Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

On Sublime Oblivion Anatoly Karlin notes that the disgraced former mayor of Moscow , Yuri Luzhkov, has been granted permission to enter Britain.  Contrary to some reports though, he has not yet received a residence permit for the UK. Austria and Latvia have already rejected Luzhkov’s requests to live within their borders.  His family are currently in Britain and his daughters are studying at a university in London. All sorts of Russian dissidents, out of favour oligarchs and even terrorists have chosen to make these shores their home, over the past ten years.  Boris Berezovsky, the exiled tycoon who aspires to overthrow Russia’s government by force, and the Chechen rebel Akhmed Zakayev are two of the more prominent examples. In a recent Conservative Home article , Carl Thomson revealed that 150 extradition requests by Moscow had been rejected by the UK since 2001.  Partly the statistic is explained by links, cultural and economic, which exist between the Russian elite and Britai

The savage beating of Oleg Kashin hit the headlines in Britain yesterday, as Russian journalists gathered to show solidarity for their colleague in Moscow.  Reporting news can be a dangerous business in Russia and Kashin is just the latest in a succession of cases of intimidation, violence and even murder. The thirty year old was beaten into a coma - he suffered two broken legs, mangled fingers and serious damage to the skull.  Notably, reports of the incident suggest that none of his personal belongings were taken.  The attackers did a methodical, brutish and highly effective job of silencing the journalist. The easy response to such incidents is to allege that the Kremlin organises punitive beatings (and worse) for dissenting investigative journalists.  That’s a gross simplification.  A complex blend of corruption, vested interests, youthful nationalism and ’legal nihilism’, can underlie such attacks. Kashin, it appears, does not fit the stereotypical template of a campaigning

Further evidence of Dmitry Medvedev’s growing assertiveness in the cause of reform. After a public spat, Yuri Luzhkov, the demotic mayor who ran Moscow like a private fiefdom, has been dismissed by the Russian president. Luzhkov, a Yeltsin functionary and then a fixture of United Russia who had held his position since 1992, clashed with Medvedev when the Kremlin cancelled a road building project, due to objections by environmental campaigners. Against a powerful enemy, often portrayed as untouchable, the President showed steely determination. In recent weeks Russian state TV shone a spotlight on the corrupt kleptocracy which Luzhkov operated in Moscow, in order to enrich his own family. Despite clear signals from the Kremlin that his reign was nearing its end, the mayor clung on to the bitter end and refused to jump. Medvedev held his nerve and applied a much needed shove. The interesting aspect of this dismissal is that Luzhkov had made some very dismissive comments about t