Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Russia

McCain Says Putin Is Undermining Russian Democracy

Senator McCain (R) with U.S. President George Bush (file photo) (epa)

MUNICH, 4 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- U.S. Senator John McCain has strongly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for what he characterized as the undermining of democracy in Russia and abroad.

TEXT SIZE - +

February 04, 2006

McCain made his comments in a speech at an international security conference in the German city of Munich.

The U.S. senator, a presidential candidate in 2000, said Russia appears to be pursuing autocracy both at home and abroad. He also said he seriously questioned whether the member states of the G8 group of industrialized nations should attend a G8 summit scheduled to be hosted by Russia in St. Petersburg later this year.

McCain also criticized Moscow for using its natural gas resources as a means of punishing democratic Ukraine and Georgia while providing cut-rate gas supplies to a dictatorship in Belarus.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin covers his face during a conference of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in Moscow on February 9.

Administrative (Resource) Breakdown

Administrative resources make up the glue that holds authoritarian structures like Putin's power vertical together. And there have been plenty of signs recently that this glue is weakening. More

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