Word: kremlins
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Before Litvinenko died, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service stated bluntly that he was "not the kind of person for whose sake we would spoil bilateral relations [with Britain]," and a Kremlin spokesman said talk about any possible role it may have had in the affair was "sheer nonsense." Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Putin's chief envoy to the European Union, suggested that the murder might be part of "a well-orchestrated campaign or plan to consistently discredit Russia and its leader." Asked about the matter at a Russia-E.U. meeting in Helsinki on Friday, Putin described...
Whatever the final outcome of the cases, the deaths of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya have chilled Russia's already frosty civil society, and revived memories most Russians would prefer to forget. Back in the bad old days of Soviet rule, fear was prevalent. People who spoke up against Kremlin authoritarianism knew what to expect: harassment, isolation, imprisonment and worse. Most people dared to grumble only in the relative safety of their own kitchens, but a hardy few - advocates of freedom such as Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky - made their dissent public...
...startling question, but not all that far-fetched. Russian democracy, chaotically vibrant just a decade ago, is looking increasingly fragile as checks and balances to Kremlin power are dismantled. Regional governors and members of the upper house of parliament are no longer elected but appointed; no new political parties can exist or be started, unless endorsed by the Kremlin; it is no longer possible for independent candidates to stand in constituencies for election to the Duma. The continuing conflict in Chechnya has given rise to a slew of allegations about human-rights abuses. And there's a strong impression - real...
...Russian authorities are terrified of the sort of "people power" that brought Viktor Yushchenko and Mikhail Saakashvili to power in Ukraine and Georgia. He sees a new dissident movement as "the only option," because power in today's Russia is now so concentrated in the hands of the Kremlin that any other opposition is futile. "It's very much the same as the case was in Soviet times," Kondaurov says...
...Mikhail Khodorkovsky Founder and former chairman, Yukos Oil Once one of Russia's richest men, he fell afoul of the Kremlin by taking an independent political stand and lost everything. Yukos has been dismembered, and Khodorkovsky, 43, who is serving an eight-year sentence in a Siberian jail on fraud charges he vigorously disputes, has become a symbol of the political nature of Russian justice. Before being jailed, he spoke to a newspaper about the aspirations of his compatriots: "They need democracy, because these are people who don't want to feel uncomfortable when talking to the police, these...