building in proper democratic checks and balances, including criticism from a free media and legal system, can accountability be created and corruption or incompetence tackled
The organizers of Russia’s opposition protests had hoped to organize a human chain that would stretch across the entire ring, which at an average width of a foot and a half per person, they estimated would take 34,000 people.
Western analysts portray the Russian government as a virtual dictatorship. Hoover fellow Michael A. McFaul dissents. It would be an odd dictatorship, he argues, that found itself thwarted by a legislature or pushed around by a free press. In both Russia and the West, most analysts portray Russia's political system as an authoritarian regime.
Vladimir Yakunin, who had revived a bank started by the Communist Party
how much they disliked the unfolding chaos of Boris Yeltsin's Russia.
5 years later, many of these same men (and some of their closest friends) now run the country
Putin became President in 2000, thanks to President Yeltsin's unexpected resignation
ake group have risen to the hig
hest levels in Russian business and politics
tate-owned oil company
Railways.
largest company
While Putin, 55, stepped into the No. 2 role of Prime Minister, no one doubts that he has extended his regime.
swiftly to reassert the government's control over key sectors of the Russian economy,
flashy entrepreneurs who grew fabulously wealthy when Yeltsin liberalized the Russian economy
taken back an estimated $100 billion in assets held by private hands in the 1990s
Almost to a man, they served in the Soviet-era KGB
Among the top Russian bureaucrats and business leaders, more than one-quarter have their roots in the so-called power ministries of the government, of which the old KGB
started getting nervous.
Stories of Russian power plays have grown too numerous to dismiss
business leaders thrown in jail on bogus charges
ssets taken by dubious lawsuits,
partnerships with Russian companies suddenly turning into struggles over control
the invasion of Georgia
concerns have sent the Russian stock market plunging more than 30% since May
On Oct. 7, 2006, she was found dead in her apartment building with a Makarov 9-millimeter pistol dropped at her side
Mr. Putin, the Russian prime minister who was then president, kept silent for three days.
the level of her influence on political life in Russia was utterly insignificant."
Investigators and colleagues concluded that someone had ordered her death to silence her
But authorities say the murder was ordered from abroad by enemies of the present governm
Of the 10 men originally arrested in the killing, three were charged with murder: Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov and Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police investigator.
more stable, less pluralistic politics in Russia seems also to reflect the reality that rapid economic development has been achieved in a number of post-Communist countries that never transitioned to democracy, like China.
Putin’s decision to return will reinstall a leader with the power to implement decisions and end an increasingly dysfunctional diarchy
“I think we are on the verge of very important, perhaps tectonic, shifts in the consciousness of the elites, including the power elites,”
Other analysts note that companies and investors will now be able to price in political risks whose contours are not likely to change much, as Mr. Putin is poised to remain in power until 2024.
“Western businesses work wonderfully with dictators,”
“a retrograde, and indeed farcical step, that is incompatible with economic and political progress in Russia”
he country was on the way to becoming a “third-world petrokleptocracy.”
A few days before Putin's rigged election on March 4 and the upcoming rally of the opposition against a newly falsified Putin's polls, "Putin, the leader of KGB Russia, threatened the opposition with killings.
Q:IN WHAT sort of society might a 68-year-old man be sent to jail for peacefully carrying his nation's flag in a parade to celebrate Flag Day? A: In Vladimir Putin's Russia, if the man is someone that Mr. Putin -- former president, current prime minister and seemingly eternal ruling-party boss -- happens not to like.
Russia's newly outrageous legal treatment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of the country's largest oil company, is a reminder that Russia has yet to grasp the idea of equal justice under law - especially when the Kremlin decides someone is in the way.
March 27, 2010: After nearly a year of negotiations, Russian and the United States diplomats have agreed on new terms to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expired at the end of 2009. START limits the number of nuclear weapons each nation has.
commands great respect and authority amongst the leading industrialists of Russia and has the Oil and Gas companies in his pocket
Critics of Putin argue that “United Russia has lost touch with reality”
probably be in power until 2024
Medvedev has proven the puppet many saw him to be
When you see him on TV, you can’t help but feel Prime Minister Putin has not only given him the nod and written his speech, but probably even dressed him, fed him and brushed his teeth as well
“I am certain that there will be victory (for United Russia) and that it will be secured by legal means”
Medvedev is preparing to secure the job of Prime Minister
United Russia are on an offensive to make sure the vote goes the way it should.
MOSCOW - For Dmitry Nesterenko, an entrepreneur in the restaurant business, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's overwhelming victory in the elections was a "disgusting act."
Tens of thousands of people marched in downtown Moscow for three hours Saturday to protest against alleged electoral fraud by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in last weekend's parliamentary elections -- and to call for Putin to step down. The government-sanctioned demonstrations in 60 cities across the country marked the largest display of public discontent in post-Soviet Russia.
Addressing a rally outside the Kremlin, Mr Putin had tears rolling down his cheeks as he claimed he had won an "open and honest battle" and secured "clear victory" over his four rivals. Early results suggested he had won more than 63 per cent of the vote, enough to avoid a run-off against another of the candidates and deliver him an unprecedented third term.