As the Moscow Times reports:

A liberal-leaning newspaper claimed Wednesday that the Investigative Committee’s chairman threatened one of its reporters, who has since fled the country for fear of his safety.

Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov, in an open letter published on the newspaper’s website, accused Alexander Bastrykin of making the threats on a roadside bordering a Moscow region forest after the reporter had been driven there by Bastrykin’s security guards.

Muratov later told Radio Liberty that the reporter, deputy editor Sergei Sokolov, had fled the country. Muratov has not disclosed the actual threats.

Sokolov was alone with Bastrykin when the threats were made, the letter said. Bastrykin is one of the nation’s most senior law enforcement officials.

Recently, Sokolov wrote that he was outraged by the relatively soft sentencing of Sergei Tsepovyaz, a reputed member of the notorious Kushchyovskaya gang, which murdered 12 people, including small children, in 2011.

Tsepovyaz was fined 150,000 rubles ($4,600) for covering up the crime. The court ruled that he did not participate in the murder. Two other men who share Tsepovyaz’s last name were found guilty of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In the article on the crime, Sokolov calls Bastrykin, as well as President Vladimir Putin and Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, “servants of countless Russian ‘Tsapoks.'” The Kushchyovskaya gang’s reputed mastermind, Sergei Tsapok, is currently in jail awaiting trial.

Muratov said Sokolov has since publicly apologized for that remark.

In 2006, Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who gained prominence for her reporting from Chechnya, was gunned down near her residence in Moscow. Her murder remains unsolved.

Muratov said in the letter Wednesday that Bastrykin spoke negatively about the paper’s editorial policy and mentioned Politkovskaya in a derogatory way.

Muratov stated that while he took Bastrykin’s words “seriously,” he declined to quote Bastrykin’s words against Politkovskaya in order “not to participate in a clan war of law enforcement officials.”

Muratov was referring to the ongoing struggle between the Investigative Committee and the General Prosecutor’s Office over political influence.

The reformed Investigative Committee now has authority over all the nation’s investigations, whereas the Prosecutor General’s Office has lost its ability to investigate crimes on its own.

The Investigative Committee did not comment on the alleged threats by Wednesday evening.

Muratov called on Bastrykin to “guarantee security” for Sokolov and said the threats were “empty” due to Bastrykin’s “emotional state.”

The alleged threats against Sokolov prompted protests outside the Investigative Committee’s headquarters on Wednesday.

Published three times a week, Novaya Gazeta is jointly owned by billionaire Alexander Lebedev and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Analysts said such threats might have stemmed from Bastrykin’s personal ties to Putin. The two were classmates at Leningrad University Law School.

Vladimir Prybilovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said Bastrykin’s connections to Putin make him “rather powerful.”

Prybilovsky said Bastrykin is someone who would “pursue a hardline course” against the opposition, referring to searches conducted at homes of opposition leaders, including Alexei Navalny, on the eve of Tuesday’s protest march in Moscow.

United Russia Deputy Alexander Khinshtein said at the time that Bastrykin was trying to “serve” Putin by putting pressure on the opposition.

Yelena Pozdnyakova, an expert with the Center for Political Technologies, said Bastrykin is trying to suppress negative publicity against him, which shows that he is “nervous” about the situation.

“Novaya Gazeta has always irritated him,” she said.

But Pozdnyakova added that it is still unclear whether Novaya Gazeta, known for its highly critical articles, might have exaggerated the scandal in order to attack Bastrykin, Putin’s ally.

This is not the first time that Bastrykin has been mired in a media scandal.

In 2008, United Russia Deputy Khinshtein accused Bastrykin, then a deputy prosecutor, of possessing undeclared property abroad.

It turned out that the property had been registered before Bastrykin became a law enforcement official.

In a full confession that will shorten his own future prison sentence, Dmitri Pavlyuchenkov admitted that he was guilty of aiding in the organization of the murder but was not the main organizer himself. Pavlyuchenkov had originally been maintaining his innocence since his arrest late August.

Now, with new evidence from the ex-lieutenant colonel, investigators say that the main suspect in the primary organizing role is Chechen businessman Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, currently sitting out a 15-year prison sentence in Ukraine for organizing the attempted murder of businessman Gennady Korban in March 2006.

According to Kommersant, investigators believe that Gaitukayev received an order in July 2006 from an “unidentified figure” to murder Politkovskaya. He then organized a hit team made up of his two nephews, Ibragim and Rustam Makhmudov, as well as Pavlyuchenkov. However, Gaitukayev was arrested the next month in Moscow on an arrest warrant from Ukraine, where he was later convicted of organizing the Korban murder attempt.

Without their primary organizer, the hit team spent some time lying in wait before being taken over by Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former Moscow police officer. At the time, Khadzhikurbanov had just been released from prison, where he served a term for abuse of authority. Investigators say that he and the other members of the group were given orders by cell phone from Gaitukayev in his detention facility.

Pavlyuchenkov admits that he ordered his subordinate officers to spy on the Politkovskaya and determine the pattern of her daily movements around the city. He then gave this information – along with the murder weapon – to the Makhmudov brothers. On October 7, 2006, Rustam Makhmudov shot and killed the journalist in her apartment building’s elevator.

Notably, Gaitukayev had previously stated that Anna Politkovskaya’s murder could have been no less than a $2 million job, although he denied having any involvement in it himself. Federal prosecutors say that they no charges are currently being filed against Gaitukayev and his lawyer declined to comment.

Kommersant added that it has information that Pavlyuchenkov has provided investigators with the name of the possible “client” in the case – said to be currently abroad – who paid Gaitukayev and the hit team. Federal investigators and the ex-lieutenant colonel declined to discuss the issue.

Khadzhikurbanov’s lawyer, Aleksei Mikhalchik, told Kommersant that Pavlyuchenkov was simply providing false evidence to ease his own fate. “I hope the investigation doesn’t rely on his words alone,” he said.

Novaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Sergei Sokolov commented that Lom-Ali Gaitukayev is not the sort of person who “talks with investigators” and therefore is unlikely to confirm Pavlyuchenkov’s testimony about the alleged client.

Politkovskaya’s death catapulted Russia into the spotlight as one of the world’s deadliest countries for reporters. Over the past five years, blame has been cast at Chechen militants, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Russian then-President Vladimir Putin, and Russian police officers, among others. But today, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that ex-Lieutenant Colonel Dmitri Pavlyuchenkov had been arrested as the suspected organizer of the journalist’s murder.

Investigators say that Pavlyuchenkov, who was at one point a main witness in the Politkovskaya case, was paid to organize the hit and even provided the criminal group in question with the murder weapon.

An answer to the larger question of who paid Pavlyuchenkov also may be close at hand, as the Investigative Committee additionally announced that it had information regarding the murder’s “client.” According to RIA Novosti, the name of the suspect is under wraps for now in order to prevent complications with the investigation.

Editors at Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked, said the news matched up with the results of their own independent investigation.

“In regards to the client, I do know of a few versions that federal investigators have developed at various levels of detail. They partially overlap with our own,” Novaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Sergei Sokolov told Gazeta.ru. “But to name any specific names right now would be irresponsible.”

At the very least, Novaya Gazeta’s investigation found that Pavlyuchenkov definitely played a key role in organizing the murder, said Sokolov. “I can’t say if he was the only organizer; there could have been two. But that this man was one of the main organizers and used his position [to ensure the murder was carried out] can already be confirmed,” he explained.

According to Gazeta.ru, the journalist’s children came to the conclusion that Pavlyuchenkov was involved in the murder “long ago.”

“We and Novaya Gazeta, as victims, carried out our own research, collected evidence in the case and more and more came to the conclusion that he was involved in the crime and should not take the stand as a witness,” said Anna Stavitskaya, lawyer for Ilya and Vera Politkovskaya.

For more information about the developments and background in the Politkovskaya case, see Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

On June 22, a small group of protesters stood outside the Moscow mayor’s office holding posters reading “We had a beekeeper for a mayor and now we have a tile layer,” “put a stop to the tile aggression” and “Sobyanin! Enough digging around in the budget money!”

“There are serious grounds to suspect an element of corruption,” said Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, present at the protest. “Stones are being laid at a rapid pace, the quality is low, the stones are swelling up, some parts are collapsing.” He called for the work to be temporarily halted until an experiment could be carried out on the tiles.

Police initially tried to detain the protesters, but chose not to in the end.

At the end of this past February, Moscow Vice Mayor Pyotr Biryukov announced plans to tear up 4 million cubic meters of sidewalk pavement and replace it with stone tiles in 2011.

The Russian press explains the mayor’s interest in the project as connected with the fact that his wife, Irina Rubinchik, owns a stone tile business. Whether or not the stones being laid in Moscow were purchased from her company is unclear. But according to Novaya Gazeta, the entire center of Tyumen was laid with stone tiling while Sobyanin was governor of Tyumen Oblast between 2001 and 2005.

Last month, dozens of photographs of what has become known as “Putin’s Black Sea Palace” were dumped onto Ruleaks, the Russian analog of Wikileaks. The pictures gave new life to allegations that Russian taxpayers have been unknowingly funding a grandiose vacation home for their prime minister’s “personal use.” Presidential Affairs chief Vladimir Kozhin denied the administration had any involvement in the project, which whistleblowing businessman Sergei Kolesnikov claims has eaten up $1 billion in construction costs so far.

The photographs piqued the curiosity of environmental activists at the Environment Watch North Caucasus group, who say the sprawling complex is being built illegally on protected land. Despite being briefly arrested, the activists were able to release their own pictures of the palace, which is apparently crawling with federal guards. Then, last week, Novaya Gazeta published documents that, as they put it, “not only confirm the Office of Presidential Affairs was involved in the construction of the facility in Gelendzhika, but also point directly to Vladimir Kozhin as the civil servant who approved the project.”

In a column written for the Moscow Times, business magazine editor Alexei Pankin explains what all of this talk about luxury dachas could mean for Russia’s current political situation.

The Great Dacha Wars
By Alexei Pankin
Feberuary 22, 2011
The Moscow Times

Russia is headed for some major shocks. I came to that conclusion after reading a news release with the heading: “Yabloko Party Activists Detained at Putin’s Black Sea Dacha.” The key word here is “dacha.”

Late last year, businessman Sergei Kolesnikov wrote an open letter informing President Dmitry Medvedev that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was having a $1 billion palatial residence built for himself on the Black Sea shore, and the money to finance the project was obtained by extorting money from businesses. Kommersant, Dengi, Vedomosti and Novaya Gazeta newspapers and Radio Svoboda all ran stories on the subject, and Sobesednik newspaper reporter Rimma Akhmirova was recently arrested at the construction site. Investigations by journalists have generally corroborated Kolesnikov’s claims.

Instead of being elated by the triumph of the free media over corruption, I am deeply concerned. The problem is that every time there is a public fight against “dacha corruption,” it ends with a new round of hardships for ordinary citizens.

For example, in 1990-91, rather modest dachas owned by nine ministries from the Soviet Union’s powerful military industrial complex were bought out by top officials from those ministries. Then, in summer 1991, democrats from the Supreme Soviet attacked this blatant attempt at nomenklatura privatization. A coup d’etat was all but unavoidable. The captains of military industry had no qualms about shedding their Communist ideology; it was their dachas they were prepared to defend tooth and nail. A nomenklatura putsch was staged in August 1991, and that soon led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev lost power when he was at his dacha in Foros, Crimea, the construction of which had met with significant opposition even during the perestroika years. He was first kept in isolation there by the people who had staged the putsch and later brought to Moscow by the victorious democrats to be subjected to public humiliation.

In 1992-93, the ideological struggle between the “democratic” President Boris Yeltsin and the “red-brown” Supreme Soviet boiled down to the media outlets controlled by both forces reporting on how the other side was building luxurious suburban dachas for themselves while the people were going hungry. The end result was the order for tanks to fire on the White House and the passage of the authoritarian 1993 Constitution.

The next round of the dacha wars was fought in the international arena. During the 1999 State Duma election campaign, reporters from the pro-Luzhkov NTV showed aerial shots of an enormous castle in southern France that they claimed belonged to the Yeltsin family. The pro-Yeltsin ORT television station aired live reports from a collection of luxurious cottages in Spain and claimed that they belonged to the owners, senior managers and leading journalists of NTV. Since then, there hasn’t been any free, balanced coverage of elections.

The next dacha war was initiated in the fall. Reports on Luzhkov’s opulent dachas outside Moscow and in Austria was a key weapon used by state-controlled media to discredit the capital city’s mayor, who had fallen out of favor with the president.

And now we have the latest dacha scandal, and this time it involves Putin. For the time being, all talk about Putin’s palace has been confined to the print media, but when we start seeing aerial shots of the castle on our television screens, you can be sure that another wave of political upheavals will soon follow.

Svetlana Dobronravova, a reader of the Metro newspaper, told the publication she overheard lawyers discussing the verdict. “I was attending to my own matters in the Khamovnichesky Court,” said Dobronravova. “It was the last day of arguments in the Yukos case. I accidentally heard a female prosecutor’s telephone conversation. She said: ‘Now the lawyers are rattling off fees, Khodorkovsky is avoiding answering. But the sentence isn’t ready, they haven’t brought it from the Moscow City Court yet.'”

“I’m prepared to testify in court!” she added.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev were sentenced to 14 years in prison late last December in the second court case filed against them by the government. They were accused of stealing oil from their own company, Yukos. The case is widely believed to have been politically motivated and analysts and oppositionists alike routinely point to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the driving force behind the guilty verdict.

On Monday, Khamovnichesky Court spokesperson and aide Natalya Vasilyeva said the verdict was not written by presiding Judge Viktor Danilkin, but by judges in the Moscow City Court.

According to Metro, Vasilyeva said her family is now experiencing pressure from Russian law enforcement – internal ministry officials have inquired about her spouse’s documents. The police denied any involvement.

Dobronravova is not the first person to come forward with evidence backing up Vasilyeva’s accusations. On Monday evening, Novaya Gazeta columnist Vera Chelishcheva wrote on the newspaper’s blog: “I agree with what Natasha is saying. We all heard how Danilkin screamed in his chamber during breaks in the hearings. He screamed at prosecutors, so it was occasionally heard in the courtroom.”

Danilkin himself has maintained that the accusations are slander, but, as Kasparov.ru put it, “is not rushing to bring her to court.”

Following months of legal battles, a Russian court declared in September that a decision by Roskomnadzor (Russia’s federal media supervision agency) to issue an official warning against the newspaper for “propagandizing nationalistic views” was valid. Since a publication can be shut down after two such warnings, Novaya Gazeta editors say that the court’s decision spells the beginning of the possible end of the newspaper.

In a post on Novaya Gazeta’s blog on Sunday evening, Deputy Chief Editor Sergei Sokolov explained the court case:

It’s entirely possible that next year Novaya Gazeta won’t be found in either kiosks or your mailbox. We may be shut down…

What alarmed the federal officials? The article “Gang, agency, party. Who are the ‘legal nationalists'” – which is research dedicated to ultra-right organizations that openly preach nationalistic views. We quoted propagandistic texts from the web site of Russian Mind, we took photographs from a Nazi website in which people calling themselves legal politicians were covered in symbols that look fascist to the point of confusion. (Notarized copies of these materials were presented to the court.)

Why did we do this? Because Novaya Gazeta has taken a principally antifascist position for the course of many years: it demands that the authorities investigate the activities of nationalist-extremists, it explains to people what the activists from numerous “patriotic” movements that gallivant around the center of Moscow in Russian Marches actually are, it reports statistics on the victims of nationalists. (Several kilograms of these texts were presented to the court.)

In January 2009, fascists murdered our journalist Anastasia Baburova and a friend of our editorial office, lawyer Stanislav Markelov – they were shot in the back of the head in the center of Moscow. It was a public punishment for antifascists. (The court was aware of these circumstances.)

We carried out our own investigation and explained: the people now charged with murder associated with members of Russian Mind and had a certain attitude towards it. Meanwhile, Russian Mind advertises itself as a non-extremist and non-fascist organization. In order for readers and law enforcement agencies to get the proper impression of these citizens, we quoted THEIR program documents and showed THEIR photographs with Nazi symbols. (The court was aware of this.)

We expected that after this publication, Roskomnadzor would deal with the fact that the website of Russian Mind exists, and that prosecutors would begin looking into further criminal charges.

Roskomnadzor did deal with it – only not with the ultra-right, but with Novaya Gazeta.

The offending article can be read in Russian by clicking here.

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

In honor of Politkovskaya, memorial events were held on Thursday throughout Russia. At a rally in Moscow, more than 500 people gathered with candles and photographs of the murdered journalist to pay their respects. A variety of journalists, editors, oppositionists, human rights activists, and cultural figures spoke at the event. Among them were rights activists Lev Ponomarev and Sergei Kovalev, journalist Natella Boltyanskaya, Solidarity opposition movement co-leaders Garry Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov, and Editor-in-Chief Dmitri Muratov of Novaya Gazeta, where Politkovskaya used to work.

During his speech at the rally, Novaya Gazeta journalist Oleg Khlebnikov proposed renaming Lesnaya Street in honor of his murdered colleague.

Garry Kasparov told the crowd that the Russian government was doing everything possible to prevent the country from having real journalists. As an example, he cited a scandalous calendar released earlier this week by female journalism students from the prestigious Moscow State University, Politkovskaya’s alma mater. The calendar was presented as a birthday gift for Prime Minister Putin, featuring the scantily-clad students coupled with suggestive phrases. The government, Kasparov asserted, has no use for professionals of Politkovskaya’s caliber.

“We know the answer to the rhetorical question of who orchestrated Anya’s murder,” he said.

Literary scholar Marietta Chudakova reminded those gathered of Putin’s remark that the journalist’s murder brought more harm upon the government than her publications had.

“He lacked the cultural understanding to realize that he’ll go down in history with precisely these words,” she said.

Memorials were also held in the cities of St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Tomsk, Kurgan, and elsewhere.

Russian state investigators said on Wednesday that they were extending an already long-standing probe into Politkovskaya’s death, but her colleagues doubted that the effort was genuine.

“How on earth is it possible to have not found Anna’s killers after four years?” alleged Muratov. “Perhaps political will is missing.”

Nadezhda Prusenkova of the newspaper’s press service said that the DDoS attack on Novaya Gazeta’s server has increased in strength since its initiation on Tuesday morning. The site now receives one and a half million hits a second, effectively paralyzing it.

“We have prepared and are submitting today an appeal to law enforcement agencies, in which we basically are demanding that criminal proceedings be initiated,” Prusenkova said.

Novaya Gazeta is one of the only newspapers in Russia that remains openly critical of the Kremlin. Four of its journalists have been killed since 2001, including Anna Politkovskaya, whose October 2006 murder shocked the world and drew unprecedented scorn onto the Russian government. “There are visitors in our editorial office every day who have nowhere else to bring their troubles,” Politkovskaya wrote before her death, “because the Kremlin finds their stories off-message, so that the only place they can be aired is in our newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.”

“The editors of Novaya Gazeta consider this attack to be a direct violation of media laws, an impeding the realization of the professional activities of journalists, a violation of the rights of our readers to obtain prompt information and a breakdown of the agreement with our advertisers,” reads a post on the newspaper’s LiveJournal blog, which editors are using to publish material while the website remains inaccessible.

Editors of the newspaper suspect that the attack could be motivated by its recent extensive coverage of controversial house demolitions in the Moscow village of Rechnik. “Our correspondents are on duty in the village around the clock and send the editors photographs and videos, testimony from the victims, and also property ownership documents that still have not appeared in the news,” they said in a blog post.

“According to the information that we have, the house demolitions in the village are planned to be completed by Monday. And the materials that began to appear on our website are an absolutely undesirable background for this,” the post concludes.

Prusenkova noted that editors are attempting to find an alternative domain for the website in addition to LiveJournal. “But the problem is that the attack immediately goes exactly to the domain name ‘Novaya Gazeta’,” she said.

Russian opposition websites are quite frequently subjected to DDoS attacks. They often correspond with important political events, such as elections or large-scale protests. The website for the opposition movement Solidarity underwent such an attack in September 2009, after a presentation of movement leader Boris Nemtsov’s critical brochure on Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

US President Barack Obama sat down for an interview with the Novaya Gazeta, an independent paper known for its in-depth journalism and criticism of the Kremlin.  During the conversation, Obama backed President Medvedev’s judicial reforms, and repeated an earlier pledge to support worldwide freedom of speech and human rights.  The complete interview will be published in full on Monday, June 6th, but Novaya Gazeta has released some excerpts.

“I agree with President Medvedev when he said that ‘freedom is better than the absence of freedom,'” Obama told the paper.  “I see no reason why we cannot aspire together to strengthen democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as part of our reset.”

Asked about the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a Novaya Gazeta investigative journalist gunned down in 2006, Obama fell back on his inaugural speech:

“As I said in my inaugural address: ‘To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.'”

The US President also briefly answered a question about the judicial process against businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon serving a sentence seen by many as political.  Russian prosecutors have launched a second set of charges against Khodorkovsky.

“It does seem odd to me that these new charges, which appear to be a repackaging of the old charges, should be surfacing now,” Obama said.

Obama earlier spoke about the need to improve US-Russian relations, and reiterated his administration’s hope to “press the reset button.”  Obama also noted the many issues and interests that the two countries must face jointly, including the economy, defense, terrorism, and the possibility of a nuclear Iran.

The US President also made it clear that he viewed Russia as an equal, a change from earlier administrations.

Barack Obama will visit Russia from June 6th to the 8th.  Ahead of his trip, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev admitted that US-Russian relations had fallen to nearly Cold War levels in recent years, adding that now was a time to come together.

While in Moscow, Obama will meet with Kremlin officials, as well as parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition leaders.  Obama has invited some of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics, including United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov and Solidarity chair Boris Nemtsov, to a Tuesday meeting.

—

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESIDENT OBAMA’S INTERVIEW WITH NOVAYA GAZETA

1. Do you agree with the opinion expressed by many Russian and European politicians that the United States is primarily responsible for the economic difficulties that their countries are now living through?

No. We all are experiencing a severe economic crisis that is affecting the lives of many people in countries around the world.  This crisis resulted from a culture of irresponsibility regarding financial matters that took hold over a number of years in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.  I am proud of our efforts to lead by reforming our regulatory and supervisory systems and promoting an era of responsibility, so that the U.S. and global economies will be stable and growth will be sustained. We of course have an obvious interest in developing policies that stimulate economic growth in the United States, but we also believe that economic growth in our country also will nurture economic growth around the world, including in Russia.
In the 21st century, we all -Americans, Russians, and everyone else – have an interest in fostering world economic growth that benefits us all. We need to spend less time thinking about who is to blame and more time working together to do what needs to be done to get all of our economies moving in the right direction.

2. Do you agree that lies and greed – –  lies about the state of markets and greed of their participants — are the main reasons for the current economic crisis?

As I said to Congress in February, our economy did not fall into decline overnight.  Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank.  We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy.  Yet we import more oil today than ever before.  The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform.  Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for.  And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.  A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.  Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.  People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway.  And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

3. Many experts believe that the 21st Century Financial Regulatory Reform you proposed may become the most significant innovation in the U.S. financial system since the era of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  What do you consider to be the most important element of this reform?  Are we at the doorstep of new transparency of business and finances?

Our regulatory and supervisory reform plans, announced a few weeks ago, are sweeping and important.  The plans include three important components. First, we’re proposing a set of reforms to require regulators to look not only at the safety and soundness of individual institutions, but also — for the first time — at the stability of the financial system as a whole. Second, we’re proposing a new and powerful agency charged with just one job: looking out for ordinary consumers. Third, we’re proposing a series of changes designed to promote free and fair markets by closing gaps and overlaps in our regulatory system — including gaps that exist not just within but between nations. We are called upon to put in place those reforms that allow our best qualities to flourish — while keeping those worst traits in check. We’re called upon to recognize that the free market is the most powerful generative force for our prosperity — but it is not a free license to ignore the consequences of our actions.

4. On November 18, 2005 Senators Obama, Biden and McCain together with other Senators adopted Resolution 232 on the trial, sentence and imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovskiy and Platon Lebedev. The Resolution said that “in investigations that present a threat to authorities, Russian courts become instruments of the Kremlin, and cannot be responsible or independent.” Have you been following the new trial of Khodorkovskiy and Lebedev?

I do not know the intimate details of these new proceedings, though my advisors most certainly do. However, without knowing the details, it does seem odd to me that these new charges, which appear to be a repackaging of the old charges, should be surfacing now, years after these two individuals have been in prison and as they become eligible for parole. Nonetheless, I think it is improper for outsiders to interfere in the legal processes of Russia. Instead, I would just affirm my support for President Medvedev’s courageous initiative to strengthen the rule of law in Russia, which of course includes making sure that all those accused of crimes have the right to a fair trial and that the courts are not used for political purposes.

5. “Restarting” the relationship implies cooperating with Russia in those areas where it is possible. Does this mean weaker attention to Russia’s observation of civil rights and liberties, and to persecution against and murders of journalists? Specifically, to [the need to] apprehend and punish those who ordered and committed the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya?

Of course not. I seek to reset relations with Russia because I believe that Americans and Russians have many common interests, interests that our governments recently have not pursued as actively as we could have. For instance, I believe that Americans and Russians both would benefit from fewer nuclear weapons in the world, greater control over nuclear materials around the world, a defeat of extremist elements in Afghanistan and Pakistan, an Iran that produces nuclear energy but not nuclear weapons, and a North Korea that refrains from launching missiles and exploding nuclear weapons and instead returns to the negotiating table. I also believe that Americans and Russians have a common interest in the development of rule of rule, the strengthening of democracy, and the protection of human rights. As I said in my inaugural address: “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” I then emphasized in my Cairo speech that “I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things:  the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose.  These are not just American ideas; they are human rights.” These are ideas embraced by your president and your people. I agree with President Medvedev when he said that “Freedom is better than the absence of freedom.” So, I see no reason why we cannot aspire together to strengthen democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as part of our “reset.”

6. Will you sign the new START treaty if Russia conditions its signing upon non-deployment of the U.S. missile defense system in Central Europe?

In our meeting in London on April 1st, President Medvedev and I issued a joint statement on instructions for our negotiators for this new treaty. These instructions very explicitly did not mention missile defense as a topic of discussion for these negotiations.
At the same time, we understand Russian sensitivities to this issue and have sent several high-level delegations to Moscow over the last several weeks to engage in a serious dialogue about U.S.-Russian cooperation on missile defense.

My government is completing a comprehensive review of all of our missile defense programs, including those in Europe. Given the threats around the world, especially those growing from North Korea and Iran, our goal is to enhance missile defense for the United States and our allies in Europe and elsewhere. As I have said many times, such a system has to work, be cost effective, and must address the real threats to the United States and our allies, not imaginary ones. When discussing our plans for Europe, we first and foremost are seeking to build a missile defense system that protects the United States and Europe from an Iranian ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead. We are not building and will not build a system that is aimed to respond to an attack from Russia. Such thinking is simply a legacy of the Cold War.

We have not yet decided how we will configure missile defense in Europe. But my sincere hope is that Russia will be a partner in that project. If we combine our assets on missile defense, the United States, Russia, and our allies will be much safer than if we go it alone. I see a great potential here, and I hope to have a robust discussion with President Medvedev about these possibilities for cooperation on missile defense when I am in Moscow next week.

7. In the course of your presidential campaign, you competed with Hillary Clinton. Does this hinder your joint work now?

Absolutely not. This is the beauty of democracy. Secretary Clinton and I engaged in a hard-fought, very competitive race for the nomination of our party. By the way, without question, these primaries made me a better candidate for the general election against Senator John McCain. But in democracies, once the election is over, then all Americans who care about our country get back to work. It was because of how well I got to know Secretary Clinton during our campaign that I knew she would be such an excellent Secretary of State, and she has served our country with excellence.