Posts tagged as:

Democracy

Does Ukraine hold the key to Russia’s future?

November 14, 2008

The MIT World Policy Journal is celebrating its 25th anniversary by making access to its Fall 2008 journal for free until the end of November.
The 25th anniversary issue looks ahead to the next 25 years and, in Russia’s Rotting Empire, Nina L Khrushcheva (yes – before you ask – she’s Nikita Kruschev’s great-granddaughter) has penned [...]

Read the full article →

Russia to set up democracy think tank in Brussels

October 29, 2007

Another EU-Russia summit has come and gone. Late last week I outlined a few of the issues that were on the agenda, and noted that officials seemed “cautiously optimistic“.
If, by “cautiously optimistic” these officials meant that nothing exciting, either positive or negative, would happen – well, they were right. No real agreements were [...]

Read the full article →

Putin – I am the world’s only “pure democrat”

June 5, 2007

Is it just me, or does Vladimir Putin’s latest public statement make it seem like he’s completely off his rocker?
Am I a ‘pure democrat’? Of course I am, absolutely. But do you know what the problem is? Not even a problem but a real tragedy? The problem is that I’m all alone, the only one [...]

Read the full article →

Garry Kasparov being hassled again

May 19, 2007

The harrasment of Garry Kasparov continues – this week Kasparov was prevented from flying to Samara, venue for this weekend’s EU-Russia summit:

Yesterday Mr Kasparov apparently outdid himself when he was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetevo airport on suspicion of forging his own airline ticket.
It was an elaborate plot, with suspicion falling on all those travelling with [...]

Read the full article →

Almost half of Russians think election will be fixed

May 9, 2007

Almost half of Russian voters think that this year’s parliamentary elections will be marred by fraud, and will not reflect the will of the people, is the key finding of a suvey by the Levada Centre.
Some key stats:

45% think that the election result will not reflect the will of the people
39% think local officials will [...]

Read the full article →

More on Russia’s regional elections

March 15, 2007

Global Voices online has a roundup of blog reactions to Russia’s regional elections.
Update: Sean Guillory also has some thoughts on Russia’s emerging two party system:
Russia is developing its own versions of the Republican/Tory and Democratic/Labor Parties. The Russians are learning liberal democracy very well.

Read the full article →

Regional elections – guess who won?

March 13, 2007

Well, the preliminary results are in from the Regional elections that took place across Russia last weekend.
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that pro-Putin party United Russia came first in 13 of the 14 regions, with around 46% of the vote. Nor will it surprise you to hear that newly formed pro-Putin party [...]

Read the full article →

2,000 protest in St Petersburg

March 4, 2007

2,000 people took part in an anti-Putin protest in St Petersburg on Saturday. After a confrontation in which protestors broke through lines of riot police, 100 were arrested.
What caught my eye was what seems to be a new feeling of confidence among protestors:
No, really, nothing like this had ever happened before – people marching [...]

Read the full article →

Is Democracy the answer to Russia’s problems?

February 19, 2007

Ruminations on Russia has taken La Russophobe’s recent interview, and run with it, in “an attempt to lift the La Russophobe debate out of the mire.”  And he’s picked a pretty controversial topic – democracy in Russia.
He manages to cover a wide spread of issues in just one post including – most impressively – managing [...]

Read the full article →

Government reshuffle may indicate Putin’s successor

February 16, 2007

Sergei Ivanov, one of the two leading contenders to replace Vladimir Putin as President in 2008, has been promoted to First Deputy Prime Minister.
The move puts Ivanov on a par with Dmitri Medvedev, the other leading candidate who, until this morning, held a nominally higher government office than Ivanov. Promotion also means that Ivanov [...]

Read the full article →

Khodorkovsky releases statement

February 7, 2007

Mikhail Khodorkovsky has released a statement from jail on the new charges of embezzlement that he now faces.  Essentially, Siberia’s most famous jailbird seems to have decided that he has nothing left to play with but his martyr card:
My task in the upcoming process is to demonstrate by my own example that current Russia is [...]

Read the full article →

Demonstrations in Moscow

December 18, 2006

This weekend saw three major demonstrations in Moscow.

An anti-Putin dissenters march, which drew about 2,000 demonstrators, including Garry Kasparov.  The were outnumbered four to one by 8,000 police, who earned their money by arresting around 50 of the protestors.
A demonstration to remember killed Russian journalists, which drew about 250 demonstrators, and hundreds of police
A demonstration [...]

Read the full article →

Two post-Soviet elections

December 10, 2006

It’s been a busy weekend for post-Soviet election watchers with not one, but two elections taking place – a referendum on a new constitution in Nagorno-Karabakh, and a Presidential election in Transdniester.
Nagorno Karabah
In Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave of (mostly) Armenians stuck in the middle of Azerbaijan, they’ve been voting in a referendum on their new [...]

Read the full article →

Ukraine, two years on

December 8, 2006

The quite excellent Europhobia has also had a re-launch of sorts in the past few weeks. He’s shifted his focus back to broader European issues, resulting in posts like this second-and-a-bit anniversary of the Orange Revolution post. It’s not all doom and gloom, he concludes, but nonetheless:
There are moves afoot in the [...]

Read the full article →

Putin cuts minimum voter turnout to 5%

December 7, 2006

Looks like Russian democracy has come on leaps and bounds while I’ve been away:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a measure canceling the 20-percent minimum voter turnout threshold for elections.
A mere 5% turnout is now sufficient to give an election democratic legitimacy in Russia.

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries