RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – August 11, 2009

By Citizen M | Published: August 11, 2009

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TODAY: Human rights activist and husband murdered; Medvedev has idea for military abroad; Georgia suggests the Kremlin seeking justification for incursion.  Ukraine-Russia ties on the rocks; reports to be submitted about bribery.   

President Medvedev has submitted a bill to the State Duma that would allow for the deployment of Russian troops almost anywhere overseas.  A Georgian Foreign Ministry spokesman has said that the new law is an attempt ‘to place the aggression perpetrated against Georgia last year within a legal framework’.  The Ministry also says that Russia has not honored the terms of the cease-fire agreement and called Medvedev’s thanking of Sarkozy, who helped to broker the peace deal, ‘a cynical move’.  The Washington Post reports in-depth on the displaced civilian populations in Georgia.  An op-ed piece in the Moscow Times examines the gap between the superannuated nature of Russia’s armed forces and the grandeur of its ambitions.  Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin has said that the new NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has a style which is ‘very interesting and new’ for the alliance.


President of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurovhas been released from hospital and has pledged to’destroy’ those responsible for the attempt on his life.  ‘The tensions between Russian and Ukraine are truly off the charts’, Medvedev has said in an open letter to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, and hasrefused to send an envoy to Kiev until relations are settled.  Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych, who favors closer tieswith Russia, looks set to win the January 17th election.

Prosecutor General Yury Chaika has instructed prosecutors to inform their superiors within 24 hours of being offered a bribe.  An article in the Moscow Times series on Putin looks at where today’s movers and shakers were to be found on the eve of Putin’s rise to power.

Zarema Sadulayeva, the head of Grozny-based charity Save the Generations, which works with Chechen children injured in the Chechnya war and their parents, and her husband, Umar Dzhabrailov, have been found dead inthe boot of a car, with gunshots wounds to the head and chest, havingbeen abducted by armed men. 

PHOTO: United Russia leader Boris Gryzlov, Medvedev and Communist chief Gennady Zyuganov riding a chair lift, August 7, 2009.  (Dmitry Astakhov / RIA-Novosti / AP)

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