More Troubling Events Concerning Russia
Expert in Russian poisoning case is shot
WASHINGTON - FBI agents say they are assisting police in suburban Washington who are investigating the shooting of a Russian expert — a man who spoke out on "Dateline NBC" last weekend and strongly suggested that remnants of the KGB were responsible for the bizarre poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko.
The Russian expert, Paul Joyal, was shot Thursday night as he got out of his car in front of his house in Adelphi, Md. Investigators in Prince Georges County say a witness claims to have seen two men running away after the shooting. Joyal remains hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the midsection. Authorities have not said whether they've been able to talk to him.
Joyal is a long-time consultant on security and Russian affairs. From 1980 to 1989, he was director of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
On last weekend's "Dateline," he said of Litvenenko's death: "A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: 'If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you and we will silence you — in the most horrible way possible.'"
Russian Police Crack Down on Anti-Kremlin Demonstration
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Police clubbed protesters and dragged them into waiting buses on Saturday in response to a defiant demonstration against the Kremlin in the heart of President Vladimir Putin's hometown.
Several thousand members of liberal and leftist groups chanted "Shame!" as they marched down St. Petersburg's main avenue to protest what they said was Russia's roll back from democracy. The demonstration, called the March of Those Who Disagree, was a rare gathering of the country's often fractious opposition.
It was at least the third time police have moved in to break up an anti-Kremlin protest in recent months.
St. Petersburg authorities had prohibited the march, only granting permission for a rally far from the city center, but the activists defied the ban and marched down the Nevsky Prospekt, the city's main street, blocking traffic. The mayor called the protesters extremists trying to destabilize the city ahead of local elections.
Riot police beat dozens of protesters with truncheons, but several thousand broke through police cordons. They marched toward the city center and rallied for about 40 minutes until police moved in again, detaining people and dragging them into buses.
Putin accused of shutting out opposition parties from coming polls
Opposition parties in Russia are accusing Vladimir Putin's Kremlin of mounting a concerted campaign to shut them out of forthcoming elections and squeeze the life out of the democratic process.
With seven days to go until regional elections, nine parties have already been barred from standing in one or more regions, and others are struggling to overcome the obstacles being placed in their path.
Small parties not currently represented in the national parliament claim that to qualify for the vote on March 11, they have been told they must put up a huge bond in advance or collect tens of thousands of signatures of support. They say that even when they meet the criteria, the government moves the goal posts.
The warnings come amid an increasingly bitter war of words between the United States and Russia over the direction in which Moscow is heading. Last week Mike McConnell, America's national intelligence director, accused Mr Putin of taking a backward step in the march towards democracy. He claimed Mr Putin had surrounded himself with "extremely conservative" advisers and was controlling the process of selecting Russia's next leader.
Next Sunday's contests in 14 regions are the last major electoral test before federal parliamentary elections in December and the vote to choose President Putin's successor a year from now.
Under new legislation passed last year, nearly half of Russia's 35 parties had already been defined out of existence because they were too small. Some of them allege election rules have been twisted to consign them to the wilderness.
Kremlinology: a study of the president's men
Winston Churchill famously compared analysing Soviet-era politics to watching bulldogs fighting under a carpet.
Although Boris Yeltsin, unwittingly perhaps, laid bare the Kremlin's inner workings for a while, ex-KGB Vladimir Putin has not just pulled the carpet back into place, he has nailed it to the floor. As a result the art of Kremlinology has made a comeback - and nowhere is it practised more enthusiastically than over the question of Mr Putin's successor.
For the moment, at least, the Kremlinologists believe there are two front-runners: first deputy prime ministers Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov. Both men, each backed by competing Kremlin factions, have been given extensive coverage in the media over the past year in an attempt to boost their popularity.
Western diplomats say they would marginally prefer Mr Medvedev, who is seen as the more moderate of the two. But as a friend of Mr Putin from the time when the president served as deputy mayor of St Petersburg in the 1990s, he is still unlikely to diverge much from Russia's current course.
Mr Ivanov is seen as more of a hawk and has been frequently vocal in his criticisms of the West. Like the president, he is a former KGB officer and is thought to be close to a powerful faction in the Kremlin known as the Siloviki, dominated by those with a Soviet-era intelligence background.
While cipher candidates could also run to give the election an air of legitimacy domestically, few doubt that the candidate backed by Mr Putin will win. Liberal heavyweights like former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and former chess champion Garry Kasparov could also mount a challenge but it is likely to be stillborn. They will either be jailed or further discredited and are already unpopular after being portrayed as corrupt stooges of the West. Some still believe that, despite his insistence to the contrary, Mr Putin will change the constitution to seek a third term. Even if he does not, Mr Putin will still loom large in Russian politics, assuming his successor stays loyal — something that cannot be taken for granted as Boris Yeltsin discovered.
Mr Putin, however, is in a stronger position. Although the factions in the Kremlin are locked in fierce competition for control of the country's energy and natural resources, they know that stability is the best way to ensure their own preservation.
It is also possible that Mr Putin could pick another insider if his loyalty appeared more solid. Kremlinologists say that as many as 10 other candidates are still being considered.