RFE/RL: How important has USAID funding been to your organization?

Lyudmila Alekseyeva: It’s not [just] about our organization. It’s about the human rights sphere in [Russia]. I think it really helped.

In 1997, USAID issued a large grant for us to monitor the human rights situation in Russia. Of course, the Moscow Helsinki Group could not conduct work of this scale on its own and it worked together with human rights organizations from 80 different regions. Each of these collected material and compiled reports on the situation. We then did reports on the basis of this material.

We of course taught them how to work. This three-year grant helped lay the ground for monitoring work in our country.”

RFE/RL: What impact will the cessation of USAID funding have in general in Russia?

Alekseyeva: Of course it will have very sad consequences. It will reduce the effectiveness of human rights organizations. But I think that the cessation of the work of USAID is entirely logical after the law on NGOs came into force requiring social organizations financed from abroad to register themselves as foreign agents.

If we decline to do this and if organizations like us decline to do this, then [the authorities] will still stop our activates and won’t allow us to make use of their bank accounts. If we agree to register [as foreign agents], we also won’t be able to [to work effectively] because a certain section of the population will stop trusting us because the authorities have created a psychological understanding that everything from abroad is hostile and aimed at Russia’s demise.

Even worse, the Kremlin will probably issue an order to bureaucrats telling them not to cooperate with organizations that have registered themselves as foreign agents.

RFE/RL: In what ways will the Moscow Helsinki Group suffer specifically from the cessation of USAID funding?

Alekseyeva: We will remain without funding because we don’t receive Russian financing. The state won’t finance us because we defend citizens whose rights are violated by Russian bureaucrats. Our state won’t fund that kind of organization. Business here won’t finance us either because every businessman understands that if he finances an organization that is not useful to the authorities, then he puts his own business under threat.

We don’t have any other sources of financing apart from abroad. It will seriously reduce the efficiency of our work. We won’t be able to continue, for instance, our educational projects that we’ve had for many years.

RFE/RL: So how will you get around this problem in practice?

Alekseyeva: The Moscow Helsinki Group was founded in 1976 during the Soviet period, when of course there was no financing whatsoever either from abroad or from Russia. It received its first grant only in 1993, when it was already an internationally renowned organization.

We will lose the efficiency of our work. We will return to the way we worked in the Soviet Union. Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, human rights workers find themselves once again in the same position.

[We’ll get around it by] volunteering. Back [in Soviet times], we distributed our documents on human rights violations through samizdat. Now it is much easier than it was back then.

Information will come to us — we can find out things through the Internet and people approach us directly via telephone or online. We will put out material on citizens’ human rights violations.

RFE/RL: Why do you think the Russian authorities have made this move now?

Alekseyeva: Because now a serious attack is being carried out on all the rights of citizens — on their voting rights as well as their right to expression and on the right to unite. All of these rights are guaranteed by our constitution, but the authorities have already long forgotten about its existence.

As Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe reports:

When Moscow City Court Judge Svetlana Gavrilina scolded three government inspectors this week for issuing construction permits to build on the site of a federally protected park, it was clear that an unusual ruling was on the way.

“More and more monstrous buildings are springing up all across Moscow! More and more trees are being chopped down and there is less and less air to breathe!” Gavrilina said. “If you want your children to die of cancer, then that is your right. But I won’t have it!”

Still visibly angry nearly an hour later, Gavrilina ruled that the Moscow city government illegally felled hundreds of trees to make way for a three-story building on the site of a park at the historic Stroganov estate in Moscow.

The ruling was an unusual rebuke to city hall from Moscow’s usually docile courts. It was also a most unlikely victory for Sasha Andreyeva, a newly elected opposition deputy in Moscow’s Lefortovo District Council.

Andreyeva, a former English teacher who has been in office for a little more than a month, has decided to take on what she believes is a widespread practice in which city officials skim off kickbacks by commissioning construction projects on any available patch of land in the capital.

Her battle with the mayor’s office is a sign of things to come in the Russian capital following big gains for opposition candidates in Moscow’s district council elections last month, analysts say. Such grassroots assertiveness is also something likely to be seen more often across the country in the wake of opposition victories in mayoral elections in Tolyatti and Yaroslavl.

“This is democracy in action,” says Pavel Salin, an analyst at the Moscow-based Center for Political Assessments. “Politically and socially active citizens are standing up not only for their own interests but the interests of others who live around them.”

Salin says the Andreyeva case gives cause for optimism. “First, that a person has defended their interests against the Moscow authorities in a Moscow court,” he says. “And second, that this person was elected to the municipal assembly.”

With Prime Minister Vladimir Putin set to be reinaugurated as president on May 7, the fight over the Stroganov estate construction project is the latest indication that the era of tightly managed top-down politics he established more than a decade ago might be coming to a close.

As the authorities focused all their efforts – and administrative resources – on securing Putin’s victory in Russia’s March 4 presidential election, hundreds of opposition candidates slipped under the radar and won a third of the seats in Moscow’s 123 district councils on the same day. Their ranks include colorful figures like professional poker player Maksim Kats to ordinary citizens like journalism student Vera Kichanova and Andreyeva, a former English teacher.

With scant financial resources, the 32-year-old Andreyeva campaigned door to door and focused on bread-and-butter issues whose increasing social currency reflects the political awakening that Russia has undergone since the mass protests following December’s disputed parliamentary elections.

Andreyeva, who has lived her whole life in eastern Moscow’s Lefortovo District, told RFE/RL that she was inspired to enter politics because she wanted to have a tangible impact on issues that touch the everyday lives of Muscovites.

“You can’t constantly run around with a bucket trying to catch all the drips from the holes in the ceiling. You have to acquire political power and not rely on others,” she says. “You need to work to make sure that the law functions normally so you don’t have to resolve situations like [the Stroganov construction project] in court. You have to make sure that such things could never happen in the first place.”

The Stroganov project attracted Andreyeva’s attention months before she even considered seeking a district council seat. In June 2011, she and other local residents discovered that a prized patch of land on the grounds of the Stroganov estate had been earmarked for a three-story building that would dwarf the 18th-century estate. Three hundred trees were rapidly felled and within months construction was under way.

Following the April 23 court ruling, it appears that construction will be stopped and the building scrapped, although lawyers for city hall say they will appeal the ruling.

Andreyeva isn’t the only Moscow district council deputy locking horns with city hall over construction projects. Yelena Tkach of the capital’s Presnya District and Natalya Chernysheva of the Gagarinsky District have also sided with local residents in respective campaigns against buildings commissioned by the city administration.

And in a bid to decentralize political power in Russia’s two largest cities, 15 district council members in Moscow and St. Petersburg appealed to the Constitutional Court on April 25, seeking to dissolve two government bodies controlled by citywide authorities and have their powers transferred to district councils.

Read the full story at RFE/RL.

The announcement came on Saturday during the second day of a congress of Putin’s United Russia party and was received by a standing ovation by the 11,000 members present.

He added that current President Dmitri Medvedev “can create an effective management team as the head of the Russian government,” meaning that he would name Medvedev as prime minister during his own presidency.

Analysts have clashed over which member of Russia’s ruling tandem would run in the upcoming elections since the day Medvedev was elected. All but confirming the long-held belief of many Kremlin critics that Medvedev was doing little more than keeping the seat warm for Putin to return to office four years later, Putin made clear that “an agreement over what to do in the future was reached between us several years ago.”

Russian law only allows the same person to be president for two consecutive terms, but also allows that person to run again after a “hiatus” period. As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty points out:

Putin’s victory in March is a virtual certainty, given both his popularity and Russia’s tightly controlled political system. It would set the stage for him to serve two six year terms, which would keep him in the Kremlin until 2024, meaning he could end up running the country longer than Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, whose 18-year rule became synonymous with socioeconomic decay.

Analysts are also split as to whether Putin and Medvedev differ in regards to policy, as opposed to fronting mere cosmetic or other orchestrated differences to lend the regime a veneer of legitimacy. Nevertheless, Medvedev had garnered a number of loyal supporters over the years and they were none too pleased with what Gleb Pavlovsky of the Foundation for Effective Policy called “Medvedev’s political capitulation.” As the New York Times puts it:

One of Mr. Medvedev’s closest aides, Arkady V. Dvorkovich, vented via Twitter during the United Russia event, remarking, first, “there is no reason for happiness,” and then “now it is time to switch to the sports channel.” The influential political consultant Gleb O. Pavlovsky, whose longstanding contract with the Kremlin was severed this spring, gave one of the sharpest comments.

“The fact that the president, as a politician, betrayed those who believed in him — that is political self-annihilation, and he has the right to do it,” Mr. Pavlovsky said. He called the move “a blow to the prestige of the institution of the presidency in Russia.”

Several politicians and analysts gave their takes on the announcement to Gazeta.ru.

Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Foundation for Effective Policy

“This is Medvedev’s political capitulation. It’s possible that it was voluntary and possible that it wasn’t. It’s unclear what sort of pressure we’ve hit up against here. But there’s a unique fact: the post of the president of a nuclear power is being transferred by private dealings. We have no reason to believe that Medvedev was lying when he said he was ready to run for president. It’s possible that his position changed due to the influence of a certain factor.

“If he’s a real politician, he needs to explain why he made this decision and why he felt that his own presidency was unsuccessful. If not, then it’s unclear what he’s doing at the head of United Russia’s candidate list.”

Sergei Mironov, leader of A Just Russia

“All these years, we have had serious problems with the work of the government. And bigger ones with the United Russia party… We maintain our previous positions: our party will not support the candidate forwarded by United Russia. And so we’re in no rush. Let our opponents rush… in regards to the fact that Medvedev is heading the Duma list – watch the video footage of the faces of the United Russia members and see if they look happy about it or not.”

Aleksei Malashenko, member of the Carnegie Moscow Center

“When this decision was definitively made is already meaningless, but it seems to me that it happened not at all long ago, after the forum in Yaroslavl. Everything came to that, although there were still grounds for speculation. What became definitively clear was that our political life is a swamp. And the US and the European Union have already looked to Putin to gauge things for a long time. The most interesting thing now, the only intrigue, is who’s going to become prime minister. There isn’t 100% certainty that the decision for it to be Medvedev is definitive. There’s expectation of pension system reform and a high rise in taxes. And it’s the prime minister who gets the most flack.”

Boris Nemtsov, co-leader of the unregistered People’s Freedom Party

“Putin is a pure provocateur: he is provoking the Russian people to a revolt.

He is provoking the Russian people with his irremovability, provoking the Russian people to come out into the streets and begin to act like they do in countries where the institution of the turnover of government has been destroyed. After a month, the Central Bank will announce how much money has disappeared. Trust me, I am rarely mistaken: $100 billion. That’s my analysis – $100 billion and the emigration of 500-800 thousand people.

“The country is going to experience a certain amount of sluggish development, but this is very bad… Unhappy Russia: Putin is back until his death. I don’t know how long he’s going to live. Either Russia will die first or Putin will – I don’t know. I’d prefer all the same that Russia remained.

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.

Days after the United States State Department blacklisted a group of Russian officials involved in perpetrating the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the “reset” in relations between Russia and the US appears to be on the verge of faltering – despite general sentiments of improvement.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

The White House touts its “reset” policy toward Russia as one of its key diplomatic successes. But the Russian authorities were caught off-guard when Washington quietly barred some of their officials from traveling to the United States this week, a move that threatens to undo some of the gains Washington has made boosting ties with Moscow.

The State Department blacklist targets those connected to a scandal that’s drawn widespread international condemnation: the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer jailed in 2009 after accusing police of bilking the government of more than $200 million. A report commissioned by President Dmitry Medvedev himself concluded Magnitsky was denied medical care and probably severely beaten before he died.

Magnitsky’s supporters have been lobbying Western countries to ban Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky’s death.

But speaking on a talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio, Leonid Slutsky, first deputy chairman of the Russian Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said he couldn’t believe the United States went ahead and did it, adding the information could have been made up as a provocation to harm ties.

The Kremlin soon reacted more strongly. Medvedev’s spokeswoman told the “Kommersant” newspaper the president was preparing retaliatory steps. “We were bewildered by the State Department’s action,” she said, adding that nothing like it happened “even in the deepest years of the Cold War.”

Ironically, the blacklist appears to have been intended to head off an effort to impose even stronger sanctions. A group of U.S. senators is sponsoring a bill that would include more Russian officials, freezing their U.S. assets in addition to denying them visas.

Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal “Russia in Global Affairs,” said the nuance seems to have been lost on Russian officials. “Everybody expected the U.S. Senate to act,” he said, “but the preventive or preemptive measure by the State Department was quite unexpected.”

Other signs of fraying ties emerged this week. Senator Jon Kyl (Republican, Arizona) has called for more investigation into a recent bomb blast outside the U.S. Embassy in Georgia that U.S. intelligence officials say may have been linked to a Russian agent. In Brussels on July 28, the Russian ambassador to NATO dredged up old complaints about plans for a U.S. missile-defense shield in Europe.

While relations between the two sides often appear precarious, the latest developments mark the biggest challenge to President Barack Obama’s Russia “reset.” The White House says its policy has delivered major gains for U.S. national security, including Russian cooperation over Afghanistan — for which Moscow is well-paid — help over sanctions against Iran, and the signing of the new START nuclear-arms treaty.

Another sea change has been much less visible. Under Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, cooperation between diplomats on various levels all but ended in favor of a direct dialogue between presidents. Much was made of their personal relationship, but when Bush left office, relations stood at Cold War lows.

The bureaucratic ties have since been restored. Russian diplomats say collaboration with their U.S. counterparts is even better now than in the relatively friendly 1990s. If decisions at top levels once took many weeks to implement, now agreements such as a recent deal over U.S. adoptions of Russian children can be put in place more quickly.

But top Russian officials threatened to curtail cooperation on Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea over the Senate’s Magnitsky bill, according to a leaked State Department memo that first made the blacklist public on July 26.

Although the memo argued against stronger measures, political expert Andrei Piontkovsky said he thinks the Russian threats may have had the opposite of their intended effect. “My reading of this development is that people at the very top,” he said, “maybe the president himself, were shocked by such [direct] language and decided not to submit to blackmail.”

Observers said that although the memo was probably leaked to show the White House to be keen on protecting relations, the blacklist was nevertheless evidence of a significant change in Washington.

Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Center said it poses a challenge to the Russian leadership, shown to be unable to protect loyal officials from punishment abroad. “By now it’s well known denying visas to Russian officials is a sensitive spot that could potentially expand to other countries, to Europe,” she said, “which may be more important to Russian officials.”

The blacklist has been praised by Russian human rights activists and other critics who worry Washington has sacrificed support for Western values in favor of better relations with the Kremlin.

The U.S. action may help usher in a new, potentially rockier phase in the relationship. While the fate of the Senate’s Magnitsky bill remains unclear, the Russian parliament has been preparing its own bill in response.

But few believe cooperation over important issues will be affected. The Carnegie Center’s Lipman pointed out that previous incidents that could have worsened relations, such as revelations from U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks and Washington’s expulsion of 10 Russian intelligence agents last year, did not visibly affect ties.

Lukyanov of “Russia in Global Affairs” agreed the blacklist won’t change the nature of relations. “Of course it won’t contribute to a better relationship,” he said, “but I don’t think it will damage much because in areas where Russia and the United States cooperate now — like Afghanistan, nuclear disarmament, even Iran — both sides are interested in it.”

But Lukyanov said that even if relations suffer, Russian and U.S. politicians are focused on presidential elections in each of their countries next year, and will make no significant moves until 2013.

“America offered Putin’s regime more or less a veto right over a US missile defense system. So again, this is your business, because it’s your country, but I think it was absolutely wrong to bring Putin’s regime to the same level, because what we saw, Obama and Medvedev signing the treaty, is like a recreation of the Cold War era with Nixon and Brezhnev or Gorbachev and Reagan. There is no need for America to elevate an undemocratic Russian regime to the same level of importance.”

Now, missile defense negotiations between Russia and NATO have broken down – possibly definitively – and Russia continues to threaten to pull out of New START altogether.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

For a while now, well out of the limelight, Russia and NATO have been negotiating about how to cooperate on missile defense. On Wednesday we got the announcement that the talks have broken down. For good? Hard to say. But the atmospherics don’t sound promising.

There is, potentially, a lot at stake. The Russians have been dropping hints that they might pull out of New START, the much-ballyhooed treaty on nuclear arsenals that went into force earlier this year, if a deal can’t be reached. Even President Dmitry Medvedev, not usually known as a saber-rattler, has allowed himself a few dire predictions. In May he warned about the possibility of a “new Cold War” if talks on missile defense were to fail. (This actually shouldn’t come as such a surprise. It was Medvedev, after all, who vowed to shift Russian short-range missiles to Kaliningrad a few years back in order to deter construction of the European missile shield.)

If the Russians were to make good on this threat, it would effectively scupper the signal foreign policy achievement of the Obama Administration – the “reset” in Russian-American relations that followed a few years of cool in the later stages of George W. Bush’s term in office. New START, signed by both presidents last year in Prague, is the centerpiece of this rapprochement. Judging by some of President Obama’s statements in recent months, a positive outcome on missile defense talks with the Russians was going to be the next big take-away.

The irony is that the current White House managed to get to this point in part by watering down the Bush Administration’s more ambitious missile defense system plans. Soon after he came into office, President Obama declared that the U.S. would opt for a system based on shorter-range mobile missiles rather than fixed-site interceptors. The Russians (and many Europeans) initially reacted with relief. But the mood has soured since then.

It’s hard to know precisely what NATO was offering the Russians to make them feel better about the missile defense project. The Russians don’t like the idea of a European missile defense system at all, since they fear that it undercuts their own nuclear deterrent. They want NATO to give them pledges that the system won’t be used against their own missiles – essentially giving them a veto over the defense system’s operation. Plus they want a whole host of other reassurances:

Russia wants a treaty on the matter to include information on the total number and the kinds of missile interceptors that would be deployed in the shield as well as their speed and deployment locations, Kommersant reported.

Moscow also wants a joint “sectoral” defense with both NATO and Russia at the controls, giving the Kremlin a “finger on the trigger,” as it were. But it’s extremely hard to imagine any NATO countries signing up for that. NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen has repeatedly stated that that’s not what NATO wants:

What we have in mind is cooperation between two independent missile defense systems. If we achieve this, if will be a tangible demonstration that NATO and Russia can build security together, rather than against each other.

The Americans and their allies have talked about giving the Russians a role as a “stakeholder” in the existing system (whatever that means). But what these negotiations actually seem to have done in practice is to expose just how deep the gulf between the two sides remains.

Some experts also wonder whether the Russians are really ready to make good on their threats to pull out of New START. Carol Saivetz, a Russia expert at the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that Moscow needs the treaty more than Washington does since so much of Russian nuclear arsenal is either outdated or under-maintained. Meanwhile, the restart has benefited the Russians by effectively taking NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia “off the table.” She notes that the collapse of the missile defense talks has gone largely unmentioned in the Russian media.

Still, you can’t help but wonder whether the premise of these negotiations was flawed from the start. How do you design an effective European missile defense that the Russians would really be willing to swallow? Sure, I understand the argument that a system designed to protect against a small number of missiles from Iran won’t be effective against a large-scale attack from the Russians – meaning that the proposed NATO missile defense doesn’t really undermine Moscow’s strategic deterrent. But it’s also easy to imagine all sorts of political and strategic reasons why the Kremlin would never want to be seen accepting such a thing without getting a whole lot in return. Europe needs a missile defense system. Russia will probably have to find a way to live with it.

So let’s see what happens when Robert Gates meets his Russian counterpart, Anatoly Serdyukov, for talks today. Perhaps there will be more news then.

– Christian Caryl

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

The prosecution had sought to portray the couple as radical nationalists bent on eliminating Markelov, a prominent defender of minority rights. But Tikhonov and Khasis protested their innocence throughout the trial, even as they acknowledged their nationalist beliefs.

Markelov was shot in broad daylight in January 2009, just minutes after leaving a press conference in central Moscow. Baburova, who had been interviewing Markelov for the opposition newspaper “Novaya gazeta,” was shot dead as she attempted to protect Markelov.

Markelov’s death was mourned as one in a series of deaths of Russian rights defenders, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in October 2006; and activist Natalya Estemirova, a member of the Russian rights group Memorial, who was kidnapped and shot dead in Chechnya in July 2009.

Rights watchers hailed the verdict as a rare instance of courtroom justice in a country where many high-profile murders go unresolved.

There was, however, still cause for concern that the judicial process was not entirely lawful:

A former juror who resigned from the case told the “Moskovsky komsomolets” newspaper the jury had been pressured to convict Tikhonov and Khasis.

A key witness for the prosecution also attempted to retract his testimony, saying he had been forced to deliver it under duress.

Maryana Torocheshnikova, who covered the trial for RFE/RL’s Russian Service, said the jury was forced to recess twice on April 28, “the first time to clarify some questions and the second time to revise the verdict, after the judge…said there had been violations in the formation of the verdict.”

Tikhonov and Khasis’s defense say they plan to appeal because the verdict was “unlawful.”

Oleg Orlov, head of the human rights foundation Memorial, has issued a statement in response to the verdict:

While the case went on, human rights activists stayed silent – we followed the process attentively.

It seems that our many years of experience would allow us to distinguish made-to-order cases fabricated by the intelligence and security services from cases that these same services and structures, with all their telltale marks, investigate in good faith.

In assessing the evidence presented by investigators, we attempted to put ourselves in the jury’s shoes, doubting everything that could bring about doubt. Now we can speak without fear that this would be perceived as pressure on the jury.

We will speak more about the details of the process at a later time. However, we can say today that we agree with the jury’s verdict – those were the real killers at the defendants’ bench, and not some people arbitrarily accused.

We will only make two remarks, as we and our colleagues were mentioned during the trial.

The defendants and their lawyers referred numerous times to the testimony of our colleague Natalya Estemirova, who was murdered in the summer of 2009. They mentioned the record of witness questioning that was done in the first days after Markelov and Baburova were murdered, in which Estemirova lays out possible “Chechen” versions of the case.

Many of us spoke about a “Chechen” version during our questioning – but only among a long series of other versions. The defendants and their lawyers purposely referred to the murdered Natasha and not to living witnesses who could have been summoned to court today and clarify which of the original majority of versions was the most relevant account.

At the same time, in testifying about Stanislav Markelov’s Chechen cases, witnesses spoke most of all not about Chechens but about Russian soldiers and members of Russia’s federal security structures who have been convicted of crimes against civilians in Chechnya. To this day, these convicts still enjoy the sympathy of circles connected to the defendants (it was the lawyer Vasiliev who said that the girl murdered by Budanov – Markelov represented the interests of her parents in court – was supposedly a sniper!). In regards to the contradictions with the lawyer and Kadyrov’s administration, which the defendants mentioned, the situation was not strained in January 2009 – Markelov worked in cooperation with Kadyrov’s human rights ombudsman on the Budanov case.

Finally, the defendants and their lawyers pointed to the supposedly entirely probable connection between the murders of Stanislav Markelov, Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova, having worked together on the very same Chechen cases. As far as we know, the connection with their mutual case – the case of federal security services officer Sergei Lapin, the so-called Cadet – was not examined in a single one of these three murder cases. In our opinion, the participation of Chechen Republic security structures is entirely probable in Natasha Estemirova’s murder case, but is not at all connected either to Politkovskaya’s murder or with the “federals” in the Cadet case.

Finally, as we know for sure, investigators considered the Chechen version of Stanislav Markelov’s murder in detail, not at all as a formality; they did not limit themselves to sending inquiries and orders to Grozny: officials from the Main Investigative Committee were sent to Chechnya in the middle of 2009.

Yevgenia Khasis calls herself a “human rights advocate,” using a term that has not been very popular in recent years. But what meaning is given to this concept by nationalists, whose basic ideology is the denial of all people’s inherent equal rights and freedoms (most of all the right to freedom of movement and choice of place of residence)? Let alone by radical nationalists or Nazis (which the defendants are, without question), who confer themselves with the right to violence and murder?

Indeed, Yevgeniya Khasis lent charitable and informational, but not legal (she does not have the proper skills or education for that) support to the convict – but most of all convicted not at all for his beliefs, but for violent crimes committed on the basis of a division of people between “superior” and “inferior.”

It seems that the nationalists are trying to foist their own concepts of truth and rights onto society, not hesitating to defend themselves in court with everything up to falsifying testimony – there was the inept attempt to organize an alibi for Yevgeniya Khasis, which fell apart in the eyes of the public! The defendants’ lawyers tried ineptly throughout the entire case to hide their own positive attitude towards terrorism and their readiness to defend terrorists: indeed, an important goal of the murders of both migrants and public activists like Markelov is precisely the desire to sow fear within society – an openly terroristic intention.

One would like to believe that today’s verdict will serve as a lesson for all those who would like to represent the interests of the “white race.”

Orlov’s original statement in Russian can be found here. Translation by theotherrussia.org.

As Brian Whitmore explained in a column for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

Medvedev set off the latest frenzy with his interview with China’s CCTV, where he gave the strongest indication yet that he plans to seek reelection in 2012. For good measure, he also said it was time to move beyond the authoritarian “state capitalism” model that has been a hallmark of Putin’s rule.

Putin then weighed in, saying elections were still nearly a year off and that either he or Medvedev (or perhaps both) could run. Putin also seemed to take a swipe at Medvedev by saying that all the “fuss” over the election is disrupting the work of the government.

A separate question altogether is which one of these two leaders Russians citizens would rather vote for in the first place. In this article for Yezhednevny Zhurnal, journalist Anatoly Bershtein explores how the history of the relationship between Russians and their leaders might affect that outcome.

Which Tsar Do Russians Need?
By Anatoly Bershtein
April 18, 2011
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

So Medvedev announces unequivocally that he’s ready for a second presidential term. And he even lays the foundation for it: Putin’s time has passed; what was good ten years ago has become antiquated; the time for change is ripe.

The dispute has been going on for at least half a year – Putin or Medvedev. And for the most part, political scientists and people who consider themselves to be adults are certain that Putin is going to be president: the real power is in his hands; the fundamental forces and finances. Medvedev’s entourage isn’t serious, and he himself – no matter how hard he tries – is little more than a marionette. And therefore he looks ridiculous when making his own “independent” statements.

But the main argument against Medvedev is actually that he isn’t a “real tsar;” that is to say, he doesn’t look like a Russian tsar, doesn’t rule like one, doesn’t behave in an appropriate manner.

In Rus’, the tsar was seen as a consecrated figure from the very beginning. His power had no earthly basis; it was based on divine right. And as Boris Uspensky justifiably points out, there was no talk about “good” or “bad” tsars, but only about “proper” or “improper” ones.

In the mind of a medieval Russian person, a real, proper tsar is first of all not he who cares for his subjects or even he who builds up power. It is he who behaves as befits a true sovereign: that is to say, following an elaborate ceremonial and living in exact conformity with “procedure.”

Why didn’t the young and talented False Dmitiry I last in the seat of power? Largely because he didn’t behave like a tsar: he didn’t nap after lunch, ate with a fork, didn’t go to the baths, traveled around Moscow practically without guards, talked to laypeople. And on the other hand, he undertook all sorts of incomprehensible reforms, thought up new names. And so people started hearing rumors – “this is not a proper tsar.”

Much water has passed under the bridge since then, but nevertheless, the process of desacralizing the government has been extremely slow and incomplete over that period of time. And traces of ancient Russian impressions of this can be found in the Russian mentality even today.

The distinction of “higher” in regards to “power” continues to reflect not so much its position in the administrative hierarchy as reflects its special, almost “unearthly” status. A ruler is expected not so much to care about the prosperity of the citizens of its country as it is to fulfill some special mission and correspond with the image of an ideal ruler.

Although religion lost its core role in society long ago, the current throwback to the old religious consciousness has turned out to be wonderful aid for political spin. The work to fix a certain mythology around the country’s chief executives has allowed substantive conversations about their politics to be frequently be substituted with discussions of purely superficial displays of their actions.

I can’t say that this is a Russian phenomenon. A mythologized consciousness is characteristic for any society at any time, and Western political scientists construct the image of their own high-ranking “fosterlings” with the same accuracy as their Russian colleagues do. Although myths aside, there’s much that’s interesting to say about reality in the West.

And here people continue to pay markedly more attention not to what a person in the government does, but to how he presents himself. And so Putin – a self-promoter from God – looks like a more natural ruler than Medvedev.

Yeltsin ruled like a tsar, Putin like a national leader, and Medvedev is trying to become a reformer president. The fate of reforms in Rus’ is well known. Nevertheless, is our population finally ready to choose a president and not a leader or a tsar? It seems that the fate of the 2012 elections depends on the answer to this almost rhetorical question.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

Moscow city authorities today officially approved a planned rally by a group of human rights and opposition activists in support of freedom of assembly, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.

Authorities gave the green light to the March 31 rally — organized by activists including Moscow Helsinki Group Chairwomen Lyudmila Alekseyeva — days after banning a similar protest planned for the same day.

Alekseyeva said today that her group’s rally will be held on Moscow’s Pushkin Square, not on Triumph Square, as it was in the past. Alekseyeva said city officials refused to permit the activists to march through the streets after the demonstration.

Eduard Limonov, a leader of the Other Russia opposition group, applied last week to the mayor’s office for permission to hold a large-scale Strategy 31 gathering on March 31 on Triumph Square. But city authorities rejected that application on March 18.

Limonov said that he and his supporters will gather on Triumph Square despite the ban and march from there to Red Square.

Limonov launched the Strategy 31 campaign in 2009. The movement holds protests on the last day of months with 31 days to commemorate Article 31 of the Russian Constitution that guarantees freedom of assembly.

Other opposition groups and rights activists later joined the campaign.

Limonov and Alekseyeva split in October after Alekseyeva agreed to the Moscow authorities’ request to limit the number of demonstrators at the protests to 1,000. Limonov accused her of collaborating with government officials.

Authorities in St. Petersburg have refused permission for a March 31 rally there.

The news surfaced after the mother of an ailing child tried to find out what happened to the funds.

“A very strange situation has arisen,” she wrote in an open letter. “Before and after the concert there was talk about handing over funds [to hospitals], and now it appears that no one had promised anything.”

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the Interfax news agency that the prime minister had been informed about the allegations.

“We’re aware of the Internet user’s appeal in which she asks completely fair questions about what happened to the money raised at the charity event in which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took part,” he said.

Peskov said that Putin was only a guest at the concert and not involved with the fund-raising. He declined to say who was responsible for handling the money but said the government is satisfied the “work is being carried out.”

A spokeswoman for the Federation Foundation, which held the event, told the website Newsru.com that it was involved only in organizing the concert and had nothing to do with collecting or distributing the donated money.

Russian media reported that former musician Vladimir Kiselyov, believed to have been responsible for spearheading the event, warned reporters “not to look for anyone.”

“No one will tell you anything,” he said. “The Federation Foundation is doing its work and you should do yours.”