RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – Feb 19, 2010
TODAY: Russia to query Bulgaria on missile plans; UN report on Moscow’s secret prisons; Medvedev responds to public reaction over corrupt police; Stalin billboards divide the Duma; too late for green Sochi; gnome poster removed ahead of presidential visit; Yabloko to merge with People’s Democratic Union?
Russia plans to make an official query to Bulgaria regarding the ‘goals and essences‘ of its plans to deploy US air defense missiles on its territory. A new report on secret detention centers in Moscow, compiled by the UN Human Rights Council is ‘confrontational‘ and shouldn’t be published as an official document, says Russia. Prosecutors have opened four criminal cases over the demolition of homes in Rechnik, insisting that the court order permitting the original demolitions was issued in violation of the law. On top of immediate cuts to the police force, Dmitry Medvedev has responded to the ‘strong public reaction‘ about the state of the police force by ordering the number of personnel at the Interior Ministry’s head office to be halved – effectively calling for 10,000 jobs to be cut. Medvedev said that the 15,000 cases of police corruption logged last year were just the tip of the iceberg.