Luzhkov mustn't be allowed to stay in Britain.

On Sublime Oblivion Anatoly Karlin notes that the disgraced former mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, has been granted permission to enter Britain.  Contrary to some reports though, he has not yet received a residence permit for the UK.

Austria and Latvia have already rejected Luzhkov’s requests to live within their borders.  His family are currently in Britain and his daughters are studying at a university in London.

All sorts of Russian dissidents, out of favour oligarchs and even terrorists have chosen to make these shores their home, over the past ten years.  Boris Berezovsky, the exiled tycoon who aspires to overthrow Russia’s government by force, and the Chechen rebel Akhmed Zakayev are two of the more prominent examples.

In a recent Conservative Home article, Carl Thomson revealed that 150 extradition requests by Moscow had been rejected by the UK since 2001.  Partly the statistic is explained by links, cultural and economic, which exist between the Russian elite and Britain.  There are many Russians living here and a minority avoid Russia because of disputes with their government or problems with the law.

The UK has no need to admit another failed klepotocrat seeking to avoid fraud proceedings in his home country.  Luzhkov ran Moscow like a personal fiefdom and it is alleged that he abused his position in order to enrich his own family.

Britain has sheltered Berezovsky, a rich manipulator who played the factional game of Russian politics and lost, under the pretence that he’s a dissident and a democrat.  It mustn’t allow Luzhkov to play the same trick.  Let him visit his family and let him leave again.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Shia Revival

The Iranian author, Vali Nasr, has written an interesting book called The Shia Revival: How conflicts within Islam will shape the future .  Its argument is exceptionally pertinent at a time when European governments are edging toward arming Sunni extremists in Syria. Nasr portrays Shiism as the more liberal, palatable strand of Islam and a religion for underdogs.  He makes his point persuasively, although putting a progressive gloss on the regime in Iran and Hezbollah does undermine his thesis. A lot of the material is focussed on Iraq, where there is a Shia majority, which was suppressed during the presidency of Saddam Hussein.  The leading cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, is depicted as a moderating influence, who opposed retaliation as Sunni extremism threatened to cause sectarian civil war. The book’s opening chapter provides an erudite and fascinating history of factions within Islam.  The split dates back to the origins of the faith and a dispute over the prophet Mohammed’
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro
Read more