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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russian paper to air WikiLeaks corruption material |
| 2010-12-22 |
| Russia's leading opposition newspaper said it would publish new WikiLeaks disclosures unmasking corruption among Russia's "highest political echelons". Novaya Gazeta, a weekly known for its critical, anti-Kremlin investigative reporting, said by joining forces with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, it had gained unlimited access to new material linking Russia's political elite to organised crime. "Assange said that in the near future, Russian citizens will learn a lot of new things about their country. He wasn't bluffing," the paper said on its website. "Our partnership is aimed at exposing corruption in the highest political echelons." The new WikiLeaks material is a trove of "intriguing material" including documents on the trial of jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and on the paper's own slain reporter Anna Politkovskaya, spokeswoman Nadezhda Prusenkova told Reuters. "But what's most interesting to us," she added, "are cables showing corruption linked to the political establishment ... The authorities must be transparent." President Dmitry Medvedev angrily dismissed as irrelevant US diplomatic cables published so far which cast Russia as corrupt. "We don't give a damn about what diplomatic circles say, judging one or another public process in our country. It's only a matter of opinion," Mr Medvedev told journalists on the sidelines of an official visit to Mumbai, India. "What has been published to date, does not weigh at all on Russian interests." The cables describing Mr Medvedev as a side-kick "Robin" to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's "Batman", portrayed Mr Putin as a ruler who allowed unscrupulous officials and crooked spies to siphon off cash from the world's biggest energy producer. But the few disclosures on Russia so far seemed anti-climactic compared with the promise by WikiLeaks, which has unloaded thousands of diplomatic cables onto its website, to publish eye-opening secrets about Moscow's political underbelly. "The American diplomatic cables were just a small part of the whole WikiLeaks dossier," Novaya Gazeta said on its website. "Now none of them is safe from the truth." |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #1 Wonder how much of the material Novaya Gazeta reports will be completely fabricated. Not that I doubt Putin's mobbed up; I have no doubt he's the chief mobster. But I doubt Assmange has the balls to touch real Russian material; he doesn't even have the balls to treat women well. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2010-12-22 22:06 |