Word: oligarchically
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What's inside the Putin doll? Russian craftsmen have long since satirized their politicians by painting their likeness onto traditional hollow "matryoshka" dolls, each of which houses a smaller doll in descending sequence. And where cynics might have expected to find the likeness of arch-oligarch Boris Berezovsky inside a doll representing the president he helped bring to power, Putin may instead contain figures unpalatable to the media tycoon. Indeed, the new president's campaign against some of the other oligarchs - politically powerful billionaires who, like Berezovsky, accumulated their fortunes by questionable means in the Wild West early years...
...citing the fiction that his prosecutors were independent and beyond his control. And that's why Russians will take little comfort in President Vladimir Putin's suggestion, while traveling in Spain, that he knew nothing about the arrest this week of anti-Kremlin media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky. Gusinsky, the oligarch whose Media-MOST company operates radio, TV and print media critical of President Putin's administration, was arrested Tuesday, purportedly on charges of stealing $10 million in state property, and taken to a 19th-century prison where he'll have to wait 10 days before appearing in court. Because Gusinsky...
...Vladimir Gusinsky is certainly no better than any other Russian oligarch," says TIME Moscow correspondent Yuri Zharakovich. "All of them came to their exalted positions and their wealth by crook rather than by hook. But he has, nonetheless, created the most honest and most professional media organization in the country, and its objective coverage of stories such as the Chechnya war has infuriated the Kremlin. Putin may say that this was an independent decision by the prosecutor's office, but nobody in Russia makes a decision of such magnitude unless it comes from the boss...
...freedom of speech in Russia, which has been the only tangible benefit the country has gained since the collapse of the Soviet system," says Zharakovich. And it's not only Putin critics who see the media mogul's arrest as an ill omen. Even Boris Berezovsky - the oligarch most closely connected with Putin's rise, and a mortal enemy of Gusinsky because of business and political rivalry - has expressed disquiet. "Berezovsky, who actually wanted Gusinsky out of the way, appears to be scared by how the Kremlin has gone about removing him," says Zharakovich. "Because Berezovsky is extremely intelligent...
India's modern military tradition begins, somewhat ironically, after the mid-nineteenth century British conquest of the subcontinent. Before the Imperial era the various Indian nations maintained essentially feudal, personal armies. Each prince, oligarch king, or head of state led armed forces with personal allegiance to, and often clan relationships with, the leader. The "officers" were almost always members of the ruling family or clan...