No-Confidence Vote in Russia’s Duma Likely Next Week
Russian opposition parties have gathered enough signatures to table a vote of no-confidence in the State Duma lower house of parliament next week, a nationalist leader said on Thursday. Opposition parties, which jointly control less than 100 seats in the Duma, have demanded the vote against the government since a law scrapping Soviet-era benefits fueled public protests across Russia earlier this month. Although the vote has no chance of success in the Kremlin-dominated Duma, its tabling would give a strong moral boost to the nationalist and communist opposition as the first such attempt to unseat Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.Full Story