Posts matching tags 'putin'
2007/4/23
Everyone complains about the procession of doom and gloom in the news, but only the Russians are doing something about it. After a bank loyal to Russia's President Vladimir Putin bought out Russia's largest independent radio news network, they decreed that at least 50% of reports about Russia must be "positive".
As well as protecting the Russian people from doom and gloom, they are also committed to guarding them from the pernicious influence of unapproved politicians, all mention of whom has been banned.
(via /.) ¶ [no comments]
2006/11/19
A former KGB colonel and critic of the Russian government resident in Britain appears to have been poisoned with thallium, after investigating the recent murder of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya (another critic of the Putin government). Alexander Litvinenko, who was granted political asylum in Britain in 2001 and was reportedly a British citizen, had made a number of claims about the Putin government, including that the Russian security services orchestrated a catastrophic terrorist attack on Russian soil to create a pretext for an offensive in Chechnya. Could the Russian security services once again be assassinating troublemakers abroad, as the KGB and their Warsaw Pact allies did during the Cold War?