Tag Archives | Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin On The Benefits Of Group Sex

Can you imagine Stalin making this kind of public statement? Visitors to Lenin’s tomb in Moscow have probably seen him looking several shades redder than his normal white hue. Tom Parfitt reports on the Russian president’s rather unstatesmanlike comments for the Telegraph:

Mr Putin made the observation on Thursday in one of his trademark pithy remarks during his first interview since his inauguration in May, with the Kremlin-controlled, English-language RT television channel.

“Some fans of group sex say that it’s better than one-on-one because, as with any collective work, you can skive off,” he said.

The comment came after the Russian leader had spoken about an orgy that was staged in Moscow’s state biology museum in 2008 which involved Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, one of three feminist activists of the Pussy Riot group who were jailed for two years for hooliganism last month after a politically charged trial…

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“Free Pussy Riot” Murders: Further Justification for Russian Crack-Down?

Picture: Igor Mukhin (CC)

Via HuffPo

Some might find a gruesome murder that could be connected to supporters of Pussy Riot awfully convenient for the Putin administration. The bodies of two women were found beneath a message scrawled in their own blood: “Free Pussy Riot.”

Investigators have identified the murderer as Igor Danilevsky, who they say murdered the women as part of a bizarre scheme to pay off outstanding debt:

The man – a 38-year-old university professor named Igor Danilevsky – was detained Thursday in Kazan, Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Friday. It said Danilevsky wrote “Free Pussy Riot” on a wall in the victims’ blood because he wanted the deaths of the 38-year-old woman he dated and her mother, 76, to appear as if they were a “ritual killing.”

The Committee said Danilevsky had convinced the woman to take out a loan to repay his debts, and promised to marry her.

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Pussy Riot Found Guilty By Russian Court

Игорь Мухин (CC)

[UPDATE: Pussy Riot sentenced to two years in prison.]

If there was ever any doubt that the judge would do what Vladimir Putin wanted, it has now been erased. Protests reacting to the verdict are in progress. Report from USA Today:

A Russian judge found three members of the provocative punk band Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism on Friday, in one of the most closely watched cases in recent Russian history.

The judge said the three band members committed hooliganism driven by religious hatred and offending religious believers.

The three were arrested in March after a guerrilla performance in Moscow’s main cathedral calling for the Virgin Mary to protect Russia against Vladimir Putin, who was elected to a new term as Russia’s president a few days later.

They face a maximum seven years in prison. The sentence is to be handed down later Friday.

The case has attracted international attention as an emblem of Russia’s intolerance of dissent.

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Pussy Riot Facing Long Prison Sentences For Performance At Cathedral

Can anyone save the world’s boldest feminist punk rockers, now that they have been unmasked and thrown in Russian jail? Is this the last stand for politically-subversive pop music? The Art Newspaper writes:

The lawyer for three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, who are currently awaiting trial for an allegedly blasphemous protest in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral shortly before the election that saw Vladimir Putin returned for a third term as Russian president, says only appeals from Western celebrities and high-profile cultural figures can save them from further criminal charges and long jail sentences.

The performance infuriated the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill I, and other top church officials, who were criticised in the “punk prayer” performance which also asked the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Putin.

“The authorities must now, in essence, falsify the charges,” says Nikolai Polozov. “It’s very hard for them to back down.

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Putin Calls For ‘Eurasian Union’

Putin (right) with President Dimitri Medvedev. Photo: Presidential Press and Information Office (CC)

Putin (right) with President Dimitri Medvedev. Photo: Presidential Press and Information Office (CC)

Uh-Oh, this is bound to rile up One World Government conspiracy theory types … from Reuters:

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he wants to bring ex-Soviet states into a “Eurasian Union” in an article which outlined his first foreign policy initiative as he prepares to return to the Kremlin as the country’s next president.

Putin said the new union would build on an existing Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan which from next year will remove all barriers to trade, capital and labor movement between the three countries.

“We are not going to stop there and are setting an ambitious goal — to achieve an even higher integration level in the Eurasian Union,” Putin wrote in an article which will be published in Izvestia newspaper on October 4.

Putin said last month he would run in the March 2012 presidential election and his current public approval ratings show that he is set to win…

[continues at Reuters]… Read the rest

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Putin Calls U.S. A ‘Parasite’ Over Its Debt

Alien ChestbursterJust over its debt, Mr. Putin…? Richard Boudreux writes in the Wall Street Journal:

MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the U.S. “a parasite” because of its huge debt load, evoking a term used by Soviet leaders to demonize people who didn’t work, study or serve the Communist state.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, shown at a youth forum, on Monday labeled the U.S. ‘a parasite’ for its debt load. The term is steeped in Soviet rhetoric: Lenin invoked it after the 1917 revolution, and Stalin, himself denounced as a parasite by Trotsky, used the label against Jews, dissidents and others.

In a speech Monday, Mr. Putin said Russia and other countries should seek new reserve currencies to hedge against “a systemic malfunction” in the U.S. Both Russia and China in the past have questioned the dollar’s pre-eminence as a reserve currency and its role in international trade and investment.

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All-Female Cult Worships Vladimir Putin As Saint’s Reincarnation

sy2d94Let’s face it — at one time or another, you’ve wondered if Putin was, in fact, something more than an ordinary mortal. The Telegraph reports:

Vladimir Putin has become the object of veneration for a bizarre Russian all-female sect whose followers believe that the prime minister is a reincarnation of the early Christian missionary Paul the Apostle.

“According to the Bible, Paul the Apostle was a military commander at first and an evil persecutor of Christians before he started spreading the Christian gospel,” the sect’s founder, who styles herself Mother Fotina, said.

As befits a sect that worships a man who has denounced the decadence of the oligarchs, the sect’s members are said to survive on a Spartan diet of turnips, carrots, peas and buckwheat.

Father Alexei, the priest in the local village church, has dismissed the sect. “Her so-called teachings are a nonsensical mixture of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, the occult, Buddhism and political information,” he said.

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