Putin: Demands Of and Threats Against

Marina Litvinenko, widow of Alexander Litvinenko, is seeking a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that the Russian state was complicit in poisoning the former security agent with radioactive polonium.

Louise Christian, Litvinenko’s lawyer claimed she had obtained expert evidence that the polonium had come from Russia's Avangard plant, a state facility surrounded by tight security.

The former KGB security officer became a Kremlin critic in exile, and was poisoned by polonium slipped to him in a cup of tea. He spent three weeks dying in agony in London.

Britain wants to prosecute another ex-KGB man, Andrei Lugovoi, for the murder. Russia strongly denies state involvement in the killing and refuses to hand over Lugovoi because its constitution bars it from extraditing its own nationals.

Exiled Russian businessman Boris Berezovskii, a friend of Litvinenko and Kremlin opponent whom Russia has tried unsuccessfully to extradite from Britain has stated that he believes British authorities know the source of the polonium.

Berezovskii said Putin had violated the constitution and therefore his ouster was legitimate and forecasts a possible uprising like Ukraine's Orange Revolution between elections in December and March.

He said such an uprising could come after parliamentary elections on December 2 and before presidential polls three months later.

Democratic movements staged the Orange Revolution in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine in 2004, a popular uprising that brought pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko to power.

Berezovskii, who faces a number of charges in Russia, was a key Kremlin insider in the 1990s, but left Russia after coming into conflict with Putin and was granted political asylum in Britain in 2003.

Ukrainian Government Resigns

On November 23, 2007 Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych presented his government's resignation at the first session of a new parliament on Friday, in the aftermath of the September elections.

Yanukovych's declaration, as required by the Ukrainian constitution, came after the swearing in of all 450 new parliamentary deputies. Earlier, Yanukovych expressed hope that his Party of Regions would be included in a new governing coalition.

Analysts say an "orange" coalition of President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine-Self Defence party and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc will most likely be the result.

Ukraine held elections at the end of September in an effort to resolve months of dispute between the pro-Western Yushchenko, and the more pro-Russian Yanukovych. Yushchenko has called for the Party of Regions to be included in the new government.

Putin Decries Western Meddling in Russian Elections

Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked opponents and has accused the West of meddling in Russian politics.

Putin's attack on his opponents came as he seeks to secure a high turnout and strong support for the United Russia (Ednaya Rossiya) party.

Many see this as a way for Putin to retain power after the March 2008 presidential election. Putin’s statements appeared to refer to opposition rallies planned for the coming weekend in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

He did not name specific nations or political parties, but offered a general criticism of his liberal, pro-business and Communist opponents, calling to mind the economic and political uncertainty that plagued Russia before and after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union as well the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that led to the installation of pro-Western regimes.

A clear victory for the United Russia party would give Putin a popular mandate and a loyal parliament to limit his succesor's influence and possibly lay the groundwork for his return to the presidency in 2012 or sooner.

This week’s stadium rally was a mixture of a soccer game and a Soviet-style rally.

Many of Putin’s supporters have demanded constitutional changes that would permit him to stay on as president. He has promised to step down as the constitution currently required, but has also indicated he will seek to retain influence and has not eliminated the possibility of presidential bid in 2012.

Над Бабьим Яром памятников нет

Babii Yar is a ravine in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. In the course of two days, September 29—30, 1941, German Nazis, aided by their collaborators murdered 33,771 Jewish civilians. The Babii Yar massacre is considered to be the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust.

Dmitrii Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor (Op. 113, subtitled Babii Yar) first performed in Moscow on December 18, 1962 by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and the basses of the Republican State and Gnessin Institute Choirs, under Kirill Kondrashin. The soloist was Vitali Gromadsky.

The work sets poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko that concerned the World War II Babii Yar massacre and other topics.

The first poem, Babii Yar, criticises Soviet anti-Semitism.

The second, "Humour", describes humor as a mischievous rascal who constantly eludes censorship.

The third, "In the Store", glorifies the women of the Soviet Union, always tired from standing in long lines at the store, often in bitter cold.

The fourth, "Fears", recalls the pervasive atmosphere of dread during the Stalin era.

The fifth final poem, "A Career", is a celebration of Galileo's refusal to recant his discoveries about the nature of the heavens, even when faced with the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition.

The symphony was completed during a thaw in Soviet censorship, but even so Nikita Khrushchev criticised it before the premiere, and threatened to stop its performance. The premiere went ahead, but afterwards Yevtushenko was forced to change his poem, replacing a stanza declaring in part "I am every old man shot dead here, I am every child shot dead here" with a stanza mourning the ethnic Russians and Ukrainians that died alongside the Jews at Babii Yar. Thereafter the work was infrequently performed until more recently.

Shostakovich originally intended the first movement to stand by itself, but ideas kept coming to him and he had to expand the work into its current symphonic form.

Black Sea Oil Spill: Ukraine's Yanukovich Intervenes for Environmentalists

On November 11, 2007, the Volgoneft-132, a small Russian tanker, broke up and spilled between 1,300 and 2,000 tons of oil.

The result is that Russia's Black Sea coast could face an ecological catastrophe. Three seamen were drowned.

A search was under way for five others missing, though hopes of finding them alive were dwindling.

The spilled fuel oil coated birds in a thick black sludge along a vast expanse of coastline in the northern mouth of the Black Sea, near Russia's border with Ukraine.

Sunday’s storm sank the tanker and at least four freighters while crippling other vessels in the narrow Kerch Strait between the Black Sea and Azov Sea.

On Monday, rescuers found the bodies of three of the sailors missing since the storm. Helicopters and rescue vessels continued to search for the five seaman still missing, but with a new storm on its way later in the week, officials said hopes of finding them alive were dwindling.

Environmentalists, backed by Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, said the incident raised questions about safety standards for shipping in the region. This incident has the potential to exacerbate Russian-Ukrainian relations, which often become difficult as winter approaches.

Russian officials said the captains of several vessels had put to sea despite storm warnings. The tanker that was the source of the spill was built in the 1970s, and was not designed for heavy seas. At Novorossiisk, Russia's No. 2 port for exports of oil and oil products, officials had ordered tankers not to dock because a new storm was on its way later in the week.

Yuliya Tymoshenko

Yuliya Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko is a Ukrainian politician, former Prime Minister of Ukraine, and the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" party and the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc.

Before becoming Ukraine's first female Prime Minister, Tymoshenko was one of the key leaders of the Orange Revolution.

Prior to her political career, Yuliya Tymoshenko was a successful but controversial businesswoman in the gas industry, which made her wealthy.

Tymoshenko is the daughter of Ludmila Nikolaevna Telegina and Vladimir Abramovich Grigyan She was born on November 27, 1960, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine (then the Ukrainian SSR). In 1979, she married Oleksandr Tymoshenko, son of a mid-level Soviet communist party bureaucrat, and began rising through a number of positions under the Komsomol, the official Soviet Communist youth organization. She graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk State University with a degree in economics in 1984, and went on to gain a candidate’s degree (the equivalent of a Ph.D.) in economics. Since then, she has written about 50 papers.

From 1995 to 1997, Tymoshenko was the president of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine, a privately owned middleman company that became the main importer of Russian natural gas to Ukraine in 1996. During that time she was nicknamed "gas princess" in light of accusations that she has been reselling enormous quantities of stolen gas and avoiding taxation of those deals.

Tymoshenko moved into politics in 1996, and was elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) from the Kirovohrad Oblast, winning a record 92.3% of the vote in her constituency. She was re-elected in 1998 and 2002. In 1998, she became the Chair of the Budget Committee of Verkhovna Rada.

From 1999 to 2001, Tymoshenko was the Deputy Prime Minister for fuel and energy sector in the cabinet of Viktor Yushchenko. She was fired by President Leonid Kuchma in January 2001 after developing a conflict with the oligarchs in the industry.

In February 2001, Tymoshenko was arrested on charges of forging customs documents and smuggling of gas between 1995 and 1997 (while president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine) but was released several weeks later. Her political supporters organized several protest rallies near the Lukyanivska Prison where she was held in custody. According to Tymoshenko, the charges were fabricated by Kuchma's regime, under the influence of oligarchs threatened by her efforts to root out corruption and institute market-based reforms. In spite of being cleared of the charges, Moscow maintained an arrest warrant for Tymoshenko should she enter Russia until her dismissal as Prime Minister over 4 years later.

Several months into her government, numerous inner conflicts inside the post‐Revolution coalition began to damage Tymoshenko's administration. On September 8, 2005, after the resignation of several senior officials including the Head of the Security and Defence Council Petro Poroshenko and Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko, Yuliya Tymoshenko's government was dismissed by President Viktor Yushchenko during a live TV address to the nation.

Tymoshenko wrote an article called "Containing Russia" in the May-June 2007 edition of the journal Foreign Affairs. In the article she sharply criticized alleged authoritarian developments under Vladimir Putin and opposed the alleged new Russian expansionism.

Following balloting in the 2007 parliamentary elections held on September 30, 2007, Orange Revolution parties said they had won enough votes to form a governing coalition. As of October 3, 2007, an almost final tally gave the alliance of Tymoshenko and President Yushchenko a slim lead over a rival party of Prime Minister Yanukovych. Although Yanukovych, whose party won the single biggest share of the vote, also claimed victory, one of his coalition allies, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, failed to gain enough votes to retain seats in Parliament.

Nonetheless, it is expected that the Tymoshenko Bloc and the Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc, which is associated with President Yushchenko, will form a governing coalition. Both parties are affiliated with the Orange Revolution. On October 15, 2007, Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc and the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc agreed to form a majority coalition in the new parliament.

The Ukrainian Party of Regions

The Ukrainian Party of Regions political party was created in March 2001.

It originally supported president Leonid Kuchma and joined the pro-government United Ukraine alliance during the parliamentary elections on 30 March 2002. The party's current leader is Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

Its power base, both electoral and financial is located primarily in the east and south-east of Ukraine. In the Eastern Ukrainian Donetsk Oblast the party claims to have over 700,000 members.

The party shifted its political ideology to the left and became much more populist in nature before the Ukrainian presidential election, 2004 and, as a result, Yanukovych won over a large part of the Communist party's electorate in eastern Ukraine. The party announced support for making Russian a second official language in Ukraine, a pro-Russian foreign policy, and increased social spending. It also advocates the regionalist ideology, and many members support making Ukraine a federation.

The Party of Regions moved to opposition after its candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, lost the 2004 presidential election. The party leader first claimed an electoral victory but strong allegations of electoral fraud triggered a series of events commonly known as the Orange Revolution. In the re-run of the presidential election ordered by the country's Supreme Court, Viktor Yanukovych lost the election to Viktor Yushchenko.

In the parliamentary elections of 26 March 2006, the party gained 32,12% of votes and 186 (out of 450) seats in the Verkhovna Rada, forming the largest parliamentary group.

In mid-2007, the Ukrainian Republican Party and Labour Ukraine merged into the Party of Regions.

Is Turkmenistan Neutral?

Turkmenistan’s late President Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov (1940-2006) created a personality cult that will survive him and probably several successors, including Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow. The motto he established: Halk, Watan, Turkmenbashy (One Nation, One People, One Leader) can still be seen everywhere throughout Turkmenistan, from the most remote villages to monuments in the capital of Ashgabat.

Even though Berdimuhammedow has promised various reforms, it seems change is slow to come. The Internet is somewhat more available, but access is by no means widespread. One of the best indicators may be the Tolkuchka (“shoving”) market outside Ashgabat, where people come from all over the country to buy and sell, and the selection of carpets remains nothing if not spectacular. The problem, however, is that all but the smallest carpets require an export certificate, and these are still difficult to come by.

Turkmen Customs officials are friendly and have even been known to offer a traveller a drink of vodka, but they still search luggage looking for one thing in particular: carpets!

Turkmenistan’s future lies in its vast natural resources. Turkmenistan ranks fourth in the world to Russia, the United States, and Canada in natural gas and oil extraction. The Turkmenistan Natural Gas Company (Turkmengaz), under the auspices of the Ministry of Oil and Gas, controls gas extraction in the republic. Gas production is the youngest and most dynamic and promising sector of the national economy. Turkmenistan's gas reserves are estimated at 8.1-8.7 trillion cubic meters and its prospecting potential at 10.5. trillion cubic meters. The Ministry of Oil and Gas oversees exploration of new deposits. Sites under exploration are located in Mary Province, in western and northern Turkmenistan, on the right bank of the Amu Darya, and offshore in the Caspian Sea. Turkmenistan has always described itself as neutral, but this neutrality may not extend to oil and gas. In April 2003, Niyazov signed a 25-year gas deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin under which Russia gained the right to buy most Turkmen gas starting in January 2007.

In 2006, under the contract, Russia was to buy 7 billion-10 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas. Then on 29 December, Aleksei Miller of Gazprom signed a new contract in Ashgabat to buy 30 billion cubic meters of gas from Turkmenistan in 2006 at $65 per 1,000 cubic meters. The result is a decidedly pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian arrangement. Given Ukraine’s pro-European inclinations, the situation could become quite complex if things do not change.