Vedomosti
Nashi urged to beat the opposition at their own game
Ahead of elections, Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov is once again taking on the opposition. On the eve of an anti-corruption rally to be held by the pro-Kremlin movement Nashi, United Russia’s chief ideologist told its members how they should treat liberals.
Surkov attended a Nashi activist meeting ahead of a major street protest: the youth movement has scheduled a 50,000-strong anti-corruption rally for April 16. To mark the event, Nashi issued an erotic calendar where girls, posing in underwear pledge they’ll “never marry a grafter” and that they “get turned on without a bribe.” The rally, as the movement’s spokeswoman Kristina Potupchik writes in her blog, will launch an anti-corruption committee called White Aprons and will receive video complaints from victims of corruption.
Meanwhile, the so far unregistered opposition Popular Freedom Party (Parnas) is planning a protest in a different part of Moscow on the same day, and has already agreed the date with the Moscow authorities. Its organizers want to gather 10,000 participants under the slogan “Against Lawlessness and Corruption. For Free and Fair Elections.” Boris Nemtsov, one of the Parnas leaders, said that their plans were made back in February, which means Nashi is organizing a counter-rally.
Surkov hinted that the opposition thinks it has a monopoly on the anti-corruption drive and that it should be deprived of its initiative. The opposition likes to accuse the authorities of corruption, he said, yet “they live on dubious foreign grants without even trying to hide the fact. What is this if not a demonstration of corruption?” he said. It appears that “they cannot be detained” for breaching the law but “are allowed to receive foreign cash,” he added. “Those who have institutionalized corruption are placing the blame on us and writing ‘anti-corruption reports,’” Surkov concluded, referring to the “Putin. Corruption” report compiled by opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov. “All these critics clearly find it easy to fabricate stories built on lies or economic benefit,” Surkov said, in a statement that echoed remarks made by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had accused Parnas’ leaders of theft during their time in office in the 1990s.
In July 2008, Surkov issued entirely different instructions: he said the threat of an orange revolution in Russia was over, that youth movements could take much of the credit for that, but that now they were facing fresh challenges and they had a duty to promote innovation.
Political analyst Alexander Kynev believes Surkov’s rhetoric has since changed ahead of the elections: “The focus has shifted to the unofficial opposition, which is becoming an increasingly significant factor in the political process.”
The authorities are getting jittery, Nemtsov says. He has tried to take Putin to court and is accusing Surkov of lying: “They have no facts or evidence.”
Moskovsky Komsomolets
Senior officials charged with poaching
On Wednesday, a district court in the Altai Republic began to examine a sensational poaching case involving several senior officials killed in a January 2009 helicopter crash. This is the first time the prosecution has said publicly that the late Alexander Kosopkin, former Presidential Representative to the State Duma, had hired the helicopter and was hunting Siberian argali.
Previously, investigators hushed up the fact that Kosopkin and former Prime Minister of the Altai Republic Anatoly Bannykh were hunting these wild sheep, which are on Russia’s official list of endangered species.
The indictment, read out in the Kosh-Achgarsky District Court, said that Kosopkin had asked Bannykh to provide a helicopter, and that Bannykh had instructed his assistant to sign the relevant contract with Tomsk-based Gazpromavia company. During the hunt, the helicopter landed, and the passengers, Alexander Kosopkin, Viktor Kaimin and Sergei Livishin got out, rifles in hand. According to the indictment, Kosopkin and the two other hunters then hid and waited for the animals to appear. The helicopter frightened a herd of them and drove it toward Kosopkin, Kaimin and Livishin. A shot fired from the helicopter killed one argali. Once the animals were within shooting distance, the three men on the ground fired at least one shot each. Kaimin claimed one kill, the indictment read.
Of the three surviving defendants, only Nikolai Kapranov, Deputy Director of the Moscow-based Institute of Economy and Legislation, attended Wednesday’s hearings, pleading not guilty on poaching charges.
Two other surviving defendants, Anatoly Bannykh and Ineko General Director Boris Belinsky, asked to be tried in absentia. The court granted their requests. Both men are also pleading not guilty.
The Mil Mi-171 helicopter carrying the officials crashed in January 2009 near Chornaya (Black) Mountain in the Altai Republic. Seven people were killed, including Kosopkin. The case provoked a public outcry after pictures from the scene of the crash, including images of the dead argali, were posted online.
Gazeta.ru
Will Russia call time on visa-free travel with Central Asia?
The Federal Drug Control Service and Federal Migration Service have proposed scrapping Russia’s visa-free travel agreements with former Soviet countries in Central Asia over growing security concerns.
Representatives of the two agencies told a parliamentary hearing held behind closed doors that at the very least there is an urgent need for passport control to be tightened. Lawmakers supported the initiative adding that Russia’s policy in the region needs to be revised to strengthen national security and uphold national interests.
“The speaker from the drug control watchdog said the agency will not be able to stem the flow of drugs trafficked into Russia if visa-free travel is retained,” Konstantin Zatulin from the lower house’s CIS committee told Gazeta.ru. “He said those countries’ governments are doing little to help probably because they have stakes in the drug business.”
According to Zatulin, Russia’s policy in Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan no longer complies with its national security goals.
Another lawmaker, Semyon Bagdasarov from the foreign affairs committee, said there was no need to terminate the existing visa-free agreements. Tightening passport control for travelers arriving from Central Asia would, he argues, be sufficient. This could be done immediately without breaking the existing agreements.
“These agreements contain a clause on introducing additional passport checks or similar procedures if one of the countries poses a threat to the security or health of the other country’s nationals,” he explained.
However, Bagdasarov doubted that the proposals would ever reach the country’s leaders, even after the parliamentary hearing, because no one would dare report to them on the true scale of the problems Russia is facing in Central Asia.
Russia is rapidly losing influence in the region, while its policy of injecting money into local economies has failed, participants in the hearing said.
“The United States is investing in its own organizations operating abroad and is actively lobbying for U.S. interests. But Russia just donates cash to other countries’ budgets,” Bagdasarov said. “Investments in their social programs put pressure on Russia’s budget without benefitting Russia or its influence in the region.”
Alexei Vlasov, head the Foundation for Oriental Studies, believes that in order to pursue an effective regional policy, Russia would have to set up a single powerful agency to coordinate it.
“There is a worldwide network of Western NGOs which successfully promote their countries’ interests. They have long been working effectively with various peoples in the CIS, while our own NGOs get bogged down in bureaucracy.”
Zatulin agreed that Russia should cut direct support for Central Asian economies. “We can’t just give them money; we need to tell them exactly what we want to get in return for financial support.”
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