Tag: Alexander Bastrykin

Although he is living in Switzerland, Russian authorities have summoned business and former political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky for interrogation in the murder case of Nefteyugansk Mayor Vladimir Petukhov Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue […]

Staunton, September 4 – Alyaksandr Lukashenka has so far refused Moscow’s demand for the establishment of a Russian military base in Belarus, two senior Belarusian analysts say, noting that in addition to promises of aid, Moscow is currently preparing to destabilize its Western neighbor and even create the conditions for a Russian military intervention. Arseniy […]

The man recently installed to head Chechnya’s Investigative Committee — a body tantamount to Russia’s FBI — has been sacked by Vladimir Putin in a high-profile embarrassment for the Committee’s overall head, Alexander Bastrykin. It appears that Sergei Bobrov has been relieved of his duties for attempting to do his job properly in Kadyrov’s murky […]

On June 4 2012, Russian reporter Sergei Sokolov was part of a press delegation accompanying the three-year-old Investigative Committee, often described as Russia’s FBI, on a trip to Kabardino-Balkaria, a republic in the Caucasus. Sokolov’s publication, Novaya Gazeta, is one of the few independent newspapers left in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a fact ominously borne out […]

Below is the transcript between between Aleksandr Bogomolov (Federal Patriotic Herald) and State Duma Deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov after opposition leader Alexei Navalny was temporarily released from prison so that he might pursue a campaign for Moscow’s mayor, pending his appeal.. -Ed. Novaya Gazeta has asked the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Ministry of Health to […]

Aleksei Navalny woke up this morning knowing that he’d be found guilty of the crime of embezzlement. What he wasn’t absolutely sure of, though probably heavily suspected, was that he’d be given a lengthy jail sentence — five years, as it turns out, which is just one fewer than the prosecutor had asked for, along […]

[Today, opposition leader Alexey Navalny made his closing statement at his trial for “embezzlement.” The defense was not allowed to call any witnesses and comments made before the trial began by the presiding judge and officials from the Investigative Committee characterized his guilt as a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, Navalny remained defiant in the face of […]

[The expatriation of Sergei Guriyev, a highly regarded Russian economist, was a major story both in the Russian and in international presses last month. By his own admission, Guriyev left Russia because he feared imprisonment after continued harassment by Russia’s Investigative Committee, which searched his office and seized thousands of emails related to investigation into […]

– It seems that C-list action star Steven Seagal is now trying his hand at diplomacy. Seagal, coming off of his recent ventures helping Putin promote school physical education and posing with Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, attempted to organize a Congressional fact-finding trip in the aftermath of the Boston bombings to the volatile republic. As […]

[Vladimir Markin, head of media liaisons for the Russian Federation Investigative Committee, has recently become the main supplier of political news. His commentaries and interviews not only lead to feverish discussion about who’s in and who’s out in the Kremlin, they arguably result in the immediate firings of the ill-favored: That’s what happened after Markin […]