Novaya Gazeta
Protestors: Putin must go
Eight hundred protestors gathered on Moscow's Pushkin Square on Saturday to demand Vladimir Putin's removal from office.
Strange as it may seem the authorities gave the recently established Five Demands Committee the green light to hold this protest.
The Committee includes members of a variety of Russian political movements such as the Left Front, the Moscow Council, the Nations of Freedom, Oborona, the Society of Blue Buckets, the United Civil Front, Solidarity and the Vpered (Forward) Socialist Movement. Chess genius Garry Kasparov, human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov, Ilya Yashin and Sergei Udaltsov are among those who sit on its organizing committee.
"We declare these five demands and we will keep coming out onto the streets until they are fulfilled," said Dmitry Georgievsky, a member of Moscow's Solidarity movement. Their demands were spelled out on placards held high above the crowd: the removal from power of Putin's government, the dissolution of parliament, free and competitive elections, a shake-up of the police and secret services, and a transparent state budget.
Opposition unites against Putin
The flags fluttering over the square belonged to many movements: Solidarity, Left Front, the Social Democratic Party, the United Civil Front. "People with different views have gathered here, people from the left and right ... But one thing unites us: we want free elections," said Ilya Yashin. "The authorities like to repeat that they have no rivals, and that there is no alternative to Putin. But if United Russia really does enjoy the support of everyone in the country, why then is it so afraid of us?" he went on to say. "Look, it is fencing itself off from its own people with an army of cops and security,"
The police were out in force: Police buses surrounded the square.
"Only our numbers can help us get rid of this monstrous regime. We are for non-violent protest," politician Garry Kasparov echoed.
Konstantin Yankauskas from the activist group Solidarity spoke of the effectiveness of street protests. He recalled that the authorities had tried to start renovation work on Pushkin Square several days ago and even partially fenced it off with concrete blocs but thanks to public protest the blocs were removed and the work curtailed.
Daniil Poltoratsky, a member of the Vpered (Forward) Socialist Movement, stressed that if there is to be any real change, Putin must go not only as a politician, but as an embodiment of the entire regime. "We demand a radical shakeup of the whole system," he shouted from the stage.
Old habits?
Lev Ponomaryov said that under Putin's regime Russia was once again seeing political prisoners. The singer-songwriter Natella Boltyanskaya sang a song about a "gnome" tightening up screws across the country.
About 800 people gathered on Pushkin Square, most of them middle aged or pensioners. Behind them, the Pushkinsky cinema was swathed in an ad for a new film: "The City of Thieves." "Very apt," one of the speakers joked. "Just about sums up our authorities."
Rossiiskaya Gazeta
Russian census forms littered with comic blunders
One man's wife is apparently also his mother, while a four-year-old confirms he is not currently seeking employment. Young Russian census-takers have their work cut out correcting these, and many more mistakes as Russia's 12-day population count draws to a close.
Judging by the number of census form blunders, it is clear that Russia's census takers found their first day at work the most challenging. Now, a week into the second population count since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, college students employed as census takers have just about got the hang of it. They have started asking the required questions using the exact wording from the dry government documents. They answer their own cell phones saying "All-Russian population census, can I help you?" and are no longer making mistakes when filling out the forms.
However, complaints of census takers failing to ask all of the required questions abound on the Internet. It is easy to check as the standard forms are available online.
Not all errors were those of omission, some overzealous census takers took it to the other extreme, asking a host of unnecessary questions. As a result, a four-year-old's form says he is "not currently seeking employment" and the reason given "due to his age." In fact that question should not be put to respondents under 15 years of age. Roman, the student responsible for this particular error, an intelligent looking young man with cropped hair and wearing trendy army boots, had a logical explanation: the child could be "in the movies" even at that tender age.
Who's who?
Worse inaccuracies crop up in other questionnaires. One 41-year-old woman is listed as being the daughter of a 39-year-old, while one man's wife is also, apparently, his mother. Wrong apartment numbers are a particular headache for census-takers, who now have to call people and double-check which of the two flat 45s is the right one. Their calls are not always welcome: people snap at them, irritated at being bothered a second time.
Respondents' jokes also make for amusing reading. The list of foreign languages now includes "swearing" while "goblin" is now the latest addition to the already comprehensive list of potential ethnicities.
Census takers with a healthy sense of humor ask university graduates about being literate. Curiously, in some of these cases the relevant field contains a "No."
All this raises concerns about the census results' reliability. Statisticians claim that the proportion of jokes is still very low. Yet the fact that nearly each form requires some degree of correction hampers scanning and processing work. Those who participated in the 2002 census say blunders are more frequent this time round, mostly because the majority of the students sporting logo-branded scarves and bags are "forced volunteers" and are poorly trained.
Vedomosti
Jailbird oligarch to stay behind bars
On Friday, Russian prosecutors demanded 14-year sentences for disgraced oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev, who are serving out their original sentences and currently standing trial on fresh embezzlement charges.
Khodorkovsky, 47, the former head of the oil company Yukos and once Russia's richest man, and his associate Lebedev, both pleaded not guilty. If convicted, they could remain in prison until 2017.
Prosecutor Valery Lakhtin demanded that both defendants, who stand accused of embezzling oil produced by Yukos subsidiaries, be sentenced to eight years in prison, and that they serve an extra nine years for their additional alleged involvement in money-laundering operations.
Lakhtin said the sentence given should take time already served into account.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were each jailed for eight years in 2005 on charges of fraud and tax evasion.
Khodorkovsky has just over a year left behind bars, while Lebedev is due to be out in 252 days.
Lakhtin said people in other countries were sentenced to 20 years and more for similar crimes, that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had discredited the Russian business community in the eyes of investors, and that they had put illegal pressure on the court, eyewitnesses and the media.
He said they had undermined the pillars of the state by appealing their case at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.
Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, quoted Lakhtin as saying that appeals to the ECHR hindered the administration of justice.
Olga Kostina, a witness for the prosecution in the first Yukos case and a senior Russian Public Chamber official, said the ECHR handled cases already examined by national courts, and that Lakhtin was probably talking about political factors which had allowed the defendants to circumvent this procedure.
Criminal defense lawyer Andrei Andrusenko said that if time served was taken into account, then the defendants, sentenced in 2003, could remain behind bars until 2017 with their first opportunity to request parole hearings coming in mid-2011.
Klyuvgant said that the prosecutor could request from six to 15 years for the defendants, but that a fair trial would release them immediately.
Conflicting official comments about Khodorkovsky suggest that Russia's leaders remain undecided on the trial's outcome, political analyst Alexei Makarkin told the paper.
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