RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – June 30, 2011
TODAY: Foreign Ministry proposes tit-for-tat; rights violations at Matrosskaya Tishina; Russia’s role in Belarus’ meltdown; Kaczynski report blames Russia for Smolensk; Petrozavodsk transcripts completed; Medvedev’s driving gaffe; pre-election speculation.
The Foreign Ministry is proposing that foreigners who have violated the rights of Russian citizens be blacklisted and barred from entering the country – the Ministry calls this ‘our acceptable answer to the actions of the West, including the U.S. State Department, which drafts certain blacklists of Russia citizens.‘ 11 prison officials have been ‘disciplined‘ for violating inmates rights at the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center where Sergei Magnitsky and Vera Trifonova died. ‘The swiftness of Belarus’ economic meltdown reflects the directness of its cause. Russia had been financing Lukashenko’s shabby paradise, and then it decided to stop paying.‘ An anti-Lukashenko documentary which ‘seemed to encourage [anti-government] protests‘ was apparently just aired on Belarusian airwaves with the help of Gazprom-owned NTV.