Russia holding 5 Georgian fishermen

TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia on Wednesday accused Russian authorities of illegally detaining five Georgian fishermen and demanded their immediate release.
The Georgian Foreign Ministry said five men were detained Tuesday while fishing in Georgian territorial Black Sea waters off the town of Anaklia. It said the Russian authorities accused the men of illegal fishing.
"A chain of Russia's extremely dangerous and dirty provocations still continues, and it has acquired a clear form of hunting people," the ministry said in a statement.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said that Russian coast guard detained nine fishermen off the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia and handed them over to Abkhaz authorities. He said those detained lacked proper IDs and fishing permits.
Neither Russian nor Georgian officials offered any explanation of the differing figures.
Moscow has recognized Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent nations following a five-day Russian-Georgian war last year. Russia has deployed its troops to both regions, and Russia's coast guard also patrol Abkhazia's Black Sea coast.
Nicaragua and Venezuela are the only nations that have followed suit in recognizing of the two regions' independence. The U.S., the EU and the rest of the world consider them part of Georgia.
Georgia also accused the Russian troops in Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia of firing on a minibus that carried a four-year-old child to a hospital along with several other people. The ministry cited local residents as saying that several people were wounded during the incident that occurred early Wednesday. The claim could not be independently verified, and the Russian Foreign Ministry didn't comment on that.
Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war over South Ossetia and Abkhazia last year.
Russia recognized Georgia's breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations after the war. Nicaragua and Venezuela are the only nations that have followed suit. The U.S., the EU and the rest of the world consider them part of Georgia.

Swedish approval for Russian pipe line

Sweden became the second country to grant final approval for OAO Gazprom’s Nord Stream AG natural- gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, ending almost two years of Swedish opposition and wrangling over the energy project.
The country approved the 506-kilometer (314-mile) Swedish stretch of the 1,220-kilometer link that will pump gas from Russia to Germany, Zug, Switzerland-based Nord Stream and the government in Stockholm said today.
Opposition to the project was widespread in Sweden, where the public, politicians, media and fishermen questioned its impact on fish breeding grounds and the environmental risks of laying pipes on a seabed littered with mines and chemical weapons dumped during two world wars. Russia’s motives behind the project were also questioned, including concerns that pipeline facilities may be used for espionage.
“The government has made tough demands to secure that the sensitive environment in the Baltic Sea isn’t jeopardized,” Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said today.
Denmark gave permission on Oct. 20 and Germany, Russia and Finland also have to give a go-ahead for the project on which construction is planned to start early next year. The venture, which also includes BASF SE’s Wintershall Holding AG and E.ON Ruhrgas AG, seeks to transport 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year when completed in 2012 and is designed to ease supplies from Russia to Western Europe by avoiding Ukraine.

All Permits
“Nord Stream is aiming to obtain all required permits by the end of 2009,” the company said today.
Sweden got the formal application in December 2007 and two months later requested more information about the environmental impact and asked the company to evaluate alternative routes. Nord Stream withdrew plans for a maintenance platform off the coast of the island of Gotland amid concern over Russian presence in Swedish territory.
“The starting point for the government’s decision is that all states has a right to put pipes in international waters and on a coastal state’s continental shelf,” Sweden said. “The government’s room for maneuver has therefore been significantly more limited than it’s in evaluations of applications regarding Swedish territorial waters or projects in Sweden.”
Nord Stream today cleared the second of three steps in the Finnish permitting process for the gas pipelines after that country’s government said the company may use its economic zone in the Baltic Sea. The venture requires a separate permit in Finland in order to begin construction.

Another Human Rights Activist Killed in Russia

A prominent human rights activist in Russia's southern province of Ingushetia has been shot dead in at least the third killing of an opposition figure in the volatile North Caucasus region in as many months.

An opposition activist and businessman from Russia's Ingushetia region in the country's southwest was shot and killed in his car on Sunday. Local authorities reported that Maksharip Aushev was driving near the town of Nalchik in the nearby region of Kabardion-Balkaria when his car was sprayed with automatic-weapon fire. The attack also seriously wounded a passenger.
According to the opposition website, the attack took place on a main road, but the full circumstances remained unclear. Aushev was a strong critic of the region's former president, Murat Zyayikov, and had led protests to publicize human rights abuses allegedly committed by government security forces.

Colleagues of the slain activist are shocked and many have spoken out, including Yunus-Bek Yevkorov, the Kremlin appointee who took over the position of regional president a year ago. In a statement on his website, Yevkorov said the killing was an attempt to destabilize the situation in Ingushetia and that he would personally take charge of the investigation.
Alexander Cherkasov, from the human rights group Memorial, told Echo of Moscow radio that Aushev had received threats and that in recent weeks he feared the secret services would take revenge.

Attacks on the rise

This is just the latest in an increasing number of attacks over the past few months in the North Caucasus. In July, Natalya Estemirova, a prominent human rights activist, was found shot dead in Ingushetia. A month later, Zarema Sadulayeva, a Chechen woman who helped injured children, and her husband were kidnapped and killed.
The Russian government has blamed the attacks on Muslim insurgents, who it says are backed by foreign cash which threatens Moscow's control over the volatile southern region. The worst hit areas have been Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya. Russia has fought two wars against Chechen separatists since 1994.

Aushev had close ties with another prominent local opposition activist, Magomed Yevloyev, who was detained and killed by local police in August 2008. The website Ingushetia.org, which Aushev owned at one time, said the deaths of the two men were linked and that anyone who dared to speak against the authorities or speak the truth, is doomed to the fate shared by Magomed and Maksharip.

Tatiana Lochkina, director of Human Rights Watch in Moscow, agreed. She told Interfax that the killing "illustrates very clearly the atmosphere of impunity" in the region. She added that participating in opposition politics or defending basic freedoms in the North Caucasus has become "almost a form of suicide."

Russia's bridge to nowhere: Russki's Island Bridge

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/world/europe/21russia.html
See a video on the bridge to nowhere: Russki's Island Bridge

Sakharov Prize goes to Russian right group Memorial

Russia rights group wins EU prize

Russian rights group Memorial has won the European Parliament's annual Sakharov Prize, in memory of murdered activist Natalya Estemirova.

Estemirova was found dead in July in the Russian republic of Ingushetia after being abducted in Chechnya.

A Moscow court recently ordered Memorial to retract its accusation that the Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov was responsible for her murder.

Memorial campaigns against abuses in countries of the former Soviet Union.

'Circle of fear'

Awarding the prize, the European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek said people who defended human rights must be free to express themselves.

He said the assembly hoped "to contribute to ending the circle of fear and violence surrounding human rights defenders in the Russian Federation".


“ We see that the development of the situation is not going in the direction that we would have liked... The rights mechanisms that we worked out at the beginning of the 1990s are not working today ”
Oleg Orlov Memorial head
The prize, named after the late Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, went to Memorial head Oleg Orlov and the group's activists Sergei Kovalev and Lyudmilla Alexeyeva.

In a statement, Mr Orlov said: "I am flattered... that we have been awarded the Sakharov prize.

"In our view the prize has been awarded to the Russian rights movement. I am thankful for that," the statement said, according to AFP news agency.

But he admitted having concerns about the rights movement in Russia.

"We see that the development of the situation is not going in the direction that we would have liked," he said.

"This is also our fault. The rights mechanisms that we worked out at the beginning of the 1990s are not working today."

This month, Mr Orlov lost a defamation lawsuit brought by President Kadyrov. He was ordered to retract his accusations that Mr Kadyrov had been behind Estemirova's murder.

The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, now in its 21st year, comes with a cash reward of 50,000 euros ($75,000; £45,000). It will be awarded at a ceremony in Strasbourg in December.

The Chinese dissident and civil rights campaigner Hu Jia won the prize last year.

Iran - Russia - IAEA

A team of Obama administration officials, joined by officials from France and Russia, will begin negotiating in Vienna on Monday with Iranian diplomats over terms of an unusual deal that could remove a significant amount of Tehran's low-enriched uranium from the country.

The administration views the deal -- which would convert the uranium into fuel for a research reactor used for medical purposes -- as a test of Iranian intentions in the international impasse over the nation's nuclear program. The reactor is running short of fuel, according to Iran, and so the administration proposed that 80 percent of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile be sent to Russia for conversion into reactor fuel. France would then fashion the material into metal plates, composed of a uranium-aluminum alloy, used by this reactor.

U.S. officials argue that if Iran fails to follow through on a tentative agreement on this deal, then it will help strength the case for sanctions. But the negotiations already have highlighted splits between the United States and two of the key players -- Russia and China -- in the effort to restrain Iran's nuclear ambitions.

During a visit to Moscow last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was rebuffed by Russian officials when she tried to discuss the need for tougher sanctions if negotiations with Iran do not progress quickly. "All efforts should be focused on supporting the negotiating process," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, with Clinton at his side. "Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive."

Meanwhile, China signaled impatience with talk of new sanctions. On Thursday, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met in Beijing with Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi and declared that his government would seek "close coordination in international affairs" with Iran. "The Sino-Iranian relationship has witnessed rapid development, as the two countries' leaders have had frequent exchanges, and cooperation in trade and energy has widened and deepened," Wen said, according to the official New China News Agency.

Three other key players -- France, Germany and Britain -- are more willing to press for sanctions if progress is not apparent by the end of the year. A secret French Foreign Ministry strategy paper, published this month by the French weekly Bakchich Hebdo and translated by the Web site ArmsControlWonk.com, depicted France as the most eager for substantial sanctions.

There were "minor differences about the envisioned sanctions" with Germany and Britain, the paper said.

"The United States, which made an unprecedented overture to Iran in the spring, apparently does not intend to review this strategy until the end of the year. Its strategy is a bit more wait-and-see than ours." Russia and China, it added, "very clearly emphasize dialogue and do not wish to raise the idea of further sanctions."

French officials declined to comment on the document.

In a sign of American seriousness, the U.S. delegation for the talks in Vienna will be headed by Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel B. Poneman and include White House and State Department officials. The make-up of the Iranian delegation is unclear, but a Reuters report from Vienna quoted an Iranian official as saying Iran was sending relatively low-level officials rather than the head of its nuclear energy program.

Since officials announced a tentative agreement on the deal in Geneva on Oct. 1, Iran has sent a series of contradictory signals. Different Iranian officials have suggested at various times that there was no agreement; that Iran wanted to produce the fuel itself; that Iran wanted to purchase the fuel rather than convert its enriched uranium stock; and that Iran wanted to convert even more uranium. U.S. officials said they have no idea what Iran will propose in Vienna but they expect hard bargaining over timetables, payments and other issues.

The talks, to be held under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will last at least two days.

The French document suggested that Paris is concerned the U.S. gambit could lead to endless haggling. "We have given the United States our agreement for this operation, with conditions," it said. "In particular, it seems essential that . . . the entire 1,200 kg [2,640 pounds] of uranium leave Iran on a short deadline (Iran should be asked for an answer in principle by the end of October; the uranium should exit before the end of the year)."

NATO-style rapid-reaction force

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Thousands of troops from Russia and four other ex-Soviet nations are staging exercises as part of a newly formed NATO-style rapid-reaction force.
It's the first such drills for the Collective Security Treaty Organization's new miltary unit.
Kazakh defense officials say more than 7,000 troops gathered Friday in southern Kazakhstan for two weeks of exercises.
Russia and four other members — Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — earlier this year agreed to set up the unit.
Moscow hopes it will bolster the power of the seven-nation CSTO, seen largely as a talking shop established by Russia to counterbalance NATO.
Officials say the exercise will, among other things, train the force in responding to insurgencies in alliance member countries.

No missiles in Kaliningrad

Russia won't put missiles in Kaliningrad: Medvedev

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday he will call off his decision to deploy missiles in the enclave of Kaliningrad, his response to the United States scrapping missile shield plans in Europe.
U.S. President Barack Obama last week announced Washington will not put interceptor missiles in Poland or a radar system in the Czech Republic, parts of a project viewed by the United States as protection against potential attacks from Iran.
Medvedev, who met Obama in New York on Wednesday, has described that decision as "courageous."
Dealing with the issues of the U.S. missile shield, Iran and nuclear disarmament are major elements of attempts by Medvedev and Obama to reset thorny bilateral relations that had plunged to post-Cold War lows under the Bush administration.
To Russia, the U.S. missile shield plan for eastern Europe was a threat to its security.
Medvedev had vowed to put Iskander missiles in the Baltic region of Kaliningrad, bordering NATO members Lithuania and Poland, if Washington went ahead with the plan.
"When I announced this decision I said it was a reaction to the creation of a third positioning region," Medvedev said in Pittsburgh, where he attended a summit of Group of 20 leading economies.
"Now that this decision was scrapped, I will make a decision not to deploy Iskanders in the appropriate region of our country."
A senior Russian military official said earlier this week that the military would reverse plans to deploy Iskanders after Obama's announcement. But armed forces chief of staff General Nikolai Makarov later said such a decision should be made by the president.
The West suspects Iran of seeking to make nuclear weapons. Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has so far blocked attempts to impose strong sanctions against Tehran.
But Medvedev, annoyed by reports about Iran building a new uranium enrichment plant, warned Tehran to respond to international concerns and give up any military elements of its nuclear program.
Medvedev, clearly siding with the Western condemnation of Iran's plans, said Tehran should start cooperating with U.N. inspectors by the time it meets international negotiators for talks on October 1.

From Russia With Hate: Neo Nazism in Russia

Rural Russia is Dying of Poverty and Neglect

KUVSHINOVO, Russia — The government administrator was bursting with optimism: More children are being born, many rubles will be invested in infrastructure and his region is weathering the global economic storm.
"The situation is so good," said Boris Zaitsev, a broad-shouldered man who spoke in a confident monotone.
Outside his office, some 170 miles northwest of Moscow, the front steps to the Soviet-era government building are falling into a pile of rubble. Deep, spine-rattling potholes that rival sections of Baghdad riddle the town's streets. The region's population has plummeted by more than a quarter.
Officials here like to point visitors to Kuvshinovo's new Russian Orthodox church, an elegant wooden structure. Work inside the church hasn't been finished, because the money ran out. Looters searching for icons and cash previously torched the office of another local church. Twice. A priest in a nearby village, who'd led an anti-alcoholism campaign, was burned to death with his family.
The area around this rural enclave is in steep decline; once-thriving fields are empty and the population is in free-fall. Along with many other towns and villages in vast rural Russia, it's a microcosm for a country that, according to recent studies, is withering away.
In Kuvshinovo and outlying hamlets, the population has dropped to 16,000 people from 22,000 in less than 20 years. Russia as a whole lost 12.3 million people from 1992 to 2008. An influx of immigrants, mainly from former Soviet territories, helped hide the extent of the problem. The population is now 142 million, but it would have been 136.3 million without that surge from outside.
The statistics help explain why Vice President Joe Biden struck such a sensitive nerve among Russia's ruling elite when he said recently that the country has "a shrinking population base; they have a withering economy," and added, "It's a very difficult thing to deal with, loss of empire."
Despite the Kremlin's posturing on the world stage and its hard line in what Russians call the "near abroad" — invading Georgia, shutting off natural gas to Ukraine, claiming a privileged sphere in other post-Soviet territories — the decay in the heartland suggests that Russia isn't a resurgent superpower so much as a nation that's trying not to come apart at the seams.
The mansions and gardens of old imperial Russia have faded or crumbled, as have many of the collective farms that fed communist Russia. Today, the hamlets dot a forsaken land of rampant poverty where men drink from morning to night. The interconnected crises of low fertility, high death rates and ragged infrastructure have left much of the nation barren.
Looking over the hayfields that lead to the onion dome and the glistening gold cross of a steeple a few miles outside Kuvshinovo, a Russian Orthodox priest mulled the question: What's happening to Russia?
"There are villages with only two people left, and others where nobody lives," Alexander Peshekhonov said, choosing his words carefully. Peshekhonov, his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, added the obligatory caveat that, "Our country is great."
He then flicked a finger at his throat, a gesture meaning, "They drink."
When spring comes around, he said, the bodies of locals who fell drunkenly into the snowdrifts of winter are found in the pastures and roads. One man responsible for burning the church office in Kuvshinovo was caught in a market, selling icons and religious cassette tapes he'd swiped to raise money for vodka.
"If you read the newspapers and listen to our leaders' propaganda, you get the feeling that everything is OK," Peshekhonov said. "But I don't believe that."
Even darker times may lie ahead.
A major study that the United Nations released in April, authored by leading Russian experts, projected that Russia would lose at least 11 million more people by 2025. Another U.N.-sponsored report said last year that the population could fall to as low as 100 million in 2050.
That report cited a recent improvement in fertility but cautioned that, "while these favorable trends may last another five or six years, all recent forecasts . . . predict that Russia's population decline will only intensify."
"There's a risk that in the most negative situation, Russia will stop existing as a state," said Olga Isupova, a senior demographic researcher at the Higher School of Economics, a leading private Russian university in Moscow.
Asked whether that was really a possibility, Isupova told a reporter who was about to visit Kuvshinovo, "If you go out there and find something more optimistic, please tell me."
Down a dusty road and then a dirt path from Kuvshinovo, Dr. Anna Voronova holds medical clinics in the village of Pryamukhino. Sitting behind her desk in a dimly lit room with warped floors and chipped paint, Voronova said she saw a lot of people with drinking problems. She didn't mean just vodka and beer.
"They buy household cleaners, or solvents used to clean a machine, and drink it because it's cheap," she said. "It's not one or two people; it's many people."
There were 720 people living around Pryamukhino in 1990. Today, there are about 500, a decline caused in part by an exodus to Russia's cities, but mostly by the fact that deaths outnumber births.
The talk of alcoholism isn't confined to handwringing clergymen and small-town doctors. A study published this June examined three Russian industrial cities with typical mortality trends and found that during the 1990s, more than half of the deaths of those aged 15 to 54 were alcohol-related.
The findings, authored by a blue-ribbon panel of experts including representatives of the Russian cancer research center and the University of Oxford, suggest that Russia is drinking itself to death.
Unless something changes, "the villages will die out," said Yulia Novosyolova, a school equipment manager in Pryamukhino whose husband shovels coal in the winter and tends to cattle in the summer.
Novosyolova, who invited a guest to tea and pastries, has three daughters aged 17 to 22. All of them have moved away or are planning to, and none of the three sounded optimistic about the future.

Russian submarines on a friendly mission?

Two Russian attack submarines have been cruising in the Atlantic off the East Coast of the United States, a senior defense official said Wednesday.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said their presence is not causing alarms to go off.
"So long as they are operating in international waters, as, frankly, we do around the world, and are behaving in a responsible way, they are certainly free to do so, and it doesn't cause any alarm within this building," he said.
It has been years since Russia operated near the U.S. seaboard, thousands of miles from home ports.
"What's interesting is, they haven't been able to do this in some time, and now they are. It indicates a return to their ability to do this," the senior defense official said.
He viewed the patrol as an example of Russia showing the United States and the world its expeditionary forces, part of a continuing trend. He said the Russians have recently been a partner in anti-piracy operations around the world. And last year the Russian Navy conducted a "tour around the world," pulling into ports throughout Latin America.
In December, a Russian spokesman said that tour demonstrated "Russia's ability to fly its naval flag and ensure protection of its national interests in the world theater."
The Akula-class nuclear-powered submarines, which are normally equipped with surface-loaded cruise missiles and surface-to-air missiles, have stayed in international waters, the source said. These are not the class of submarines that can launch intercontinental nuclear missiles.
The U.S. Navy has the capability to locate, identify and track submarine activity through satellites, ships, aircraft and classified systems.
"NORAD and U.S. Northern Command are aware of Russian submarine activity off the East Coast operating in international waters. We have been monitoring them during transit and recognize the right of all nations to exercise freedom of navigation in international waters according to international law," said Lt. Desmond James of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
A Russian military spokesman said at a news conference in Moscow that the submarines' activities were "part of the normal process."
Defense officials told The New York Times that one of the Russian submarines was in international waters Tuesday about 200 miles off the coast of the United States. The location of the second was unclear.
U.S. officials downplayed the significance of the submarines operating off the U.S. coast.
"There is no need to overreact," the senior defense official said.
"This is not an issue of concern. It is all consistent with the internationally-recognized principle of freedom of navigation. As long as the vessels do not cross into territorial waters, they are free to navigate any open waters," another official said.
Officials have said this is the naval equivalent to Russian bomber missions close to U.S. and other countries' borders.
"It is Russia again trying to assert its influence and trying to show they have a relevant military," a third defense official said.

Russia concerned over North-Korean nuclear test

MOSCOW, May 25, 2009 (AFP) - The Russian foreign ministry voiced "concern" on Monday about North Korea's nuclear test but was still examining the situation, the RIA-Novosti state news agency reported.
"The information about the North Korean nuclear test evokes concern, but before reaching any final conclusions it must be carefully checked," the ministry's press service was quoted as saying.
Earlier on Monday, North Korea said it had staged a "successful" underground nuclear weapons test which was more powerful than its previous test of an atomic bomb almost three years ago.
South Korean officials said a tremor was detected around the northeastern town of Kilju, near where the first test was conducted in October 2006.
Russia has been a participant in the six-party talks aimed at convincing the reclusive Communist state to scrap its nuclear weapons programme, along with the two Koreas, China, Japan and the United States.
Russia is also a permanent, veto-holding member of the UN Security Council, which last month condemned a North Korean rocket launch, angering Pyongyang.

EU - Russia: no gas deal

Russia-EU Summit Ends with Differences Over Energy

EU Commission President Barroso, Russian President Medvedev, Czech President Klaus and EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana in Khabarovsk, 22 May 2009.
A tense summit meeting between Russia and the European Union has failed to provide assurances Europe will not face another mid-winter gas cutoff.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has also warned that stronger European ties with former Soviet republics should not turn into an anti-Russian coalition.
Meeting in the city of Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East, Russian and EU leaders failed to bridge differences that block assurances of reliable gas supplies to Europe.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said his country has no problem supplying the fuel or honoring its delivery commitments to Europe.
He blamed the continent's recent energy disruptions on the inability of Ukraine to pay for its own supplies. About 20 percent of Europe's supply of natural gas comes from Russia through Ukrainian pipelines. Mr. Medvedev says assurances should be provided by those who pay for the gas, and there is room here for cooperation.
The Russian leader notes that if Ukraine has the money, fine, though he expresses doubt that it does.

Russia prepared to help Ukraine.

President Medvedev said Russia is prepared to help Ukraine, but wants a considerable part of this work to be assumed by the European Union and countries interested in reliable and secure energy cooperation.
Russia is also seeking to replace the so-called Energy Charter Treaty, a 1990's agreement on integration of European and former Soviet energy sectors.
Moscow signed, but did not ratify the treaty, which would provide foreign commercial access to Russian pipelines. The European Union does not want the Charter scrapped, but EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Russia has put forth interesting suggestions. "We could consider those proposals in the process of revision of the Energy Charter Treaty," he said.

Moscow suspicious of EU partnership program

Moscow is also suspicious of the EU's Eastern Partnership Program with several former Soviet republics. President Medvedev warned in Khabarovsk that the outreach program should not turn into an anti-Russian coalition.
He says what concerns Russia is that in some countries, the European Partnership is seen as a partnership against Russia. The Kremlin leader says he does not have in mind EU leadership nor any of the partners at the table [in Khabarovsk], but rather other countries.
The Partnership Program is designed to enhance Europe's relationship with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

Positive comments about summit

Despite tensions at the summit, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said the summit increased mutual trust between the EU and Russia. The Czech Republic holds the EU's rotating presidency.The venue chosen by Russia, the city of Khabarovsk, is near China, about 8,000 kilometers east of Brussels. President Medvedev made a point on Thursday of noting EU leaders would understand how great Russia is by having to fly so far.

Russia doing business with Syria

Syria Denies MiG Deal Cancelled

Syria on Sunday denied a report by the Russian newspaper Kommersant that Moscow had cancelled a $500-million deal agreed to in 2007 to sell the Damascus government eight advanced MiG-31 fighter aircraft. Kommersant cited pressure from Israel and Syria's inability to pay for the planes.
An official Syrian statement said, "This is part of attempts to undermine the friendly relations and cooperation between Syria and Russia." The statement was issued as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited the Syrian capital and met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. During the meeting, al-Assad told Lavrov that the Middle East peace conference that Moscow wants to organize this year should be properly planned ahead of time.

Georgia v. Russia in Geneva

GENEVA (Reuters) - Georgia and Russia resumed security talks on Tuesday after international mediators and a U.N. report helped nudge Moscow's negotiators back to the table, officials said.
Delegations from Russia and the Moscow-backed rebel region of South Ossetia had withdrawn from the two-day talks in Geneva on Monday citing the refusal of another Moscow-backed rebel region, Abkhazia, to attend, due to a delay in a U.N. report.
"The formal discussions have just finished," a U.N. spokeswoman said. "Everyone participated."
A senior Georgian official in Geneva said that the closed-door discussions had lasted about 3-1/2 hours.
In the report on the U.N. mission in Abkhazia, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said tensions between Georgia and Russia, who fought a brief war over South Ossetia in August, were weighing heavily on the region, an important transit territory for Western gas and oil deliveries to the West.
Talks to date had helped to maintain a "relative calm."

MONITORING
It cites the official title of "United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia" but otherwise skates round the sensitive question of whether Abkhazia is part of Georgia or not.
"I hope that these efforts can lead to the establishment of a more stable security regime in the area," Ban said.
It is the fifth session between Russia and Georgia since September.
Tensions remain around areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, particularly Akhalgori in South Ossetia and the Kodori Gorge and Gali regions of Abkhazia.
The U.N. deploys 129 military observers, drawn from 30 states, and 16 police officers in Abkhazia.
Ban's report recommended that security zones with no armed forces or military equipment be enforced for 12 km (8 miles) on both sides of the ceasefire line, and restricted zones with no heavy military equipment for another 12 km on each side.
He also called for regular U.N. monitoring of conditions in the Kodori valley and regular meetings between Russian and Georgian officials to maintain calm and stability.

Sergei Bagapsh

Sergei Wasyl-ipa Bagapsh (Abkhaz: Сергеи Уасыл-иҧа Багаҧшь) (born March 4, 1949, Sukhumi) is the President of the partially recognized de facto independent Republic of Abkhazia, which is recognized by most countries as de jure part of Georgia. A former Prime Minister from 1997 to 1999, he was elected as President in 2005.
Sergei Bagapsh was born March 4 1949 in Sukhumi. Throughout most of his life he has lived in Abkhazia. Bagapsh graduated from the Georgian State University of Subtropical Agriculture in Sukhumi. During his studies he worked first in a wine cooperative and later as a security guard for the state bank. In 1972 he fulfilled his military service as the head of a sovkhoz following which he became instructor with the Abkhazian regional committee of the Komsomol. In 1978 Bagapsh became responsible for information in the central committee of the Komsomol's Georgian branch and in 1980 first secretary of the Abkhazian regional committee. In 1982 Sergei Bagapsh became secretary general of the communist party in the Ochamchira district. After the fall of communism, Bagapsh became a businessman and the representative of the Abkhazian government in Moscow.

Security treaties between Russia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia

MOSCOW — Russian border guards on Saturday began taking up long-term positions along the boundaries of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, an arrangement that will probably mean sustained tension in the two breakaway Georgian territories.
Security treaties signed on Thursday in Moscow between Russia and the two territories called for joint patrols in South Ossetia and Abkhazia for an unspecified period along the boundaries that separate the enclaves from the rest of Georgia. The State Department expressed “serious concern” over the arrangement, saying it violated Georgia’s territorial integrity and broke commitments made in a cease-fire agreement reached last fall.
The territories were at the heart of a war last August between Russia and Georgia; the conflict raised tensions between Moscow and the West to a level not seen since the end of the cold war. Heavy Russian armor poured into both territories after Georgia attacked Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Russia then officially recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign nations, despite protests from Europe and the United States, and promised to guarantee their security.
Russian troops have been at the territories’ border since August, but the security pact signed on Thursday makes their role formal and permanent. It grants Russia’s border guards, a division of the Russian Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., any land or buildings needed to patrol the area. It also grants Russian border guards many of the rights of Abkhaz and South Ossetian citizens.
In an interview, Abkhazia’s president, Sergei Bagapsh, said 500 Russian border guards — not Defense Ministry troops — would perform joint patrols alongside 300 Abkhazians until Abkhazia could train enough personnel to secure the 60-mile border.
He said Abkhazia had negotiated for some changes to the agreement, among them ensuring that guards at the crossing in the Gali region, which has a large ethnic Georgian population, would be Abkhaz rather than Russian.
“People will be going to the markets; you cannot stop life,” he said. “We don’t want to build a Great Wall of China between Abkhazia and Georgia.”
But Georgian authorities said the move to long-term postings was dangerous. Shota Utiashvili, a senior official in Georgia’s Interior Ministry, said that though Russian soldiers had been staffing checkpoints since August, he worried that F.S.B. units “might be more willing to stage operations” along the Georgian border.
He said Georgian authorities were watching to see how heavily fortified the border would be.
In a statement released on Friday, Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said Russia “once more draws a line between itself and the entire international community, and again brutally tramples on fundamental standards and principles of international law.”

NATO (Brussels) expells two Russian spies

Russia considers NATO's decision to expel two Russian diplomats in Brussels a "gross provocation" based on an "absolutely invented pretext", the Russian foreign ministry says.
"A gross provocation has been carried out against two employees of Russia's permanent office at NATO, whom the alliance's security functionaries want to expel from Brussels on an absolutely invented pretext and without any distinct explanation," it said in a statement.
The expulsion threaten to undermine a recent thaw in Russia-NATO relations, the ministry said, adding that unnamed "forces" opposed to improved ties were behind the incident.
"This disgraceful action fundamentally contradicts statements by NATO's leadership on its readiness to normalise relations with Russia," it said.
"For us it is clear that behind this provocation stand forces which are not interested in giving a stable character to the noted trend towards normalisation."
Earlier on Thursday NATO diplomats in Brussels confirmed that the alliance had expelled the two diplomats in retaliation for a spy scandal in which a former Estonian official passed secrets to Moscow.
The officials included a Russian political counsellor and a son of Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's ambassador to the European Union, one diplomat said.
Former Estonian defence ministry official Herman Simm was arrested last September in a case which has proved deeply embarrassing for Estonia after suggestions that NATO secrets may have been leaked to Russia.
Estonia, a Soviet-ruled republic until 1991, joined NATO and the European Union in 2004 and has rocky relations with its powerful neighbour Russia.
Simm pleaded guilty to treason and was sentenced in February to 12 years and six months in prison.

Russia expands the list of banned US meat imports

Russia has expanded the list of banned U.S. meat imports. In addition to U.S. pork, they have also banned U.S. beef and poultry from certain U.S. states.
The bans apply to meat and poultry produced in California, Kansas, New York, Ohio and Texas, where cases of influenza have been reported.
U.S. Meat Export Federation quickly denounced Russia's decision. USMEF President and chief executive officer Philip Seng described it among the "demonstrated overreactions" by certain trading partners.
The American Meat Institute also is trying to spread the word. In a statement, AMI quotes Keiji Fukuda of the World Health Organization as saying, " Right now we have zero evidence to suspect that exposure to meat leads to infections."
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Tuesday urged all trading partners to base their decisions on scientific evidence per international obligations.

Russki Island Bridge

Here on Russia's eastern edge, seven time zones from Moscow, a huge project is beginning to take shape.
Two miles worth of steel and cable will connect the mainland to a small island where there is not much besides a few thousand residents, some age-old ice fishing grounds and patches of locally prized curative herbs.
The comparison, of course, is hard to shake: the Kremlin is building its very own Bridge to Nowhere. And not even the financial crisis is putting a stop to it.
The government plans to spend well over $1 billion on the span, which is to be one of the longest suspension bridges in the world, and at least $6 billion on related projects in this thinly populated region, near China and North Korea.
The projects are supposed to spruce up Vladivostok to serve as the host for the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in 2012, and come on top of another $6 billion that the government is allocating for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the southern resort city of Sochi.
The costs for both ventures are likely to soar because of inadequate planning and widespread corruption in Russia, officials acknowledged.
The government is pouring money into the Vladivostok and Sochi events despite acute pressure on the federal budget from the financial crisis and rising concerns about the overall neglect of infrastructure in Russia. Poor quality roads, ports, power plants and other facilities have long been a drag on the Russian economy, as any multinational company that tries to do business in the country can attest. The spending looms large because the government has sharply cut the rest of the infrastructure budget in response to the financial crisis. As a result, the work in Vladivostok and Sochi is drawing criticism that the Kremlin is focusing on trophy projects that might burnish national pride, but will not yield long-term economic benefits.
"Obviously, this spending on Vladivostok and Sochi doesn't make any sense," said Ivan Tchakarov, chief economist for Russia at Nomura International, a securities firm.
"If Russia wants to diversify from the oil and gas sector, the only way to create sustainable growth is to create real infrastructure - such as, for example, doing badly needed repairs to Russia's transport systems, including the dilapidated railway network, and spending on ports and the electricity grid." Before the financial crisis, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin proposed a $1 trillion program to modernize infrastructure, but those plans have been largely shelved, officials said, in favor of spending on social and employment programs, which are aimed at helping to soothe tensions in distressed parts of the country.
Financial analysts estimated that Russia spent roughly $42 billion for infrastructure in 2008, about 13 percent of government spending. This year and next, however, that figure is expected to drop to 5 to 7 percent, they said, and that includes the outlays for Vladivostok and Sochi. The Kremlin is eager to use the Vladivostok meeting in 2012 to demonstrate that Russia is as much an Asian power as a European one.
Yet it seems highly unlikely that the region could turn into an economic engine in the near future. It is thousands of miles from Russia's political and business core, and has less than 5 percent of the country's population. The region's manufacturing and maritime industries have been in steep decline since the Soviet Union's fall, while the area's population has plunged by 25 percent, to six million people from eight million. Still, the government hopes to impress participants at the 2012 summit meeting by holding meetings on Russki Island off the coast of Vladivostok. It is currently reachable only by ferry.
In Soviet times, Vladivostok was closed to foreigners because it was deemed a strategic port, and the island was a secret military facility. Officials intend to build a conference center, hotels and a university campus there.
Already worried about costs, they recently canceled plans for a medical center and a theater for opera and ballet in the city. The government is also renovating Vladivostok's airport, and erecting a smaller bridge between two sections of the city to ease bottlenecks. Improvements will be made to water treatment and other facilities. Yevgeny V. Khokholkov, a vice governor of the region, said federal investment was desperately needed to stem the flow of people abandoning the Far East for the European part of Russia.
Mr. Khokholkov said the bridge to Russki Island and related projects would symbolize the country's commitment to Asia. "The center of development in the world economy is shifting here," he said. "So it is important for Russia to develop this territory as much as we can." Residents of Vladivostok have long complained about neglect from Moscow, but even some supporters of an increased federal role here question the wisdom of the summit meeting master plan. "Without a doubt, it will do some good things for our city," said Alan V. Gutnov, an analyst at the Far Eastern Marine Research, Design and Technology Institute. "But personally, I believe that all that money could be spent more effectively if invested in the economy of the Far East. These projects won't create many jobs in the future." On a visit to Russki Island in February, residents expressed ambivalence about the 2012 meeting, saying that they realized that the region was suffering economically, but that they worried that the projects would destroy the environment. Standing on the deck of a ferry as it chugged through a channel in the ice, Natalya A. Andreyeva, 51, an emergency room doctor, said the island should be turned into a national park. "Visitors seriously pollute the island," Dr. Andreyeva said. "Boatfuls arrive, and after that I personally myself will go and clean the beaches. It's terrible what happens. Why is it worth spending those billions? Good ferries and boats would be enough." As the ferry approached Russki, the landscape changed.
All over the ice, heavily bundled people sat on chairs, holding small fishing rods above small holes in the surface. Some had been there many hours, as if there were no better pastime than staring into the horizon, bracing against the wind and hoping that a fish takes a bite. Among them was Yuri T. Minayenko, 78, a retired driver who moved to Russki Island from Ukraine after the fall of Communism, looking to spend his final years here. "I love the quiet," he said. "If they construct that, there will be more people, more problems, more cars, more commotion and everything else. I don't want that. As an old man, I want silence. That's all."

Russki Island bridge

On the western edge of Russia, not far from the city of Vladivostok, the government is building a huge new bridge to a small island. The bridge to Russki Island is intended to be ready for the 2012 Asian-Pacific Economic Summit and will be one of the world’s longest suspension bridges. The only way to get to the island now is by ferry boat.

The new bridge will cost over US$1 billion, according to sources. Additionally, the government plans to spend an additional $6 billion on projects meant to make the area more attractive for the summit meeting. This is on top of the plans to spend at least $6 billion for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, on the Black Sea coast.

The island was formerly home to a military facility and now has a few thousand residents. Officials intend to construct several new facilities on the island and the Vladivostok area, including a conference center, hotels and a new university campus. Also in the works are renovations to the airport, an additional bridge between two sections of the city and improvements to the water treatment facilities. Currently, there are some 6 million residents of the city and surrounding area.

Lavrov to appeal to North Korea

Russia's foreign minister has arrived in North Korea, where he is expected to urge the leadership to return to talks on its nuclear disarmament.
The two-day trip by Sergei Lavrov is the first high-level visit since North Korea expelled international monitors from its nuclear facilities.
Pyongyang also vowed to restart its nuclear programme after UN criticism of its recent long-range missile launch.
It is not clear if Mr Lavrov will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Mr Lavrov is expected to focus on trying to persuade Pyongyang to return to six-nation negotiations - which include North and South Korea, China, Russia, the US and Japan.
The Russian foreign minister may deliver a letter from President Dmitri Medvedev to the North Korean leader, according to media reports from Seoul and Moscow.

Monitors expelled

The visit comes at a time of heightened regional tensions due to the North's controversial rocket launch on 5 April, which was widely seen by its neighbours as a disguised missile test.
North Korea says the rocket was carrying a communications satellite.
Following criticism by the UN Security Council, Pyongyang announced it was quitting international disarmament talks and restarting its nuclear programme.
It has expelled US and UN nuclear monitors.
Russia and China have both already urged North Korea to reconsider its decision.
The BBC's John Sudworth in Seoul says that based on its Soviet past, Moscow still has some influence in Pyongyang, but there are limits.
Even North Korea's closest ally, China, was unable to prevent North Korea's 2006 atomic test, or this month's rocket launch.
The six-party talks have stalled in recent months since a landmark deal under which the North agreed to end its nuclear ambitions in return for aid and political incentives.
Last year North Korea partially disabled its Yongbyon reactor and handed over what it said was a complete declaration of its nuclear activities.
In return, the US removed North Korea from the list of countries it says sponsors terrorism.
But talks have broken down, with Washington and Pyongyang accusing each other of failing to meet obligations.

Russia needs more political competition

Russia needs stronger political competition and a greater freedom to protest, President Dmitry Medvedev said in remarks released Thursday, sending the strongest signal yet that he may rethink the legacy of predecessor Vladimir Putin.
Medvedev, who has positioned himself as a cautious liberal during his first year in power, has until now followed the path blazed by Putin, who methodically rolled back Russia's post-Soviet freedoms during his presidency.
Medvedev's statements at a meeting Wednesday with civil society activists contained some of his most explicit criticism of Putin's policies to date. The remarks were released on the Kremlin's Web site Thursday.
Medvedev specifically criticized the 2006 law that toughened registration and accounting rules for human rights groups and other non-governmental organizations, hampering their operations.
"A significant number of officials, which I think is quite dangerous, have got a sense that non-governmental organizations are enemies of the state which must be confronted to prevent some disease from seeping through and undermining the foundations of our order," Medvedev said.
Medvedev added that the purpose of the law was not to interfere with the operations of the groups. But his remarks contrasted sharply with statements from Putin who said tightened regulation was necessary to make sure that NGOs weren't controlled by what he called puppeteers from abroad.
The 2006 law requires organizations to file highly detailed reports about activities for the previous year, such as a precise accounting of all meetings held by NGO officials, and detailed information on how they are financed.
Passage of the law reflected the Kremlin's fears of what it saw as Western encouragement of anti-government protests in other ex-Soviet nations, including Georgia and Ukraine.
Medvedev said that NGOs face undue restrictions and added that changes in the law are "possible, and even essential."
He added that the country needs more freedom.
"There must a political competition, it's irreplaceable," he said.
Responding to rights activists' complaints about official refusals to sanction opposition protests, Medvedev agreed that authorities' actions defied the law.
"Authorities obviously don't want to sanction such actions, it's understandable," he said. "But in any case such decisions aren't based on law."
He agreed with one person at the conference, who suggested that Moscow needed its own Speaker's Corner, like the one in London's Hyde Park, and added that it should not be put in a distant location.
"It mustn't be an empty spot near garages or near some industrial zone," he said.
Moscow authorities have continuously rejected appeals from opposition groups to hold their rallies in central areas and offered alternative spots away from downtown.

Yet a new gas conflict

Russia-Turkmen gas conflict looms: report

MOSCOW (AFP) — A blast on the main gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Russia reflects rising tensions between the two countries and could signal a Ukraine-style "gas war," a Russian newspaper said.
The Kommersant broadsheet pointed to growing problems between Russia and its ex-Soviet gas partner ahead of Thursday's explosion on the main gas export pipeline from the Caspian Sea state to Russia.
Russia generally sources Turkmen gas in order to boost its own reserves and help meet European demand.
"Russia could start a new gas war, but this time on the southeastern front," Kommersant said. "Russia has decided to use the same weapon as in the gas war with Ukraine," the paper added, referring to a dispute with Kiev in January.
The blast was the result of a decision by Russian gas giant Gazprom to sharply cut gas purchases from Turkmenistan -- leading to strain on the Turkmen section of the pipeline.
Kommersant said the cut amounted to 90 percent. The controversy came as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in the Turkmen capital for a regional foreign ministers' meeting.
Whereas Russia in the New Year cut off supplies to Ukraine, a gas war with Turkmenistan would follow the reverse pattern with Moscow drastically scaling down its imports of Turkmen gas.
There is commercial logic to reducing the purchases as demand drops in Europe, particularly from crisis-hit Ukraine, and Kommersant said that Gazprom stood to profit from selling its own reserves.
The Vedomosti newspaper, in an article headlined "The Welcome Accident", said that Gazprom would be easily able to compensate customers with its own supplies.
"Russia is not receiving Turkmen gas because of the pipeline explosion. But that could even be advantageous for Gazprom whose production has fallen in line with demand," it said
Gas demand in Europe has fallen sharply due to the economic slowdown and as a consequence gas reservoirs are full.
Gazprom's deputy chief executive, Valery Golubev, said on Thursday that the crisis will force Gazprom to maintain a 10 percent cut in output over the next 4-5 years from its peak last year.
He said that output would reach only 492 billion cubic metres this year compared with 549.7 billion cubic metres in 2008.
But Turkmenistan had angered Russia since a notably unproductive visit by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to Moscow last month that the Kremlin hoped would strengthen its grip on Turkmen energy, the paper said.

Dubai vs Russia

Authorities in Dubai said Sunday that they believed the murder of Sulim B. Yamadayev, a former Chechen general, had been planned by a member of Russia’s lower house of Parliament who is a well-known ally of the Chechen president.

Adam S. Delimkhanov
At a news conference, Dubai’s chief of police, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan bin Tamim, said that he would ask Interpol to arrest the member of Parliament, Adam S. Delimkhanov, and that it was “Russia’s responsibility in front of the world to control these killers from Chechnya.”
General Tamim’s allegation was striking because Mr. Delimkhanov is so close to Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed president. Mr. Yamadayev, who was shot in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, on March 31, was the latest in a series of Chechen figures to be killed after challenging Mr. Kadyrov.
Though the recent murders of Chechen dissidents have attracted wide attention, investigators had identified only low-level suspects — until Sunday, said Grigory Shvedov, the editor of the Web-based news service Caucasian Knot.
“Those were people no one knew,” Mr. Shvedov said of the suspects. “Today, we are talking about a person who is very well known, with a key position in the regional government and a very high position on the federal level.”
A person in the Russian prosecutor general’s office told the Interfax news agency that Mr. Delimkhanov could not be extradited under Russian law, but that prosecutors would consider pressing charges if they saw convincing evidence.
Mr. Delimkhanov vigorously denied the accusation, saying it was “a provocation and an attempt to destabilize conditions in the Chechen Republic.”
“I am a politician who has dedicated most of my life to the war against terrorism, and even in this case I am ready to help any justice system, among them Dubai’s,” Mr. Delimkhanov said in a statement released by his spokesman.
He also criticized the United Arab Emirates for giving an entry visa to Mr. Yamadayev, “a criminal who ran from the judicial system in his own country.”
“As regards the dead man, he had enemies all around the world,” the statement said.
Authorities in Dubai released new details about the murder.
General Tamim said the killer had surprised Mr. Yamadayev outside the Jumeirah Beach apartment complex and shot him in the head, then threw away the weapon not far from the crime scene. He said the weapon resembled guns carried by Mr. Delimkhanov’s bodyguards, and that a witness in police custody had said the weapon was given to assassins hired to kill Mr. Yamadayev.
The general was scathing about the spillover of violence outside Russia’s borders.
“Russia must take a strong and powerful step to stop this, to make sure that Chechen dirty payback doesn’t spread outside,” General Tamim said. “We will give Russian authorities the case file. It is up to Russia whether or not to hand” Mr. Delimkhanov to authorities in Dubai, he said.
The police arrested two suspects, an Iranian and a Tajik, shortly after the murder, and four other suspects were in Russia, General Tamim said.
Mr. Delimkhanov, 39, rose under Mr. Kadyrov to become a top Chechen official. After heading the police division that protected Chechen oil facilities, he was appointed deputy prime minister overseeing security forces in 2006. The next year he was appointed to the Russian Parliament as a representative of United Russia, the party headed by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. A spokesman for Mr. Delimkhanov described him as “a friend” of the Chechen president.
His name arose in written legal complaints by a Chechen exile, Umar S. Israilov, who was shot to death in Vienna in January. Mr. Israilov described a scene in which Mr. Delimkhanov beat him with a shovel handle in Mr. Kadyrov’s presence. Mr. Delimkhanov declined requests for comment on the allegation.
Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from Moscow, and an employee of The New York Times from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The enemies of Kadyrov are not safe

The enemies of the Chechen president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, keep turning up dead.
In September, it was Ruslan B. Yamadayev, shot while his car was stuck in Moscow traffic. In January, a former Kadyrov bodyguard named Umar S. Israilov was shot in Vienna when he stepped out to buy yogurt. Then, last week, Sulim B. Yamadayev — a brother of Ruslan’s — was shot in the parking garage of his apartment complex in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
This time, though, something unusual happened: Dubai’s police chief called a news conference and publicly excoriated Russian authorities for allowing the violence to continue.
The chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan bin Tamim, said investigators had traced the killing to one of Mr. Kadyrov’s closest associates, Adam S. Delimkhanov. Mr. Delimkhanov denied any involvement.
The allegations pose a problem for leaders in the Kremlin, who installed Mr. Kadyrov as president of Chechnya and have relied on him to stamp out an insurgency that threatened to wrest the republic from Moscow’s control.
While prime minister and now president, Mr. Kadyrov has virtually eliminated the insurgency; human rights organizations and journalists have documented his regime’s use of brutal tactics, among them abduction and torture.
Authorities in Moscow apparently put few restraints on Mr. Kadyrov. And on Monday, as the accusations against Mr. Delimkhanov made headlines, observers wondered whether Russian leaders were willing, or able, to do so.
“They need him,” said Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian crime at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. “They’ve actually created a kind of Frankenstein’s monster. In the name of fighting Chechen nationalism, they’ve basically created an autonomous Chechen state.”
Sulim Yamadayev, the man killed in Dubai, was once a powerful Chechen military commander and had posed an increasing threat to Mr. Kadyrov.
After a clash between his troops and Mr. Kadyrov’s guards last year, federal authorities stripped him of his command and he left Russia for Dubai in December. Mr. Kadyrov’s government has denied responsibility for that clash.
Russian federal authorities have made no comment on the Dubai case. Because Mr. Delimkhanov was elected last year to Parliament, he has immunity from prosecution, and Russian law does not allow its citizens to be extradited.
An official in the general prosecutor’s office said Sunday that Russia would prosecute him if Dubai police provided convincing evidence.
On Monday, Mr. Kadyrov issued an angry defense of Mr. Delimkhanov.
“I must say that Adam Delimkhanov is my close associate, a friend, a brother or even my right hand,” Mr. Kadyrov said in a statement. “I take any statements concerning him personally. We will take all measures provided by Russian and international laws to hold responsible those who make slandering insinuations.”
In comments to reporters in Grozny on Monday, Mr. Kadyrov said that Sulim Yamadayev had repeatedly tried to assassinate him, at one point by poisoning a lake.
He also said there was “objective evidence” that implicated Mr. Yamadayev in a 2004 bombing that killed his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, who was then the president of Chechnya.
“We did all that we could to bring Sulim Yamadayev, who was involved in a series of killings, kidnappings and other severe crimes, to trial in Russia,” Mr. Kadyrov said, according to the news agency Interfax.
The scandal comes at a difficult moment for Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, who has vowed to make rule of law the foundation of his presidency. It also coincides with a much-discussed “reset” of relations between Russia and the United States, as Western leaders set aside, at least for the moment, criticism of human rights abuses in Russia.
Sergei Markedonov, head of the interethnic relations department at the Institute of Political and Military Analysis in Moscow, said that he was not convinced that Mr. Kadyrov had ordered the murder, but that the case had already raised “a lot of unpleasant questions for Russia as a whole and for Medvedev.”
“Why was Ruslan Yamadayev killed, and then Sulim Yamadayev?” Mr. Markedonov asked. “Why is there no opposition to Kadyrov? What is this regime that Moscow supports? And to what extent is Moscow able to influence it?”
Hints of a shift in the relationship came after Sulim Yamadayev died on March 31. That day, the Kremlin had seemed prepared to grant Mr. Kadyrov’s longstanding request to withdraw thousands of federal troops from Chechnya. The act would remove shipping and transportation restrictions imposed as part of a counterterrorist operation when the second Chechen war began nearly a decade ago.
Less than a week later, however, as news of Mr. Yamadayev’s death began to circulate, Russia’s National Antiterrorist Committee announced that the restrictions and troops would remain in place, citing a continuing danger of violence in the region. Officials said the murder had nothing to do with the committee’s decision.
“It does appear that at this point in time the Kremlin does want to keep some control over Kadyrov and his team,” said Tatyana Lokshina, a Chechnya expert with Human Rights Watch in Moscow. “Ending the counterterrorist operation, getting multitudes of troops out and removing all the restrictions would give Kadyrov even more freedom — and he certainly does have enough.”
But in recent years, she added, Moscow has made little attempt to interfere with Mr. Kadyrov’s tactics, “as long as he kept the insurgency suppressed.”
With Kremlin backing, Mr. Kadyrov has accomplished in just a few years what few independent experts thought would be possible in decades. He has winnowed the insurgency by killing off most of the rebel leaders and granting amnesty to militants in exchange for loyalty. Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, has been largely rebuilt. Cafes and restaurants are bustling, electricity is more or less regular and people stroll along newly built avenues.
“They built up Kadyrov, and from their point of view, he’s doing what he is supposed to be doing,” Mr. Galeotti, of N.Y.U., said. “Considering the rise of chaos in the rest of the North Caucasus, the irony is that Chechnya is a haven of peace.”
International attention has drifted away from Chechnya since then. Mr. Markedonov, a specialist in the north Caucasus, said he had not heard the republic discussed so avidly in the international news media for years.
He compared the Yamadayev case to the furor that resulted in 2007 when British authorities pressed Russia to extradite Andrei K. Lugovoi, a former K.G.B. agent, in the killing of a former spy, Alexander V. Litvinenko, who died in London after ingesting polonium 210, a rare and toxic radioactive isotope.
“Already, in our media,” Mr. Markedonov said, “they have started to call it ‘Litvinenko 2’ or ‘Lugovoi 2.’ ”

NATO urges Russia to pull out of breakaway regions

Strasbourg (AP): NATO reached out to Russia at its summit today, saying it wanted to work together against threats such as piracy and terrorism. But the alliance's insistence that Russia pull its troops from the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia risks meeting Kremlin resistance.
NATO leaders meeting on the French-German border sent the two-pronged message to Moscow, which sees the alliance as a throwback to a Cold War that ended nearly two decades ago.
Their choice of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO's new chief threw another potential wrench into the complicated relationship, as he is little loved in Russia.
"There is a shared view in NATO that we must cooperate with Russia," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said at the close of the summit. "We think this relationship can deliver more than it has up to now."
NATO leaders said they were ready to resume ministerial level meetings with Russia in the coming months, and hoped to work with Russia on fighting new threats including piracy and terrorism.
"Despite the disagreements we have now with it, Russia has a particular importance for us as a partner and neighbor," the NATO leaders said in a statement.

Vendemaire in Vladivostok

VLADIVOSTOK. April 6. VOSTOK-MEDIA – The French frigate ‘Vendemaire’ arrived at the main base of the RF Navy Pacific Fleet. The main aim of the visit is further strengthening of friendship and naval cooperation between the fleets and carrying out of joint Russian-French excercise on communications and joint manoeuvring.

The big submarine chaser ‘Marshal Shaposhnikov’ is the leading vessel of the training exercises.
The chaser is under command of Andrey Kuznetsov, the post captain.

‘It was very pleasant for us to see French sailors at the Russian territory. In August last year our ship ‘Marshal Shaposhnikov’ was also the leading ship and we hosted the same French frigate, participated in exercises’ – said the captain. ‘The French party has positive attitudes towards conducting of the loint Russian-French exercises, because Russian and French vessels will pursue defencive strategies at the Arabia Gulf. They will fight agains piracy.’

The French frigate usually stands guard at New Caledonia. There are 92 crew members on board, including 12 catering officers. And every year this frigate cruises around the Pacific Ocean for three months. Three days ago the French navy was in Japan and after Vladivostok the ship will set sail for South Korea. This is a ship that travells much.

‘Vandemaire’ will stay in Vladivostok for three days. During this period the guests will meet the command of the RF Navy Pacific Fleet, make an official visit to the major of the city and lay wreath to the memorial ‘Military fame of the Pacific Fleet’. They will also participate in sports meetings.

Silly Russian game

Russian Danger Game With Fast Train - Click here for the most popular videos

This man almost gets killed. Life is so boring in Russia that they do silly things.

Jackson-Vanik amendment - safeguard it!

The Jackson-Vanik amendment must be upheld!

"From the business community perspective, everybody wants this over and done with," said Michael Considine, director for Eurasian issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But Moscow must first fulfill anti-piracy and other commitments it made to the United States in 2006, as well as finish talks with all WTO members, Considine said.

Obama and Medvedev, meeting in London on the eve of a Group of 20 developed and developing countries summit, said in a joint statement they would instruct their "governments to make efforts to finalize as soon as possible Russia's accession into the World Trade Organization."

The administration of former President George W. Bush hoped in early 2008 to finally usher Russia into the WTO after years of negotiations. But the political fallout from Russia's short war with Georgia in August set those talks back for months.

Now, as Obama and Medvedev are trying to rebuild relations, congressional Democrats are complaining that Russia still has not fulfilled all of the commitments it has made to the United States to crack down on copyright piracy.

CURRENT BENEFITS AT RISK

They urged Obama in a March 26 letter to insist Moscow honor all of those commitments before he signs off on a final WTO accession package. They also recommended Obama suspend U.S. trade benefits for Russia until it significantly improves its enforcement of intellectual property rights.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office did not respond to a request for more information on Obama and Medvedev's pledge.

But in an annual report on Tuesday on foreign trade barriers, the trade office said "Russia has much work to do" to bring its laws into compliance with WTO rules and to honor bilateral deals it has made to join the world trade body.

Russia also must resolve multilateral concerns over its intellectual property rights regime, support for agriculture, import licensing of products with encryption technology, operation of state-owned enterprises and barriers to agricultural imports, the trade office said.

Many U.S. lawmakers still oppose lifting a Cold War-era restriction on trade with Russia known as the Jackson-Vanik amendment, despite the recent recommendation of a bipartisan experts group that Congress do that to help repair relations between the two countries.
The measure tied normal trade relations with the Soviet Union and other centrally planned economies to the rights of Jews and other religious minorities to emigrate freely.

Russia has been in compliance since 1994, but most U.S. lawmakers have insisted Moscow finish negotiations to join the WTO before they vote to lift the measure and establish permanent normal trade relations, referred to as PNTR.

So far, there has been no detectable change in that sentiment, a Senate aide who works on trade said.

Once Russia reaches a final deal to join the WTO, the United States will be obligated to grant PNTR in order to share in the market-opening concessions that Moscow has made, said Doug Goudie, director for international trade policy at the National Association of Manufacturers.
That could be a tough political fight, but hopefully not as difficult as it was to persuade Congress to approve PNTR for China in 2000, Goudie said.

A WTO deal that opens the Russian market to more U.S. exports would be a boon to U.S. manufacturers at a time when they desperately are looking for new sales, Goudie said.

Russians do not like Polish meat - 2

Poland could block Russia's entry to the global trade organization if Moscow fails to lift the 2005 embargo on imports of agricultural products, a deputy agriculture minister said on Monday.
"Poland would like Russia to be a WTO member. But if Russia fails to change its approach to Poland [in terms of veterinary control], then we will have to speak out against Russia's membership in the organization," Jan Krzysztof Ardanowski told a news conference in Moscow adding that Poland was reluctant to block Russia's membership.
Ardanowski said Russia said its refusal to lift the Polish meat embargo was down to the failure by Poland to meet Russia's sanitary standards.
"The world is trying to introduce uniform standards. And Polish products conform to these demands, which have nothing to do with the norms the Russian side is citing," he said.
The deputy minister said Warsaw believes there are no grounds for the Russian embargo to be continued. He said Russian and EU experts had made inspections at Polish meat plants.
"European experts said there were small breaches, while the Russian side said the violations were very serious, which meant Russian representatives doubted [the effectiveness of] all European Union food control systems," he said.
Russia imposed a temporary ban on meat products and fruit and vegetable deliveries from Poland in November 2005 saying Polish companies re-exported the products from third countries representing a threat to sanitary standards.
Demanding that Russia lift the embargo, Poland blocked talks on a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between Russia and the EU. The current agreement expires in December.
Ardanowski said Poland believed there was a link between the Russian embargo and the veto by Poland over the partnership agreement talks, as most EU members, he said, back Warsaw in the meat dispute.
Russia's veterinary watchdog said Monday Russia is ready to discuss lifting its two-year ban on Polish meat imports if meat producers undergo new checks.
"The problem is quite simple. We proposed holding inspections and resolving all issues long ago. We are ready to conduct inspections together with European Union representatives, but we have yet to be admitted," Alexei Alexeyenko, the Russian regulator's press secretary, told RIA Novosti.
"We can't open our borders to unchecked enterprises," he said.
According to Polish data, before the embargo, the country's annual earnings from meat exports to Russia were about $560 million, or 5% of total exports.

Russians do not like Polish meat

Poland is to block Russia’s WTO accession until Russia takes off embargo on Polish meat and vegetables, introduced in November 2005.
Still Poland doesn’t mind Russia’s joining the organization; the Polish side has claimed that such a powerful country like Russia should be the WTO member.
But Poland first of all tries to solve its meat market problems. It has already blocked a new cooperation agreement between Russia and EU, now it can block Russia’s WTO accession.

Russia used to buy 5% of Poland meat export. In 2005 Russia has banned Polish meat and vegetables as Poland re-exported these products from the third countries, mostly from African countries. Russia claimed such products didn’t match Russian veterinary requirements.

Will Russia ever join the WTO?

President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday that delays in Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organisation "irritate" Moscow but added that his country was still ready to join the global trade body.
"Russia is ready for accession on normal, non-discriminatory terms. We will do everything that is necessary. This process has dragged out and this irritates us," Medvedev said in televised remarks.
"We are not making a tragedy out of the fact that the process has been drawn out. The main thing is that it does not become a never-ending story," Medvedev said at a joint press conference with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
Russia's WTO hopes suffered a setback last year after its war with Georgia badly strained relations with the West, and the United States cast doubt on Russia's bid to join the international body.
Moscow responded that its WTO bid was an economic matter that should not be politicised, but trade negotiations made little progress.
Russia is the largest world economy still outside the WTO. Initial membership negotiations started in 1993 but were delayed by disputes over a variety of issues, including enforcement of copyright laws and meat exports.

Can Obama Take on Russia?

Reports coming from the meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev sound reassuring, but behind the apparent love feast is a stark, cold, and threatening reality far different from the optimism surrounding the encounter. The truth is that the diplomatic smiles of the Russian elite mask a world strategy meant to bring America to its knees. The strategy continues and will not abate, despite the Obama-Medvedev press releases.
In a statement to the press, President Barack Obama characterized his meeting with Russian Federation president Dmitry Medvedev, which occurred during the G20 summit in London, as the beginning of a "very constructive dialogue," and Medvedev declared that "there are many more positions that bring us together than those that pull us apart." A joint statement pledged a united effort in Afghanistan and against "Al-Qaeda and other terrorist and insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan," and seemed to promise progress on an agreement reducing nuclear weapons.
Moscow appears to be a reasonable international partner, but the internal and external realities of the Russian Federation recall the old Soviet Union far more than the Russia which was promised by Boris Yeltsin and other Moscow politicians following the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Medvedev's Russia, like Vladimir Putin's Russia, is the home of suspicion, murder and state terror. Opposition journalists are often killed, and even lawyers seeking to defend journalists against state harassment are in danger, as the recent slaying of one well-known lawyer proved. Schools and news outlets preach distrust of the West, especially of the United States. Pro-Kremlin youth groups, usually dressed in Bolshevik revolutionary red, teach their young members hostility to the United States and attack those opposing official Russian policy.
The activist organization Memorial is often the target of official Russian displeasure. Memorial seeks to protect human rights in Russia and to uncover and preserve the memory of those who suffered and died during the oppression of the Soviet era. Memorial's offices have been raided, its files confiscated never to be returned.
The most recent work of one of the leading writers on the Soviet era, Orlando Figes, cannot find a publisher in Russia - evidence of a de facto ban. Figes had based much his book, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, on material from Memorial.
Around the world, Moscow is pursuing a course hostile to the United States.
Only a few weeks ago, a group of Russian "Swallow" bombers flew into Venezuela. Speculation soon followed, inspired by statements of a Russian general, that Moscow would establish bomber bases in Venezuela and Cuba, both of which are within striking distance of the United States. Moscow is selling sophisticated weapons to Venezuela's neo-Marxist tyrant, Hugo Chavez, and has granted a license to the Chavez regime for the manufacture of the AK103, one of the world's most advanced automatic assault rifles. There is strong indication that an unknown number of the 100,000 AK103s already sold directly to Chavez by Moscow may have been passed on to drug cartel militias now engaged in a savage civil war against the Mexican government.
The island gulag state of Cuba remains one of Moscow's "key allies" in the Latin American region. Moscow has recently assured Raul Castro, Fidel Castro's brother and successor, of its continued and enthusiastic support. As with almost all of the Russian press, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass is under the control of the Kremlin. The deputy director-general of Itar-Tass, Michael Guzman, interviewed Raul before his late January-early February 2009 trip to Moscow. During the fawning interview, Guzman continually and respectfully referred to the new Cuban leader as "Comrade President."
The visit of the Russian bombers indicates that Chavez has very powerful friends willing to extend themselves into what had been regarded as "America's Backyard." Moscow's support of Cuba's fifty-year communist dictatorship confirms an alliance which extends, without interruption, back to the Soviet era.
In the Middle East, Moscow is the only reason that Iran has a nuclear capability and is able to threaten its neighbors from Israel to Europe. It is Moscow that has sold sophisticated anti-aircraft missile batteries to Iran for the defense of those nuclear facilities.
At this writing, North Korea is preparing a missile for launch which may be able to reach the United States with a nuclear weapon. The Stalinist dictatorship also has hundreds of thousands of troops ready at the whim of the "Beloved Leader" to attack American soldiers and their South Korean allies. Neither Stalinist North Korea, nor the "Beloved Leader," could not exist without the support of Moscow.
Russian aid has also made possible the Chinese military buildup which now threatens the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region. For well over a decade Russia has supplied China with weapons technologies and training for the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) . U.S. aircraft carrier groups are vulnerable to a Chinese ballistic strike, and almost every nation on earth is vulnerable to a Chinese cyber attack. Russian forces have staged extensive military exercises with the increasingly sophisticated PLA.
Russia's attack on the small Caucasus nation of Georgia shocked the world, and now Moscow recognizes as independent the rebel regions it helped sever from Georgia. This past winter Russia cutoff natural gas supplies to Ukraine during a dispute over pricing. In terminating Ukraine's access, Russia also endangered gas delivery to much of Western Europe, which soon learned that dependence on Moscow comes at a high price.
As Arctic ice melts and reveals extraordinary deposits of natural resources, the nations bordering on the Arctic Ocean are pressing their claims to the newly available wealth. To assert its interests, Russia is preparing for possible military operations in the region. As Russian bombers prowl off the southern coast of Alaska, specially trained Russian troops are engaging in military exercises in preparation for action in the Arctic, a conflict which could easily involve the northern coast of Alaska.
The last Democratic president to engage Russia was Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Russia at that time was weak and in the early stages of recovering from the shock of the collapse of the USSR. On the other hand, America was strong in every way, the only remaining superpower. Now, the situation is dramatically different. Russia is strong thanks to its tremendous natural resources, and America is weakened from its excessive spending policies, especially those enacted in the last few weeks by the new administration.
The Russian bear is again walking upright - and thanks to Moscow's political elite, the bear is hungry. Obama, America's policy makers, and the American public must beware of the embrace, no matter how warm, of the stalking bear.

Humor in Vladivostok

A juicy scandal broke in Vladivostok because of All-Fools’ Day joke.
On April the first a popular local news agency had published the comic article that led to losses of one of the key companies of the city – ‘Vodokanal’.
It was stated in the article that there would be mass cold water outages because of severe economical situation. The point was that cold water would be cut during the hours of darkness because of bad economic situation. And the agency advised people to lay in a supply of water.

Moreover, the news was not at first marked by smile or anything that would indicate it as a joke.

And only when scandal started to gain pace, the authors of the article added a note about All-Fools’ Day joke.

Meanwhile, other news agencies picked up the news and started spread it around the city. It caused the panic.

So, people started to lay in a supply of water, and the water consumption increased dramatically. The company managed to avoid major losses of water thanks to timely taken measures.

Excess consumption accounted for 3 thousand cubic meters.

The aftermath could have been much worse. According to the chief operating officer, at the present time the legal department of the company is considering the issue as to prosecution the media agency.

Ramzan Kadyrov - a brutal biography

The young president has silenced dissent, pacified the Russian republic and embarked on a massive reconstruction campaign. His critics are hard to find, because they have a habit of disappearing.

GUDERMES, RUSSIA -- 'I'm going to make them scream."The president of Chechnya looks out at the menagerie of birds, floating on the murky man-made lake in his backyard: black swans, pelicans and ducks. Ostriches roam the opposite bank. Deep grunts of laughter shake his thick chest, jolting his barrel arms. Then Ramzan Kadyrov stops laughing. "Bring me the tiger!" he barks to his camouflage-clad servants. "Bring me bread!"

Two former guerrilla fighters wrestle a chained tiger down the muddy slope. The tiger rears up on its hind legs, fangs bared, and swats at the guards with splayed paws. They yell and beat the tiger about the head until the animal is low to the ground. Meanwhile, Kadyrov is tossing chunks of bread into the water for his fancy birds, imported here from all corners of the Earth. He hopes to draw them close enough to shore to get scared by the tiger. He still wants to hear them scream.Kadyrov has been the president of Chechnya for a year; he was appointed by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin shortly after his 30th birthday made him old enough to hold the job legally. He inherited his power from his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, a Muslim cleric and separatist leader who cut a deal with Moscow after a blood-drenched war and emerged as Chechnya's president, only to be assassinated.Ramzan Kadyrov is finishing the job his father started when he shifted allegiances and steered Chechnya back under the sway of Moscow. The younger Kadyrov has managed to silence dissent, pacify the breakaway republic and embark on a massive reconstruction campaign.

Kadyrov's biography is brutal and Byzantine. His story is the story of Chechnya, and also a glimpse into the violent underbelly of modern Russia.Today the streets of Grozny, famously flattened in a ruthless rain of Russian bombs, ring with construction and adulation of the young president. "God brought us Kadyrov!" exclaims a taxi driver as he steers through the capital.

Kadyrov's critics say that he lords over Chechnya using terror and violence, that he has created a neo-Soviet dictatorship. But his critics are hard to find, because they have a habit of disappearing."When Ramzan Kadyrov came to power, the fear began. This fear creeps into people's hearts gradually," says Tatiana Kasatkina, the Moscow-based executive director of Memorial, a Russian human rights group that has been active in Chechnya for years. "These are people who fought in the mountains, they are rebels and their arms are soaked in blood up to their elbows. Their code is, if you go against us or you go against Kadyrov, you'll be exterminated."
When Kadyrov hears the term "human rights group," he smiles, puts a knife in his mouth and bites down on it. Then he says all the stories are lies. There are a few things Kadyrov won't talk about. The first is the war. When Chechnya fought the first of its two wars for independence from Moscow, Kadyrov and his father fought against the Russians. He shrugs that he was "15, maybe 16" when he led his first militia. He says he didn't have a childhood. He doesn't want to remember those times. The process of switching sides to the Moscow camp -- that, too, is an unwelcome topic. "I was always with the people," he says. "I don't know who changed which side, but I was always with the people." Nor will he talk about his father's death in May 2004. Kadyrov was in charge of his father's security, but he was in Moscow the day he died. Somebody planted an artillery shell smack under his seat in a soccer stadium in Grozny. Kadyrov wears his father's mantle eagerly. The scarcely rebuilt capital is crowded with memorials to Akhmad Kadyrov, many of them adorned with this quote: "I have always been proud of my people." Akhmad Kadyrov was arguably more famous for declaring: "Russians outnumber Chechens many times over, thus every Chechen should kill 150 Russians." But that quote is nowhere to be seen.
Since Ramzan Kadyrov took over, Moscow appears to have granted him a blank check for reconstruction and a free rein to crack down. Analysts say this is the Faustian deal struck by the Kremlin: Let Kadyrov do what he wants as long as Chechnya stays quiet.Kadyrov has nothing but praise for Putin. "He's my idol," he says. "Putin is a beauty."For all his macho swagger, Kadyrov has gotten smoother since he came to power. Earlier in his career, he told a reporter: "I've already killed who I should have killed. . . . I will be killing as long as I live."
Reminded of those words, he smiles in recognition and nods. Is it still true? Certainly, he says. But he avoids repeating the word "kill.""
We used tough methods to show what's wrong and what's right," Kadyrov says. "Against those who didn't understand, we led a tough and even cruel struggle."

It's been years since the second Chechen war diffused into scattered guerrilla attacks, but somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 Chechens are still missing. Nobody knows how many of those people disappeared during the war, and how many went missing on Kadyrov's watch.But human rights activists say that most of the people who have disappeared since the young president came to power were taken by his security forces. The police forces are dominated by Kadyrov's former rebel fighters; so are the members of his personal security detail.

"We are looking for them. We are digging them up," Kadyrov says. "The majority of people who are missing committed crimes in Chechnya and left our state. Some took to the forest. Some of them died."
The rate of disappearances drastically slowed as Kadyrov grew stronger and silenced dissent, according to human rights monitors.
But they warn that the statistics have gotten harder to measure as people have become more fearful.
"There's a very, very big number of people who disappear for several hours or several days and return home beaten up and psychologically broken, and most of them never say what happened to them," says Natalia Estemirova, a monitor in Grozny for Memorial. "This is being seriously hushed up."
Kadyrov is married and the father of five children. His tastes run to dangerous animals, fast cars and boxing.He doesn't bother with a driver, just swings himself behind the wheel of his Mercedes and careens over the roads in snaking convoys of security officers, trailed by an identical Mercedes with an identical license plate and a look-alike driver. When he gets to where he's going, his staff rushes to change the plates, all to thwart any would-be assassin.

On the mountainside overlooking the presidential residence in Gudermes, this city east of Grozny, "There's no god but God" is spelled out in massive Arabic letters.

Out past the hulking stone house and fragrant rose garden, Kadyrov leads visitors from cage to cage in his private zoo, showing off the lions, leopards and pumas. He reaches inside to pet and tousle them, to pull them closer and slam them against the bars. He tugs hard on the lion's mane.
When the beasts growl at him, he growls right back, baring his teeth and mirroring their mugs. "This one is not friendly yet," he says, looking intently at a snarling panther. "But every person has his frequency. We'll find the frequency to deal with him."
He leads his visitors down to the pond; when they pick their way across a bridge rigged from rope and planks, he stands at one end shaking the structure. Watching them waver and lose their balance, he laughs his grunting laugh again. And then, lest anybody be confused, he crows: "I'm doing it on purpose!"Later he hunches over a table spread with fine black caviar, "choco pies" and fresh apricots. He brags about the military academy he's opened to train members of his personal security detail, then brings out a documentary his men made of the teenagers attacking tanks and fighting each other in martial arts."Watch this, watch this, it's the best part," he says. On screen, a cadet connects a hard kick to the head of his opponent. Techno music pulses in the background. "That's a beauty!" Kadyrov says. He admires Mike Tyson and his "fists of iron." After meeting the American boxer in Moscow, Kadyrov persuaded him to pay a visit to Grozny."People say I paid him a lot of money. It's not true," Kadyrov says. "He should have paid money to be allowed here.""Kadyrov, you've only been president for a year and the city has risen from the ashes and the people are exulting," reads a banner on Kadyrov Prospect, just across from Kadyrov Square and the Akhmad Kadyrov mosque.At least part of that statement is true: Grozny is coming back to life with remarkable speed. Two years ago, the city had one stoplight. Today there are supermarkets, a small hotel attached to a working airport, billiard halls, a movie theater and restaurants, two of which are named Hollywood.All of this, courtesy of Moscow -- the price of peace. "As much as we need," Kadyrov says. "They destroyed all of it, so why shouldn't they? Our people are not to blame. They should have carried out pinpoint strikes, not what they did. I always tell them. I demand. They are obligated to rebuild and if it doesn't happen, I'll write my resignation paper."When the evening comes, the streets are quiet and clotted with people, out strolling among the rosebushes, perched on benches, picking their way between construction sites and streets ripped open to lay pipes. But it is a renovation founded on boneyards. Human remains keep coming to light. European human rights groups have set aside money for a laboratory to identify the bodies, but so far there is no laboratory, and no identification.There are surfaces here, and then there are the realities. The surfaces are mostly new, and generally covered with Kadyrov's face. But as soon as a klatch of old women sees visitors pulling up to the yard of a resurfaced apartment house, they begin to yell: "There's no water! There is nothing inside! Not even doors!"The women lead the way up the concrete staircases, the smell of human waste thickening as they climb. They duck into an apartment and gesture around in despair: Bare, cracked floors have been patched up so hastily that concrete smears the walls and the footprints of workmen are permanently sunk into the rooms. There is no running water, sewage or toilet. No doors. Only a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling.But when somebody mentions the thousands of missing people to a woman named Zaira Dovletbayava, her eyes widen and fly to the minder sent by Kadyrov's press office."No," she says, quietly and quickly, eyes fixed on Kadyrov's man. "There are no missing people."It's graduation day at the Kadyrov School, a freshly opened elementary and high school named after Chechnya's most famous clan. All 1,400 students have been invited to the party. Russian rock music booms through the corridors, out to where the senior girls and boys in red sashes pose for photographs. The girls wear patent leather spike heels, generous slabs of makeup and big earrings under their head scarves. Like everything else in Grozny, the school is very clean and very full of Kadyrov. Bright, burst balloons litter a courtyard buckled from bombs. "He alone managed to save us all," read the posters on the wall. "The worthy son of a worthy father."The principal is sitting in her office, overflowing with cakes and candies and fresh fruit. She adores the president. He isn't afraid to do the "dirty work," she says. "We ordinary people are very, very grateful to him," she says, "because he fulfilled our dreams."She recently took a handful of her best graduates to meet the president."On that day I realized he is really the leader of the youth," she says. "I saw the children's eyes, and they were full of admiration. And I thought, 'They'll do whatever he tells them.' "