By Citizen M | Published: 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.
Polish opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has reiterated that
Russia is to blame for the April 2010 Smolensk plane crash in a new report,
written independently of the two previous state probes into the crash. Transcripts from the Tu-134 plane that crashed in Petrozavodsk have been
completed.
Oops. Dmitry Medvedev stepped out of his Mercedes to meet villagers in Mirny, but
failed to park it beforehand, causing a scrum of bodyguards who tried to prevent the car from rolling into the crowds and general mass public embarrassment. A nice counter to Vladimir Putin’s failure last month to get his Lada to start, notes
RFE/RL, duly noting that ‘
[t]he tandem can’t drive!‘ The IHT has an
extensive round-up of pre-2012 election running tandem jitters.
PHOTO: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gestures during a meeting about preparations for the Asian Pacific Economic Conference in Vladivostok June 30, 2011. REUTERS/Dmitry Astakhov/RIA Novosti/Kremlin