This is an excellent documentary about modern day Russia under Vladimir Putin.

It’s phony election time again in Russia. That means it’s time to start throwing people in jail and intimidating those who would demand an actual election rather than a sham.

Russia launched an investigation on Thursday into the country’s chief independent election watchdog, in what the group described as the culmination of a state-sponsored campaign to silence the monitor just three days before parliamentary polls.

Moscow city prosecutors said in a statement the investigation followed a complaint filed by lawmakers objecting to watchdog Golos’s foreign financing and calling for it to end vote monitoring.

The complaint echoed Vladimir Putin’s speech on Sunday at his United Russia party congress, where he accused foreigners of funding his political opponents in what reminded some of the anti-Western rhetoric that marked his 2000-08 presidency.

This is what you have to understand about Russia. The way Vladimir Putin retains power is by convincing Russians that they are somehow under siege from “foreign powers” and therefore they need a leader with a firm hand like him. The funniest part is how Putin complains about “political opponents.” Who? Any real political opponents he threw in prison years ago. I don’t know how anyone in Russia can watch the so-called upcoming “elections” and keep a straight face. Vladimir Putin has decreed that he will be the next president of Russia. Just like he decreed that Dmitry Medvedev would replace him as president last time. And how he decreed that he would be the Prime Minister after installing Medvedev. And how he decreed just the other day that Medvedev will replace him as Prime Minister. Why bother with the sham elections?

What’s interesting about Russia is that most Russians don’t really seem to mind living without basic freedoms like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or a free press. They like Putin. They don’t mind living in a country where the police moonlight as contract killers for organized crime. They don’t mind having a government run by a bunch of gangsters. Imagine living in a country where journalists are routinely murdered for criticizing the government. That is the reality in modern day Russia. But the people don’t seem to care.  All I can say is, good luck with that.

Insights into the life and beliefs of Russian Prime Minister (and soon to be President for the second time) Vladimir Putin. One of the most fascinating and revealing stories about Putin comes from George W. Bush’s book, “Decision Points.” He says when Putin spent the weekend at his ranch in Crawford he was quite relaxed and they discussed many things. Putin asked Bush how he and other US presidents control the media. What does he do when they write or say things The White House doesn’t like? Bush told him the media is free to say and write anything they want. The White House has no control over the media and never will. Putin didn’t believe him and thought he was joking. No matter how many ways he explained it, Putin refused to believe him. The idea of real freedom is an alien concept to a man like Putin. That one story tells you a lot about Vladimir Putin.

This article titled “Putin’s populist speech hints at Kremlin return” was written by Miriam Elder in Moscow, for The Guardian on Friday 23rd September 2011 17.15 UTC

Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the government should be more responsive to people’s concerns, at a party congress that could indicate whether he plans to return to the Kremlin next year.

Addressing members of the ruling United Russia party, the prime minister avoided the tough talk for which he has become known, focusing instead on issues close to the country’s increasingly dissatisfied populace. He vowed wages would be raised to an average 24,000 roubles (£480) a month by the year’s end. He promised better education and a renewed focus on pensioners, and acknowledged the problems of corruption and excessive bureaucracy.

Putin also mentioned the work of the country’s struggling human rights community – but implied the government should take over. “There is a category of people who criticise me,” Putin said, saying they “belong to the so-called human rights defender category”.

“They are not many but they, as a rule, bring attention to those problems that seem to neither affect nor relate to people’s everyday life,” he said. “But without solving these problems, society will not develop, it won’t feel complete.” It was the government’s job, he said, to address those problems.

The two-day United Russia congress may provide hints as to who will become Russia’s next president, a post widely expected to be taken back by Putin, who is also the leader – though not a member – of the party. An announcement could come on Saturday, when both Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the current president, are due to address a rally of 10,000 people in the Luzhniki football stadium.

The recent increase in Putin’s publicity stunts – from riding a Harley Davidson to “discovering” ancient Greek urns while diving – is among the factors being taken as a sign he plans to return to the presidency.

The congress’s main task is to present a list of candidates for December’s parliamentary vote. The person chosen to head the list could be a sign of who the presidential candidate will be.

The overwhelming focus of Putin’s address, and his responses to questions from deputies, focused on economic issues, which rank at the top of voter concerns. The “most fundamental rights of citizens”, he said, were “salary, vacation, healthcare and education”.

Putin also took his traditional shots at the west, saying Russia’s justice system was “probably better” than that of the United States and disparaging the protests that have erupted in financially stricken parts of Europe.

In Russia, he said, “everything we do is done for the sake of the people – or, at least, that’s how it should be”.

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This article titled “Mikhail Gorbachev lambasts Vladimir Putin’s ‘sham’ democracy” was written by Miriam Elder in Moscow, for The Guardian on Monday 21st February 2011 18.56 UTC

Russia under prime minister Vladimir Putin is a sham democracy, Mikhail Gorbachev has said in his harshest criticism yet of the ruling regime.

“We have everything – a parliament, courts, a president, a prime minister and so on. But it’s more of an imitation,” the last president of the Soviet Union said.

Gorbachev, who oversaw the softening of the communist system and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, has become increasingly critical of the modern Russian state, accusing its leaders of rolling back the democratic reforms of the 1990s.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of his 80th birthday, Gorbachev criticised Putin for manipulating elections.

In response to the prime minister and former president’s comments that he and his protégé, President Dmitry Medvedev, would decide between them who would run for office in March 2012, Gorbachev said: “It’s not Putin’s business. It must be decided by the nation in elections.”

He called Putin’s statements a sign of “incredible conceit”.

Asked how he thought the regime approached human rights, Gorbachev said: “There’s a problem there. It’s a sign of the state of our democracy.” He was echoing statements made by Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, during a visit to Russia last week.

Gorbachev said United Russia, the ruling party founded with the sole goal of supporting Putin’s leadership, was a throwback.

“United Russia reminds me of the worst copy of the Communist party,” he said. “We have institutions but they don’t work. We have laws but they must be enforced.”

Its stranglehold over political life would eventually backfire. “The monopoly ends in rotting and hampers the development of democratic processes.”

Gobachev said he did not like how Putin and Medvedev were behaving. “It’s a shame that our modern leaders aren’t very modern,” he said.

Gorbachev now runs a charity foundation that will hold a gala at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 30 March to mark his birthday. He co-owns the country’s leading opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.

Held up in the west as a hero for his softening of the Soviet system and eventual acceptance of its fall, Gorbachev remains widely despised inside Russia, where he is seen as a traitor who allowed the empire to crumble and ushered in a period of great uncertainty. Over the years he has aligned himself with the cause of Russia’s sidelined liberals.

On Monday, Gorbachev called the regime’s campaign against jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky politically motivated. “Politics shouldn’t have been involved in [the case], but they were,” he said.

He noted the case of Natalya Vasilieva, a court clerk who worked on the Khodorkovsky trial and broke ranks to publicly announce that the judge had been pressured throughout and had a verdict and sentence pushed on him.

“I fully believe her,” Gorbachev said. “People can’t stand it anymore – she saw what was happening with her own eyes.”

• This article was amended on 22 February 2011 to restore missing text in the third paragraph.

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This article titled “Mikhail Khodorkovsky verdict ordered from above, claims judge’s assistant” was written by Miriam Elder in Moscow, for The Guardian on Monday 14th February 2011 20.02 UTC

The guilty verdict against the oil tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky was ordered from above and written by a judge who did not try the case, a Russian court official who worked on the recent trial has said.

Natalya Vasilyeva, in an interview she claimed was certain to spell the end of her career, said: “I can say that all of legal society understands perfectly well that this is a made-to-order case, a made-to-order trial.”

Vasilyeva was assistant to Viktor Danilkin, the judge who in December found Khodorkovsky guilty of theft and money laundering in the second case against the billionaire, who has been in jail on fraud charges since 2003.

The tycoon’s lawyers and supporters have repeatedly denounced the trial as a farce, alleging that Danilkin – who extended the prison sentence until 2017 – had been put under pressure by the Kremlin.

Vasilyeva’s interview – published in Gazeta.ru, a respected liberal online news portal, and shown on TV Rain, a cable channel said to be close to the liberal circle around President Dmitry Medvedev – marks the first time someone from the court that tried the case has spoken out against the trial.

Vasilyeva said Danilkin was required to seek approval for every step he made during the 20-month trial with the Moscow city court. That included the writing of the verdict, which was initially set to be handed down on 15 December.

“Danilkin began to write the verdict,” Vasilyeva said. “I suspect that what was in the verdict didn’t suit the higher authorities. And that’s why he got a different sentence, which he then had to read out.”

“That the sentence was brought from the Moscow city court, I know for absolute certain,” she added.

The reading of the verdict was delayed until 27 December so higher court authorities could write the new verdict, she said.

Danilkin was summoned to the Moscow city court on 25 December and when he returned to his courthouse looked “very stressed,” Vasilieva said, citing people who saw him that day. “He might have been physically ill and was clearly very depressed,” she said, noting he had earlier shown signs of developing heart trouble.

She said Danilkin had become a changed man after the reading of the verdict. “He’s become withdrawn, he’s depressed and just sad.”

Shortly after the interview was released, Danilkin described its contents as slander.

“I firmly believe that Natalya Vasilyeva’s statement was no more than libel which can be refuted in an order established by the law,” the judge told the state news agency, ITAR-Tass.

Anna Usachyova, a spokeswoman for the Moscow city court, said Vasilyeva had resigned before giving the interview and questioned her motives. “Natalya Vasilieva’s statement is a provocation. It’s clear straight away that the girl is unfamiliar with the procedural foundations of the law,” Usachyova told RIA-Novosti, another state-run news agency. “Judge Danilkin heard the case for two years and could only write the verdict himself.”

Vasilyeva said she was certain she would be fired after coming forward, and also said she feared for the fate of the judge. Explaining why she chose to speak out, she said it was because she was disillusioned. “I wanted to become a judge,” she said. “But when I saw its internal workings, how everything happens, then the fairytale that the judge is answerable only to the law and nothing else melted away.

“I wanted people to understand that a lot of what is told to them is cleaned up and fixed up and doesn’t always correspond to reality.”

Critics of the Kremlin have held up the case against Khodorkovsky as a prime example of Russia’s corrupt legal system. Medvedev, a former lawyer, has vowed to reform it but has taken few concrete steps to do so.

Khodorkovsky’s supporters insist the case against him was orchestrated by Vladimir Putin, now prime minister. They have appealed the latest verdict. State prosecutors have hinted that they might seek a third set of charges against Khodorkovsky, which would extend his sentence even further.

Yet in recent weeks, Medvedev has ordered his human rights council, an advisory body, to look into several high-profile cases, including the one against the jailed oil tycoon.

Some analysts have posited a split between the circles surrounding Medvedev and Putin as Russia gears up for a presidential election early next year.

Yury Schmidt, one of Khodorkovsky’s lawyers, welcomed the interview. “This is a woman speaking the truth,” he said. “I don’t see any other reasons for it.”

Khodorkovsky has been in jail on fraud charges since 2003.

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The “trial” of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is finally waking Russian citizens up to the fact that their country is run by gangsters. Rule of law does not exist. Russia’s kangaroo courts are a place where Putin can settle political scores and lock up real and imagined opponents.

The collapse of the Soviet Union did not bring the kind of freedom and democracy that we in the West had hoped for. Instead, it brought about the worst kind of crony capitalism. Crony capitalism centrally controlled by an organized crime syndicate masquerading as a government. A crime syndicate led by former KGB henchman and FSB stooge Vladimir Putin. A crime syndicate that murders journalists, shuts down newspapers, beats and arrests protesters, uses propaganda against its citizens, uses the judiciary as a political weapon, and allows corruption at every level of government from policeman to prime minister.

The fact that we in the West continue to wine and dine Putin and treat him like he deserves a place at the table is disgusting. He’s a thug. Russia should face sanctions and be a pariah in the international community.

This article titled “Khodorkovsky found guilty as protests mount against Putin and ‘charade’ trial” was written by Tom Parfitt in Moscow, for The Guardian on Monday 27th December 2010 20.13 UTC

The fate of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was left hanging in the balance today after a court in Moscow found him guilty of theft and money laundering in a politically tinged trial that is seen as a weathervane for Russia’s future course.

Viktor Danilkin, the trial judge, told the packed court that Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, 54, “carried out the embezzlement of property entrusted to the defendants”.

But the trial remains delicately poised because Danilkin will not sentence until he finishes reading his full 250-page verdict, which could take several days.

Opposing factions in the Kremlin are said to be in dispute over how much longer the businessman, who has already spend seven years in jail on earlier fraud charges, should stay behind bars.

Khodorkovsky, wearing a scuffed black jacket, and Lebedev, in a white tracksuit top, whispered to each other inside the enclosed dock and ignored the judge as he said the court had established their guilt.

Hundreds of protesters outside the court in the Khamovniki district of southern Moscow shouted “freedom” and “Russia without Putin”. Police arrested about 20 people, dragging them out of the crowd and crushing their placards.

Speaking during a recess, Khodorkovsky’s lead lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, said: “The trial was a charade of justice, the charges were absolutely false, but I fear the sentencing will be very real.”

Yury Shmidt, another lawyer, said Danilkin was “not talking, but droning” through his verdict.

Supporters of Khodorkovsky, who part-owned the Yukos oil company and was once Russia’s richest man, say the Kremlin controls the court system and singled him out for punishment because he funded opposition politicians.

The oligarch has been in prison since he was seized by special forces as his plane landed to refuel on a Siberian runway in 2003. A court sentenced him and Lebedev to eight years in prison two years later, but a trial on fresh charges of embezzling bn (£16bn) of oil began last year.

Analysts say the length of the sentence, which is expected this week or in early January, will show which of two Kremlin clans – the siloviki (security and military veterans) associated with Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, and the liberals grouped mainly around the president, Dmitry Medvedev – has gained supremacy in the country.

Prosecutors want the men to stay in prison until 2017, and Putin said this month that “a thief should be in jail” when he was asked about the trial. Medvedev, however, has distanced himself from the case and said on Friday that “neither the president nor any other official in public service have the right to express their stance on this before the verdict is delivered.”

The friction over Khodorkovsky channels into a wider debate over which man from Russia’s “ruling tandem” will stand for the presidency in 2012. US diplomats believe Medvedev is “Robin to Putin’s Batman” and Putin will try to get back the post he held from 2000 to 2008, according to documents disclosed by WikiLeaks earlier this month. But Medvedev has given muted signals that he’d like to stay in the job.

Andrei Illarionov, a former economic adviser to Putin, told the Guardian outside the court that the liberal camp was unlikely to prevail.

“This prosecution is the result of a coup,” he said. “In 2003, the siloviki became afraid that Khodorkovsky and the political forces surrounding him were becoming too powerful, so they decided to arrest him. These people are still dominant in the country and for them it would be a defeat if Khodorkovsky was released.”

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former MP and opposition politician who was also outside the court, said: “There has been open pressure on the judge from Putin who consistently expresses his hatred for Khodorkovsky and says publicly that he is guilty of theft.”

Ryzhkov added: “I believe they want to keep him in prison for another three or four years at least, so he is not released until well after the next presidential elections, in 2012.” He dismissed suggestions that Medvedev might ensure a softer sentence. “There is never any action behind Medvedev’s rhetoric,” he said.

One protester among the crowd opposite the court was Vladimir Yurovsky, 54, the manager of a small Moscow financial services company.

“I’ve seen the indictments and they are absurd,” he said, adding. “I once worked for a company that competed with Khodorkovsky’s business and he took away our clients. But it was done in a gentlemanly way that only demanded respect.”

The decision comes as leaked US embassy cables reveal that US diplomats believe attempts by the Russian government to demonstrate due process in the trial are “lipstick on a political pig”.

Despite the protests, many Russians are indifferent to Khodorkovsy’s fate, believing that oligarchs who grew rich in the turbulent 1990s should also be prosecuted.

“Given such significant international implications to the case, and given Khodorkovsky’s former stature, one might expect a large amount of focus on the Yukos case inside Russia,” noted a US diplomat in Moscow last year, according to the WikiLeaks documents. “However, most Russians continue to pay scant attention.”

The trial resumes tomorrow.

Profile

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was one of the most successful of the first wave of Russian oligarchs, politically connected businessmen who made good in the chaotic decade after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Born in Moscow in 1963, he was active as a student in the Communist youth movement, using his ties to devise a scheme to turn government subsidies into hard cash. He also sold imported computers.

In 1988, he set up Menatep, a commercial bank he later used to acquire control of the Yukos oil company. Yukos developed rapidly after major investment and Khodorkovsky turned it into a western-style quoted company. But he fell out of favour with Vladimir Putin, then president, when he began complaining about corruption, promoting private oil pipelines and funding opposition politicians. He was arrested in 2003 and later sentenced to eight years in prison for fraud.

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As we’ve documented before, Russian PM Vladimir Putin is fond of playing various macho characters for the Russian press. But his latest character, that of Judo champion, is actually true to life. Putin has been training in Judo since the age of 14 and is a 6th degree black belt.

Rumors that retired Russian Olympic gymnast and model Alina Kabaeva is Russian PM Vladimir Putin’s mistress have persisted for some time. The Russian newspaper that first reported on the alleged affair two years ago found itself shut down. Putin was furious over the allegation which he strongly denied.

Putin was and remains married to wife Ludmilla Putina, who oddly enough became quite close to former First Lady Laura Bush during the Bush presidency.

Anyway, Alina Kabaeva is Vogue Russia’s cover girl for January 2011.

Styleite calls it the “Russian equivalent of Monica Lewinsky snagging the cover of Vogue.”