| Thursday, July 3, 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Today's
Issue:
- NEW CHARGES AGAINST KHODORKOVSKY: ARE THE SILOVIKI DRAWING A LINE? Previous
Issue:
- EU-RUSSIA SUMMIT TARGETS NEW PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT
Other Jamestown Publications:
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NEW CHARGES AGAINST KHODORKOVSKY: ARE THE SILOVIKI DRAWING A LINE?
The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office has filed new charges against former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who, like his former business partner Platon Lebedev, is currently serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion. The new charges could add 15 years to Khodorkovsky’s prison sentence. The Investigative Committee claims that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev “embezzled nearly 350 million tons of oil and laundered 487 billion rubles ($20.7 billion) [as well as] $4.7 billion.” Khodorkovsky’s lawyer, Yury Shmidt, told Moscow Times that in filing the new charges, the prosecutors simply rewrote the multibillion-dollar embezzlement and money laundering charges brought against Khodorkovsky in February 2007. “Bringing the [February 2007 case] to trial is something that has not yet been decided, because they have not gotten direct instructions from the Kremlin,” Schmidt said (Moscow Times, July 2).
CHOOSING AN ENEMY, CHOOSING A STRATEGY, CHOOSING A DOCTRINE
By Pavel Felgenhauer
Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced that the number of servicemen in the armed forces would be decreased from the present 1.13 million to one million by 2013. According to Serdyukov, "The previously approved concept scheduled a decrease in numbers to 1.1 million by 2011 and to one million by 2016. Now we have decided to move more rapidly, in the understanding that service pay must be extensively increased." Serdyukov announced that a special 100 billion ruble ($4. CIS DEFENSE MINISTERS AGREE TO BOOST COOPERATION IN AIR DEFENSE
By Erica Marat
On July 2, 10 members of the Council of Defense Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) convened in Bishkek to discuss issues of further cooperation, integration processes in the military sector and increasing "mutual understanding." In particular, they discussed the strengthening of cooperation in air defense until 2015 and joint preparations for the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Second World War victory in 1945. BASBUG ISSUES CALL FOR CALM AMID DEEPENING POLITICAL CRISIS
By Gareth Jenkins
On July 2 General Ilker Basbug, the commander of the Turkish Land Forces, issued a public statement calling for calm in the wake of the unprecedented wave of detentions of hard-line secularists on July 1, in which a number of high-ranking retired military personnel were taken into custody (see EDM, July 1). |
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