Bulgarians, Yukos, and the degradation of Russia.

Georgy Bovt, who shares Yulia Latynina's delicious dry wit, describes the third-world antics of the Russian government vis-a-vis Bulgarians in Russia. Similar tactics used against Yukos resulted in its CEO's being sentenced to a long prison term. It's not difficult to make the leap that the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya was not perpetrated by a jilted lover.

Russia, it seems, is sinking beneath the waves, with the rule of law and free elections just a fantastic dream superseded by very sincere government rabbit-preservation concerns:^[1]

They [Bulgarians inside Russia] are being targeted as revenge against the regime of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

It seems to me that it would be much more honest to pass a law saying that Russia is at war -- a cold one to start with -- with Georgia, and then everything and everyone Georgian could be banned and subject to internment or deportation. But the current campaign looks more like the campaign against Yukos and its former CEO Mikhail Khodorokovsky. He was also "rubbed out," not because he harbored inconvenient political plans and feuded with influential Kremlin insiders, of course. The explanation was that he didn't pay his taxes. At one point, a rabbit-breeding firm under Yukos' control was even found in order to accuse Khodorkovsky of ill-treating the bunnies.

The humane treatment of animals was used as a weapon by Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Natural Resources Ministry's environmental inspectorate, in a dispute surrounding the Sakhalin-2 project. Instead of rabbits, this time it was gray whales and the Amur salmon, which are allegedly being poisoned by Western oil companies. If the companies agreed to split their share with Gazprom, it's unlikely Mitvol would continue to worry about the whales.

. . . Society is being made to understand that doing business legally here is impossible because any business can be targeted, infringements found, and the owner subjected to repression 24 hours a day. All, of course, in accordance with the law." [Sic.]

This kind of application of the law is useful for street toughs. But when a state gets used to behaving in the same way, it becomes ripe for degradation and collapse.^[2]

Notes
^[1] Which Col. Bunny shares.
^[2] "The Law's Cleansing Effect." By Georgy Bovt, Moscow Times, 10/12/06.