Word: putin
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...bombings have played an important role in Russian politics. Last fall's barrage triggered the most dramatic political changes in Russia since 1991. The attacks--and the war they engendered--thrust then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin into a role of unexpected prominence and eventually into the presidency of Russia. That chain of events has also provided rich ground for a whole crop of conspiracy theories: that the bombs were planted by ex-KGB goons trying to push Putin into power, for instance. Some Muscovites and many liberal Russians are worried that the Pushka killings will become a precursor...
...bombings has been to encourage a kind of scrappy vigilantism. Local "committees" now patrol and protect apartment buildings. Suspicious people and unattended packages prompt immediate calls to the police--all in all, a state of affairs that is a far cry from the image of a well-managed democracy Putin has tried to show the West...
...rules that require visitors to register with the police. Russia's Constitutional Court, the nation's highest legal authority, has repeatedly held that these rules violate the rights granted by the Russian constitution. But constitutional debate in Russia is shaped more often by shrapnel than by legal doctrine. Putin's anti-Chechen rhetoric often seems a calculated reminder that a country at war should hardly hope for enlargement of civil rights...
...some quarters, however, the bombs are upping pressure for a negotiated solution. Boris Berezovsky, a Russian tycoon who has become staunchly anti-Putin, captured that sentiment when he told TIME recently, "You can't defeat terrorism unless you have talks ...Are we waiting for a nuclear plant to explode to make us come to our senses?" Putin's view is that the only language the Chechens understand is violence. That is how he intends to talk to them. The worry in Moscow last week was that the Chechens have begun to talk back...
...week later, Russian officials revealed that they have a letter they say Kim gave Putin during his July 19 visit, which reaffirms Pyongyang's offer to halt its intercontinental ballistic missile program. That pricked up ears in the State Department, which is now probing North Korean diplomatic contacts to find out just what the "Dear Leader" has in mind...