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From: Eagle-wng

Kremlin watchers surprised by new PM
By Steven Eke
BBC Russia analyst

The most important outcome of the government reshuffle in Moscow is that it leaves the world in the dark over who – if, indeed, anyone – President Vladimir Putin has in mind as a chosen successor.

Analysing Russian politics increasingly resembles the Sovietology of previous decades.

Then, the positioning of Politburo members as they stood on Lenin’s mausoleum was seen as a guide to what was happening in the inner recesses of Soviet power.

Now, the promotion and demotion of otherwise rather obscure bureaucrats seems to function in a largely similar way.

Viktor Zubkov’s biography contains nothing spectacular. It is the life-story of a solid “Soviet man”, who prospered under the previous system and managed to find a niche for himself in post-Soviet Russia.

But the one major achievement is that Vladimir Putin entrusted him with power.

In a system where so much depends on the personal decisions – and whims – of one man, this was critical in bringing him to the prime minister’s chair.

Media campaign

All manner of theories now abound as to why Vladimir Putin did not do what many expected and nominate Sergei Ivanov or Dmitry Medvedev, the two men seen as frontrunners in the presidential race, to the premiership.

There has been a concerted campaign in the state media to groom the public image of Sergei Ivanov over the summer.

Although news programmes have long started with a round-up of Vladimir Putin’s latest trips, activities and pronouncements, they now often feature Mr Ivanov alongside the president.

The choice of subjects is also revealing: they usually involve materials designed to show Russia as a renascent economic and military power.

Whenever a new weapons system is being tested, for example, it is almost certain that Mr Putin and Mr Ivanov will be there, inspecting it together.

Competing theories

Against this background, the sudden promotion of Viktor Zubkov has caused genuine surprise.

Supporters of Mr Putin have suggested it is because he needs both Mr Ivanov and Mr Medvedev to continue their substantive work during December’s parliamentary election, and right until the presidential election next March.

Critics of Mr Putin say it is a sign of panic.

They point to how a recent attempt by his spin-doctors to cast him in the image of a “tough guy” – shirtless photos, noticeably bulked-up muscles – backfired, with many Russians suggesting he had all but given up on real politics.

Keeping the world guessing, the critics’ theory goes, is meant to suggest Mr Putin is anything but a lame duck.

An alternative explanation suggests that the early promotion of Sergei Ivanov would send the wrong signals to the West, a day after Russia claimed to have exploded the world’s largest conventional bomb.

Mr Ivanov has made sometimes very blunt comments about Russia’s relations with the outside world.

Finally, there is the notion that there is serious infighting between Kremlin “clans” over the successor, and the appointment of Viktor Zubkov helps keep a lid on something the public is not supposed to see.

It has long been accepted that there are sometimes mutually antagonistic groupings inside the Kremlin, with varying degrees of access to the president’s ear.

Many analysts consider its most anti-Western elements to be behind the deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West over the last two years.

Vladimir Putin personally retains a degree of popularity and trust unthinkable for most Western leaders and, indeed, for any of his opponents at home.

However, there are many Russian analysts who challenge the notion that Russia is more stable under his rule.

They have suggested that his departure might reveal that the system is anything but stable, and that the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections are likely to produce many surprises.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6991815.stm

From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 9/17/2006 10:27 AM
Will Khazret Sovmen stay for second term?
17.9.2006
     

In press, first of all in the Russian federal, the question, who should be the next Adygeya president, rises from time to time. That is in many aspects connected with the actions of Khazret Sovmen himself. So, we shall remind, on April 4th at one of the first sessions of the State Soviet-Khase of the new convocation the Adygeya president declared about his intention to retire. He explained his decision with that the plenipotentiary of the president of Russian Federation in the Southern federal district Dmitry Kozak was achieving his leaving. Then the crisis of authority in Adygeya was resolved at the meeting of the president of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin with Sovmen accompanied by the speaker of the republican parliament Ruslan Hadzhebiyokov. According to the last, during the conversation the Adygeya president several times reminded about his request to Putin to sign his application. But the Russian president invariably rejected him.

It is necessary to note that during that long crisis around Khazret Sovmen the most significant part of the public of the republic, including the republican branch of the party “United Russia”, as well as the organizations of the foreign Adygeyan Diasporas rallied. However then, having united in their support of the head of the republic, many public leaders, especially of the Adygeyan national movements spoke that the president’s resignation at present would be inappropriate also because there was a heat struggle for the status of the republic. And Sovmen many times supported preservation of the status of Adygeya. Not considering his other useful acts, only in view of that they should let him fulfill the term up to the end and after that to discharge him (in February, 2007) with honour and gratefulness.

However after his long, become habitual, absence, having visited the republic with official visit as people in Adygeya were used to joke, Khazret Sovmen, gathered on July 15th the most reliable, in his opinion, members of the fraction of “United Russia” in the State Soviet-Khase. There he declared about the following: time was coming when they should define; under the law discussion of his successor should begin 90 days before the expiry of the term of the powers of the operating president. In that connection, Sovmen should meet the president of the country. But Sovmen is sure that Putin would suggest him to prolong the term for the next five years. He would accept the offer with the condition that he received broad support of “United Russia”, the public, the population of the republic.

Not answering directly the declared, the deputies expressed the opinion concerned some reasons of failures in Adygeya development. Those are frequent and long absence of the leader of the republic, frequent and poorly proved rotation in the political management, inefficient actions in economy.

Then new absence of the president – less long – and the resignation of the time acting prime minister of Adygeya Evgenie Kovalev on September 13th followed. The action as the interrogation of representatives of the public and the parties proved, was not regarded by them as a next political crisis. At the same time, it has already made a split inside the parliamentary fraction of “United Russia”, has considerably increased the number of the one-mandatory deputies initially oppositional to the president and the executive authority as a whole. The same things had happened at the public level. Probably, having understood that mistake, the president decided “to get rehabilitated” with the way habitual for him: declared about giving the schools of the republic 100 million rubles.

As natpress has already informed, the meeting of the Adygeya president with the speaker of the parliament Hadzhebiyokov on September 15th should take place. The knowledgeable governmental sources informed that that meeting passed in time. It lasted 2 hours and a half and was very strained. Its details while remain unknown.

Aslan Shazzo, natpress

http://www.adygeanatpress.net/stat_e.php?id=1928

From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 9/21/2007 10:16 PM
Friday, September 21, 2007

North Caucaus: Who Is Behind The Spiraling Violence In Ingushetia?

By Liz Fuller

Ingushetia — President Murat Zyazikov, 22May2007
Ingush President Murat Zyazikov
(TASS)
Over the past three months, Ingushetia has been the scene of almost daily violence that has targeted, on the one hand, local police and security forces and perceived collaborators with the republican authorities and, on the other hand, innocent civilians regardless of their nationality (see “Ingushetia: Militant Attacks Increase As Cracks Emerge Within Leadership,” rferl.org, August 1, 2007).

Both Russian and Ingush officials tend to blame those attacks on the North Caucasus armed resistance. But the resistance is not the only, nor possibly the most influential player involved. Nor has the deployment to Ingushetia in July of several thousand additional Interior Ministry forces from elsewhere in Russia served to quell the upsurge in violence. On the contrary: the website ingushetiya.ru on September 9 quoted residents of Malgobek Raion as saying that the situation there has deteriorated since the deployment of Interior Ministry forces who have themselves become the target of attacks.
 
Resistance fighters commanded by radical Chechen  field commander Shamil Basayev staged multiple attacks against police and security personnel in Ingushetia in June 2004, killing some 80 people, and since then, Russian troops have regularly sought to intercept groups of Chechen fighters who use Ingushetia as a rear base. In the summer of 2006, the resistance began systematically shooting ethnic Ingush serving with the republican Interior Ministry, branding them as traitors. But the Ingush jamaat — one of several operating under the aegis of the Chechen resistance command — stressed at the same time that in conducting such operations, it takes every precaution to avoid harming “ordinary Muslims” (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” August 18, 2006).
 
That what is going on is not, however, a simple two-way struggle — between the resistance and the so-called siloviki — is clear, despite the propaganda campaign by Russian officials to portray it as such. There appear to be at least two, and possibly more, additional players involved, although it is not entirely clear what their precise agendas are, and from whom they take their orders.
 
The North Caucasus resistance by its own admission seeks to overthrow the leadership of Ingushetia’s Moscow-backed President Murat Zyazikov, and it has launched an impressive number of attacks in recent months. But those attacks, listed chronologically in successive press releases posted on the resistance website kavkazcenter.com, are aimed exclusively at law enforcement, security and border guard personnel and facilities and a few isolated civilian members of the Ingushetian government bureaucracy, and comprise either mortar or automatic rifle fire attacks on stationary facilities, or drive-by shootings targeting police or military vehicles. The Ingush jamaat expressly denied in a statement on September 3 that it was responsible for two killings in the previous two months of Russian families. “If people live peacefully, whether they are Russians, Chechens, Koreans or representatives of other nationalities, we have no grudge against them provided they do not participate in the struggle against Islam,” that statement affirmed.
 
Civilian Deaths

A second category of killings targets civilians from several different ethnic groups. This category includes the two Russian families referred to above; a Korean father and son found shot dead on September 6;  a Russian woman doctor killed on September 7; and a father and two sons, identified as gypsies (tsygane), killed on September 11. Galina Gubina, a Russian woman involved in coordinating the return to Ingushetia of Slavs who left the republic during the fighting in Chechnya, was similarly shot dead in June 2006.
 
These killings, too, are generally reported to be the work of unidentified gunmen traveling in unmarked cars. Russian media declined to publicize the fact that the two men arrested on suspicion of killing the first Russian family (in mid-July) were a Russian and an Ossetian contract serviceman. Isa Merzhoyev, the Ingush Interior Ministry official who went public with that information, was himself shot dead on August 11. And although the Ingush police swiftly announced the arrest of several suspects with Ingush names, Russian pedagogue Vera Draganchuk, who escaped when her husband and two sons were shot dead during the night of August 30-31, was quoted by “Novaya gazeta” on September 6 as saying the gunmen responsible spoke Russian with no trace of an accent. The Ingush suspects were subsequently released, according to ingushetiya.ru on September 15.
 
And Ingush too — in particular young men known to be practicing Muslims — have been targeted. Under the pretext of “anti-terrorism operations,” Russian security personnel have gunned down several young men on the street in full view of passers-by, openly planting grenades on or near the bodies to substantiate the case for “neutralizing” a potential terrorist threat (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” September 4, 2007). An alternative intimidation tactic employed by police and security personnel, most recently in Ali-Yurt in late July, entails cordoning off a village, deploying armor, and then indiscriminately beating the inhabitants, regardless of age or sex.
 
Ingushetian President Zyazikov has construed the recent killings as an attempt to sabotage efforts to persuade Russians to return to Ingushetia. Local human rights activists are concerned that the shootings are part of a broader campaign to fuel inter-ethnic hostility, possibly by forces intent on engineering a major breakdown in law and order that could be adduced as the rationale either for postponing the upcoming Duma and presidential elections, or for amending the constitution to permit President Vladimir Putin to remain in power beyond the end of his second term.
 
Unpopular President

Some Ingush are inclined to blame the apparently indiscriminate killing of civilians, whether Russians or Ingush, on a shadowy force that seeks to sow fear and discord with the aim of further discrediting Zyazikov, who is loathed and despised by the overwhelming majority of the republic’s 480,000 population. (Over the past four weeks, more than 1,500 people of a total of almost 2,000 respondents to an on-line poll have registered their readiness to sign a collective legal action against Zyazikov for corruption and deliberately misinforming Moscow about the true situation in Ingushetia.)
 
The identify of that particular faction is, however, open to debate. Some suspect an alliance between the Russian military and pro-Moscow Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov, under which the military perpetuate instability that creates a cover for the theft of oil and arms and could be adduced as the rationale for abolishing Ingushetia’s status as a separate federation subject by subsuming it into a reconstitued Chechen-Ingush Republic administered by Kadyrov. Kadyrov himself on August 30 implicitly accused Zyazikov of being unable to rein in “criminal elements,” and he affirmed Chechnya’s readiness to offer assistance to the “fraternal Ingush people” in restoring “order,” according to Novy Region as reposted on ingushetiya.ru. Kadyrov repeated that offer of help in restoring “order” in Ingushetia in an interview published on September 10 in “Komsomolskaya pravda,”  and again on September 15 during a meeting in Grozny with Federation Council Chairman Sergei Mironov. But presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District Dmitry Kozak told journalists on September 8 that assuming the violence in Ingushetia is politically motivated, it will not result in any changes in the republic’s leadership, kavkaz-uzel.ru reported.
 
It is conceivable that fugitive former Russneft head Mikheil Gutseriyev, an Ingush who has been tentatively identified as the putative sponsor of the anti-Zyazikov website ingushetiya.ru, could have played a role in recent events. Gutseriyev’s brother Khamzat, a former Ingushetian interior minister, was barred on a technicality from contesting the presidential election five years ago that brought Zyazikov to power (see “RFE/RL Newsline,”  April 8, 2002). The Kremlin went after Russneft on tax evasion charges in January 2007, and eventually forced Gutseriyev to agree to the sale of his company to Oleg Deripaska’s Base Element. While there is no concrete evidence of a link between Gutseriyev and ingushetiya.ru, other influential Russian oligarchs — including Vladimir Gusinsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky — were subjected to pressure, reprisals and legal action in retaliation for their political engagement  in support of the opposition to President Putin.
 
Abductions

It is unclear whether there is a connection between the recent execution-style killings of young Ingush and the abductions of several hundred Ingush men over the past three-four years. Many Ingush are convinced that those abductions are the work primarily of North Ossetia’s siloviki, presumably acting at the behest of the republic’s leadership, which in turn is unlikely to take any decisions without tacit, if not explicit, approval from Moscow. The abductions are seen as part of a long-term war of attrition waged by North Ossetia with the objective of coercing the Ingush to abandon their dogged campaign for the repatriation of Ingush displaced persons to their homes in the neighboring Prigorodny Raion of North Ossetia and for designating that region part of Ingushetia. Prigorodny Raion was part of the then Checheno-Ingush ASSR until that territorial unit was abolished in the wake of the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia in 1944, and  remained part of North Ossetia when the Checheno-Ingush ASSR was reconstituted following then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s exoneration of the “deported peoples” in 1956. In October-November 1992, Ossetians backed by Russian Interior Ministry forces clashed with Ingush who had returned spontaneously to settle in Prigorodny Raion. According to Russian statistics, 150 Ossetians and some 300 Ingush were killed in two weeks’ fighting and tens of thousands of Ingush forced to flee to Ingushetia.
 
The alternative hypothesis that the abductions of Ingush by Ossetians are intended as revenge for the September 2004 Beslan hostage is spurious insofar as the spate of disappearances dates from 2003, over a year earlier. And the North Ossetian police have no interest in killing Russian civilians: the nominally Christian Ossetians are widely regarded by their Muslim neighbors as Moscow’s fifth column in the North Caucasus. North Ossetia would, however, presumably not be averse to the abolition of Ingushetia’s status as a separate federation subject, as such a move would weaken the tenuous legal arguments advanced by the Ingush in support of their claims on Prigorodny Raion.
 
Ingush officials have blamed the spate of killings and shootings in recent weeks on “external  forces.” Ingushetian Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev, for example, on September 5 described them as part of a concerted campaign orchestrated from outside Ingushetia with the aim of “destabilizing the situation,” and on September 7, Ingushetia’s Interior Minister Musa Medov claimed that the gunmen responsible infiltrated Ingushetia from Georgia. That accusation is implausible insofar as the Russian border guard presence on the Ingush stretch of the Russia-Georgia border has been intensified over the past year, angering many Ingush (see “Ingushetia: Talk Of Ingush Border-Guard Replacement Causes Uproar,” rferl.org, February 9, 2007), although analogous claims by Moscow five years ago that Chechen militants, including the group subordinate to field commander Ruslan Gelayev, were using Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge as a base for operations ultimately proved to be true.
 
Curiously, however, federal bodies in Moscow, in the first instance the Russian Foreign Ministry, that would normally seize on any shred of evidence with which to blacken Georgia, have not repeated the Ingushetian officials’ allegations.
 
“Vremya novostei” and the Chechen resistance websites chechenpress.info and kavkazcenter.com on September 12 quoted unnamed Ingushetian security officials as claiming on September 11 that the recent spate of killings in that republic were perpetrated by a band of young militants recently recruited by three Arab emissaries of Al-Qaeda. The Arabs are said to have paid individual fighters between $2,000 – $5,000 for each assault. The Ingush security service claimed to have evidence suggesting that the militants are merely using Ingushetia as a base from which they plan to launch a major attack elsewhere in the North Caucasus, possibly in the neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria Republic.
 
Meeting on September 13 in Nazran with Zyazikov and Russian Deputy Interior Minister Colonel General Arkady Yedelev to assess the situation, presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District Kozak excoriated the Ingushetian Interior Ministry, accusing its officers of corruption, failing to take timely action, not coordinating their activities with the federal Interior Ministry contingent deployed to Ingushetia in July, and collaborating with the armed resistance, the daily “Kommersant” reported on September 14. Whether that criticism heralds the imminent dismissal of Interior Minister Medov, who has held the post only for a few months, is not clear, but simply replacing him is unlikely to bring about a fundamental improvement in the security situation.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/09/376D59C1-EC87-4CC1-A2C5-C6DDC8331FE1.html

From: Eagle_wng

Adygeya’s exposition at Sochi forum “Kuban – 2007” was not expressive
24.9.2004
     

The international economic forum in Sochi “Kuban – 2007″ showed that judging to its investment potential Adygeya has one of the last places across Russia. As to its participation in the forum, that is supposed to be rather expensive issue and the republican investment projects in comparison to the others looked pale. But, nevertheless, they were in demand, “Caucasian unit” correspondent reported referring to the local TV.

First from among the federal officials the Adygeya’s exposition Адыгеи was visited the plenipotentiary in the SFD Dmitry Kozak, but the main event became visiting of the president of Russia Vladimir Putin. The leader of the republic Aslan Tkhakushinov, meeting him, could not help to declare the basic project of Adygeya’s economy – construction of the road “Maykop-Dagomys”.

The road’s construction is planned to implement on the site of 63 kms, he said. It should cost to the state budget 18 billion rubles. Other variants of the project are much more expensive – about 34-36 billion rubles. Solving of that problem is important not only for Adygeya, but for the other subjects of Russian Federation, too. And if the construction is implemented, the republic will not need any economic help any longer.

The Adygeya president said about his impression after participation in the forum the following: “I’d like this process (corr: training how to attract investments) not delayed for the whole life. Therefore we have arrived at the forum, have seen our mistakes, which many of, have seen that in the investments Adygeya is almost on the last place in Russian Federation. Now we should study closely our opportunities and undertake concrete creative steps”.

Vladimir Petrov, the chairman of Committee on tourism of Adygeya, having presented the most capacious from the financial point of view project – about 6 billion rubles – said that “about all the projects exhibited at the forum we have negotiations”. “Canadian party became interested, in particular, – he said. – this year the private investments in Adygeya tourism made about 200 million rubles”.

The negotiations at the forum also concerned the projects of municipal formations. According to the head of Koshehablsky area administration Nalbiy Tkharkahov, 4 projects the area presented at the forum, do not concede to other projects. “For one of them (corr.: on raw materials production) we have got 6 applications, for the project on Khodzinsky thermal source – 2 applications”, – he explained.

As the minister of economy of the republic Aslan Matyzhev mentioned, Adygeya exposed at the forum 42 investment projects and 30 investment platforms without designation of their applicability. The priorities, as he said, are clear – mountain-skiing complexes and tourist-recreational objects.

At the same time he named important those projects, which concern the building industry. In particular, he said, the construction of several brick factories and factories on gravel-sandy processing. In that direction, according to the minister, the Sochi forum has given potential investors.

“And it is natural, – the minister also explained, – Adygeya as an agrarian republic is interested in construction of cattle-breeding complexes”.

NatPress

http://www.natpress.net/stat_e.php?id=2977