September 25, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Banking on Russia

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia and the Rogues

(3)  Russian Banks teeter on the Brink of Collapse

(4)  Kasparov and the New Cold War

(5)  Aslund on Appalling Russian Hubris

NOTE:  If Dima Medvedev is serious about improving  relations with the USA, why is a KGB website smearing an important American diplomat with a bogus sex tape?

13 responses to “September 25, 2009 — Contents

  1. Notorious war criminal General Shamanov becomes a petty military criminal:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/6218936/Russian-commander-used-special-troops-to-block-police-search-of-sons-factory.html

    One of Russia’s most senior military commanders is being investigated over claims he used special forces troops to block a police search of a factory owned by his fugitive son-in-law.

    (…)

    General Shamanov told Novaya Gazeta he refused to comment on what he said was a personal matter, dismissing the allegations as provocative rumours. If he does lose his job, human rights activists will not shed any tears. They accuse him of presiding over numerous war crimes in Chechnya. The General, 52, denies wrongdoing.

  2. RIAN:

    MOSCOW, September 23 (RIA Novosti) – A top Russian military official on Wednesday denied media allegations of abuse of office as part of a smear campaign against him.

    Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has ordered a probe into media reports alleging that Airborne Troops commander Lt. Gen. Vladimir Shamanov sent a group of paratroopers to impede an investigation at a company owned by his son-in-law, who is wanted in Russia on murder charges.

    Novaya Gazeta newspaper published transcripts of the general’s telephone conversations to show his involvement.

    Shamanov protested his innocence in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily, saying the telephone conversations were taken out of context, which distorted the essence of what had been said.

    He refused to elaborate.

    Novaya Gazeta’s editor on Wednesday stood by what the newspaper had published.

    “Novaya Gazeta had at its disposal the full phone-tap conversations of all the figures in the case,” Sergei Sokolov told RIA Novosti. “Naturally, it is impossible to print them in full – we chose the fragments that directly concerned our investigation. We did not make anything up.”

    “It is possible to listen to the telephone conversations on the newspaper’s web site,” he added.

    Shamanov said he was the victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by people “in Chechnya and in Moscow.”

    The Airborne Troops commander suggested that “some Chechen officials” had an axe to grind and could not forgive him his “position on Col. Budanov.”

    Yury Budanov, who commanded a tank regiment during the second Chechen war, was convicted in the summer of 2003 of strangling an 18-year-old Chechen woman, and was sentenced to 10 years in jail. He was paroled in January 2009.

    Shamanov took a high-profile role in pushing for Budanov’s early release.

    Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov said on Wednesday that Shamanov would remain in office and that no action would be taken with regard to him until after the probe was completed.

    He warned against “hasty and unjustified decisions” that could “cast a shadow over a respectable person.”

    Shamanov, a Hero of Russia and commander of the 76th Airborne Division during the second Chechen War, was appointed commander of the Russian Airborne Troops in May.

    Human rights organizations have said troops under Shamanov’s command in Chechnya committed atrocities against civilians.

    Shamanov met U.S. President George W. Bush in March 2007 as co-chair of a U.S.-Russian commission on servicemen missing in action, a visit that reportedly embarrassed the White House after it learned of the abuse allegations.

    http://en.rian.ru/russia/20090923/156225870.html

  3. Russia’s Chechen chief blames CIA for violence
    Today, 22:38 | Reuters

    “We’re fighting in the mountains with the American and English intelligence agencies. They are fighting not against Kadyrov, not against traditional Islam, they are fighting against the sovereign Russian state,” he said.

    The West sought to attack both Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the country as a whole by targeting the country’s weakest regions, Kadyrov said in the comments republished prominently on http://www.chechnya.gov.ru.

    http://www.kyivpost.com/world/49412

      • Anyway,

        “Former rebel-turned-Moscow-ally Ramzan Kadyrov said in comments to Zavtra newspaper reprinted on his official website that he had seen the U.S. driving licence of a CIA operative who was killed in a security operation he led.”

        is of course hilarious, but

        “Chechen authorities have previously said insurgents following the radical Wahabist form of Islam receive support from international Islamist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but have not accused the West of instigating violence.”

        is totally wrong (as I already said they’re doing this all the time – I guess Reuters only just discovered it because they don’t watch Grozny TV).

        “”There was a terrorist Chitigov, he worked for the CIA. He had U.S. citizenship…When we killed him, I was in charge of the operation and we found a U.S. driving licence and all the other documents were also American,” he said.”

        Geez, someone go and tell them the CIA agents their “US driving licences” actually can’t be used in Russia ;)

        As of this CIA agent Chitigov fellow, this what the MVD website says about him:

        “In 1999 the commander [Chitigov] had ordered to abduct and to kill officers from the OSCE mission – two of who had been UK subjects and the other one had been from New Zeeland. Rizvan Chitigov had been personally involved in the matter.”
        http://eng.mvdrf.ru/news/1510/

        What the heck are they talking about, I have no idea. My guess is that the guy who wrote it had some really bad hangover :)

    • Btw,

      Kadyrov Directs Razing of Mosque
      http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/383735.html

      Dzhabrail Yamadayev, to whom the mosque was dedicated, was killed by a bomb in 2003. Ruslan and Sulim were shot dead in 2008 and 2009.

  4. Hi Robert,

    My prior post was to show the typical generic kremlinoid statements – USA/CIA is responsible for all of the problems that the moskali endure.

    Here is another one:

    However, the samples were not studied in Ukraine or another European country. They were secretly taken to the U.S., where they were enriched with dioxin and were later taken to the UK with help from the U.S. special services. Those blood samples were sent by the administration of the Austrian clinic Rudolfinerhous to expert establishments, which found dioxin,” Segodnya quoted Cherednichenko as saying.

    http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/48975

    The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has confirmed that Ukrainian specialists were involved in servicing air defense systems in Georgia during the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict in August 2008, the Segodnya newspaper reported on Friday, referring to a source in law enforcement services.

    http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/48911

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