Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1748

September 15:

Moscow’s Cathedral Mosque, built in 1904 by Tatar Muslims, has been demolished amid claims that it had become badly deteriorated and now constitutes a risk to public safety. The head of the Kremlin-backed Spiritual Board of Muslims of the European Part of Russia had additionally complained that the mosque was not correctly aligned with Mecca and had no historic value, reports the Washington Post. Many Muscovites, however, are skeptical about the move. At a news conference held by the "Yabloko" party, conservationists and concerned citizens expressed their dissatisfaction with the move. “The mosque was built despite czarist disapproval, and it withstood revolution and repression,” said one activist. “And now someone has demolished our memories.” Others called the mosque a cultural center for Tatars, that was destroyed in favor of a mosque begun in 2005 and rumored to be backed by Muslims from the Caucasus.


September 16:

Mikhail Prokhorov has been ousted as head of the "Just Cause" party after just three months at its helm. Prokhorov blamed discord behind the scenes, reports the New York Times, calling the party a “puppet” of the Kremlin, and claiming that it was covertly run by Vladislav Surkov, a long-time political advisor to President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He called himself “naïve” for agreeing to lead "Just Cause," and claimed that within the first month, he was being told who could and could not be admitted to the party. Prokhorov denied that he was fighting with the government of Prime Minister Putin, and voiced hope that he could meet with either the President or Prime Minister in the near future to discuss the possibility of a new party to replace “Just Cause.”


September 17:

Russia has asked for “firm guarantees” from NATO and the United States regarding the proposed basing of missile defenses in Eastern Europe. According to Bloomberg, the Kremlin wants reassurance that Russia will not be a target of the SM-3 interceptor missiles based in Poland, which it fears could decrease its own strategic deterrent. NATO, however, has stated that the system in Poland, as well as the interceptors already deployed in Turkey and Romania, is intended to safeguard against missile attack from countries like Iran.


September 18:

Imprisoned former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has suggested that a return to the presidency by Prime Minister Putin would mean the end of any hope for reform in Russia, the Moscow Times reports. According to Khodorkovsky, it would also mean the departure of Russia’s best and brightest “in droves.” Khodorkovsky, whom Putin has compared to American gangster Al Capone, responded to written questions mailed to him by the Reuters agency with predictions that Russia will face a crisis around 2015. When asked his view on the legitimacy of next year’s presidential elections, his reply was that “The real question is: Will the elections appear fair enough so that the legitimacy of the president is sufficient when the crisis comes? The depth and essence of the crisis, I cannot predict, but it is inevitable soon after 2015.”


September 20:

The European court of human rights has ruled in favor of Yukos — theoretically, if not yet financially. The Guardian reports that the court ruled that the Russian government violated the rights of the energy firm run by former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky by punishing the company unfairly over tax violations and failing to provide it with enough time to prepare a suitable legal defense. It has not, however, made a ruling regarding the nearly $100 billion claimed by Yukos in damages, the largest such claim in the court’s history, and has instead delayed the decision for three months, offering both sides the opportunity to reach a settlement in that time. Khodorkovsky responded to the decision in an opinion piece in Kommersant Vlast in which he stated that “Those who made up criminal cases against me and my colleagues simply wanted to take for free the country’s most profitable oil company with a market value of $40 bn.”

While much of the world has begun to rethink nuclear power following the near-meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, Russian officials have not – and instead have made the controversial decision to extend the lives of some of their older Soviet reactors. Of special concern, reports the Wall Street Journal, is the fact that all of the reactors included in the administrative decision are RBMK models, which lack the containment structures necessary to trap any radiation that could escape during an accident. The reactor that exploded in Chernobyl in 1986 was an RBMK model. Under the new plan, the lives of the eleven reactors in question will be extended to 2035. The IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, has refused to comment on the decision, but critics have claimed that the aging reactors will be vulnerable to “stresses from extreme heat, radiation bombardment and chemical corrosion,” and Western nuclear experts in particular have suggested that RBMK reactors are one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear reactors and suffer from fundamental flaws.