Russian Redux...

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Two days ago, someone posted this thread about how Putin plans to remove election of governors by popular vote. Well, we have some new info. (You have to register to view these articles, but it is free to register).

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/international/europe/15russia.html

On Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin announced he would strip Russia's 89 regions of much of their authority and electoral legitimacy. On Tuesday, not one of the leaders of those regions said a public word of protest.

On the contrary, there were words of praise.

"It is constructive and productive," Murat M. Zyazikov, the president of Ingushetia, said in a telephone interview, embracing a proposal that would leave him serving at the will not of his impoverished electorate in southern Russia, but of the president in faraway Moscow.

There was also an interesting article about the person who mastermind the school attack of several months ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/international/europe/15chechen.html

The most loathed man in Russia moves in secret along the edges of a nation whose security services were once thought to be all-knowing. It should be hard for him to hide, having only one foot, a shaved head, and a beard reminiscent of the Taliban.

Shamil Basayev, the man accused of plotting the attacks that have terrorized Russia this summer and killed hundreds, including more than 170 children in a school in the town of Beslan, has always had a flair for spectacular attacks. But once he was also capable of restraint.

His first terror act was in 1991. Mr. Basayev, then 26, seized a passenger plane with hijackers armed with pistols and grenades. He forced the jet to Turkey and then Grozny, the Chechen capital. Having made his point - Chechnya is sovereign, he said - he let 171 hostages go.

What do you think? I personally think that Putin is slowly restabilishing the Russian Czar. I hope that good can come from this instead of bad.

As for Chechyn rebels/terrorists, I think they are going to pull much more dangerous attacks. I fear for the safety of Russian citizens. Shamil Basayev has nothing to loose by dying, I hope he doesn't get ahold of something dangerous.

 

[dkelly]

I hope good can come from it too, but somehow it seems unlikely.