Putin’s Party Wins in Regional Elections Across Russia - NYTimes.com

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By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY

MOSCOW — The pro-Kremlin party United Russia swept regional elections across Russia, strengthening its political power nationwide while also dominating the voting for the Moscow city government, according to results released Monday.

Opposition leaders complained about electoral fraud, and disturbances were reported in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan because of problems at the voting sites.

Votes were held Sunday in 75 of Russia’s 83 regions, for positions varying from mayor to representative in the local legislatures. United Russia, led by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who is also the party chairman, called its nationwide success a vote of confidence in its economic policies.

“We can say that the voters of Russia, in a situation where we are battling the global economic crisis, are for stabilization of the political situation, for the right to realize those plans that have been set forth,” said Boris V. Gryzlov, chairman of the party’s Supreme Council.

Among the more than 7,000 local elections were races conducted in Chechnya, Ingushetia and other regions of the Caucasus.

Elections to the Moscow city government were the most closely watched. With 99 percent of the vote counted on Monday, United Russia, with 66 percent of the vote, was poised to win 32 of 35 seats in the legislature; the Communist Party, with 13 percent of the vote, was expected to win 3.

By contrast, the liberal party Yabloko, which has provided the most vocal opposition to Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov of Moscow, did not meet the 7 percent threshold of votes necessary for a seat.

Ilya Yashin, a former youth leader of Yabloko who joined the more radical opposition movement Solidarity, was taken off the ballot in Moscow for the city Duma, the local legislature, along with other Solidarity members, including the party’s leader, Boris Y. Nemtsov, for reported irregularities.

Mr. Yashin lamented on his blog Monday that Moscow had joined regions like the Caucasus as a place where United Russia had an unchallenged grasp on power.

Vladimir Y. Churov, chairman of the Central Election Commission, speaking to reporters on Sunday, rejected charges of electoral fraud. “Statements about mass violations, these are of course hysteria and an attempt to exert unlawful moral pressure during the counting of votes,” he said. “This is moral terror.”

Mr. Churov acknowledged but played down the extent of difficulties in Derbent, a town in Dagestan where one-third of the polling places never opened. The town’s mayor, who supports the Kremlin, won with 68 percent of the vote.

Mr. Yashin reported on his blog that about 100 activists of the Solidarity movement held a protest in central Moscow on Monday evening, claiming falsification of the Moscow election results. More than 40 people were detained by the police, the Ekho Moskvy radio station reported. The Associated Press reported that police officers in riot gear broke up a small demonstration, dragging people away.

Finding Those Behind Chechen Killings ‘Paramount,' Russian President Says

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 15, 2009

MOSCOW, Aug. 14 -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared Friday that the capture of those responsible for the recent killings of three Chechen human rights workers should be the "paramount task" of the nation's security services.

Medvedev also appeared to signal dissatisfaction with Chechnya's Kremlin-appointed strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel warlord who has been accused of terrorizing the population.

"I think this is a challenge for the Chechen leadership," Medvedev said at a news conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The Chechen president must do everything he can to find and apprehend these murderers."

His demand came amid a surge of violence in Chechnya and two neighboring provinces, Dagestan and Ingushetia, that left 23 people dead. The bloodshed underscored the Kremlin's struggle to maintain control of the region against an Islamist insurgency that appears to be gaining momentum.

In the deadliest incident, militants burst into a bathhouse Thursday night in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan and gunned down seven women, authorities said. The attack occurred after the rebels sprayed a nearby police post with gunfire, killing four police officers.

Six other police officers and five suspected rebels were reported killed in gun battles in Chechnya and Dagestan on Thursday and Friday. In Ingushetia, authorities said a woman who made a living telling fortunes was shot to death Thursday by militants who consider the practice a grave sin.

An American expert on the region warned in an article this week that Russia's repressive policies in the North Caucasus had created "fertile ground for terrorist recruiters" and represented a threat to U.S. security interests.

"Getting targeted assistance to the region, including job creation, should be of the highest importance to the White House and the State Department, as well as European governments," wrote Sarah Mendelson, human rights and security initiative director at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Referring to the unsolved killings of several human rights activists and journalists, Mendelson urged President Obama and European leaders to make clear to Medvedev that "impunity will not be tolerated" while pressing him to accept international help to address lawlessness in the region.

Chechnya's most prominent human rights activist, Natalya Estemirova, was abducted and executed last month, and a couple who ran a center for children traumatized by Russia's two wars against Chechen separatists was found shot to death in the trunk of their car Tuesday.

A day later, the Ingush construction minister was gunned down in his office. The Ingush leader, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, returned to work this week after recovering from an assassination attempt in June that killed four of his bodyguards.

Medvedev linked the attacks on the human rights workers to those on government officials, and said they were "aimed at destabilizing the situation in the Caucasus" and carried out by militants with foreign support.

"I have given all necessary orders," he said, according to the Interfax news agency. "Finding, prosecuting and punishing these murderers is the paramount task for all law enforcement authorities, for the office of the prosecutor general, for the Investigation Committee, and for other special services."

Merkel told reporters she condemned the recent killings "in the strongest terms" during a summit meeting that focused on trade and investment. "This is unfortunately a serious subject which we have to deal with time and again at many meetings," she said.

Human rights activists argue that the most likely suspects in the slayings of their colleagues are not the rebels but members of the Russian security services. Some accuse Kadyrov of engaging in "state terrorism" against his critics with the tacit support of his patron, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and a group of Russian lawyers has called for an international tribunal to prosecute war crimes committed in Chechnya.

Medvedev last month dismissed allegations that Kadyrov was behind Estemirova's death, but his remarks Friday suggest that he may be losing patience with the Chechen leader, a former separatist fighter whom Putin entrusted with unusual autonomy over the region in 2007 in return for his loyalty.

Kadyrov has condemned the killings and vowed to solve them, but he has also repeatedly derided Estemirova, saying she "never had any honor or sense of shame" and "was misleading society and writing lies."

Turkey and Russia Conclude Energy Deals

By SEBNEM ARSU

ISTANBUL — Russia and Turkey concluded energy agreements on Thursday that will support Turkey’s drive to become a regional hub for fuel transshipments while helping Moscow maintain its monopoly on natural gas shipments from Asia to Europe.

Turkey granted the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom use of its territorial waters in the Black Sea, under which the company wants to route its so-called South Stream pipeline to gas markets in Eastern and Southern Europe.

In return, a Russian oil pipeline operator agreed to join a consortium to build a pipeline across the Anatolian Peninsula, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and Gazprom affirmed a commitment to expand an existing Black Sea gas pipeline for possible transshipment across Turkey to Cyprus or Israel.

Energy companies in both countries agreed to a joint venture to build conventional electric power plants, and the Interfax news agency in Russia reported that Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin offered to reopen talks on Russian assistance to Turkey in building nuclear power reactors.

The agreements were signed in Ankara, the Turkish capital, in meetings between Mr. Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who has joined Mr. Putin on several energy projects, attended the ceremony. The Italian company Eni broke ground on the trans-Anatolian oil pipeline this year.

While the offer of specific pipeline deals and nuclear cooperation represented a new tactic by Mr. Putin, the wider struggle for dominance of the Eurasian pipelines is a long-running chess match in which he has often excelled.

As he has in the past, Mr. Putin traveled to Turkey with his basket of tempting strategic and economic benefits immediately after a similar mission by his opponents. A month ago, European governments signed an agreement in Turkey to support the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline, which would compete directly with the South Stream project.

By skirting Russian territory, the Nabucco pipeline would undercut Moscow’s monopoly on European natural gas shipments and the pricing power and political clout that come with it. That may explain why Nabucco, which cannot go forward without Turkey’s support, has encountered a variety of obstacles thrown up by the Russian government, including efforts to deny it vital gas supplies in the East and a customer base in the West.

Turkey and other countries in the path of Nabucco have been eager players in this geopolitical drama, entertaining offers from both sides. Turkish authorities have even tried, without much success, to leverage the pipeline negotiations to further Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, while keeping options with Russia open, too.

“These countries are more than happy to sign agreements with both parties,” Ana Jelenkovic, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said in a telephone interview from London. “There’s no political benefit to shutting out or ceasing energy relations with Russia.”

Under the deal Mr. Putin obtained Thursday, Gazprom will be allowed to proceed with seismic and environmental tests in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone, necessary preliminary steps for laying the South Stream pipe, Prime Minister Erdogan said at a news conference.

After the meeting, Mr. Putin said, “We agreed on every issue.”

The trans-Anatolian oil pipeline also marginally improves Russia’s position in the region. The pipeline is one of two so-called Bosporus bypass systems circumventing the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, which are operating at capacity in tanker traffic.

The preferred Western route is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which allows companies to ship Caspian Basin crude oil to the West without crossing Russian territory; the pipeline instead crosses the former Soviet republic of Georgia and avoids the crowded straits by cutting across Turkey to the Mediterranean.

Russia prefers northbound pipelines out of the Caspian region that terminate at tanker terminals on the Black Sea. The success of this plan depends, in turn, on creating additional capacity in the Bosporus bypass routes. Russia is backing two such pipelines.

Mr. Putin’s offer to move ahead with a Russian-built nuclear power plant in Turkey suggests a sweetening of the overall Russian offer on energy deals with Turkey, while both Western and Russian proposals are on the table.

The nuclear aspect of the deal drew protests. About a dozen Greenpeace protesters were surrounded by at least 200 armored police officers in central Ankara on Thursday.

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow.