RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – May 27, 2011
TODAY: G8 Summit commences, missile defense stalemate, WTO accession, Libya; Saakashvili blames Russia for demonstrations; Yabloko leader arrested; Navalny sues over fraud case; Khodorkovsky cell-mate describes forced attack; Islamic Cultural Center closes; village evacuated after military fires.
Meeting on the sidelines of the G8 Summit, President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed to continue talks on missile defense with a view to solving the problem ‘maybe in 2020‘. Both leaders are pushing for Russia’s WTO accession. Russia says that its G8 partners asked it to mediate in and help resolve the Libya crisis, although it was unclear what form such mediation would take, and one non-Russian diplomat implied that no such request had been made. The Telegraph is liveblogging the summit. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is blaming Russia for violent demonstrations (click for video) in Tbilisi, which were ended by riot police, saying that ‘our occupiers‘ sought to ‘cause sabotage and mass disorder‘. Police in Moscow have detained Sergei Mitrokhin, the leader of the Yabloko party, during a protest held outside the Ministry of Economic Development to draw attention to a 34% increase in mandatory insurance fees for small businesses.