The International Herald Tribune reports:

A senior local official in Russia's restive Chechnya province was killed Wednesday in a bomb attack, police said, in the latest violence in a more than decade-long separatist conflict.

A bomb exploded in the morning as Mairbek Murdagamov, deputy head of the southern Vedeno district, was leaving his house, said the local branch of Russia's Interior Ministry.

The explosion ripped off Murdagamov's foot and he was hospitalized, dying a few hours later, the ministry's press service said.

Large-scale fighting has all but ended in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim province in southern Russia where a separatist conflict has persisted for more than 12 years, but small-scale attacks and hit-and-run ambushes on police and government officials persist.

The violence in Chechnya has spilled over into other regions of Russia's troubled North Caucasus, blamed on both criminal gangs and remaining groups of separatist rebels.

Some readers (well, moronic apes) have expressed interest in knowing further details about the availability of attractive Russian women selling their bodies on the cheap. A few idiots have even suggested that despite Russia having an average wage one-third that of America's minimum wage, it might be possible that Americans (and other Western foreigners) would still not see Russian prostitutes as inexpensive. On her side, La Russophobe has heard that Russian whores are so popular that mentioning such things can cause a sudden temporary surge of traffic on a website as numerous horny weirdos are apparently trolling the internet looking for such opportunities as Russia is famous for offering them. Hence, if you click here you will find a listing of prostitutes from the city of St. Petersburg Russia who charge no more than $50 per hour (from just one pimping agency, in Russia there is a vast profusion, and St. Petersburg is the second-most expensive city in the country; go into the hinterlands, and prostitutes would become virtually free for Westerners with normal incomes). If anyone knows of a European nation offering a better bargain, do please inform La Russophobe. Albania, maybe? But they probably wouldn't offer such a wide variety of models to choose from, in so many styles and colors, would they? After all, it's a small country. In a nation where the average wage is $2.50 per hour, there's obviously considerable pressure on young women to pursue this mode of "employment." This is well documented in a film we've previously recommended, Lucas Moodysson's "Lilya 4ever." In Seattle in 2002, the going rate for a prostitute was $120 (undoubtedly inflation has bumped the rate to at least $150 since then), so one can find a prostitute in St. Petersburg for 1/3 the price. If one consumed prostitutes heavily enough, one could pay for the cost of a flight and even have a net profit by indulging in the Piter sex trade.

Russia is also a world leader in hosting affordable child pornography for the consumption of Western aficonados, as a recent bulletin from CBS News reports.

The Moscow Times reports that Russia has enacted a set of draconian neo-Soviet restrictions on the movements of foreigers within Russia. Logically, all Western governments with citizens subject to these restrictions should now adopt the same rules for Russians traveling in the West. Of course, these restrictions provide the Kremlin with yet anther excuse to harass, jail and eject any foreigner who dares to fail to toe the Kremlin line:

Thinking of jetting up to St. Petersburg for a week to see White Nights this summer? If you're a foreigner and you want to spare your employer from a possible $30,000 fine, you'd better make sure the government knows you're leaving town. According to a new law that came into effect Jan. 15, foreigners are now required to hand over their registration papers to migration officials -- via their employer or other sponsor -- every time they leave the country and re-register upon subsequent entry into the country. But the law is steeped in vagaries. Visa agencies say foreigners could incur heavy fines for their employers if they neglect to inform them of even a short trip out of town.

Hotels, for their part, say the amount of documentation on their foreign guests has become unduly burdensome. At least one St. Petersburg hotel has stopped admitting foreigners altogether.

The new law says a foreigner's "inviting party" -- an employer, landlord, hotel or other Russian host -- is required to inform local migration officials of the foreigner's arrival within three working days of entering the country. The inviting party is also required to inform authorities if the foreigner leaves Russia and it has two working days from the day of departure to do so. "The foreigner has to be stricken off the Federal Migration Service register, because he can't be registered with the Federal Migration Service if he is not in Russia," said Zalina Filimonova, spokeswoman for the Moscow branch of the migration service. "That's pure logic."

The law has been touted by migration officials as a simplification of the registration process. On paper, after all, the inviting party is merely required to submit information about the foreigner's passport, visa and migration card to the local branch of the migration service. Migration officials then issue a registration card that the foreigner carries at all times as proof of being in the country legally. The card makes obsolete the previous practice of placing a registration stamp in passports.

In theory, the entire process can even be done at the post office, with a post office receipt serving as confirmation of a foreigner's registration. But the new procedures could prove to be quite a hassle for foreigners who travel often -- either internationally or within Russia, said Yekaterina Elekchyan of Your Lawyer, a legal firm specializing in visa and work-regulation issues. "On the one hand, it's easier in that the landlord doesn't have to physically go down to the DEZ," Elekchyan said, referring to the local building-utilities administrator offices that were obligatory stopovers for foreigners' landlords under the old registration rules. "But for a foreigner who enters and leaves the country quite often, it's not very convenient to have to turn in documents every time." Foreigners must turn in their registration card when they leave for another region, Filimonova said. Then, upon arrival, the inviting party must register the foreigner with local migration officials within three days and inform them of his departure no later than two days after he leaves.

Under the law, the inviting party is fully responsible for registering the foreigner. According to information posted on the web site of the Moscow branch, fines for breaching the rules run up to 4,000 rubles for a Russian citizen hosting a foreigner and up to 800,000 rubles ($30,000) for employers. One large Western-managed company informed its foreign employees recently in an internal memo that they would have any fines deducted from their salaries if they did not inform the company of their international travel plans. Federal Migration Service spokesman Denis Soldatikov said Friday that authorities would not be "hunting" down violators. "But if people are found in violation, they will be fined," he said.

Inexplicably, Soldatikov contradicted the deadlines and procedures given in the law itself. He said the inviting party must inform authorities of a foreigner's arrival within 30 days and departure with 10 days. Soldatikov -- in another contradiction of what the law says -- also insisted that a foreigner does not have to turn in the registration card upon leaving the country.

Alexei Filipenkov, deputy chairman of Association of European Businesses' visa task force, said the law is so muddled and riddled with holes that it is impossible to enforce. "Nobody knows what is going on," he said. "I ask one migration official what to do, and he tells me one thing. On the same day I go to another official, and they tell me something completely different. Nobody knows what is going on because the rules are constantly being changed."

One group that is already lobbying for changes in the law are hoteliers. One large Moscow hotel said it has had to hire two employees to deal exclusively with filling out the increased paperwork for foreign guests, and because the local branch of the migration service is understaffed, the employees themselves must sit down and enter the data into the migration service's system. "Until our employee sits down and enters every single form in to their system by manually typing, no one is registered," said an executive from the hotel, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing company policy. Soldatikov, the migration service spokesman, denied that hotel employees might be entering information into the migration service's database. "Access to those computers is restricted," he said. Soldatikov said hotels had no grounds for complaint and that the system had changed little for them.

One small hotel chain in St. Petersburg, however, has stopped accepting foreigners for fear that a single violation of the new law could result in a hefty fine. "Fortunately it's not high season yet, and primarily Russian citizens are on business trips," Marina Slesareva, deputy head of the Rinaldi chain, told Komsomolskaya Pravda. "It's scary to think what will happen in the summer. Not one single branch of the Federal Migration Service can tell us what to do under the new rules."

Robert Amsterdam, Mikhail Khodorkovsky's American lawyer, has announced that Russia intends to put his client on trial for the same offense twice inside MK's prison in Siberia rather than in court. Siberian Light points out that MK is being charged with "laundering" nearly twice as much money as his maximum net worth, which "shouts out ‘politically motivated charge’." Amsterdam adds that when, upon learning of the news that his client would be charged, Khodorkovsky's Russian lawyer Yuri Schmidt tried to fly to Siberia to meet with his client and was promptly arrested by Moscow authorities at the airport and subjected to harassment. In other words, for all these reasons and more, it's clear that there is no such thing as "justice" in neo-Soviet Russia any more. The regime will do as it likes no matter what the "law" might be, and the lemming-like population will sit by and watch it happen, just as in the days of Stalin.

Amsterdam speculates on the classic neo-Soviet reasons why the Kremlin would want to make a move against the lawyers:

According to our political technologist, the detentions were probably a “dry run” rehearsal of sorts, a “bench test” on a small scale in a safe and controlled environment, where there wouldn’t be any major repercussions if anything went wrong. Better to make mistakes now and have a chance to correct them than to fall flat on one’s face during some really important stage of the game. The power doesn’t like to look weak.

So, what could they have been “testing”? Take your pick – in Russia’s culture of secrecy, nobody will ever know for sure:

• Do the police respond quickly and efficiently to a political order that comes down from above?

• Who are the first people the defense phones in a crisis? (Answer: human rights groups and the domestic and international press, all of whom immediately spread the news worldwide. By allowing the lawyers to make these phone calls during an insignificant incident, the authorities have now learned their “political technology” paradigm.)

• Do they phone anyone in government – is there anybody still left in the halls of power whom they might still consider sympathetic to their cause? (If so, such people are clearly potential enemies and need to be removed from their posts.)

• How does the press respond to such an event? Is the case still newsworthy? (Answer: thankfully for us, yes!)

• Which “press organs” give the story the quickest and deepest and most objective coverage? (These are clearly a threat that needs to be neutralized.)

• In what ways is the true story distorted by the time it hits the headlines? (Useful knowledge if you want to use the “press organs” you control to help “shape” reality for public consumption.)

A reader points us to the latest analysis of the Carnegie Center's Masha Lipman in the Washington Post, where she exposes the outrageously racist crackdown in the Russian marketplace:

The government recently outlawed foreign migrant workers at Russian retail markets as of April 1. A similar restriction cuts out middlemen by requiring that at least half of all salespeople sell their own produce. The official rationale is that this legislation protects domestic producers. But this politically motivated, hasty decision is more likely to harm Russian consumers and further exacerbate the situation of migrant workers.

The affected markets are vast premises where salesmen pay for counter space and offer produce and other goods such as clothes. Buyers looking for lower prices or fresher produce than in conventional stores find such foods as homegrown or imported fruit and vegetables, homemade preserves, cottage cheese, pickles, meat and fish.

Given Russia's climate, throughout most of the year vegetables and especially fruit are imported from warmer parts of the world. But the law seeks to impose the same pattern on all regions, even though the products and markets in southern Russian and areas beyond the polar circle are not at all alike. Without the choices provided by middlemen, diet options in many places will be reduced to carrots, potatoes, cabbage and little else.

The new regulations were probably a reaction to growing ethnic intolerance, which took an alarming turn late last summer when a riot in the northwestern town of Kondopoga forced non-Slavic residents to flee, and their businesses were looted and burned. The Russian government is concerned about controlling such hostility, especially in an election year, when any sign of autonomous activism is regarded as a potential threat to the political status quo.

Propagation of tolerance is only a marginal policy for the Kremlin -- it would hardly be efficient given the current degree of xenophobia -- so instead it opted to co-opt the spreading nationalist sentiments. In October, President Vladimir Putin called for "additional measures to improve trade in . . . retail markets in order to protect the interests of the Russian manufacturers and . . . the native population of Russia." He reiterated this concern, in a more balanced form, in his annual news conference on Thursday, saying that "labor market issues . . . have not always been settled to the benefit of Russia's own people, its own citizens."

By this time, however, government monitoring had found that migrant workers at the markets were not a national issue: They were in high proportion to natives only in Moscow and the Far East.

This is not surprising, since those regions are the two that experience workforce shortages, making migrant workers a necessity. In Far East areas near China, this need is filled by Chinese workers, many of whom cross the border to sell cheap goods.

The new regulations have already pushed Chinese traders to sell their stock at catchpenny prices and leave. And local news reports indicate that the markets are staying empty: "The benefit of the new regulation looks vague. But the disadvantages are evident," reported a newspaper in Sakhalin, in the Far East. "For the time being there's no replacement for the cheap Chinese goods and southern fruit."

A Moscow official echoed those concerns: "Do we want to leave the Muscovites without tangerines, raisins and dried apricots?"

Other problems are expected because the law enables employers to cancel contracts with migrant workers without a court decision. Significant numbers of migrant workers could find themselves jobless. Meanwhile, Muscovites are unlikely to want the low-paying, menial jobs of market salesmen. "The citizens of Russia don't wait in lines to take those 28 to 30 thousand jobs in market trade that [the new law] will require. This is a serious vacuum that will have to be filled before April 1," the Moscow official said.

These consequences should have been obvious before the law was enacted. But there wasn't much time -- or desire -- for discussion, as is the case when an initiative originates with the president. After Putin asked his ministers to protect native manufacturers at the markets, the cabinet issued a regulation restricting foreigners' presence in retail trade; in less than three months a bill was put together, passed by both chambers of parliament and signed into law.

Such actions corrode what respect for law and lawmaking is left here. Local officials will probably think of ways around the restrictions, and some are sure to take advantage of new opportunities for graft. Still others expect that the absurdity of some provisions and the damage the law is inflicting on consumers will lead to its revision. Indeed, shortly after the new regulations -- drafted by his own ministry at the president's urging -- took effect, German Gref, the minister of economic development and trade, said a full ban on the employment of migrant foreign workers may be postponed.

Dear Readers,

Just a brief little observation. Indulge a slightly long-winded introduction, won't you?

Did you ever notice the bizarre nature of the criticism La Russophobe receives from the wacko Russophile set? One minute, they accuse this blog of being devoid of editorializing, doing nothing more than copying the view of others from various sources, and hence being unoriginal. The next minute, they accuse us of doing nothing but editorializing, spewing out endless ideological tirades that betray our personal "hatred" of Russia.

The one point of commonality between these two crazily irreconcilable viewpoints is that, at bottom, they both constitute personal attacks on us rather than an attempt to address the substance of our content. In other words, it's an attempt to distract attention from out content itself. This is the best indication there is of how rock-solid and hard-hitting our content really is, and we couldn't be more delighted.

Oh yeah, the point, the point. We digress. Well, you see, we admit that the first viewpoint does have the most truth in it. As we've said from the beginning, the purpose of this blog is to document the rise of the neo-Soviet state by aggregating the news from the most reliable and varied sources we can find proving that it is occurring. In our own humble opinion, this blog is by far the best aggregator of news on Russia on this planet, and nobody who doesn't read it daily can claim to have any real understanding of what is going on in Russia today. What our critics can't seem to grasp is that nobody else in the whole wide world is doing what we're doing, and that makes us quite original indeed and accounts for why LR is so popular. The popularity is infuriating to them, but even more so they just can't stand the organized presence of all these facts, making it so much harder for them to continue their propagandizing.

Still not the point. Sorry. Just can't resist poking those wacky Russophiles. The point is this: Because we're engaged in doing this, we're in a position to warn you that things are getting pretty darn ugly pretty darn fast in Russia, much faster than even we ever dared dream possible. We can illustrate this for you by simply telling you that in the early going, we had virtually no backup in our publishing log. That simply means that each day, we published everything we had available.

We can't even come close to doing that anymore. At present, we're running a backlog that can reach a dozen posts or more, and we're cutting some material that we simply don't have space for. We feel like those doctors in M*A*S*H trying to decide which horribly wounded person to operate on first. If we kept on publishing everything we have every day, we'd innundate the blog and important material would get lost in the shuffle.

We have so much stuff because things are getting just that nasty in Russia. It's literally a physical challenge to organize and prioritize all the bad news. Another indication of how bad things are getting over there is the increasingly virulent rhetoric being lobbed at this blog by the Russophile wackos as they scurry to rationalize and defend the rise of a neo-Soviet state that is not only indefensible but unimaginable and unacceptable, and yet so horrifyingly real.

In short, as Bette Davis said in All About Eve: "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."

Yours truly,

La Russophobe

By now, La Russophobe's readers know only too well that if there's one thing she simply can't stand above all else, it's hypocrisy -- when a person says one thing and does the opposite. The Russophile lunatics are particularly given to this form of behavior, as when the eXile tabloid criticized LR for being anonymous in an article with no byline that relied on an anonymous source. Since LR practices anonymity, she doesn't criticize others for engaging in it.

Another recent example is the ZheZhe blog to which La Russophobe has previously made reference. On its home page, ZheZhe claims that its publisher is "not a Russophile." That's a blatant lie. The publisher of ZheZhe not only unquestioningly published the ravings of apparent (and certainly de facto) Kremlin shill Julia Svetlichnaya as she launched a smear campaign against Alexander Litvinenko (LR's questions to Ms. Svetlichnaya on ZheZhe have stood unanswered for weeks now), but the publisher also participates in an e-mail cabal of the most frenzied Russophile extremists, led by Russophile maniac Peter LaVelle [sic, it's our policy to misspell his dishonest, propagandizing name on purpose], heaping fuel upon their fire in the most shameless manner (while not saying a single word about it to readers -- though granted he has precious few).

Here's a sample of the endless tirades spewed forth amidst that cabal against LR by the publisher of ZheZhe (taken from e-mails circulated a few days ago):

It makes no difference if this sort of zealotry (and idiocy) is coming from a blogger, an academic, a lawyer, an international financier, or from the mainstream press. Each of their audiences, though varied in size and scope and with various degrees of crossover amongst themselves, when combined form a larger group with an unfavorably biased and distorted view that serves a specific agenda rather than portraying the objective Russian reality. With all the interest generated on this list regarding Russia and "bad press" im surprised more people on this list are content to ignore LR. O mean really, do the people here think that its only their opinions that matter or get exposure? And just like the NYT's audience is not FOX's audience, this list is not LR's audience. The problem with LR is that there are far, far more of "them" than there are of "us". Sorry to get all cold war-ish...

Us. Them. Cold war. Zealtry. Idiocy. Now LR asks you: Are those the comments of an unbiased, objective observer of Russia? And note the unbridled arrogance. HE knows the "truth" about Russia, and anybody who dares disagree is a quack. Next stop, a Russian psychiatric prison, perhaps?

One member of the e-mail group states: "Yes, there's a lot of tinfoil hattery here but what strikes me is that LsR is picked up (quite often too) by a rather more important blog Publius Pundit and I've seen it quoted elsewhere." It's quite amazing how utterly out of touch with reality a group like this can get. La Russophobe isn't "picked up" by Publius Pundit. She's a member of the creative team at that blog and the material which appears there is written by her and original to that blog.

The sad thing is that some of these cretins are undoubtedly able to convince themselves that they actually aren't biased. You know, like "I'm not pro-Nazi or anything, I'm just saying that you're taking a really one-sided view of the concentration camps and you need to try to see both sides of the issue. After all, Hitler was basically a decent man who was provoked and was just trying to . . . "

This is exactly the way we ended up with Stalin.

The German Daily Der Spiegel publishes the following extended interview with Russian author Vladimir Sorokin (pictured, left) whom DS describes as "one of the best- known contemporary authors in Russia. He established his literary reputation in the West with his novels "The Queue," and "Ice." In his latest book, "Day of the Oprichnik," he describes Russia in the year 2028 as a nationalist country ruled with an iron fist that has shut itself off from the West by building a wall."

SPIEGEL: Mr. Sorokin, in your new novel "Day of the Oprichnik," you portray an authoritarian Russia ruled by a group of members of the secret police. The story is set in the future, but this future is similar to the past under Ivan the Terrible. Aren't you really drawing parallels to today's Russia?

Sorokin: Of course it's a book about the present. Unfortunately, the only way one can describe it is by using the tools of satire. We still live in a country that was established by Ivan the Terrible.

SPIEGEL: His reign was in the 16th century. The czardom was followed by the Soviet Union, then democracy under (former President Boris) Yeltsin and (current President Vladimir) Putin. Has Russia not yet completed its break with the past?

Sorokin: Nothing has changed when it comes to the divide between the people and the state. The state demands a sacred willingness to make sacrifices from the people.

SPIEGEL: The absolute ruler in your book bears some resemblance to President Vladimir Putin ...

Sorokin: ... which was not my intention. Coming up with a Putin satire wouldn't be very thrilling. I'm an artist, not a journalist. And a novel is not a documentary. In my book, I am searching for an answer to the question of what distinguishes Russia from true democracies.

SPIEGEL: What explanation have you found?

Sorokin: Germans, Frenchmen and Englishmen can say of themselves: "I am the state." I cannot say that. In Russia only the people in the Kremlin can say that. All other citizens are nothing more than human material with which they can do all kinds of things.

SPIEGEL: In old Russian, the word "oprichnik" means "a special one." Do you feel that the divide between the top and the bottom in Russia today can no longer be bridged?

Sorokin: In our country there are special people who are permitted to do anything. They are the sacrificial priests of power. Anyone who is not a member of this group has no clout with the state. One can be as pure as can be -- just as magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky was -- and still lose everything in a flash and end up in prison. The Khodorkovsky case is typical of the "oprichnina" -- the system of oppression I describe.

SPIEGEL: Does a character like Khodorkovsky appear in your book?

Sorokin: Such a parallel didn't occur to me. However, my book does begin with an attack on a rich man. This is almost a daily occurrence nowadays. It has always been that way in Russia. Only those who are loyal to the people in power can become wealthy.

SPIEGEL: How is the elite reacting to the literary images you paint?

Sorokin: The reaction to my book has been tumultuous. But I had no other choice than to put all this on paper. I have been carrying around this wish for a long time, and so it took me only three months to write it.

SPIEGEL: Why did you suddenly feel the need to write this book?

Sorokin: The citizen lives in each of us. In the days of Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, I was constantly trying to suppress the responsible citizen in me. I told myself that I was, after all, an artist. As a storyteller I was influenced by the Moscow underground, where it was common to be apolitical. This was one of our favorite anecdotes: As German troops marched into Paris, Picasso sat there and drew an apple. That was our attitude -- you must sit there and draw your apple, no matter what happens around you. I held fast to that principle until I was 50. Now the citizen in me has come to life.

SPIEGEL: Some of your novels are filled with violence. In "Ice," for example, human beings are mistreated with hammers made of ice. Why is Russian society still so preoccupied with violence?

Sorokin: As a child I perceived violence as a sort of natural law. In the totalitarian Soviet Union, oppression held everything together. It was the sinister energy of our country. I had that sense by as early as kindergarten and grade school. Later on I wanted to understand why human beings are unable to do without violence. It's a mystery I haven't solved to this day. Yes, violence is my main theme.

SPIEGEL: How is this sinister energy reflected in Russia today?

Sorokin: It is alive in every bureaucrat. Whenever you encounter a minor official, he lets you know that he is above you and that you depend on him. It is reflected in the superpower mentality that nourishes the Kremlin. An empire always demands sacrifices from its people.

SPIEGEL: Criminal proceedings were launched against you five years ago for supposedly pornographic passages in your novel "Blue Bacon Fat." Is censorship about to be reintroduced in Russia?

Sorokin: What happened at the time was an attempt to test writers' steadfastness and the public's willingness to accept open censorship. It didn't work.

SPIEGEL: Did the pressure that was applied to you intimidate other writers?

Sorokin: Certainly. I have Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to thank that a Russian writer can not only write anything he wants today, but also publish it. I don't know what will happen in the future. The media -- television, newspapers and magazines -- are already controlled by the state today.

SPIEGEL: One of the characters in your book brags "that not just one diplomat was expelled from Moscow, not just one journalist was thrown from the television tower and not just one whistleblower was drowned in the river." When you wrote this you knew nothing about the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Sorokin: I just imagined what would happen to Russia if it isolated itself completely from the Western world -- that is, if it erected a new Iron Curtain. There is much talk about Russia being a fortress. Orthodox churches, autocracy and national traditions are supposed to form a new national ideology. This would mean that Russia would be overtaken by its past, and our past would be our future.

SPIEGEL: How realistic is such a relapse in a globalized world?

Sorokin: Putin likes to quote a sentence from Czar Alexander III, who said that Russian has only two allies -- the army and the navy. As a citizen, this makes me sit up and take notice. This is a concept of self-imposed isolation, a defense strategy that sees Russia surrounded by enemies. When I turn on the TV I see a general calmly claiming that our missiles are ahead of the latest American models by three five-year plans. It's a nightmare. We are creating a concept of the enemy, just as they did in the Soviet era. This is a giant step backward.

SPIEGEL: You have no confidence in the current Kremlin administration?

Sorokin: This is their fault, not mine. My television teaches me that everything was wonderful in the Soviet Union. According to the programs I watch, the KGB and apparatchiks were angels, and the Stalin era was so festive that the heroes of the day must still be celebrated today.

SPIEGEL: Why is there no opposition from Russia's legendary intelligentsia?

Sorokin: It's astonishing. I can't help but gain the impression that our champions of the freedom of opinion -- writers, emigrants and civil rights activists -- had only one goal in mind: the collapse of the Soviet Union, started by Alexander Solzhenitzyn. And now they are all silent.

SPIEGEL: How do you feel about the former chess world champion, Garry Kasparov, who is trying to build an opposition movement?

Sorokin: I have respect for him and other members of the opposition movement, like former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and (politician) Irina Khakamada. But these politicians do not exist for most people. About the only place you will find them is on the Internet. If a state-owned station were to report tomorrow that Kasyanov was visiting Russian cities and talking to the people, the manager of that station would be looking for a new job the next day.

SPIEGEL: What can be done?

Sorokin: It's pointless to expect change to be ordered from above. The bureaucracy has grown such powerful roots, and corruption is so widespread, that these people have no interest in changing anything.

SPIEGEL: In other words, everything is hopeless?

Sorokin: Everyone must awaken the citizen within himself. The Russian philosopher Nikolay Berdyayev once said that Russia has many ideas and few goods. It was that way throughout the entire 20th century. Only in the last 15 years have the Russians managed to dress up and eat their fill. However, people with full bellies tend become drowsy. This explains, for example, the disinterest among students. In no other country are they as apathetic as they are here.

SPIEGEL: With so much pessimism, do you even like your fellow Russian people?

Sorokin: The word "people" is unpleasant to me. The phrase "Soviet people" was drummed into us from childhood on. I love concrete people, enlightened people who live conscious lives and do not simply sit there and vegetate. To love the people you have to be the general secretary of the Communist Party or an absolute dictator. The poet Josef Brodsky once said: The trees are more important to me than the forest.

SPIEGEL: In your book you describe a wall with which Russia isolates itself from the West. Why is this wall built?

Sorokin: After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, former party officials burned their party books and traded in their black Volga limousines for black German-made sedans. That was it. We had no purifying revolution. Neither Communist Party officials nor KGB generals were forced to give up the reins of power. In August 1991, I was in the crowd standing in front of the Lubyanka KGB building when the monument to KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky was toppled. It seemed as if a new era was about to begin. But we underestimated the power of the Soviet Union. It became ingrained in people's consciousness over the course of seven decades. After German reunification, West Germany became a mirror for former East German citizens. We didn't have that.

SPIEGEL: You hold a degree in petroleum engineering. Was the latest confrontation with Belarus over natural gas and oil an expression of Moscow's power politics?

Sorokin: Our government hasn't become accustomed to the fact yet that Georgia, Azerbaijan, the Baltic states -- in fact, the entire former Soviet Union -- are now independent countries. Incidentally, I wrote my thesis on the development of dampers for oil pipelines.

SPIEGEL: Did this expertise come in handy in your book?

Sorokin: Yes, there is a sentence in it that reads: "We shut the damper, as the czar ordered."

SPIEGEL: How should German politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, behave in dealing with the Russian government?

Sorokin: The West should be even more vocal in insisting that the Russians respect human rights. All compromise aside, I ask myself whether Russia is moving in the direction of democracy. I don't believe it is! Bit by bit, Russia is slipping back into an authoritarian empire. The worst thing that can happen to us is indifference in the West -- that is, if it were interested in nothing but oil and gas. I am always surprised when I watch the weather report on German television. First they show the map of Europe and then the camera moves to the right. Then comes Kiev, then Moscow and then everything stops. This seems to be the West's view of us -- of a wild Russia that begins past Moscow, a place one prefers not to see. This is a big mistake. The West must pay closer attention.

SPIEGEL: Does the West understand Russia?

Sorokin: Yes and no. In Russia no one is surprised when an official accepts a bribe while at the same time portraying the state as some sacred entity to which the bourgeois should pay homage. This all sounds absurd to you. But for Russians it is completely normal.

SPIEGEL: There used to be a similar attitude toward the state in Germany. But that changed after the Nazi dictatorship. Nowadays the state plays a more modest role in society, just as it does in America.

Sorokin: That just happens to be democracy. The Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov once said: In a Democracy, portraits of a nation's leader should never exceed the size of a postage stamp. That won't happen so quickly in our country.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Sorokin, we thank you for this interview.

According to the most recent data published by the Kremlin (as reported last week on La Russophobe), the average wage for a Russian person is $100 per week or $400 per month or $4,800 per year.

Let's assume this data is correct, even though it's almost certainly an overstatement (because the Kremlin is run by a clan of professional liars who have every incentive to cook these numbers and make themselves look better). We know that Russia has a significant number of millionaires. What is the significance of the fact that it does on the average wage?

The significance is this: for every person with an income of $1,000,000 per year Russia must have over 200 people who only earn $100 per year ($8 per month or $2 per week, fifty times times less than the national average) in order for the national average to remain around $5,000 per year. {here's the ghastly math: 200 people earning $100 per year earn a total of $20,000 plus one person earning $1,000,000 equals $1,020,000 in total income divided by 201 people equals $5,100 per person per year on average}

It's been reported that Russia has roughly 90,000 millionaires today. Assuming that each of them has an income of $1,000,000 per year, that means Russia must have 18 million people earning just $100 per year in order to keep the national average at $4,800 per year. That is equivalent to the populations of Russia's seven largest cities (Moscow, Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novogorod, Yekaterinburg, Samara and Omsk) COMBINED. It's 12% of Russia's total population.

Now, the picture is probably not quite that bleak, because a "millionaire" might merely be defined as a person who has a million dollars of net worth, and such a person could conceivably earn well under $1 million per year. So let's say she earns only $100,000 per year. If Russia has 90,000 people with a net worth of $1 million each earning $100,000 per year, it would need 1.8 million people each earning just $100 per year ($2 per week) to keep the average for the group at $5,000. That's more than the total population of Russia's third-largest city, Novosibirsk.

And that's probably a very conservative estimate, because the 90,000 millionaires could include any number of billionaires and many people with annual incomes of far more than $100,000. It's quite safe to say that although Russia's national average wage may be $400 (it's probably lower) Russia has at least 2 million people "living" on less than $0.50 per work day in wages, or less than $0.06 per hour for an eight-hour workday.

That's to say nothing of the fact that being paid $400 for four forty-hour weeks (160 hours) works out to an average hourly wage of $2.50 per hour in Russia, which is one-third the U.S. minimum legal wage ($7.50 per hour in California, $7.15 in New York). Russia's minimum legal wage is 1,100 rubles per month as of May 1, 2006, or roughly $41 -- so even those earning $100 per month are getting more than twice the legal minimum of $0.25 per hour for a 160 hour week.

In other words, Russia has a vast, vast underclass of desperately poor people propping up a tiny overclass of millionaires, just exactly the way it did a century ago in 1907, a situation that triggered the crazed Bolshevik revolution that led to the killing of more Russians by Russians than by any foreign enemy. Russians have learned nothing from this. They're doing the same thing all over again.

And at the same time, Russia has exactly the same form of government, a KGB dictatorship, that it had in Soviet times (no local elections, no opposition political parties, no independent TV news, dissidents being jailed and murdered, ridiculous 70%+ approval ratings for the dictator, etc.), a situation that caused the USSR to implode and disapppear. Russians have learned nothing from that either. They're doing that same thing all over again, too.

When last we heard, Julia Svetlichnaya was threatening to sue the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten and the British newspaper Times of London for reporting that she had undisclosed connnections to the Kremlin which could draw her credibility into question when she claimed that Alexander Litvinenko was a blackmailer and a crazy person.

Has anybody heard of Julia actually filing suit, or taking any further action against either paper? Has she made any further public comment of any kind? It seems this has not occurred. For sure, she's ignored all the questions that La Russophobe asked her on the ZheZhe blog.

First we learned that Julia's associate James Heartfield was a communist extremist, then the BBC aired two different documentaries showing Litvinenko for who he really was, images totally at odds with what Julia wrote, and now blogger David McDuff offers the following comments from Litvinenko's widow about Ms. Svetlichnaya and her story:

What theory are you inclined to believe? Was it revenge for something in the past, or was it related to something he’d got mixed up in more recently? There was even a story in the press that he’d helped to make a “dirty bomb”, either for the Chechens or for Al Qaeda.

‘Well, it was dreadful when those insinuations began, when Yulia Svetlichnaya made those statements - I saw her at our house. Sasha invited her once, because she was writing a book. When she began to say that Sasha bombarded her with email messages - I mean, Sasha distributed messages to all his friends, sent them to hundreds of addresses. He believed that if you possessed information, you should share it, especially if it was something someone had written about Russia. And if you didn’t like it, then you could simply delete it, or start blocking it. But that statement, that interview about how he might have sold information and blackmailed businessmen, the FSB - that was totally absurd, it went against everything Sasha had ever done. Perhaps that was the real trouble - he was always open and frank. At the press conference he sat with his face uncovered, he didn’t wear dark glasses or a mask. If he wrote articles, he signed them with his own name, even if he didn’t need to. It was all on public record. As they once said, the system doesn’t forgive - and they will reach and punish anyone, in order to teach a lesson to others who might take it into their heads to speak openly. Anya Politkovskaya…. that was also a lesson, that it’s forbidden to write like that. Sasha was never a spy, he never sold out any interests. He was a regular employee of the FSB, with secrets of a completely different kind.”

Siberian Light points to the most recent installment of the Heritage Foundation's worldwide survey of ecnomic freedom, on which only 37 countries out of 157 under study had less economic freedom than Russia. Georgia ranks 35th, Kazakhstan ranks 75th, and Russia brings up the rear at 120th. La Russophobe has already documented a multitude of other examples of scientific evaluations of Russia by scholars and international organizations which demonstrate that the nation's economic, political and social systems are in a state of doomed retrograde. This is just one more fact to add to a mountain of undeniable evidence of total failure as Russia recreates a Soviet state.

Over the past few days the Kremlin has launched a shameless series of attacks on jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkhovsky, just as he was about to come up for parole. Reuters reports on the filing of new charges against him, which Forbes quoted Khodorkhosky attorney Yuri Schmidt as being "not simply absurd - they are insane. ... Whoever wrote them was either mad or drunk." What he means is that Khodorkhovsky has already been convicted of failing to pay taxes on this allegedly "laundered" money, and now he is being accused of the same "crime" again, but this time just for the mere act of laundering without regard to the consequences. In other words, he'll be tried twice for the same offense, and conceivably sentenced to different periods of incarceration.

Russian prosecutors on Monday brought new charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a move likely to bury the politically ambitious tycoon's hopes of release from jail before 2008 presidential elections. Khodorkovksy, the founder of the YUKOS oil major and once one of Russia's wealthiest and most powerful men , will now be tried on money-laundering charges, his lawyer said. He is already serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion. Money laundering is punishable in Russia by up to 10 years in prison. If the charges are proved in court, some of the new sentence could be added to Khodorkovsky's existing term. "One thing all lawyers agree on is that the new charges are absurd," Khodorkovsky's lawyer Karina Moskalenko said by telephone. "They are crazy from start to end." Khodorkovsky's business associate Platon Lebedev was also charged with similar offences on Monday. He too is serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion. The Russia's Prosecutor-General's office later released a statement confirming the new charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev Khodorkovsky's imprisonment has been widely seen as part of a Kremlin campaign to punish him for his involvement in politics, a taboo for tycoons under President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has denied any political motivation behind the trial, which ended in May 2005.

But the United State's State Department said the new charges raised fresh questions about Russia's commitment to democracy and free market economics. "The continued prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the dismantlement of Yukos raise serious questions about the rule of law in Russia," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at his daily briefing. Under Russian law, Khodorkovsky could apply for early release from October this year, when he will have served half of his sentence.

2008 ELECTION

A member of the Khodorkovsky legal team linked the new charges with the 2008 presidential election, when Putin must step down and a successor is to be chosen. "(The) important thing is the tremendous fear Russia has ... that Mr Khodorkovsky might either become politically active because he was due for a possible parole later this year or that he might finance political parties," said lawyer Robert Amsterdam. Analysts say Khodorkovsky, who made a fortune in murky privatisations in the early 1990s, is not popular among voters and has no chance of becoming a key figure in the presidential polls. But his political independence, backed by solid financial resources, could cause headaches for a Kremlin keen to ensure a smooth handover of power to a new leader who will continue Putin's policies. YUKOS, once Russia's biggest and most profitable oil company, was driven into bankruptcy by back-tax claims. The firm's receiver said last month that YUKOS owed its creditors 667.8 billion roubles ($25.33 billion), up from the previously announced 492 billion roubles. "The Prosecutor-General's office views as criminal practically all YUKOS activities, its creation, oil extraction and sales," Lebedev's lawyer Konstantin Rivkin said commenting on the new charges. "Every step, every sneeze of theirs ... has been found to be criminal." Rivkin said the charges against Lebedev, similar to ones filed against Khodorkovsky, were contained in a 148-page document. It was officially announced to the two in the city of Chita, close to the Chinese border, where they are being held.

The International Herald Tribune reports on the attack on his lawyers:

Lawyers for imprisoned Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner were briefly detained at a Moscow airport on Sunday, a day before new charges were expected to be filed against their clients, one of the attorneys said. Five lawyers for Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev were detained by police at Domodedovo airport in the evening as they were waiting to register for a flight to the Siberian city of Chita, where their clients are in custody, Yuri Shmidt told The Associated Press. Speaking on his mobile phone as he headed for the flight, Shmidt said that he and the others were held for about an hour without explanation, and then were released. Police could not immediately be reached for comment. Khodorkovsky, founder of the now bankrupt oil giant OAO Yukos, has been serving an eight-year sentence in a Siberian prison camp near the Chinese border after being convicted in 2004 on fraud and tax evasion charges following a politically charged trial. He and Lebedev were moved in December to a detention center in Chita, a regional seat, for questioning. Before his arrest and the parallel tax probe that put most of Yukos in state hands, Khodorkovsky was estimated by Forbes magazine to be the richest man in Russia, with a fortune worth US$15 billion (€11.5 billion). The trial and tax probe were widely seen as Kremlin-driven punishment for his challenges of President Vladimir Putin and his perceived political ambitions, as well as part of a drive to boost state control over the strategically important oil sector.

Russia's top prosecutor last month said new money laundering charges would be filed against Khodorkovsky and other former Yukos executives, raising the prospect of years more in prison. Shmidt said Saturday that prosecutors would file the new charges Monday, and had instructed Khodorkovsky's legal team to travel to Chita for the indictment. Khodorkovsky could face up to 15 years for money laundering. He has been in detention since October 2003 and could be eligible for parole later this year. Kremlin critics suggested the new charges were aimed at ensuring he remains in prison and presents no political threat. Prison terms on separate charges are not usually served consecutively in Russia; convicts are jailed for the longest sentence. Prosecutors have not commented on the substance of the new charges. According to Shmidt, they allege Khodorkovsky was involved in laundering oil revenues defrauded from Yukos through his Open Russia foundation. Shmidt said he did not know why the lawyers were detained, but that police had hinted of suspicions that they possessed illegal documents. Lawyers and others linked to Khodorkovsky and Yukos have faced harassment from the authorities.

Press reports indicate that the Kremlin has stated the orange/yellow, oily, smelly snow that recently fell in Russia is not toxic.

The question is: If the snow WERE toxic, would the Kremlin admit it?

As if.

So then, what's the point of asking?

The Wall Street Journal identifies six candidates for the post of "President" of Russia in 2008. Who do you think is the best alternative from their slate? Vote below:

Who should succeed Vladmir Putin as "President" of Russia in 2008?
	Dmitry Medvedev
	Sergei Ivanov
	Mikhail Fradkov
	Vladimir Yakunin
	Mikhail Kasyanov
	Garry Kasparov
Free polls from Pollhost.com

While considering how to mark your ballot, consider this from the Washington Post on how the Kremlin is seizing control of even the most seemingly mundane aspects of the mass media to manipulate the public for its own crass purposes:

Every Sunday morning, two favorites of President Vladimir Putin play prominent supporting roles on a television game show called "Happy Bus." In sunny clips spliced into the show's airtime, Dmitri Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov hand out awards and urge young people in general to live healthy lives. Ostensibly, the two men have perfectly straightforward reasons for appearing on the show: Each week, one team of contestants is sponsored by Gazprom, the state-controlled energy giant chaired by Medvedev. The opposing team is sponsored by the New Generation Foundation, headed by Ivanov, who is also defense minister.

But "Happy Bus" is widely viewed here as proof of the Kremlin's ability to commandeer the airwaves -- even the most trifling show -- to aid Putin in anointing a successor. By most accounts, the president has narrowed his choice to Medvedev or Ivanov, and over the last year each man's image, particularly Medvedev's, has been rigorously burnished. "Happy Bus" debuted in May on NTV, a network owned by a Gazprom subsidiary.

With the centralization of power in the Kremlin, Russian politics has become ever more tightly scripted, and genuine electoral competition has withered. Whoever turns out to be Putin's nominee will dominate television and almost certainly ride unimpeded through the presidential elections in early 2008, analysts said. "Putin, Medvedev and Ivanov are the three main heroes, the three main characters on the news," said Anna Kachkayeva, a professor of broadcast journalism at Moscow State University. "It's a command from the administration." Producers at Russian television stations, including the makers of "Happy Bus," declined to discuss coverage of Ivanov and Medvedev.

In presidential politics, Russia has an electoral college of one -- Putin. When Vladimir Ustinov, the former prosecutor general and a perceived favorite of the security services, started making some very president-in-waiting noises last year, Putin fired him. He was rehired as justice minister, a much less influential position. Putin himself denies he is the decider. "There will be no successors. There will be candidates for the post of president of Russia," he said Thursday at his annual news conference, which this year ran to three hours and 30 minutes and was attended by about 1,200 journalists. "I reserve the right to express my preference. But I will only do it once the election campaign begins."

Since the reelection of Boris Yeltsin in 1996, when a group of media tycoons threw the full weight of their television stations behind his faltering candidacy and demonized his Communist opponent, tight management of broadcast journalism has been a critical instrument in Russian presidential elections, including Putin's two campaigns. But unlike in 1996, when the power of television was wielded by wealthy businessmen, today those media assets are controlled by the state or companies loyal to the Kremlin.

Ivanov, 54, has long been well known both at home and abroad as minister of defense. Medvedev, 41, was an obscure figure until 15 months ago. In November 2005, Medvedev and Ivanov were simultaneously made first deputy prime ministers, in addition to their other titles. Since then, Medvedev's public image, down to his haircut (shorter and more stylish), weight (he's clearly lost a few pounds) and choice of clothes (more casual), has been carefully refashioned. The makeover has become the talk of the town. The wooden, cautious and loyal official of a year ago has become a self-confident and assertive politician tinged with some very Putinesque characteristics -- in particular, his occasionally brusque scoldings, sometimes directed at other ministers, delivered with the colloquial phrases and tightly coiled physicality that many Russians love in their president.

Speaking in November about improving health care and access to drugs, Medvedev said: "There are swindlers who manufacture pharmaceuticals. Then there are other swindlers who sell those pharmaceuticals, and there are still other swindlers who act as intermediaries using state funds. The situation in the pharmaceutical industry is disgusting."

Medvedev, who is married and has one child, is a lawyer by training and first worked with Putin in the city administration of St. Petersburg in the 1990s. Putin brought him to the Kremlin, where he became chief of staff in the presidential administration. He is regarded as a relatively liberal counterweight to the staffers around Putin who served in the security services. Medvedev has no background in the KGB or its successor agencies.

He never publicly criticizes Putin, however. And he defends Gazprom, where the Kremlin placed him in charge in 2002, from charges that it is secretive, bloated and inefficient, and is used by the state as a political weapon to punish neighboring countries. On television recently, he called Gazprom a "crucial Russian company" and noted that its capitalization has jumped from $10 billion to $225 billion under state control.

Increasingly, Medvedev speaks of his modest background. "Just like everyone else, I lived in the kinds of apartments that used to be given to Soviet citizens, first a communal one and later a cramped apartment in St. Petersburg," he said in a television interview in November. "And like everyone else, I went, and still go, to a polyclinic," the state-run outpatient facilities that many Russians avoid. For all the campaign-style insights he offers into his background, Medvedev remains studiously ambiguous about his ambitions. "I find it distressing that I have been made a participant in some sort of race," he said. Nonetheless, he is now the second-most-popular politician in Russia after Putin, according to opinion polls and analysts. In a poll conducted in November by the independent Levada Center, 38 percent of respondents said they would vote for Medvedev for president, making him the leading candidate. Ivanov trailed with 23 percent. Little more than a year ago, Medvedev's rating was barely above zero.

While image-building is not unique to Russia, and Medvedev's new position in government ensured he would get more news coverage, the almost universally friendly treatment he has received on Russian television has been striking. Among 2,064 news stories on Medvedev in 2006, there was not a single negative report on the news broadcasts of six television channels, including the three major national stations, according to a survey by Medialogia, an analytical group in Moscow. There were 17 negative reports on Ivanov, most of them centered on a brutal hazing incident in the military to which he was slow to respond, according to Medialogia.

Other potential candidates are not treated so kindly. In the same period, there was not a single positive report on Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister and Putin critic who has said he may seek the presidency. Of the 40 stories in which Kasyanov was the main subject, 60 percent were negative and the balance neutral, according to Medialogia statistics. The Kremlin declined a request to allow a Washington Post reporter to accompany Medvedev on a typical daily event; he is normally covered by a small pool of reporters.

Last week was typical. Three of the national channels, ORT, RTR and NTV, ran expansive reports Wednesday night on a meeting chaired by Medvedev in which he talked about raising the birthrate and other projects. Medvedev held up a certificate that will guarantee cash payments to women who have a second child, and his remarks were spliced with images of cooing babies in maternity wards.

No critic of the management of the so-called National Projects was quoted on any of those news reports. The Kremlin declined a request to allow a Washington Post reporter to accompany Medvedev on a typical daily event; he is normally covered by a small pool of reporters.

"The National Projects are an imitation of activity," Ivan Melnikov, deputy chairman of the Communist Party, said in parliament last month. "Upbeat TV pictures that we see practically every day have nothing to do with the real state of things."

"He is being built up, and he is changing himself," said Igor Bunin, head of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow, referring to Medvedev. "The first task was to get people to recognize him. . . . The next task was to associate him with most pleasant things from the state. He cuts all the ribbons now. "At the beginning, he was soft, like a teddy bear, but now he seems much stronger. Like Putin, he can summon up some thunder and lightning when he criticizes incompetent officials." Bunin added, "There may be no final decision, but he is candidate number one, with Ivanov in reserve."

A reader points out the following story from Radio Free Europe in which the duplicity of Kremlin-controlled Russian media outlets is exposed:

Russia: Misprint Or Provocation?

By Victor Yasmann

A reader offers the following fascinating tale of Russian corporate intrigue from the Ukraine:

It seems that Russia and Norway are locked in a battle for control of a Ukrainian telecommunciations company called Kyivstar GSM. In 2004, a Russian-controlled company called Storm LLC and a Norwegian-controlled company called Telenor Mobile Communications AS established Kyivstar as a joint venture, and signed a shareholders agreement (this followed about six years of negotiations). Storm was the proxy of the Russia-controlled firm Altimo Holdings & Investment Ltd., the Russian control being funneled through a Cyprus proxy company known as Hardlake and a minority shareholding company called Alpren. They soon began to fight over control (basically, the Russian side wanted to seize it), and proceeded to arbiration in New York as per the terms of the 2004 agreement (Telenor insisted on this provision because it feared the reliability of the Ukrainian courts and the motivations of its Russian partner, which turned out to be quite a good idea).

Despite entering into arbitration, Storm immediately began to claim that the arbitration clause was not binding (likely as soon as it saw that it had little chance of winning in the American court). It claimed that its General Director, one Valeriy Nilov, was not authorized to sign the arbitration agreement with Telenor and tried to disavow it. Shortly after the arbitration began, Alpren filed a lawsuit in Urkaine seeking to have the arbitration agreement declared invalid. In a classic Russian move, it "forgot" to tell either Telenor or the New York arbitrators that it had done so until the Ukrainian court had ruled in its favor. It then informed the New York arbitrators of the results, but they valiantly refused to stop their activities and Storm filed suit in a New York state court to block the arbitration from going forward based on the Ukrainian court's order. Telenor moved the case to federal court where it convinced the judge to side with Norway.

On December 15th of last year, the federal judge determined that the Ukrainian court proceeding "had a number of curious features." First of all, though a representative of Storm appeared and claimed to oppose the proceedings because it was in arbitration, the whole thing only lasted ten minutes. Then, Storm's representative in the proceeding was not only not a lawyer, he was an Altimo executive. This caused the federal judge to decide that Storm's opposition may have been "somewhat perfunctory." In other words, it was a classic Russian tour-de-force. Therefore, though the Russian companies were represented by expensive lawyers from the top American firm of Cravath Swaine & Moore, the federal judge nullified the Ukrainian proceedings and ordered the arbitration to go forward.

The Economist confirms suspicions that Russia is losing control over its nukes and couldn't care less (either that, or it's intentionally abusing its nukes in concerted effort to undermine the West):

A CHANCE, you might think, for Russia to show the co-operation that its president, Vladimir Putin, regularly promises in clamping down on the global traffic in dangerous nuclear materials. Yet the release last week of new titbits about a Georgian sting operation which reportedly netted just short of 80 grams of highly-enriched weapons-useable uranium, a Russian citizen from Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia (a part of Russia) and several Georgian accomplices—was a “provocation”, thundered Russia's foreign minister.

The sting was first reported in February last year, and Russia loathes Georgia. But there is more to the Kremlin's nuclear frostiness. While it continues to co-operate with America in securing dangerous nuclear materials around the world—most recently airlifting back to Russia a whopping 286 kilos of highly-enriched uranium fuel from a research reactor in Dresden in former East Germany—Russian officialdom's souring mood at home augurs ill.

Russia is not the only country with a nuclear-smuggling habit. Excluding the Georgian sting operation, a database maintained by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear guardian, has clocked 16 confirmed cases worldwide since 1993 where highly-enriched uranium or plutonium (both, in the right form, can be used as the fissile core of a nuclear weapon) has been lost, stolen or seized from would-be traffickers, mostly in Europe and Russia. But not all countries bother to report: China, India and Pakistan have been among the 95 contributors to the list only since last year. Coverage is most patchy in the least secure parts of the world, including Africa and the Middle East.

The Georgian case is alarming. The uranium being hawked was enriched to about 90%, and intended for weapons use (fuel for nuclear-power reactors is typically enriched to 5% or less; most research reactors run on more highly-enriched stuff, meaning 20% or more). Georgian officials say their prisoner revealed that his bagful came from an as yet undiscovered stash of 2-3kg; not enough for a weapon—that takes up to 25kg—but still a threat.

This case uncannily resembles one in 2003, when 170 grams of similar material was seized on the Georgian-Armenian border; its Armenian smuggler said he had picked it up in Vladikavkaz too, though tests showed the material had originated at a Russian nuclear site in Novosibirsk.

Though the quantities of weapons-grade material seized by police are usually quite small, the consequences of any falling into terrorist hands are huge. Al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, has called the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction a “religious duty”. Some experts think building a bomb is beyond the capabilities of such a group; others don't. But a “dirty bomb”, made by packing conventional explosives around the nuclear waste and other radioactive materials that make up most of the lost or stolen material reported to the IAEA, would be horribly disruptive.

And reported cases may hardly be the half of it. Those trying to find a buyer are more likely to get caught; those who already have one can avoid police stings.

Nor is al-Qaeda the only potential customer. Chechen rebels who attacked a Moscow theatre in 2002 had first considered an assault on a nuclear research reactor at the nearby Kurchatov Institute. Among other terrorist mischief in Russia, an article in the September 2006 issue of the Annals of the American Academy lists the casing of nuclear reactors, monitoring the trains that transport Russia's nuclear weapons and even a plan to hijack a nuclear submarine.

At a summit in Bratislava in 2005, the Russian and American presidents agreed to speed a global effort to secure all dangerous nuclear materials. This included repatriating fresh and spent fuel from the more than 100 nuclear research reactors in 40 countries that Russia and America between them supplied during the cold war. Some of these are being converted to run on less dangerous low-enriched uranium. Meanwhile, America's National Nuclear Security Administration is beefing up reactor security in those ill-governed places where it consists of poorly paid guards and flimsy locks.

Russia's concerns about terrorism are one incentive to fix its nuclear problems. Another is huge dollops of American cash. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, America has helped dismantle thousands of surplus nuclear warheads, consolidate a vast archipelago of nuclear materials, and find jobs for otherwise unemployed Russian weapons scientists.

The window for such co-operation is closing, says Laura Holgate of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an independent outfit that has paid for the return of some Russian reactor fuel from abroad. Much of the easier work in Russia has been done. But officials there still reject help at their most sensitive nuclear sites, where the bulk of the most dangerous materials are kept. Without America looking over its shoulder, says Ms Holgate, it is unclear that Russia will be so conscientious in maintaining security and prosecuting wrongdoers. And if, as Georgia found, it resents being told its nuclear controls aren't perfect, there won't be much outsiders can do to help anyway.

Well, two top-ten Russian ladies made it to the semi-finals of the ATP tour event in Tokyo Japan last week. Guess how many of them made it to the finals?

Yup, zero.

World #8 Elena Dementieva, the serveless wonder, was destroyed in easy straight sets by Martina Hingus, who retired from tennis and is now making a comeback, slicing through the "top ten" Russians like a hot Swiss Army knife through butter.

And world #1 Maria Sharapova (who is only #3 on the 2007 rankings, and #1 over the past 365 days because the real #1, Justine Henin-Hardenne, didn't play the Austrialian Open)? She was blown off the court in the first set by Ana Ivanovic of Serbia, a player not even ranked in the world's top 15. Sharapova managed to take only 1 game from Ivanovic in the first set and then quit after the first game of the second, crying about an alleged injury. Sharapova barely managed to squeak by hometown girl Ai Sugiyama in the quarters, losing the first set to a Japanese player not ranked in the world's top 25 (in the match previous, Sugiyama had defeated Russian Maria Kirilenko).

So much for the best-laid plans of Shamapova. Only two other top-ten players -- Hingus and the woeful Dementieva -- entered the Tokyo draw, so Sharapova undoubtedly thought she would have easy pickings in the land of the rising sun. Such a pity the scheme didn't work out. Well, better luck next time, Maria.

In a truly breathtaking display of hypocrisy, Maria tried to blame her "injury" on having to play two tournaments, Tokyo and Australia, back-to-back. But the only reason she was playing Tokyo was to collect a bunch of essentially free ratings points against also-ran competition. Nobody forced her to play Tokyo. That's to say nothing of the pathetic spectacle of a so-called professional "athlete" whining and crying about it being "too hard" to put forth all that work (just as Maria tried to blame her abysmal first-round performance at the Aussie Open on the weather).

LR retired the Sunday Funnies feature after the cowardly execution of Anna Politkovskaya by the Kremlin. However, she's now discovered such a talented Russian cartoonist that she feels it's appropriate to feature his work today. She thinks Anna would approve. Therefore, she offers four of his cartoons below. Another was already featured in the middle of last week, in case you missed it.

The letters inside the snake spell out: F-R-E-E-D-O-M.

Source: Ellustrator.