The Truth About Putin and Medvedev

Posted by Matt in May 18th, 2008

In their concise and eloquent report, Nemtsov and Milov present a devastating picture of Putin’s eight years in the Kremlin. Indeed, the report’s appraisal of Putin and his administration is so damning that the Kremlin attempted, with considerable success, to block its distribution. Originally, the publisher, Novaya Gazeta (which produces the newspaper of the same name and had employed the murdered investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya), planned on a first printing of 100,000. But the distributor backed out at the last minute because of strong pressure from the Kremlin. This left Novaya Gazeta with only one place in the entire country to sell the book—its own kiosk on Moscow’s Pushkin Square. As a result, only five thousand copies were printed, and by mid-March some two thousand had been sold.

A Russian Documents the Truth About Russia

Freedom House has just released its 2008 report on worldwide press freedom. Russia ranks an appalling #170, tied with Kazakhstan, Sudan, and Yemen and more repressive than Venezuela and Afghanistan, and is classified as “not free.” According to FH, only 22 nations on the entire planet, out of 195 under review, have less press freedom than Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Only 33% of the reviewed nations are classified as “not free,” and Russia is among them. Only three nations out of 33 in Eastern Europe have lower scores for press freedom than Russia (Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan). Ukraine and Georgia are both much more highly rated, and Russia’s arch nemesis Estonia is #1 at the top of the group. Russia is in the bottom 10% of its own region — not even a leader there, much less in the world. Russia’s ranking has fallen from #145 four years ago, a precipitous drop for a country that was “not free” even then and didn’t have much room to fall still further — showing that Putin has been working hard to root out the very last vestiges of real reporting in the country.