Robert Coalson worked as a correspondent for RFE/RL from 2002 to 2024.
Shortly after the 4 September conclusion of the tragic school hostage taking in Beslan, North Ossetia, President Vladimir Putin said that there would be no public investigation into the incident. Speaking to Western journalists and academics on 6 September, Putin said that he would conduct an internal probe into the matter. He added that if the Duma looked into it, the investigation would become "a political show" and "would not be very effective," "The Guardian" reported the next day.
Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller (left) speaks with journalists after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin President Vladimir Putin appeared in a carefully staged, televised meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller at his residence outside of Moscow on 14 September. The president listened intently as Fradkov presented "his" idea for solving several problems at once, the most important of which he said was the problem of the dual stock system at the gas giant caused by the formal ban on foreign ownership of Gazprom stock. For years, foreign investors have complained that the ban is unfair and is hindering investment in Gazprom and in Russia generally, while the government has been unwilling to drop the ban because it does not have a majority stake in the strategically important company.
Putin has ruled out any change in policy in the North Caucasus Nearly a week after the horrifying denouement of the hostage crisis at a school in North Ossetia, the Russian government seems to have formulated its response, a reaction that is characterized by bolstering the mechanisms the administration of President Vladimir Putin has installed over the last five years, rather than by any perceptible change of course. Putin and other officials have, predictably, ruled out any softening of the government's policies in Chechnya, going so far as to deny that there is any connection between the situation in the breakaway republic and the Beslan hostage crisis. "Just imagine that people who shoot children in the back came to power anywhere on our planet," Putin told Western journalists and experts during a Kremlin meeting on 7 September, Russian media reported. "Just ask yourself that and you will have no more questions about our policy in Chechnya."
On 6 September, "Izvestiya" Editor in Chief Raf Shakirov, one of Russia's most respected journalists, submitted his resignation, a belated casualty of the horrific terrorist attack on the school in Beslan, North Ossetia. The resignation came amid widespread criticism both in Russia and abroad that state-controlled television had done much to minimize and sanitize the hostage crisis, in which well over 300 people were killed.
Investigators suspect terrorism was the cause of the 24 August air crashes As Russia continues to reel from an unprecedented wave of terrorist attacks that apparently included the 24 August downing of two civilian airliners and the ongoing takeover of a school in North Ossetia, it increasingly seems that the country is on the edge of a transformation similar to that experienced by the United States following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks there.
Central Bank head Sergei Ignatev (file photo) The traditional question in Russia of what crisis this autumn will bring was given added urgency this year by the crisis of confidence that rocked the banking sector in the early summer. Despite the overall impression among analysts that there are no objective reasons to expect a wider crisis in the immediate future, the steady stream of bank closures in the ensuing weeks has done little to calm jittery financiers and bank customers. On 13 August, Moscow's Paveletskii Bank became the eighth bank to lose its license and to be put into receivership since the crisis started in May.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov cut his Sochi vacation short -- reportedly at the personal insistence of President Vladimir Putin -- to preside over a 12 August cabinet session devoted to the subject of government accountability. Ministers at the meeting were sharply divided over the results of the work of an administrative-reform commission headed by Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Zhukov.
Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khordorkovskii (file photo) Twists in the case of embattled oil giant Yukos have been coming fast and furious over the last few weeks, although developments have appeared so thoroughly contradictory that the only thing that seems certain is that the Kremlin has not yet made up its mind as to just how things will turn out.
The fallout from this month's banking crisis in Russia continues, and the media are not being overlooked in the quest to pin blame. Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatev himself has been among those who said that the crisis of confidence was provoked in large part by unscrupulous competition in the banking sector and fueled by stories planted in the press.
As the shockwaves from the recent crisis of confidence that passed through the Russian banking sector recede, analysts and pundits have struggled to identify the effects of that crisis and to predict future developments in the sector. No consensus has emerged on the crucial questions of what caused the crisis, who benefited from it, and whether a second wave of instability looms in the near future. Perhaps most importantly, the role of the government -- and especially the Central Bank -- has come under harshly critical scrutiny.
Russian President Vladimir Putin caught Russian, U.S., and European observers off guard on 18 June when he unexpectedly announced that Russian intelligence services had repeatedly received information the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had planned terrorist attacks against the United States and U.S. interests abroad. In the ensuing days, Russian commentators have been energetically dissecting the context of Putin's statement and speculating on just what the KGB veteran might be thinking.
When Vladimir Lukin was confirmed as Russia's human rights ombudsman in February, activists were cautiously optimistic.
Filipp Kirkorov is one of Russia's most high-profile pop stars and the husband of the legendary singer Alla Pugacheva. He has long had a scandalous reputation for arrogant behavior and has had a number of run-ins with journalists, but he has always come out with his popularity intact. So, most likely, he didn't think twice about taking on a young provincial journalist. But perhaps he should have.
Russia's embattled liberal community suffered another shock on 2 June when NTV national television summarily dismissed popular journalist Leonid Parfenov and closed down his analytical program "Namedni." NTV General Director Nikolai Senkevich made the controversial decision after Parfenov released to the media a written instruction from NTV Deputy General Director for News Aleksandr Gerasimov ordering him to remove from his program an interview with the widow of former acting Chechen leader Zemlikhan Yandarbiev. In the days since, Russia's liberals have been arguing over everything from whether this development signals a clampdown on the media to whether this was really a case of censorship at all and to what extent Parfenov himself is to blame for the unfortunate outcome.
One of the few controversial moments in President Vladimir Putin's 26 May annual address to the Federal Assembly came when he turned his attention to the country's nascent civil society. "There are thousands of citizens' associations and unions working constructively in our country, but far from all of them are geared toward defending people's real interests," Putin said toward the end of his speech. "For some of these organizations, the priority is rather different -- obtaining funding from influential foreign or domestic foundations. For others it is servicing dubious groups and commercial interests."
Since the failure of either of Russia's liberal parties -- Yabloko and the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) -- to enter the Duma in the 7 December elections and the failure of the liberal wing's least-sullied figure, former SPS co-leader Irina Khakamada, to pick up even 4 percent of the vote in the 14 March presidential election, analysts have been avidly discussing the demise and even death of Russian liberalism.
