Criminal government
Where's the distinction between illegal gangs challenging the state and the gangs joining the state?A Massacre Shows Power of Gangs in Rural Russia
[T]he epidemic of lawlessness in provincial Russia [is] a problem rooted in the collusion of bandits and corrupt bureaucrats.
“With every passing day it becomes more and more clear that the fusion of government and criminals… is not unique,” Valery D. Zorkin, the chairman of Russia’s Constitutional Court, wrote in an opinion article on Friday in the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Should the situation continue, he said, “our citizens will become divided between predators, free in the criminal jungle, and subhumans, conscious that they are only prey.”
Such corruption has never been secret… President Dmitri A. Medvedev acknowledged it in his annual state of the nation speech last month when he warned local law enforcement officials not “to hide in offices and observe as criminals grow and become insolent on their territories.”…
Uncomfortable questions have also been raised about the viability of the system of consolidated power built over the past decade by Russia’s paramount leader, Vladimir V. Putin, now the prime minister. Senior authorities, Mr. Putin included, have explained restrictions on the media and on political freedoms as necessary to restore order in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the chaos that followed. While Mr. Putin has largely brought Russia’s upper echelons to heel, many of the far-flung regions remain out of Moscow’s control…
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Labels: corruption, legitimacy, media, politics, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:13 AM
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