24 Aug 11 | Index Index, minipost
Russian investigators have detained a former lieutenant police colonel as a suspect in the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. The campaigning reporter was openly critical of Russia’s involvement in Chechnya. According to the latest investigation, Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov was offered cash to murder Politkovskaya, and he was a part of a group aiming to kill her, including Rustam Makhmudov. Makhmudov was arrested on 31 May for allegedly shooting Politkovskaya. There are also allegations that Pavlyucenkov used his position as lieutenant police colonel to monitor the movements of the journalist.
04 Aug 11 | Index Index, minipost
40,000 copies of Izvestia Kaliningrada, a weekly published in Kaliningrad, Russia, were seized by regional governors on 29 July. Its editor was also detained for several hours at the Regional Centre for Combating Extremism. The edition, due to have been published on the eve of a visit by President Medvedev, contained an open letter to the Russian leader signed by more than 2,000 local residents calling for the regional government’s removal because several of its members were implicated in corruption. The head of the regional centre, Alexander Shelyakov, told the Interfax news agency that he intervened after being informed that the issue contained “extremist statements.” This is not a one-off event: on 4 July in St Petersburg of 90 per cent of the copies of the business weekly Kommersant Vlast were seized. The edition criticised the city’s governor Valentina Matviyenko.
18 Jul 11 | Uncategorized
If you could put the former Soviet state of Georgia on the couch, it would look like it was suffering from a particularly acute case of paranoia. But is there method in the supposed madness of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili’s obsession with Russian spies? (more…)
27 Jun 11 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
Russian journalist, Oleg Kashin, has won the right to speculate about the identity of two men who beat him with iron rods. Kashin spent five days in a coma after he was attacked outside his apartmenton 6 November last year. The Kremlin’s youth policy chief, Vasily Yakemanko, filed a libel suit against Kashin, liberal newspaper Novye Izvestia and political analyst, Alexander Morozov, for reporting speculation that he might be behind the incident. A Moscow court ruled in favour of Kashin after it was found that Yakemenko had failed to prove that the accusations were factual statements.
