| President
At the initiative of the Georgian side, I had a telephone conversation with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. During the conversation, various aspects of bilateral cooperation were touched upon, as well as issues of the fight against terrorism.
Held a meeting with members of the Security Council, at the meeting issues of domestic and foreign policy of the Russian state were discussed. The meeting was attended by head of government Mikhail Fradkov, head of the presidential administration Dmitry Medvedev, heads of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Ivanov, Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliev, Secretary of the Security Council Igor Ivanov, directors of the FSB and SVR Nikolai Patrushev and Sergei Lebedev. The meeting was also attended by the newly appointed Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Arkady Edelev.
Prime Minister
Appointed Dmitry Ryzhkov as deputy chief of staff of the government. In this position, Mr. Ryzhkov will deal with “issues of the defense industry, law enforcement and intelligence services.” Prior to this, Dmitry Ryzhkov served as director of the government’s administrative department.
Government
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov chaired a meeting of the commission on administrative reform. At the meeting, proposals were considered to optimize the systems of government organizations operating within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Natural Resources. In addition, the meeting participants discussed the issue of compliance of the list of a number of state organizations with the register of federal property.
Departments
President Vladimir Putin’s latest political decisions are aimed at increasing the region’s manageability in the short term, and these decisions “do not at all mean curtailing or abandoning the course of economic reforms,” said Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. According to him, such political changes, which are caused by a number of decisions, including the procedure for electing governors, do not have a direct impact on economic reform.
State Duma
The head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, considers the abolition of the moratorium on the death penalty in Russia unacceptable. He recalled that Russia is now the only one of the 46 states of the Council of Europe that has not legally prohibited the death penalty without ratifying the sixth protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. In his opinion, now it is not worth submitting ratification to the State Duma, since this “could ruin its outcome, given public sentiment.”
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