October 21:
The Kremlin may finally begin to redress the killing of thousands of Polish officers, police, and civilians by the NKVD in the forest of Katyn in 1940. RIA Novosti reports that Moscow has turned over hundreds of files from its investigation into the case, which formally concluded in 2004, to Poland. The country’s Institute of National Remembrance has pursued the case since, and Russia's Human Rights Court agreed to hear a lawsuit by the relatives of the victims. The Kremlin, for its part, remains open to resolving the case, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov concluding that “The issue... should be resolved in such a way that it satisfies the families of the Polish victims and, at the same time, does not violate Russian law.”
October 22:
The Russian Duma has retaliated against a U.S. visa blacklist with one of their own. The so-called "Magnitsky list" was generated by Congress to penalize those Russian officials involved in the untimely death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. Now, according to the Moscow Times, Russia's response targets unnamed U.S. officials “implicated in ‘the legalization of torture in American special prisons, the abduction and torture of terrorism suspects, the indefinite detention of Guantanamo prisoners, and the uninvestigated murders of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.’” Those listed are also assumed to include officials involved with the trials of Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yakoshenko, alleged Russian arms brokers recently extradited to the U.S. against the wishes of the Kremlin. Many analysts, however, have argued that the newest blacklist is nothing but ceremonial in nature, and suggested that a serious punitive measure on Moscow's part would have targeted American businessmen with interests in Russia.
October 24:
A Russian whistleblower has been placed in solitary confinement after contacting the press with his story of official corruption. Radio Free Europe reports that Maksim Dudarev, a former state employee and ex-member of the ruling United Russia party, was placed in solitary confinement at a labor camp in Tula after telling the news service that Russian officials had been behind the fraudulent sale of a stake in the now-defunct Yukos oil company back in 2004. A duty officer at the camp claimed Dudarev was placed in solitary for keeping contraband (such as his cell phone), but according to a prison official, Dudarev had never been reprimanded, and had actually earned several commendations for “exemplary behavior.”
October 25:
Are Russo-Chinese ties taking a turn for the worse? According to the Washington Times, the bilateral relationship has noticeably cooled since the 1990s, most notably through a downturn in bilateral trade. Nowadays, the majority of Beijing’s purchases are limited to specialized technologies, but even this commerce has generated its fair share of resentment. The Kremlin has blamed China’s Ministry of State Security for stealing and illegally purchasing classified information on Russian defense technology. The thefts, one Moscow-based analyst has suggested, “stem from a Chinese obsession with trying to discern the differences between the system used by the Russian armed forces and the less-capable export variants sold to Beijing.”
October 26:
A United Russia member has been accused of ordering his subordinates in the Moscow Oblast to “ensure a landslide victory” for the party in the upcoming Duma elections. Radio Free Europe reports that a leader of the opposition A Just Russia party issued the accusation against Governor Boris Gromov, claiming to have a transcript of a speech in which Gromov tells regional officials to hinder opposition groups in every way possible, and security forces to “pay ‘particular attention’” to the Solidarity movement, Defense of Khimki Forest environmentalist group, and Other Russia, an unregistered opposition faction. Similar accusations have already been made against an official in the Urals, who allegedly told factory directors to “pressure, bribe, or otherwise cajole” workers to vote for United Russia. The party’s popularity has recently recovered somewhat from its slide earlier this year, and currently hovers around 57 percent approval.
October 27:
Experts remain skeptical over the Kremlin’s ambitious plans for investment in oil and gas exploration in the Arctic shelf. According to Moscow News, the Russian government plans to spend $224 billion on the project, which is expected to net a profit totalling half a trillion dollars. The region is believed to hold 70 billion tons of oil and gas, making it the richest reservoir in Russia, and the Kremlin hopes to obtain 200 billion cubic meters and 10 million tons of oil annually from the shelf beginning in 2030. Others, however, have pointed out numerous obstacles to this goal. Chief among them is the fact that there is currently no available technology that could transport the fuel from the Arctic shelf to a coastal terminal. Tankers would drive up the costs, making the venture unprofitable, and a pipeline would be extremely vulnerable to icebergs. Drilling alone could cost $30 million per site. And with the attendant high costs, only high oil prices would seem to justify the current projects.
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