June 4, 2010 By Citizen M

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – June 4, 2010

budget-1-storypic1.jpgTODAY: Another Hermitage lawyer under attack; United Russia quashes Duma discussion of Monday’s protests; opposition suggest Speaker’s Corner for Moscow; Duma will not castigate no show deputies. Ukraine agrees on no to NATO: military discontent with modernization budget; Russia attitude to wedlock changing; mass of WW2 shells discovered

The Interior Ministry is apparently attempting to strip Hermitage Capital’s legal adviser, Alexander Antipov, of his right to practice law, after he filed a score of complaints regarding Sergei Magnitsky’s death in pre-trial detention.  A Communist Party deputy claims he had his microphone switched off when he tried to discuss the police crackdown on Strategy 31 rallies in the Duma this week.  Michele A. Berdy translates and analyzes part of the heated exchange between Yury Shevchuk and Prime Minister Putin.  Russian Public Chamber member Alexander Brod has suggested that Moscow authorities establish an area of the city where peaceful protests can be held, not unlike Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park; whilst opposition leader Lev Ponomarev believes that protests should not be segregated, but held everywhere.  The State Duma is not planning to punish absentee deputies as the Public Chamber has suggested, as it would be unconstitutional, nor will the list of worst-offending truants be published.  Finland’s plans to deport a disabled 82-year old Russian woman have caused a storm of outrage among human rights advocates.  The New York Times has a feature on the fate of Ingushetian opposition leader Magomed Yevloyev, whose death from from a gunshot ‘accident’ in 2008 has never been fully investigated.  An ex-bodyguard for a Chechen anti-Kadyrov clan has been sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for an an assassination attempt that he claimed was ordered by the Chechen President himself.