RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Feb 14, 2012
TODAY: Lavrov indicates that Russia won’t support Syria action until ceasefire; French journalist expelled from Russia; UNICEF reports on teenage depression; Putin writes on income inequality as campaign manager slams liberals; Chichvarkin’s London-based Russia satire; activists protest metro line construction through forest.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has responded to U.N. and Arab League plans to send a peacekeeping mission into Syria, saying that any mission to support peace must be based on the presence of peace, indicating that Russia will not support any intervention without a ceasefire. The U.N.’s Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay, says that Russia’s veto of the original proposed peace plan ‘emboldened’ Bashar al-Assad’s regime. French journalist Anne Nivat has been expelled from Russia allegedly for having the wrong visa, after she had been speaking with the opposition. ‘It clearly didn’t please them that I was having conversations with people from the opposition—they clearly said it, many times,’ she said. A new UNICEF report suggests that 20% of Russian teenagers suffer from depression – significantly more than their Western counterparts. This article discusses St. Petersburg’s moves to pass a bill outlawing ‘gay propaganda’.