August 19, 2009 By Citizen M

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – August 19, 2009

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TODAY: Security shake-up in Ingushetia; blame put on local police; Russia does tit-for-tat on diplomats; Medvedev and Peres meet to discuss Middle East, Russia to reevaluate plan for weapons to Iran?; hope for power plant disaster survivors wanesCPJ fears for the death of journalism.

According to the BBC, President Medvedev has appointed a new interior minister in Ingushetia, Viktor Zhirnov.  Russia’s Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev’s has slammed local police for failing to act on a tip-off they received about the bombing.  Medvedev has sent ‘battle-hardened’ Deputy Interior Minister Colonel-General Yedelev to Ingushetia to put the region ‘in proper order’.  Reuters reports on the ‘Afghan-isation‘ of the North Caucasus where the Kremlin’s policy of ‘liberal use of oil money’ has not been enough, analyst Svante Cornell suggests, to curb insurgency.  The Telegraph examines a report by the United States Cyber Consequences Unit claiming that attacks last year on Georgian websites were executed by ‘independent groups of civilian hackers with a special relationship to the Russian government’.