March 4, 2010 By Citizen M

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

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TODAY: Confusion over Olympic Head’s resignation; Yabloko beard protest leads to arrests; Stalin posters to appear in Moscow, but not Irkutsk; Yukos case to be heard at European Court of Human Rights; Sarkozy’s reasons for warship sale; LUKoil crash causing a stir.
Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has announced that portraits of Stalin will be featured from now on as part of future city celebrations: ‘I am not an admirer of Stalin,‘ he said. ‘I am an admirer of objective history.‘  The mayor of Irkutsk, on the other hand, says that there will be no Stalin monuments in the city whilst he is in charge, despite calls from the Communist Party and veterans to the contrary.  Yukos and the Kremlin will meet in the European Court of Human Rights this week, six years after company representatives filed a complaint with the court.  Parts of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta have appeared in the Moscow Times, which focuses on claims about the ‘authorized violence‘ in Russia’s judicial system, and Reuters, which looks at Khodorkovsky’s comments about potentially violent unrest in Russia that could stem from a lack of judicial reform. What is behind Sarkozy’s sale of French warships to Russia? ‘[S]ome observers think the naval deal is being used as bait by Sarkozy to secure France wider-ranging business deals with Russia,‘ says Time.