Word: putin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...personnel, and put its approximately 4,000 troops still in Georgia on high alert, ordering them to shoot to kill if they needed to defend themselves. "These people [Georgians] think that under the protection of their foreign sponsors they can feel comfortable and secure," intoned Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday in televised remarks. "Is it really...
...Putin's jibe at the U.S. was transparent. And he stepped up his open support of the secessionist agenda of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which had broken away from Georgia with Russian encouragement in the early 1990s and are treated by Russia as if they had been annexed: he had their leaders formally invited to a major Russian economic conference held close to the Georgian border on Sunday...
...fact, only ten days after the Beslan disaster, Putin made a statement that was to reshape this country drastically. Russia was at war with terrorists, Putin said, invoking "hidden enemies" and the threat to this country's integrity. He pledged to mobilize the nation to fight back in "the total and cruel and full-scale war," and to launch an efficient crisis-management system, "which will include principally new approaches to law enforcement agencies...
...Putin's new program included scrapping popular elections of regional governors; allowing the parliamentary elections only on tightly controlled party tickets (which eliminates independent deputies from future Dumas); and launching the so-called Public Chamber as a token Kremlin-controlled voice of civil society...
...Within two years, Putin had fully accomplished his program, outlined in the wake of the Beslan tragedy: he has a rubber-stamp Parliament. He has intimidated the mass media. He has firmly taken over Russia's main riches of oil and gas. He subdued the regions and enlarged the powers of the FSB. In spite of that, reports of terror bombings and shootings have grown into a routine daily occurrence...