Blogging the democratic revolution
Andy over at Siberian Light has his weekly news roundup for Russia up. Check it out!
There were some reports earlier that the China-Russia joint military exercises were changed to prepare for an invasion of Taiwan. The Russian army chief categorically denied this. BEIJING, March 17 (Xinhuanet) — Visiting Russian army chief said here Thursday that the preparing Russian and Chinese joint military exercise is not targeted at any third country. “The first joint military exercise is a new way of cooperation between the two militaries,” said Yury Baluyevsky, Russian chief of general staff, who is on his first trip abroad since he took upthe post last July. Instead of being targeted at any third country,…
I meant to get this up this morning. My latest on Ukraine is up at Bloggledygook. The country’s Prosecutor General Pyskun has granted Mykola Melnychenko (Tape Man!) immunity in absentia. Also, Tape Man is under the protection of Boris Berezovsky, who has an interesting history of his own. Also, an interesting idea for a South Africa-style truth commission and some color commentary from former PM Pavel Lazarenko, who has had some, uh, legal problems here in the States. Go on a wade through the byzantine splendor of it all!
The LA Times has a good article on the many strange deaths that have shadowed the Orange Revolution. How Yushchenko handles the pressure in this time after the Revolution will tell us much about his ability to govern and the future of Ukraine. My take is here.
I was just searching for news, and the latest confirmation of the opposition’s attempt to block the parliament’s presidential election is showing. CHISINAU. March 12 (Interfax) – Members of the opposition Democratic Moldova Bloc (BDM) who have been elected to parliament made written obligations on Saturday to boycott the election by the new legislature of the next Moldovan president. … The BDM deputies, in explaining in a statement their planned boycott, cited what they called a need for “the decommunization of the country and the development of Moldova along the path of democracy and European integration.” But not all the…
Firstly, the OSCE is concerned because of the major crackdowns on independent media, NGOs, and people’s lives in general. A senior official of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has denounced authorities in Belarus over their treatment of independent media. The OSCE’s special commissioner for the media, Miklos Haraszti, said today that restrictions have effectively shut down many non-state media outlets. His statements accompany the release of a broad assessment of media freedoms in Belarus, where President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has kept a tight hold on power for more than a decade. Effectively, Belarus has earned the nickname…
The so-called "tapegate" revolving around the murder of Georgiy Gongadze is but one of many recording-related scandals in Ukraine. One such long and torturous story (which also features Mykola Melnichenko and his recordings) involves a prominent banker whom former President Leonid Kuchma is said to have conspired to intimidate, jail and destroy. This story has gone largely unreported in the West. It is time to tell it. On March 13, 2000, Borys Feldman, President of Sloviansky Bank, which at the time was Ukraine’s most profitable commercial bank, was arrested and charged by authorities with failing to pay income tax on…
Andy has this week’s news roundup of happenings inside and out of Russia.
There has finally been an update to the situation in Moldova, as there has been a relative media blackout post-election. Before anything, recall my latest post: I wasn????????t initially excited about the opposition????????s prospects here, or their ties to Moscow, but this could turn out to be very interesting. While the opposition is somewhat fragmented right now, they could potentially unite on their broader ideals and prevent Voronin from gathering the necessary votes he needs. Two things could happen then: the communists would have to settle for a more agreeable candidate in order to get the necessary votes, or the…
Who knew? The exit polls were pretty accurate. The president of ex-Soviet Moldova, a former ally of Moscow now committed to European integration, looked well placed in a parliamentary election on Sunday with an exit poll giving his Communists a healthy lead. But the poll also showed two opposition parties doing well enough to deny the Communists under President Vladimir Voronin the outright majority they currently enjoy. Voronin, who campaigned on forging closer ties with the West, accuses Russia of interference by helping separatists in the Russian-speaking Dnestr region. The Communists’ rivals say they lack democratic credentials and intend to…
Dan McMinn at Orange Ukraine has a great post comparing “normalcy” in Ukraine in 2004 to normalcy in 2005. From the end: I’ve been having a debate, of sorts, with one of those folks who still believe “Yushchenko has ushered in fascism”. His only major argument, so far, is that Yushchenko’s call for all public officials not to visit the sauna is a major limit on people’s freedom. If you really want to, you can read our exchange here. I’d just like to say that when the worst I have to bicker with him about is a slightly silly political…
Andy over at Siberian Light has the week’s worth of Russian news up at his blog.
And if anyone asks, that’s what the opposition has dubbed the revolution they are hoping for, due to Moldova’s vineyards. Elections are being held in Moldova today. In a nutshell, the parliament will be elected, and then the parliament will elect the president. Background But this election is much more complicated than meets the eye. The current president, Vladimir Voronin, is a communist. This is not so rare, except that he is leaning toward the EU and away from Moscow. Prague, 4 March 2005 (RFE/RL) — The Communist Party of president Vladimir Voronin is heavily favored to retain its strong…
Elmar Huseynov, the editor of the outspoken anti-government weekly publication, Monitor, was shot dead by an unknown assailant on March 2. The first thing that jumped to my mind when hearing about this was the murder of Gongadze in Ukraine, who was the anti-government editor of Ukrainska Pravda. HRW, New York, 04.03.2005 — The Azerbaijani government must fully investigate the killing of the editor of the independent weekly magazine Monitor, Human Rights Watch said today. The murder of the editor, Elmar Huseynov, is a frightening reminder of the danger of outspoken criticism in Azerbaijan. On the evening of Wednesday, March…
I was just sitting here a couple hours ago reading and thinking about doing a roundup on elections in Moldova, which are a week from now, but Lyndon Allin beat me to it.
Aussiegirl is following the prosecution of the Gongadze case, a journalist whose head was found missing under Kuchma’s regime. Here are quotes from Yushchenko. Also, has his head finally been found? Either way, the killers have been found. Secret police, no less, though that was expected. And a witness was recently injured after the killers were named. I’m thinking there may be more than these three. abdymok is all over the whole story as well, with lots of information. For some background info, he is a journalist for the Kyiv Post.
A couple of days ago, I posted the full transcript of the press conference between President Bush and Putin after their meeting. In that post, I highlighted in bold what I thought were remarks worth noting and looking into. One journalist, in particular, threw a weird question out there, asking: To follow up on the issue of democratic institutions, President Bush recently stated that the press in Russia is not free. What is this lack of freedom all about? Your aides probably mentioned to you that our media, both electronic and our printed media, have full coverage on the manifestations…
Andy has got his weekly round up news from Russia, focusing on domestic, foreign, near-abroad, and business. Well, that’s just about everything. Did I mention it’s Andy’s birthday? Go over and give him so love.
Orange Revolution reports that PORA has acquired contacts among uncountable numbers of youth in Russia, and that they are seeking ways to have a movement of their own. Yabloko’s Youth wing and a new movement “Moving without Putin” have signed a pact to consolidate youth groups opposed to the Putin regime. PORA has reported the expansion of contacts with Russian youth seeking to replicate the success of the Orange Revolution: That’s a good sign. In other countries such as those in Central Asia, opposition groups are fragmented, which makes it much harder to carry out their opposing. The consolidation of…
Reading over the actual transcript of the press conference has been a lot more interesting than just reading the news articles about that. I guess those in the press just haven’t caught on to my tastes yet, but I can forgive them for now. At the beginning of the press conference, both President Bush and Putin give their littles speeches. The action didn’t start until the newspeople started asking their loaded questions… something that made for even better answers. You’ve got to love it. I’ve put in bold some parts of interest; things that many of us have wondered about.…
I came across an article a couple of days ago detailing how Russia killed some Chechen rebels by using gas and storming the building. Russian troops on Sunday used heavy weaponry and gas to kill three rebels holed up in a house near Chechnya, local media reported. The rebels were besieged in an apartment block for more than a day, before dozens of special forces troops with armored vehicles subdued them, leaving their apartment in flames, Reuters news agency reported. Now, what I’m getting at is not how dire the situation is between these two factions, but the use of…
Abdymok has a great interview with a Dmytro Potekhin, who details how preparations for the Orange Revolution began, and how the money donated by some organizations was used. even amid all the media speculation about ???????revolution templates??????? last fall, few reported what pro-democracy activists were actually doing to set the stage for the non-stop demonstration against voting fraud that erupted in kyiv on nov. 22. Good point. And a good reason to read the interview.
Posted in the Ukraine Action Report, the speech basically thanks the European Union for their support, rejects the “neighborhood policy” in favor of full member status, explains how Ukraine will reform, and talks a lot about freedom and democracy. A great speech, overall, for a prestigious president.
From this article: Although details were still being negotiated last night, the joint statement to be released at the presidential summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, could be used as a counterpoint to the rising tension in U.S.-Russian relations over Putin’s crackdown on domestic dissent. Bush has promised to challenge Putin on Russia’s retreat from democracy during their meeting but has also stressed his continuing friendship for the Russian president and their ability to work together on mutual security issues. “We’re trying to demonstrate that we can make progress and move forward despite these other issues,” a senior Bush administration official said.…
I found this post by Neeka disturbing. In Khasavyurt, Daghestan, today, blood on the floor of a tiny, shitty apartment with shattered windows and bullet marks on the ceiling. The blood is, possibly, of Raja Aliyev, b. 1984, allegedly head of a militant group from Chechnya. A dead body on the floor is probably Aliyev’s as well. On the table, “the evidence”: a few Qur’ans and a dozen other religious-looking volumes – and then, suddenly, a 1980s Soviet edition of the Arabian Nights, its cover filled with Islamic ornaments, pretty and so unmistakably familiar. But I’m sure there are people…