August 9, 2010 By Citizen M

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – Aug 9, 2010

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TODAY: Pollution drives embassy workers out of Moscow, no sign of improved conditions, doctors told not to diagnose patients with heat or pollution-related illness; Strategy 31; new laws to curb police violence; Medvedev marks Georgian war with visit to Abkhazia; US-Russia conflict brewing over START; Pavlovsk agricultural station under threat; Russian spy says he is ‘not from Russia’.
Russia continues to burn.  Air quality in Moscow hit a new low over the weekend as embassies evacuated staff.  The BBC has footage of Moscow’s smog-filled streets, and RIA Novosti reports that the situation is unlikely to improve this week.  Over the weekend, firefighters managed to put out flames that were threatening the Sarov nuclear research center, apparently by digging a ‘five-mile canal‘ around the site.  Reuters reports that medical staff at a major Moscow hospital ‘had been instructed by senior management to not link patients’ illnesses with the heatwave‘, as opposition leaders accuse the authorities of being in denial about the crisis. Despite all of this, a ‘top public doctor‘ appears in today’s Moscow Times urging foreigners not to avoid Russia, just to ‘stay indoors‘.  Tourists, he suggests, ‘visit first St. Petersburg, where everything is fine‘.  Masha Lipman in the Washington Post examines the growing dissatisfaction of the Russian public and the ‘overreaction‘ of the government in their attempts to quash the most recent Strategy 31 protests.