Following broad criticism that President Vladimir Putin is exploiting the Beslan school massacre to enhance his powers, the Kremlin on Thursday mobilized a number of surrogates, including former president Boris Yeltsin, to rebut charges that proposed political changes would undermine Russian democracy.
“The authorities must act in a tough and speedy manner” to meet “the bloody challenges thrown at us by the new enemy,” Yeltsin said in a rare interview Thursday with the paper Moscow News. “But at the same time, I firmly believe that the measures that the country’s leadership will undertake after Beslan will lie within the framework of the democratic freedoms that have become some of Russia’s most valuable achievements over the last decade.”Full Story
