Free Republic

The deputy head of the Russian administration, Vladislav Surkov -- who serves as a designated mouthpiece for the policies of President Vladimir Putin -- has begun advocating the creation of a heftier opposition to the ruling United Russia party. Talk surfaced Thursday of a suggested merger between the nationalist-socialist Rodina (Motherland) Party, the Party of Life, and possibly the Party of Pensioners into a new opposition party in the Russian Duma. ...The two-party system is only being created for the benefit of Putin's (or his successor's) administration. The new party would serve the function of a loyal opposition to United...

Russia has given Cuba a $355 million loan, hoping for a better future for Cuba without Fidel Castro. Russia also looks forward to settling Cuba’s $26 billion debt to the USSR which has not been discussed for a long time. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov finished his visit on Cuba yesterday where he discussed clearing Cuba’s $166 million debt before Russia. The prime minister, however, did not raise the issue of the $26 billion debt to the Soviet Union. The Russian government believes that this matter should be negotiated only after Fidel Castro’s regime has changed. Fidel Castro’s government stopped...

Russia's most wanted man, the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, issued a statement yesterday in which he claimed full responsibility for the recent assassination of Chechnya's Moscow-backed president and appeared to suggest that Vladimir Putin might be next. In a text repeatedly referring to jihad, Allah and the Koran, Basayev, 39, seemed to suggest that his separatist fighters were preparing to assassinate President Putin or his Prime Minister, Mikhail Fradkov. The announcement, posted on a Chechen rebels' website called Kavkaz Center, included a sinister reference to Mr Putin's two teenage daughters, Ekaterina and Maria. Basayev described the murder of Akhmad Kadyrov...

The nomination of Mikhail Fradkov as Russia's next prime minister will do little to soften the Kremlin's increasingly assertive foreign policy, especially in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Mr Fradkov, a long-serving diplomat whose name was put forward on Monday by President Vladimir Putin, will bring to the post considerable experience of international relations. But he will also arrive with a history of close ties with the security services. While his personal views are not known, he is a member of the siloviki, the current and former members of the security services, headed by Mr Putin, who now...