Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Last Saturday a lengthy political saga  finally came to an end at United Russia’s conference in Moscow.  Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin announced that the latter will contest next year’s Russian Presidential election.  This resolves the “will he or won’t he” speculation about President Medvedev seeking a second term in office. There will, of course, be many Russian liberals who see this decision as a fatal blow to Russia’s democracy.  There will also be a chorus of “we told you so”s from commentators hostile to the Kremlin who always maintained that Medvedev’s presidency was a sham.   Their arguments have some force, but they’re very far from the full picture.   The President has defended his decision to step aside and let Putin contest the election, observing that the Prime Minister is Russia’s “most authoritative” leader.   The Russian public has consistently expressed its preference for Putin, ahead of Medvedev, wher...

When either the President or Prime Minister of Russia wants to emphasise their liberal credentials they head to Skolkovo.  A business school, set to become heart of Moscow’s answer to Silicon Valley, it’s an emblem for the new Russia: educated, tech savvy, pro-business and punching its weight. Something of a kerfuffle accompanied Dmitry Medvedev’s press conference , planned for Skolkovo this afternoon.  There was some expectation that the President would declare his hand and announce whether he would run for a second term, in next year’s election. The conference followed hot on the heals of the announcement that Mikhail Prokorov, currently Russia’s third wealthiest billionaire, would lead Right Cause, the pro-business party which has backed Medvedev for the presidency, into December’s state Duma election. Interesting choreography, but the journalists who flocked to the Moscow Management School were disappointed.  The President said that it is ‘too soon’ to announce hi...

Will Putin or Medvedev contest next year's presidential election in Russia?  The answer is by no means certain.  Everything either man does at the moment is interpreted as pre-campaign manoeuvring. To that end the New Times has sketched up an intriguing map showing pro Putin and pro Medvedev regions of Russia.  It's all rather conjectural, but the speculation is rather fun. It scores it 28 solid Putin regions to 14 for Medvedev .   The remaining 41 regions are dominated by neither man.    It must be said that the stats aren't based so much on voter intention as the administrative subtleties in each region.

A defining image of 1990s Russia was President Yeltsin's vodka fuelled dancing and conducting.  It was interpreted by many Russians as a national humiliation. That didn't deter Dmitry Medvedev from 'shimmying' along to the song 'American Boy', which Google insists is performed by a singer called Estelle. This being 2011, you don't have to be on a stage for cringey stuff to be relayed to the world.  The President's dance was captured on mobile phone and it's fast becoming a Youtube classic. Ignore the more demonstrative guy in the foreground  - Dima is the little guy in the grey suit. Much needed down time for Medvedev.  Russia faces elections to the State Duma in December.  They'll act as a barometer for the 2012 presidential poll.  Whether the current incumbent even stands in that election, we must wait and see.

Yesterday Mikhail Gorbachev celebrated his eightieth birthday.  The architect of reform in the former Soviet Union is the epitome of a ‘prophet not without honour, except in his own country‘.  Feted in the rest of the world for dismantling the apparatus of a totalitarian state, he is a marginal figure in Russia. There are signs, though, that his contribution is beginning to be recognised.  In the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall in Moscow, within spitting distance of the Kremlin’s walls, an exhibition of photographs,   ‘Mikhail Gorbachev: Perestroika’ , charts his career and political evolution. More significantly Gorbachev was awarded Russia’s highest national honour  to mark his birthday .  President Medvedev decorated the former Soviet leader with the Order of St Andrew.  Medvedev spoke about the ’immense labour’ Gorbachev contributed to Russia and the USSR at a ’difficult and dramatic time’. Elsewhere commentators are using the occasion to ref...

Nicholas II - the last Tsar of Russia. It’s been the premise of not a few thrillers, but restoration of the Russian Tsar is now the goal of a political party.  RT reports that the Tsarist Russia party held its first congress in Moscow yesterday . The group proposes that a modern Zemsky Sobor or ‘assembly of the land’ be called in order to choose a monarch.  A rudimentary parliament of that name elected Boris Godunov to the throne after the Rurik dynasty ended in 1598. The party is certainly ambitious.  It hopes to build up a 10-20% vote share with a populist programme tapping into images and symbols from Russia‘s distant past. Another less eccentric group is also charged with exploiting emotive historical events for its electoral advantage. A Just Russia was the pro-Kremlin party designed to offer an alternative to United Russia on the centre-left.  It supported Medvedev’s nomination for the presidency and squeaked into the state Duma at the 2007 election...

This time last week a full scale row was brewing over the Guardian journalist Luke Harding's apparent 'expulsion' from Russia.  Labour MP Chris Bryant even called for the Kremlin's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to be denied entry to Britain over the episode. This afternoon Lavrov delivered a speech at the London School of Economics after meeting William Hague at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office .  His visit attracted some protests from Russian opposition activists, who attempted to pass on a series of symbolic 'gifts' for President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin. So why has everything gone quiet on the Harding affair?  Quite simple really.  The journalist is back in situ in Moscow .  He reentered the country just a week after being refused entry at Domodedovo Airport.  He uses his Twitter account to suggest that colleagues pursue his "case" at Lavrov's press conference.  A week's enforced leave, though, does not make a compelling ...

If Boris Yeltsin were still alive, he would have celebrated his eightieth birthday on Tuesday .  Although his record in the job was chequered, to say the least, the current Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, paid tribute to his predecessor in Yekaterinburg. A monument to Yeltsin was unveiled in the city where he lived and where, as a communist functionary during the 1970s and 1980s, he built up his political power base.  Medvedev chose the occasion to announce an expansion of the human rights council, ordering it to investigate the cases of Yukos bosses Sergei Magitsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It was an interesting piece of symbolism - both historically and in the context of Russia‘s current system of government.  It implied that Yeltsin was the father of democracy and human rights in Russia and it rather suggested that his successors haven’t been as faithful to that legacy as they might have been. Clearly, there are problems with that interpretation.  It can...

The savage beating of Oleg Kashin hit the headlines in Britain yesterday, as Russian journalists gathered to show solidarity for their colleague in Moscow.  Reporting news can be a dangerous business in Russia and Kashin is just the latest in a succession of cases of intimidation, violence and even murder. The thirty year old was beaten into a coma - he suffered two broken legs, mangled fingers and serious damage to the skull.  Notably, reports of the incident suggest that none of his personal belongings were taken.  The attackers did a methodical, brutish and highly effective job of silencing the journalist. The easy response to such incidents is to allege that the Kremlin organises punitive beatings (and worse) for dissenting investigative journalists.  That’s a gross simplification.  A complex blend of corruption, vested interests, youthful nationalism and ’legal nihilism’, can underlie such attacks. Kashin, it appears, does not fit the stereotypical t...

Further evidence of Dmitry Medvedev’s growing assertiveness in the cause of reform. After a public spat, Yuri Luzhkov, the demotic mayor who ran Moscow like a private fiefdom, has been dismissed by the Russian president. Luzhkov, a Yeltsin functionary and then a fixture of United Russia who had held his position since 1992, clashed with Medvedev when the Kremlin cancelled a road building project, due to objections by environmental campaigners. Against a powerful enemy, often portrayed as untouchable, the President showed steely determination. In recent weeks Russian state TV shone a spotlight on the corrupt kleptocracy which Luzhkov operated in Moscow, in order to enrich his own family. Despite clear signals from the Kremlin that his reign was nearing its end, the mayor clung on to the bitter end and refused to jump. Medvedev held his nerve and applied a much needed shove. The interesting aspect of this dismissal is that Luzhkov had made some very dismissive comments about t...

The New York Times reports disillusionment in Russia with the authorities’ response to wild fires and deaths resulting from this summer’s heat-wave. Even Ria Novosti, a news agency owned by the Kremlin, records ‘waning support’ for the President and Prime Minister. In particular it quotes a source citing ’growing fatigue surrounding Putin’s popularity’. The prime minister, as is his style, has publicly taken charge of efforts to combat the wildfires. According to Ria Novosti, he took to the air in order to personally extinguish two blazes, within 200km of Moscow. The story describes Putin’s antics as a ‘stunt’, which, on reflection, is hardly an inaccurate description. Voices of opposition in the media are even more critical. The horrendous controversialist , Yulia Latynina, writing in the Moscow Times, characteristically claims that “in developed countries, citizens don’t perish in fires” . Her fiercest criticism is reserved for Putin, who signed off a ’Forest Code’ in 20...

President Medvedev talks to President Bagapsh in Sukhumi. Two years ago this weekend Georgian shells started to rain down on South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali.  The robust military action which Russia took to defend the contested breakaway republic is still a matter of controversy. However, the European Union’s fact-finding report confirmed , unequivocally, that acts of aggression from Georgia marked the beginning of the conflict.  The document bolstered the case for governments in the US and EU to reconsider their reflexive backing for President Saakashvili. The regime in Tbilisi continues to show, periodically, an authoritarian bent, and its behaviour is still  e rratic.  Saakashvili’s military gamble, which briefly threatened to push the US into direct confrontation with Russia , now looks like a massive miscalculation. His government is, rightly, treated with more caution by foreign allies, particularly in Washington, where pressing the ’reset button...

Fascist Rolf Harris lookalike sticks his tongue out. When commentators berate Russians for their stubborn support for Putin, Medvedev and United Russia, they rarely touch upon the alternatives.  The truth is that the opposition in Russia comprises a sorry, rag-tag bunch. ‘The Other Russia’ was a coalition of anti-Putinists including, most prominently, the liberal chess player Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov, an iconoclast writer, whose ’National Bolshevik’ party is banned. A party has now been formed using the Other Russia name, in order to fight parliamentary elections, led by Limonov. His eccentric ideas are easy to dismiss as a joke and the National Bolsheviks were indeed renowned for their Dadaist exploits.  However their leader was sincere enough in his ’red brown’ Eurasianist beliefs to travel to Bosnia in order to fight alongside the Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic.  And he was arrested for leading an attempted ’invasion’ of Kazakhstan, a te...

There’s bitter irony in Yulia Tymoshenko’s latest claim that the new president, Viktor Yanukovych, is dismantling democracy in Ukraine.  In the aftermath of February’s election, Tymoshenko refused to accept her defeat at Yanukovych’s hands, despite unanimous agreement from international observers that the poll was free and fair. The former prime minister’s comments are timed to coincide with Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev’s, visit to Kiev.  Both Yanukovych and Medvedev are keen to foster a constructive relationship between their two countries, repairing the turbulent relationship which existed when the nationalist, Viktor Yushchenko, was president of Ukraine. The new Ukrainian regime has set its sights on a rapprochement with Russia, which doesn’t compromise its relationship with the EU.  Yanukovych has made it abundantly clear that he still has ambitions to steer Ukraine towards European Union membership, while avoiding needlessly antagonising its powerful nei...

Victory Day in Moscow saw British soldiers from the Welsh Guards take part in a parade on Red Square, alongside Russian, American and French troops.  The lead up to the event witnessed a spat about Stalin’s role in the Great Patriotic War, as attempts to have the dictator’s portrait play a role in the celebrations were quashed. When President Medvedev made an interventio n in the debate it was to shoot down any hint of Stalin-idolatry.  Speaking to Izvestia newspaper, he slammed the totalitarian Soviet regime, stressing that it was people, rather than the tyrant, who had defeated Nazi Germany and calling Stalin’s crimes ’unforgivable’. Whatever you might read elsewhere , Medvedev has not changed tack with his comments.  He has consistently condemned the rehabilitation of Stalinism.  He has repeatedly expressed sorrow for Stalin’s victims.  And it was Medvedev who ordered that the archives be opened up, in order to reveal the true horror of the crimes at Katy...

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has reviewed his government’s performance during 2009, in an interview with Channel One . The state has a substantial share-holding in the Moscow based station and it commands a greater audience share than any of its competitors. The interview, therefore, corresponds to something like a state of the nation address. It’s an opportunity for Medvedev to assess Russia’s progress and explain to ordinary Russians the course which he intends to follow in the future. The transcript shows that the President is under no illusions about the Federation’s economic position. Whilst he is quick to point out that stability has been retained despite global financial turmoil, he is aware of the fragility of an economy dependent disproportionately upon the ’extraction and export of raw materials’. A theme of Medvedev’s presidency has been the need for Russia’s economy to diversify. Russians are acutely aware that the nation’s economic success relies on the cost of ...

Vladimir Putin has announced that bereaved families whose loved ones died in the Perm nightclub fire will each receive 500,000 rubles compensation. The measure exacerbates the sense that this incident, which cost 113 lives, was not simply a terrible accident. The Lame Horse nightclub failed to observe fire regulations. And its owners are reported to have left the city in an attempt to flee the scene, shortly after it burnt down. It has been alleged that the premises suffered from ‘the same firetrap conditions’ for eight years. The club’s website ‘gallery’ shows revellers dancing beneath a dry weave of twigs. In retrospect it does appear an obvious fire hazard. Although many of us will have been in venues throughout Europe which appeared equally unsafe. The site itself has become a poignant and disturbing remnant of a death-trap. The menus, the news section, hold the same macabre fascination involved in browsing the diary of a murderer. A criminal investigation is now in pro...

The Russian President recently set out a prospectus for modernisation in an article published on the democratic news-site, gazeta.ru. Perennially hostile observers chose to interpret the piece as an extension of a good cop / bad cop routine which they believe Medvedev is engaged in, in conjunction with Vladimir Putin. By their estimation, real power resides squarely with the Prime Minister and suggestions of liberalism, which occasionally emanate from the President’s office, form a convenient distraction, simply permitting Putin to exercise his personal authority with greater freedom and efficiency. Cynicism amongst commentators, however, is not universal. There are those who believe that Putin’s influence has merely postponed a project of reform for which Medvedev will seek a mandate in 2012. The article does not suggest that the President will willingly stand aside, should his predecessor seek an immediate return to the Kremlin, and there is plenty of evidence to corroborate th...

The anniversary of last summer’s war between Georgia and Russia has formed a pretext for predictable anti-Russian posturing. Politicians in Britain and elsewhere have been quick to rationalise their initial reactions to the conflict, despite the improvement in tone which Barack Obama’s arrival at the White House has precipitated between western governments and the Kremlin during the last six months. However, despite the residual, reflexive Russophobia which informs much of this analysis, it has generally been expressed in terms which are distinctly more temperate than the (empty) sabre rattling we witnessed last August. Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, is a particularly blinkered critic of Moscow, and compulsively meddles in the affairs of sovereign states. But he met the anniversary of Saakashvili’s invasion with an uncharacteristically muted statement which welcomed President Medvedev’s call for a ‘new security architecture’ in Europe. The Conservative shadow defence minister,...

In the wake of Natalia Estemirova’s murder in Chechnya, Dmitry Medvedev has rubbished suggestions that Ramzan Kadyrov, the region’s president, sanctioned her killing. Although, ostensibly, it is possible that the Memorial activist was abducted by a group which was not linked to the Chechen authorities, the incident will raise more questions about the methods by which Kadyrov has stabilised the Russian republic. After the last campaign in Chechnya the Kremlin’s pressing priority was to restore order without expending needlessly the lives of more Russian soldiers. Clearly Kadyrov, with his rapid ascent through government posts and his strong arm tactics, has succeeded in pacifying the republic. There is scarcely any doubt, however, that the thirty two year old is a highly unsavoury character, given to autocratic and violent methods. Knowingly, Vladimir Putin entered into a Faustian pact when he allowed Kadyrov free rein to subdue separatism in Chechnya. The former rebel, who fought ...