Torokul Doorov

By Chloe Arnold. MOSCOW, May 31, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The chief suspect in the murder of former Russian intelligence officer Aleksandr Litvinenko has said British secret services were behind Litvenenko's murder last year. Andrei Lugovoi also said Litvinenko was a British spy and that MI6 had tried to recruit him as a spy, too. Lugovoi, who has been charged in Britain with the murder of Aleksander Litvinenko, told a news conference in Moscow today that Litvinenko was a British spy who was murdered by either British special services, exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, or the Russian mafia. Whoever did it, Lugovoi said Litvinenko's poisoning with the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210 in November had to have taken place under the "control" of Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6: "There is one thing about which I have no doubt," Lugovoi said. "Whatever happened, Litvinenko's poisoning could not have happened without the control of the Br...

BISHKEK, May 30, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Kyrgyzstan's presidential medical department says Prime Minister Almazbek Atambaev was poisoned with an unknown toxin, supporting Atambaev's earlier claims that he nearly died of poisoning. According to the medical report, Atambaev underwent medical tests on May 14 at the clinic used by government officials. He was diagnosed with an "acute form of toxic hepatitis of unknown origin," which the report said proves that unidentified toxins had entered his blood. Atambaev spoke to journalists about the medical report. No Investigation "As you know, there are lots of different opinions regarding my health," he said. "Some people say 'Atambaev made up all of this to promote himself.' That's why I got this medical report. It says 'Atambaev was poisoned.' It's not good when somebody poisons a prime minister in the [Kyrgyz] White House. But the general prosecutor and the security services do not care....

The Kremlin's actions speak for themselves in Anna Politkovskaya's final account of Russian politics under Vladimir Putin. By Gregory Feifer (The Moscow Times) Published: May 25, 2007 Such was Anna Politkovskaya's courage and determination in recording killings, torture and abductions in Chechnya that failing to read her articles in Novaya Gazeta -- the country's most progressive newspaper -- meant risking ignorance of what Russia's chattering classes were saying each week about the government's latest outrage. The 48-year-old mother of two adult children was shot dead by an unknown assassin in the elevator of her apartment building last October shortly after she'd completed her last book, commissioned by Random House for publication in English. "A Russian Diary" is an account of the country's major political events from December 2003 to August 2005. It catalogs a year-and-a-half of President Vladimir Putin's relentless drive to, in effect...

By Chloe Arnold. MOSCOW, May 29, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- An international congress of journalists is convening in Moscow this week as concerns about media freedom in Russia continue to grow. In a separate session before the opening of the congress, participants discussed a global campaign against the continuing murders of journalists in Russia. In chilling footage shown at the start of the session, a female television journalist can be seen stumbling as she chases after a soldier while gunshots are fired overhead. Participants at the May 28 discussion were convinced of the need to challenge the Russian government and its failure to adequately protect journalists. But with no government officials present, some speakers said the debate was unlikely to change anything. “Our journalists have no protection, and that tells you that journalism is a very risky profession and that there is a great deal of unhappiness in society," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent State Duma deputy. "Ther...

Hi everybody! One more "old" article from me, which was published on www.irinnews.org so long time ago! The link to the original page is at the end of the text: MOSCOW, 17 March 2004 (IRIN) - Over the past five years, Russia has become the primary destination for labour migrants from Central Asia. Fuelled by poverty and unemployment, labour experts say the number of unskilled workers from the region in major Russian provincial cities continues to rise, with construction firms and service providers keen on hiring cheap illegal labour. "The rapid growth in labour migration in the second half of the 1990s has slowed a little, but it is not stabilising yet," Yelena Tyuryukanova, a social researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told IRIN in Moscow. THE NUMBER OF LABOUR MIGRANTS According to a recent study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on illegal labour in Russia, there were 3.5 to 5 million illegal labour migrants in the country, mainly from Co...

Actually, this article was published long time ago on www.irinnews.org . You can find the link to the article and the end of the text: MOSCOW, 18 May 2006 (IRIN) - Thousands of Central Asian labour migrants in Russia continue to face difficulties over their status in the country, leaving them open to harassment by local law enforcement officials. “If you don’t pay the police, they will never let you go. If they catch you in the street, they’ll extort money for sure,” complained Holmulin Halikov, a migrant worker from Uzbekistan working for a construction company in Moscow. “They threaten to put you in a car and to take you away even when your documents are in order and often demand bribes,” the migrant worker in his 30s said. Almaz, another labour migrant from southern Kyrgyzstan, agreed, noting the number of times he too has had to pay bribes. “If police catch us we pay them 100 to 200 rubles [some US $4 to $7.50] and they let us go,” he said. Due to a longstanding migration regime b...

(Please, click to link below) Background Massive emigration from Kyrgyzstan started in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the time, ethnic Russians returning to Russia accounted for most of the outflow, but, within a few years, the search for better job opportunities had prompted many ethnic Kyrgyz to head to Russia and Kazakhstan as well. Fifteen years of labor migration has drawn not only unskilled workers from the country's rural areas, but also members of the intelligentsia and qualified specialists from urban centers. The State Committee on Migration and Employment estimates that roughly 300,000 Kyrgyz citizens now permanently work in Russia and about 80,000 in Kazakhstan, most of them illegally. Other estimates put the number of migrants as high as 700,000, or one-seventh of the country's population. Low salaries and limited job opportunities are the main reasons for this migration trend. Most migrants are from the heavily populated regions of Jalalabat, Osh ...