Word: putin
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...competition (well, if she was allowed to travel). Bilan, who has a hugely successful Timbaland-produced album, performed in an elaborate presentation that featured Olympic-champion figure skater Yevgeny Plyuschenko skating next to him. Bilan won the finals and afterward was congratulated by both Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. (See a pictorial tribute to the spectacular cheesiness of Eurovision...
...President is attacking every form of dissent," says Ayesha Siddiqa, a political and military analyst. "His very authoritarian behavior is raising a serious question: are we looking at Pakistan's Mr. Putin? And how does one deal with a President who breaks all promises?" Sensing opportunity, Sharif has cast himself as a man of principle and a victim of Zardari's excesses. Unburdened by the pressures of power, the Punjabi industrialist has been pushing the government to reinstate Chaudhry for over a year now. He quit the coalition government after Zardari backtracked on agreements to do so. A confrontation...
...Khodorkovsky, then Russia's richest man, was arrested in 2003 at a time when he had been funding Kremlin-opposition groups, and had been vocal about his disdain for Putin. The charges for tax evasion and fraud on which he was convicted may have applied to many of Russia's leading businessmen at the time, say critics. "The only difference between [Khodorkovsky] and any other large-scale business at the time was his anti-Kremlin stance," says Tatiana Lokshina, deputy director of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch. "He frequently denounced Putin." Lokshina says that a further conviction...
...first year in office of Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev has marked an almost seamless continuity with the policies of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin - who is serving as prime minister until a legal framework is created to allow him to run, once again, for president. But in one potentially important respect, Medvedev is quite different from Putin: A former lawyer, the current president has spoken publicly and frequently about judicial reform to ensure fairness and end what he has referred to as "legal nihilism." Medvedev's promises of reform, if honored, could make a substantial difference to the fate...
...Some recent events have given cause for optimism that Medvedev may be relaxing some of the strictures of the Putin regime: The president withdrew Duma-approved legislation that would have broadened the terms for a treason conviction. Permission was granted for a protest march by an opposition party last month. And Medvedev visited the headquarters of Novaya Gazeta after the murder of journalist Anastasia Baburova - no such gesture was forthcoming from Putin after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya two years ago, a journalist from the same newspaper known for her exposes of human rights abuses in Chechnya...