February 18:
Dmitry Medvedev has indicated that
he will be running the country in the likely event he is elected president on
March 2nd, and not Vladimir Putin, who has agreed to serve as Medvedev’s prime
minister. “Our country was and remains a presidential republic,”
Medvedev told Itogi magazine. Asked where the “center of power” will
be with the president in the Kremlin and the “national leader” in the Russian
White House, where the prime minister’s offices are located, Medvedev answered:
“There cannot be two, or three or five (power) centers. Russia is governed by
the president, and under the constitution there can be only one president.”
In the same interview, Medvedev echoed charges that the British Council, the
cultural body funded by the British government, has been involved in spying in
Russia. “After all, it’s known that structures financed by the state like the
British Council carry out, along with socially enlightening functions, a mass of
other activities that are not so widely advertised,” Medvedev told Itogi.
“Among other things, they are involved in gathering information and conducting
intelligence activity.” The British Council suspended operations at its offices
in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg last month after Russian authorities claimed
they were operating illegally and ordered them closed.
February 19:
President Vladimir Putin and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika have met in
Moscow amid a drive to create an OPEC-like gas cartel,
Agence France-Presse reports. “It’s extremely important that we keep in
touch on energy issues, particularly since Algeria this year is chairing OPEC,”
Putin told Bouteflika. According to official European Union data, Russia in 2005
accounted for 45.1 percent of the EU’s gas imports and Algeria 20.6 percent.
Meanwhile, Russian newspapers report that Russian-Algerian military ties have
been clouded after Algeria said it wanted to return 15 MiG-29 fighter jets
bought from Russia because of their low quality.
February 20:
A Moscow court has found Yevgeny Adamov, Russia’s former nuclear energy minister
who has been charged in the United States with stealing $9 million in U.S. aid
intended to improve Russia’s nuclear security, guilty of embezzlement and abuse
of office,
the New York Times reports. Adamov and two other former Russian
nuclear energy officials were accused of running an organized crime ring that
stole from an American and Russian venture. The Kremlin had said that because
Adamov is a Russian citizen and a former senior Russian official, Russia’s case
against him takes precedence over the U.S. case. Russia has also accused the
U.S. of trying to use its case to press Adamov into revealing nuclear secrets –
a charge the U.S. denies.
An Uzbek man has been stabbed to death in southwestern Moscow, the fourth fatal
attack on dark-skinned people in the Russian capital in the past five days,
the Moscow Times
reports. A law-enforcement source told Interfax that the 26-year-old victim
worked as a street sweeper and a gypsy-cab driver and was the father of small
children.
February 22:
President Vladimir Putin has rebuked Western countries for recognizing Kosovo’s
independence, the
Associated Press reports. “The Kosovo precedent is a terrifying precedent,”
he told a meeting of presidents from the Commonwealth of Independent States. “It
in essence is breaking open the entire system of international relations that
have prevailed not just for decades but for centuries. And it without a doubt
will bring on itself an entire chain of unforeseen consequences.” Governments
that have recognized Kosovo “are miscalculating what they are doing,” Putin
said, adding that “this is a stick with two ends and that other end will come
back to knock them on the head someday.”
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