Word: duma
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...Britain's expulsion of the Russian diplomats as part of an "anti-Russian campaign" backed by the U.S. "The West is pissed off we won the 2014 [winter] Olympics, so they sought a way to prick us," he said. Andrei Kokoshin, a pro-Putin member of the Duma, dismissed the British action as "a political novice [and new Prime Minister] Gordon Brown trying to win points." Speaking to state-run TV station Vesti 24, Kokoshin added, "Should it go further, British business stands to lose much more than Russian business, because Russia is on the rise...
...Vladimir Ryzhkov, a democratic opposition leader and a rare independent member of the Duma, maintains that since the U.S. started this controversy by walking out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, there is a grain of truth in Putin's assertion that Russia was forced to respond. But Ryzhkov sees Putin's saber-rattling as "primarily an election-year message to the country: 'Your leader won't budge, no matter who formally becomes next President'." Polls show that this line works, Ryzhkov says: the Russians really...
...monuments, ruling out much of the city center. Demonstrators also have to maintain a density of two protesters per square yard. And at indoor events, there must be a seat for every attendee. "The law is ridiculous," says Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of a liberal opposition party in the Moscow duma. "If you have five full chairs and someone arrives late, you are not allowed to let them...
...reason for the street action is the sad reality of the Putin regime long denying its opponents any legitimate public fora. The mainstream media are subdued, and "the Parliament is not a place for discussion," as the Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov succinctly put it in 2005. When people are denied the right to discuss their life on the parliament floor or in the media, they're forced into the street - and into strange alliances. The Other Russia, in fact, is an unlikely motley amalgamation: members of the traditional democratic and liberal Yabloko party; new liberal factions, The United Civic Front...
Meanwhile, there is the light--uncomfortably glaring--that the case sheds on modern Russia. Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the few independent liberals left in the Duma, says, "The point is not whether Putin is responsible for these concrete murders. The point is that he is responsible for having created a system that is ruled by fear and violence." Ryzhkov claims that the armed forces, Interior Ministry, FSB and those who have retired from them to join private security services "are running this country, own its economy and use violence and murder as habitual management techniques." A U.S. businessman in Moscow...