#6 - JRL 7209
TV1 Review
www.1tv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba_sch@hotmail.com)
Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information, Moscow office
HEADLINES,
Tuesday, June 3, 2003
- After the G-8 Summit in Avian, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Cabinet Ministers. They discussed work on the 2004 budget, plans to lower taxes, increase salaries to state employees and create a Russian-Ukrainian-German gas consortium. About the summit, Putin noted that its greatest achievement was the improvement of the international situation.
- Chechen Administration Head Akhmad Kadyrov has ordered Prime Minister Anatoly Popov to form a new government. Kadyrov also dismissed Grozny City Mayor Oleg Zhidkov, replacing him with Khozh-Akhmed Arsanov, previously the chairman of the committee for youth affairs.
- Two contract murders were carried out in Moscow within a few hours. At about 7pm, Alfred Lerner, the General Director of the Meyerhold Theater-Cultural Center was shot 4 times as he was exiting his car in the center of Moscow. Lerner died before help could arrive. Plan “Perehavat” [Interception] has been put into effect, but the murderer has not been captured. Later in the evening, an unidentified criminal shot a man on Nizhnyaya Maslovka Street and escaped on motorcycle.
- The next State Council meeting, held on June 4, will be dedicated to the environmental situation, which gives cause for concern in 202 of Russia’s cities.
- A system for the rehabilitation of drug addicts will be introduced in Kaliningrad.
- Eight people were injured in an explosion at the Tuapse oil base. The explosion took place during the cleaning of a 20-ton reservoir.
- Official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Aleksandr Yakovenko declared that Russia will soon double its pre-war staff in the Baghdad Embassy.
- UNESCO General Director Koichiro Matsuura arrived in the North Caucasus to present a new program for the development of education and culture in Russia’s southern regions.
- Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov is heading to Madrid for a two-day meeting of the Russia-NATO Council.
- Russia is crossing the 22nd and 32nd checkpoints on the border with China and Mongolia to prevent the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome.
- The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) is preparing documents for a program to purchase weapons harbored by residents of Chechnya.
- One officer died and one was injured when a Chechen MVD automobile hit a landmine in the Leninsky region of Grozny
- Police officers and internal forces servicemen who worked in St. Petersburg during the celebrations of the city’s 300th anniversary received awards.
- Russian First Lady Ludmila Putina is in Helsinki for the Baltic Star International Youth Forum. She will meet with Finnish President Tarja Halonen.
- State Duma Deputy Sergei Glaziev, the Chairman of the Party of Russian Regions declared that left and patriotic forces of Russia should join efforts in the parliamentary elections.
- Aslan Maskhadov’s personal archive and a large arms cache were discovered in the settlement of Mikhketa.
- A criminal case has been initiated on the leak of poisonous substance in the Novosibirsk Oblast.
- President Putin congratulated renowned mathematician Igor Shafarevich on his 80th birthday.
- Russia’s first runner up from the Miss Russia contest, Olesya Bondarenko will participate in the Miss Universe 2003 beauty contest in Panama.