lead to higher costs for European consumers.
April 15:
Russia’s growing Muslim population is seeking equal representation on the country's most prominent national symbol: its coat of arms. Istanbul’s Hurriyet newspaper reports that Russia’s top imam has called for the addition of a crescent moon to the country’s coat of arms as a way of better representing the growing Muslim population. "We are asking for one of the heads to be topped with a crescent moon and the other to be topped with a Russian Orthodox cross," Talgat Tadzhuddin told the Moskovskiye Novosti daily in a recent interview. The request, according to Tadzhuddin, is spurred by simple mathematics: "All the crowns on the coat of arms – two on the heads of the eagles and one above them in the middle – are topped by crosses. But Russia has 20 million Muslims. That's 18 percent of the population." Therefore, he contends, Russia’s Muslims should receive prominent representation as well.
April 18:
Despite concerted attention from the Kremlin, Russia has failed to make much substantive progress in curbing the growing drug epidemic within its borders, President Dmitry Medvedev has admitted. According to Reuters, Russia already has the world’s third-highest rate of heroin use and heroin-related deaths – a trend which has exacerbated the country’s already grim demographic and health trends. Yet “[i]n spite of the fact that heightened attention is given to this topic... changes for better have been very, very few," Medvedev told regional officials while visiting the city of Irkutsk in Siberia.
Much to the ire of its critics, the Kremlin so far has refused to finance tangible risk mitigation programs, such as needle exchanges or methodone clinics. Instead, it is banking on the idea that greater education could help curb its burgeoning drug problem. "There may be reason to think about introducing separate courses in educational programs, especially in disadvantaged areas and those where there is a tendency toward drug use," Medvedev says.
April 20:
A crucial anti-corruption measure is inching toward enactment in Russia’s lower house of parliament. The Moscow Times reports that a new bribe bill proposed by the administration of President Medvedev has just survived a second reading by the Russian State Duma. The proposed measure, if enacted, would allow authorities to levy fines against corrupt officials in amounts up to 100 times the sum of a bribe taken.
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