Perennial campaigner Gennady Zyuganov - boss of the Communist Party, and the John Major of Russian politics - took a break from running for the Presidency in 2004.  But now he’s back, and a cert to stand for the Presidency in 2008. 

Here, Zyuganov gives a fascinating interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets, where he takes great pains distance himself from Vladimir Putin:

Question: What about your relations with Putin? You usually criticize United Russia or the government. When it comes down to the president himself, you close up or become extremely polite and tactful.

Gennadi Zyuganov: In my view, Putin and the government are proteges of the modern oligarchy carrying out its orders. We expected Putin to part company with it but he never did. I thought he was fairly independent in the matter of appointing ministers, but even that was a mistake. We have a furniture dealer in charge of the Defense Ministry now: an affront in the eyes of every career officer. In short, I know now that I was wrong about Putin.

As for my criticism of the president… Criticizing an individual or two is no use. Rotten nature of the whole system, corruption, absence of strategy, and inability to tackle major tasks - that’s what has to be exposed. This is what I’m convinced of.

Here’s my prediction: Zyuganov will be the runner up in next year’s Presidential election.  Again.

The Federal Registration Service has refused to register Great Russia as a political party.

Some analysts had been predicting that Great Russia, founded earlier this year by Dmitry Rogozin, the former leader of Rodina, is a nationalist party, would be capable of winning the 7% of the vote required to give it a presence in the Duma.  Others have noted that, if it were to do this, it would draw votes away from nationalist parties already in the Duma and, allegedly, already under the Kremlin’s thumb.

No specific reason has been given for the decision by the FRS.  An anonymous spokesman said there were several reasons for refusing to register Great Russia, but Andrei Savelyev, the party’s Chairman has pointed out an interesting inconsistency:

In rejecting the application, the service ruled that the party’s charter violated the law on political parties, Savelyev said.

He pointed out, however, that Great Russia’s charter was absolutely identical to that of A Just Russia, a pro-Kremlin party that was successfully registered earlier this year.

A little embarrassing for the Kremlin, if true, although I suspect that the official reason won’t actually refer to this.

The story has only really broken today - the only English language report I could find was in the Moscow Times - but I’m curious to see whether the Western media get riled up about this case.  Probably not, given that the party being denied registration doesn’t exactly fit with Western ideals of what an opposition party should be…

(Note: the Moscow Times link above is likely to vanish behind their firewall in a day or so).

The Litvinenko File by Martin Sixsmith is released in the UK on Monday.

It’s one of what is sure to be a long line of books about Litvinenko over the coming months, although probably one of the more interesting ones, if only because its author actually bothered to travel to Moscow and interview people who are both relevant and important.

An excerpt of the Litvinenko File appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Times. The most interesting part, I thought, was his interview with a group of officials from the Prosecutor General’s office:

After 20 minutes we seemed to be getting nowhere. I decided to be a little provocative. “What about the new laws of July 2006?” I asked. One of them allows the president to use the Russian secret services to eliminate “extremists” in Russia and on foreign territory. And another expands the definition of “extrem-ism” to include anyone “libellously critical of the Russian authorities”?

“It looks like a pretty clear mandate to go out and kill people like Litvinenko, doesn’t it?” I suggested.

[…] “Look, Martin, do you really think we’d bother assassinating a nobody like Litvinenko? Someone who left the country God knows how long ago? Who was no threat to us and didn’t have any secrets to betray? . . . He just wasn’t important enough. He didn’t know any secrets that would be a reason for liquidating him . . . Do you think we would have mounted such a special operation to eliminate him . . . with polonium that costs the earth? That we would have spent so much money on him? My God, we could have used the money to increase pensions here at home. If we’d needed to eliminate Litvinenko, we would have done it ages ago.”

I think I might actually go and buy this book!

A bomb exploded in a McDonalds restaurant in St Petersburg last night, injuring six people.

The police have ruled out terrorism, and are calling it “hooliganism”, linking it to an explosion last week in a St Petersburg supermarket. St Petersburg based blogger Lex Libertas, who lives just down the road from the restaurant, agrees:

It was probably planted by some of the xenophobic skinheads who unfortunately populate the city.

I’d add that it could also be linked to some kind of business feud - it’s not unknown for warring businesses / mafia gangs to try and scare people, or get revenge by blowing up businesses.

Lex has posted some pictures, and plans a more detailed post on the explosion tomorrow, so it’s probably worth checking his site again over the next few days.

Mosnews reports that REN TV news anchor Olga Romanova has been ordered off the air.

She said she was being sidelined after complaining on air on Wednesday that management was blocking news items that might anger top officials.

These included a report that prosecutors had dropped charges against the son of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. An elderly pedestrian was killed when the car Ivanov’s son was driving hit her.

The Mosnews report goes on to note that REN TV was recently bought by an industrial group that apparently has close ties to the Kremlin, although another of the co-owners is German broadcaster RTL, and I would have thought they would be pretty heavily opposed to this kind of action. If Romanova’s complaints are accurate this is clearly not the case and, rather like Yahoo! in China, RTL seem to be placing profits ahead of editorial independence.

Alistair at Ruminations on Russia has been covering this story, and has put it into some context:

You would have to look pretty hard to find that piece of news in the Russian language.

It does not mark the end of free speech on broadcast television; it was already dead. It is however, another example of the 5th directorate thugs believing that they can control the flow of news when it proves to be embarrassing. The good news is that the Russian narod are at least 2 steps ahead of the thugs and no longer get their news from the television.

I’d have to agree that independent media is long gone in Russia, although I guess we can hope against hope for a phoenix like recovery. Thankfully, the internet is around, to provide at least a little balance.

If you thought that the demise of the Soviet Union meant the demise of closed, or secret cities, then you’d be wrong. Today, it is thought that there are up to forty closed cities (also referred as ZATO’s, or Zakrytye Administrativno-Territorial’nye Obrazovaniia) in Russia, although the Russian government will only confirm the existence of ten. These ten alone are home to 1.7 million people, who are severely restricted in their movements and their ability to participate in the democratic process, compared to their compatriots in neighbouring cities.

Freedom of movement is the biggest practical problem. True, movement generally is still quite restricted in Russia - for example, the need for residential permits means that many people who have moved to Moscow are living there illegally and have limited legal rights - but the issues facing closed cities are a class apart. Roemer Lemaître of the Belgian Institute for International Law [pdf file] observes that:

Apart from the right to freedom of movement the entry and residency restrictions imposed by the ZATO Law infringe directly or indirectly on a considerable number of other rights belonging to natural and legal persons resident within the ZATO as well as to outsiders. Identity checks and searches of bags and vehicles upon entry or exit from the ZATO run afoul of the right to privacy (Article 17 of the ICCPR and Article 8 of the ECHR). According to the same provisions, the right to family life might be violated if someone is not allowed to live with his/her close family because he/she did not get the required security clearance. Limitations on property rights (especially those that largely exclude property rights for outsiders) contradict Article 1 of the First Protocol to the ECHR.

Foreigners also face many restrictions, as this news report about the announcement that the mining city of Norilsk was to become a closed city indicates:

Under the restrictions, as of Monday the city is closed to all non-Russians – except Belarusians. Any foreigner wishing to travel to Norilsk must first obtain special permission from the FSB, the Russian state security police.

Lebed stated that he will demand that all foreigners – whether living as residents or presently visiting – leave Norilsk.

The restrictions placed on residents in closed cities also directly inhibit their ability to participate fully in the democratic process - such as it is in Russia these days. The role of the media, in particular, is heavily restricted:

Federal and local mass media have no access to closed cities. Besides, local media are poorly developed, scanty and usually controlled either by agencies that they belong to, or by commercial price of information. Almost the whole volume of information flow in and out of ZATOs is censoring in order to assure its safety for ZATOs system’ existence. None of independent pressmen are allowed to visit ZATOs.

I haven’t specifically seen any sources mentioning it, but I would imagine that freedom of association - for example, in the sense of the ability to join protests - is also heavily restricted.

No other democracy today has closed cities. Today, with the exception of Russia, they are the preserve of crackpot dictatorships, like North Korea. Even China doesn’t feel the need to close off whole cities from its own people.

Unless there is something that Russia and North Korea know that the rest of the world doesn’t, I think it is safe to conclude that closed cities are no longer necessary for security. And, if that is the case, then Russia’s justification for restricting the human rights of almost 2 million of its own citizens rings hollow.