The Media Mirror, 10.07.07. What's in today's Russian newspapers?

The news of the day is the resignation of the Head of the Security Council of Russia, Igor Ivanov. There is also plenty of information concerning current situation in Chechen Republic.

IZVESTIA writes about the unexpected campaign to discredit the Head of the Security Council, Igor Ivanov, who handed his resignation to the President a few days ago.

He is one of the men with the cleanest records in government. A quiet and sophisticated intellectual, always polite, firm and straightforward when necessary, Igor Ivanov is a career diplomat who rose from attaché to Minister of Foreign Affairs. A concentrated effort to paint him black, says the article, came as a great surprise even to the most experienced journalists. Black mud does not stick to Ivanov, but the very fact of this campaign starting at all, points, as the paper sees it, to a possible unexpected career move. Ivanov himself says that he wants to concentrate on his professorial duties at the University of International Relations.

ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA has an interview with President Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya who says that the war in his republic is over, and it is over for good. Asked about the remaining illegal armed groups under field commander Doka Umarov, Ramzan Kadyrov says:

“Their time is running out. They are not going to last long in those mountains. Umarov himself, as we have learned, is very sick and lives on narcotics.”

“Fighting him is not our main priority, the economic development and reconstruction are.”

Asked about the alleged corruption in the construction business, Kadyrov replies that the problem is not corruption which is far from that of the late 1990s when only the smell of the Federal money reached the actual construction sites, but the red tape of the Federal authorities which request tons of paperwork. He says the republic has to borrow money and repay the debts upon receipt of the Federal funds earmarked for Chechnya:

“The people won’t wait for the paperwork. They need houses, they need schools for their children, they need hospitals with modern equipment, and they need it all now. Today.”

VREMYA NOVOSTEI in an article titled “A Really Fine Chap” raises the suspicion that Kadyrov’s policy of “Chechenisation” of all affairs in the republic, as well as the decision to use the Chechen language as the medium of education, leaves no hope of a return for the Russian families who fled the war. Now it is hard to say if Grozny will ever be restored to the status of the “Main center of Russia’s traditional cultural influence in the Northern Caucasus,” writes the paper.

Well, besides that Grozny used to be one of the most ethnic-tolerant cities on Earth, and that it might well become again.