By Citizen M | Published: August 3, 2010

TODAY: Fires claim 40 lives, environmentalists blame government measures; heatwave drownings; Medvedev not keen on a Putin power struggle; 50 detained at Khimki rally; human rights council calls for dismissal of Federal Youth Agency; military veterans win in the European Court of Human Rights; plane crash kills 12; North Caucasus militant leader ‘resigns’.
The wildfire death toll had hit 40 as of last night, as a
state of emergency was declared in seven regions, including Moscow, Ryazan, Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod. Environmentalists are
blaming the catastrophe on government policies, in particular the 2007 cancellation of a woodland-fire control system. A reported
1,229 people drowned last month, largely in heatwave-and-alcohol incidents. President Dmitry Medvedev says that a ‘
power struggle‘ with Vladimir Putin for the presidential role in 2012 ‘
would be bad for Russia‘. The
LA Times analyzes recent news reports on the wildfires, concluding that Putin is gearing up to be president once again, quoting a Kremlin expert: ‘
It is quite obvious that Putin uses these difficult times to show the people who is the strong man in the country, who is the national leader, who is the can-do man‘.
The Moscow Times reports that an unsanctioned rally held yesterday in the Khimki forest, protesting the plan to clear it for an $8 billion highway, saw the detention of about 50 people including Left Front leader Konstantin Kosyakin and Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, who said he had been injured on Saturday in a police encounter at a separate Khimki protest. The Kremlin’s human rights council wants the head of the Federal Youth Agency
to be dismissed over an exhibition at a youth camp portraying rights and opposition leaders as Nazis with impaled heads. A group of 87 military veterans has been
awarded $873,000 by the European Court of Human Rights after being denied pensions and a fair trial in Russia (thanks to the ‘
systemic‘ violation known as ‘
review trials‘).
A 19th-century mansion in a Moscow conservation area has been
knocked down, despite pickets and protests by preservation activists. The death toll of last night’s
An-24 plane crash in East Siberia has reached 12. The leader of a North Caucasus militant group thought to be responsible for the March metro attacks has apparently
resigned.
PHOTO: A women crosses herself as she holds a paper icon of St. Ilya as a Russian paratrooper, left, holds their unit’s flag to celebrate their troops’ arms, the Airborne Forces, at the Moscow Red Square, Monday, Aug. 2, 2010. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)