The Media Mirror – Today's Russian press review
Today Russian papers once again have a look at new details in Politkovskaya murder investigation and suggest their idea of who can stand behind it. Also, the Russian press publishes an article analysing Chechen president’s exterior policy.
TRUD writes of the Politkovskaya murder investigation. The article is headlined: ‘There are enough suspects arrested to form a football team’. The latest addition to what we know of the case, writes the paper, is a list of 11 apprehended suspects. The Prosecutor General is convinced that the mastermind of the crime is staying abroad. His motive is the desire to destabilise the Russian political system. The paper says it’s not hard to see who fits this description. The first name that comes to mind, concludes the article, is the name of “Londoner” Boris Berezovsky. And it is the last, too.
VREMYA NOVOSTEI writes, recently Ramzan Kadyrov, the President of Chechnya, has been visiting the capitals of the main Islamic nations. He’s also received several Islamic dignitaries at home. In August, the President held a congress in the town of Gudermes, titled “Islam – the religion of peace and creativity”. The paper says he has added a lot of respect from the Islamic world to that he enjoys at home. He’s also gained additional legitimacy as a leader. In the past the sources of his power were only the Russian Constitution and President Putin.
Now he is accepted as an equal by the leaders of Islamic nations.
The second Chechen war saw a change to the cause militant groups fight for, says the paper – from secular separatism to Islamic fundamentalism.
Now things will change again. Kadyrov, a believer and a non-fundamentalist, has become the new legitimate leader and representative of the republic’s Moslems. And now, says the article, it will be him not the militants who applies for brotherly help from Saudi Arabia or Jordan.
NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA announces that by presidential order, positions of police or legal attachés are being established at Russian embassies. Altogether 41 such postings will be filled with experienced law enforcement officers in countries Russia maintains the most active economic co-operation and tourist exchanges. The attachés, writes the paper, will report to the Interior Ministry.
NOVAYA GAZETA shows pictures of the MIR submersible in which a crew of three visited the ocean bottom at the North Pole. The paper writes that the trio under the command of Arctic explorer Artur Chilingarov returned to Moscow to a hero’s welcome. But neither Chilingarov nor any other member of the group ever mentioned the man who made their achievement possible – Igor Mikhaltsev, who created and tested the MIR submersible.
