Russia Today says Europe will be using Russian firefighting aviation services; the same services used throughout S Europe last summer with great success. Not before time.
I believe that the following information is important for understanding the context within which the ‘Institute for Democracy and Cooperation’ was established. The initial impulse for creating this institute came from Vladimir Putin’s comments made at Russia – EU conference in Portugal in October 2007. In his comments, Mr Putin referred to EU-funded advocacy of democracy in Russia as to something that should be matched by Russia’s similar activities in Europe and elsewhere. When explaining these comments, Putin’s aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky said that Mr Putin meant the European University at St. Petersburg that received a EU grant to implement a project on election monitoring in Russia. As a director of the mentioned project, the Inter-Regional Electoral Network of Assistance (IRENA), I would like to draw the attention of your readers to the following facts. Starting with June 2007, the IRENA project experienced continuous harassment from the Russian authorities. After a series of inspections that did not prove anything illegal in project-related activities, the Russian authorities attacked the recipient of the grant, the European University at St. Petersburg. In February 2008, the European University was closed by the authorities on a ridiculous pretext of ‘fire safety violations’. At about the same time, the ‘Institute for Democracy and Cooperation’ started to operate in Paris and New York.
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