Russia’s next president Dmitry Medvedev pledged to uphold Vladimir Putin’s policies on Monday after a big election win that critics said was stage-managed to let the outgoing Kremlin leader keep his grip on power. Medvedev (42) who will be the youngest Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas II when he is sworn in on May 7, has asked former KGB spy Putin to be his prime minister.
Dmitry Medvedev was elected as Russia’s next president, early results showed on Sunday, after a vote that will preserve the power of his mentor President Vladimir Putin but which opponents said was unfair. Medvedev, a 42-year-old former lawyer who has worked at Putin’s side since the 1990s, will take over the trappings of the Presidency from his patron in May.
The Kremlin is planning to falsify the results of Sunday’s presidential election by compelling millions of public-sector workers to vote and by fraudulently boosting the official turnout, a media report said. Governors, regional officials and even headteachers have been instructed to deliver a landslide majority for Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister.
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/ 27 February 2008
Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton clashed sharply in a high-stakes one-on-one debate on Tuesday, accusing each other of falsely portraying their stances on healthcare, trade and other issues. Clinton, who needs to win next week in Ohio and Texas, went on the attack early in the debate at the Cleveland State University.
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/ 12 February 2008
When Vladimir Putin drives to work every morning from his presidential bungalow he doesn’t pass the poor, the needy or the hungry. Instead, he passes Gucci, Armani and Prada. In the unlikely event that his presidential Mercedes breaks down, he could pop into Barvikha Luxury Village, an elite shopping complex just down the road from Putin’s dacha.
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/ 9 February 2008
Russia did not want a revived arms race with the United States, and has been forced to start a new weapons programme in response to Washington’s planned missile shield in Europe, a Kremlin spokesperson said on Saturday. ”Russia had no intention of getting into an arms race. It is just a necessary response,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
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/ 4 February 2008
From Monday morning Serbia faces up to a bruising battle over how to react to the looming secession of its southern province of Kosovo, after President Boris Tadic, a pro-Western liberal, won a renewed five-year term in a close election on Sunday night.
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/ 2 February 2008
A former cemeteries manager known as the ”Undertaker” stands his best chance of becoming head of state when Serbia votes on Sunday in a fateful presidential election. To his many critics, the extreme nationalist Tomislav Nikolic will be digging Serbia’s grave if he repeats his first-round victory.
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/ 1 February 2008
Russia accused Europe’s main election watchdog of trying to sabotage plans for monitoring its presidential election next month, the latest round of an increasingly bitter dispute with the West over democracy. Russia said the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s monitoring body, ODIHR, was trying to politicise monitoring of the March 2 election.
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/ 23 January 2008
He has been accused of bullying the neighbours, turning off Europe’s gas supply and — as one diplomat appalled by Russia’s treatment of the British Council put it — ”punching a librarian”. But now Putin, apparently fed up with Russia’s poor image abroad, has decided to do something about it: he has sent for his old judo master.
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/ 22 January 2008
It was one of the highlights of the Soviet calendar — a chance for the communist superpower to show off its military might and for ordinary citizens to check that their gerontocratic leaders were still alive. But 17 years after the last hammer-and-sickle tanks trundled through Red Square, the Kremlin is to revive the Soviet-era practice of parading its big weaponry.
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/ 16 January 2008
Britain warned Russia on Wednesday that any attempt to intimidate staff of its cultural arm was ”completely unacceptable” after Russia’s state security service summoned local employees to speak to its officers. Britain’s consulate in St Petersburg said the British Council office in the northern city had been forced to shut temporarily.
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/ 14 January 2008
A group of women whose relatives were killed in the Beslan school siege are to go on trial in Russia on Monday after they accused President Vladimir Putin of complicity in the deaths. The Voice of Beslan group has been charged with ”extremism” over an appeal which implied that Putin assisted terrorists.
Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, in an interview with supermodel Naomi Campbell, predicted that the United States ”empire” is about to fall, called Jesus Christ history’s number one revolutionary and offered to pose topless. ”Why not? Touch my muscles!” the burly 53-year-old former paratrooper said.
Millions staged midnight parties at icon landmarks around the world to see in 2008 but bomb attacks and security fears quickly darkened New Year festivities. More than one million people lined Sydney harbour for fireworks that set off the global party and hundreds of thousands packed Hong Kong streets and historic European venues.
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/ 27 December 2007
Russia is to supply Iran with a new and lethal anti-aircraft system capable of shooting down American or Israeli fighter jets in the event of any strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran on Wednesday confirmed that Russia had agreed to deliver the S-300 air defence system, a move that is likely to irk the Bush administration.
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/ 22 December 2007
The secretive oil company Gunvor has broken its silence over its alleged links with Vladimir Putin, denying that the Russian President was the company’s ”beneficiary” owner. Gunvor’s CEO said it was ”plain wrong” to suggest the company had benefited from its alleged close connections with the Kremlin.
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/ 20 December 2007
An unprecedented battle is taking place inside the Kremlin in advance of Vladimir Putin’s departure from office, with claims that the president presides over a secret multibillion-dollar fortune. Rival clans inside the Kremlin are embroiled in a struggle for the control of assets as Putin prepares to transfer power to his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev.
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/ 20 December 2007
A clash between ministries over how to stop Russia from flaring nearly -billion of gas each year is reinforcing doubts that the country can meet President Vladimir Putin’s goal to all but eliminate the waste by 2011. Some experts say Russia is also the leading flarer of gas, although by its own calculations it is only the second largest after Nigeria.
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/ 19 December 2007
Time magazine named Russian President Vladimir Putin its person of the year for 2007 on Wednesday, saying he had returned his country from chaos to ”the table of world power” though at a cost to democratic principles. ”He’s not a good guy, but he’s done extraordinary things,” said Time managing editor Richard Stengel.
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/ 3 December 2007
International observers declared on Monday that Russia’s parliamentary elections failed to meet widely accepted democratic standards, saying President Vladimir Putin and his government abused their power to favour the dominant Kremlin-backed party while opposition forces were harassed.
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/ 3 December 2007
President Vladimir Putin appeared to be heading for a landslide victory in Russia’s parliamentary elections on Sunday night amid widespread reports that millions of citizens were coerced into voting for his party, United Russia. Early results from the Central Election Commission indicated the party was leading with 63% of votes.
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/ 2 December 2007
Russians voted on Sunday in a parliamentary election expected to hand President Vladimir Putin’s party a crushing majority and boost his bid to retain authority after leaving the Kremlin. Polling stations opened in a wave across the world’s biggest country, starting on the Pacific coast.
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/ 1 December 2007
Final preparations were under way in Russia on Saturday for parliamentary elections expected to hand a sweeping victory to President Vladimir Putin’s party, just three months before presidential polls. From Kamchatka to Kaliningrad, 109-million voters are eligible to cast ballots on Sunday in Russia’s fifth parliamentary elections since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
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/ 30 November 2007
President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed into law Russia’s suspension of a Cold War treaty limiting military forces in Europe as a senior lawmaker warned that other international accords could be reviewed. The signing came on the final day of campaigning ahead of parliamentary elections on Sunday in which Putin has accused the West of trying to weaken Russia.
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/ 29 November 2007
A Russian businessman with a passion for Tsarist treasures said on Thursday he was behind the record purchase of a Fabergé egg in London for £9-million (,5-million), which he called inexpensive. Alexander Ivanov, who helped found Russia’s first private museum, bid in person at the tense Christie’s auction in London on Wednesday for the egg.
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/ 26 November 2007
President Vladimir Putin accused Washington on Monday of plotting to undermine December parliamentary elections seen widely as a demonstration of his enduring power in Russia. Putin, drawing on resurgent nationalist sentiment ahead of Sunday’s poll, also said Russia must maintain its defences to discourage others from ”poking their snotty noses” in its affairs.
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/ 20 November 2007
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday warned that Moscow would not remain indifferent to Nato’s ”muscle-flexing” and said Russia’s nuclear forces would be ready for an adequate response to any aggressor. Putin said the Nato military alliance had built up its forces close to Russia’s borders.
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/ 12 November 2007
The leaders of veteran allies Russia and India agreed on Monday to launch a joint unmanned mission to the moon, as well as to intensify deals on weapons and energy. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Vladimir Putin called during Kremlin talks for boosting their countries’ traditional ties.
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/ 31 October 2007
A bomb on a bus in the Russian car-making city of Togliatti killed at least eight people and injured 50 on Wednesday in what authorities called a terrorist attack. The blast, which came as people travelled to work in the early-morning rush hour, was probably caused by a bomb hidden under the floor of the bus, police sources said.
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/ 31 October 2007
Major powers plan to meet in London this week to discuss new sanctions on Iran amid a spat between Washington and the United Nations over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, United States officials said on Tuesday. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech on Tuesday that Iran would not retreat in the dispute.
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/ 30 October 2007
Denmark scrambled two F-16 fighter jets on Tuesday to identify a Russian bomber detected on radar near the Nato member’s airspace, the Danish air force said in a statement. ”A visual contact was made at 6.02am [local time” with the Tupolev-160 bomber, the statement said.