Word: russian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...notoriously rigid rules of conduct enforced at the IMF and other international organizations, the dramatic economic situation appears to be dampening any enthusiasm for seeing any more lofty heads fall. Especially in France, rumors are swirling that the initial press leaks of the Strauss-Kahn investigation stemmed from Russian and American rivals who covet his position and fear the French Socialists would favor an inordinately rigorous approach to regulating the global finance system. Nevertheless, some suggest there is little appetite within the IMF for an extended period of uncertainty over its leadership...
...shock and spread controversy. Their prime responsibility is to exercise caution when making claims and, when blunders occur, to seek a “public recognition and rectification of [their] mistakes,” just as Solzhenitsyn demanded at Harvard 30 years ago. We can only hope that the Russian writer’s prudence will bear out if the insinuations made about his Czech counterpart’s past are proven false...
...Russians were not surprised by the news out of France last week that Russian lawyer Karina Moskalenko found mercury in the car she had been using since August with her husband and three children. Moskalenko, who pursues the Russian government in international courts for human-rights abuses, now works mostly out of Strasbourg since Russian federal prosecutors sought but failed to disbar her in Moscow. Before authorities found the poison, Moskalenko had complained of suddenly deteriorating health - a frightening parallel to the case of former Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko, her onetime client, who was poisoned by polonium in Britain...
Moskalenko is a very high-profile target. She has won 27 cases against Russian authorities before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and has some 100 more pending. Moskalenko represents the jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, now an opposition leader. Moskalenko also represented the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot to death two years ago as she was entering her house in downtown Moscow. Moskalenko now represents Politkovskaya's family. Moskalenko discovered the poison just as she was set to travel to Moscow to take part in pretrial hearings...
...judicial system doesn't have a record of delivering justice. This month, for example, marks the 14th anniversary of the murder of Dmitri Kholodov, an investigative journalist killed in his office by a booby-trapped attaché case while he was investigating corruption in the Russian army. The long trial of his alleged murderers ended in their acquittal; a colonel charged with the murder won compensation for his forced retirement and pretrial confinement. Kholodov's friends and colleagues complain of a gross miscarriage of justice, but nothing has been done. The murder is officially unsolved; the crime is going unpunished...