Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Russia

Moscow Announces Mass Arrest Of Ukrainian Crime Gang

(RFE/RL)

30 January 2006 -- Moscow police have arrested 14 suspected members of a Ukrainian criminal gang believed to have carried out 50 contract killings over the past decade in Ukraine.

TEXT SIZE - +

January 30, 2006

Yury Karasyov, the head of the investigative department of the Russian Interior Ministry, said the arrests were carried out last week in the Moscow region on a tip-off from Ukrainian authorities and with Ukrainian officers in attendance.

He said the suspects' extradition to Ukraine will be decided within the next couple of months.

The killings were allegedly carried out between 1991 and 2002 in Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk.

Another nine suspected members of the same group had been arrested earlier in Ukraine.

(AP, AFP, Interfax-Ukraine)

RFE/RL Belarus, Ukraine, And Moldova Report

SUBSCRIBE For weekly news and analysis on Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova by e-mail, subscribe to "RFE/RL Belarus, Ukraine, And Moldova Report."

Syrians in the northwestern town of Kfar Nubul pose with a cartoon depicting Russia

Angry Over Syria, Arab World Threatens Russian Boycott

Groups in a number of Arab states, angry over the Russian-Chinese veto of a UN resolution aimed at stopping the violence in Syria, have called for a one-day boycott of Russian and Chinese goods on February 12. More

Alla Dzhioyeva attends a protest by her supporters in Tskhinvali on January 28.

South Ossetian Opposition Leader Hospitalized After Raid

Alla Dzhioyeva, the opposition candidate whose victory in a runoff ballot in November for de facto president of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia was swiftly annulled by the republic's Supreme Court, was taken to a hospital after a raid by some 200 masked security personnel on her headquarters in Tskhinvali. More

Protesters gather behind a banner reading "Honest Elections" during a demonstration in Moscow on February 4.

How To Rig An Election

A whistle-blower in Samara explains how the authorities fixed the Duma elections in December -- and plan to do the same in the presidential vote in March. More