Russia Reform Monitor No. 1542, March 17, 2008
 American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, DC

Russian bloggers in the crosshairs;
Putin: Bush legacy proposal a "serious document"

Editor: Jonas Bernstein
March 12:

Prosecutors have charged a blogger in the northern city of Syktyvkar, Savva Terentyev, with inciting hatred, the Associated Press reports. In a February 2007 blog entry, Terentyev called police “trash” who should be burned in ovens “like at Auschwitz.” Internet experts say Terentyev’s case is the first time criminal charges have been brought against a blogger. “To prosecute a person for a private commentary written on a not-very-popular blog that no one takes seriously in any way whatsoever - this is clearly an abuse of the law and discredit to the law,” said Galina Kozhevnikova, an expert at the SOVA center, which studies hate crimes in Russia. “This is clearly a signal to the blogosphere, which in Russia people now read like the free press, for real information.”


March 13:

The leader of the For Human Rights movement, Lev Ponomarev, has said that he and his group is under surveillance, NEWSru.com reports. In a letter to Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Nikolai Patrushev, Ponomarev said that four men in plainclothes “obviously carrying out surveillance” were spotted outside the movement’s offices in Moscow. Criminal charges were recently filed against Ponomarev, who has campaigned against abuses in Russian prisons, for allegedly slandering General Yury Kalinin, the head of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service.


March 14:

President-elect Dmitry Medvedev has for the first time chaired a meeting in the Kremlin not attended by current President Vladimir Putin, Kommersant reports. The meeting was attended by State Fisheries Committee chief Andrei Krainy, FSB Border Guard Service chief Vladimir Pronichev, and Federal Customs Service Chief Andrei Belyaminov, while other federal and regional officials took part via a video link. According to Kommersant, Medvedev demanded to know why an order he gave earlier this year calling for new regulations to simplify procedures for inspecting vessels in ports has not yet been fulfilled. Medvedev, who will continue to serve as first deputy prime minister until his inauguration as president in May, has already moved into a Kremlin office.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that Russia has signaled a new openness toward a U.S. missile defense program for Eastern Europe, the Associated Press reports. Speaking to reporters during a Latin American trip, Rice said that while she would not go so far as to say that Russia’s opposition to the plan has diminished, the Russians have recently expressed sufficient interest in certain aspects of the latest U.S. proposal to warrant a face-to-face meeting. “In private, we’ve had good discussions with the Russians,” she said.


March 15:

The newspaper Tvoi Den has claimed that Russia’s secret service foiled an assassination attempt on President Vladimir Putin in Red Square on March 2nd, the day of the presidential election. According to Agence France-Presse, the newspaper did not cite any sources but gave a detailed account about the arrest of a Tajik national with a sniper rifle in a raid on a rented apartment near Red Square just hours before Putin was due to give a speech there.


March 17:

President Vladimir Putin has said following a Kremlin meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he sees a chance to improve relations with the United States after getting what he called a “serious document” from U.S. President George W. Bush. Citing unnamed U.S. officials, Reuters reports that the document was a letter from Bush laying out topics for discussion both in ongoing meetings and over the longer term, possibly setting the stage for an agreement on the powers’ relationship that can be handed off to subsequent Russian and U.S. administrations.

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