Russian communists say Putin more powerful than Tsar
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The leader of Russia&#39;s Communist Party  accused President Vladimir Putin on Saturday of piling up vast  powers and said the Kremlin&#39;s main party represented  billionaires rather than ordinary people.
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MOSCOW -- Facing a wave of deadly terrorism, President Vladimir Putin moved yesterday to reshape Russia's political system and give the central government dramatically increased powers, but his critics said the changes would threaten the country's young democracy and put it on a path toward dictatorship.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin defended his stance on Chechnya during talks with Germany&#39;s Gerhard SchrÃ¶der and France&#39;s Jacques Chirac on Tuesday after both questioned him on the matter.
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President Vladimir Putin announced radical changes to Russia&#39;s democratic institutions yesterday that will give the Kremlin greater power than at any time since the fall of the Soviet Union.
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Russians voted on Sunday in regional elections, testing the strength of two big pro-Kremlin parties ahead of nationwide parliamentary polls in December.
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Russia's political elite has been showing a striking willingness to take sides in the U.S. election &#151; most notably President Vladimir Putin, whose expression of support for President Bush reflects more than the two leaders' warm relationship.
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Russia's next president will remain the  country's most powerful official even with outgoing head of  state Vladimir Putin as prime minister, Putin's likely  successor Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview on Monday.
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Letter from Moscow: Nobody knows for sure, but the backdrop for the deadly turn Russian politics has taken in recent months is the slow onset of a succession struggle
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Is Russia sliding back into czar-like autocracy, after a brief liberation from Soviet dictatorship? The leaders who ushered in democracy fear so, as President Vladimir Putin pushes to centralize yet more power in his own busy hands.
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Faced with the near total dominance of United Russia, the surrogate party of the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin, and proposed political changes that could institutionalize its control, the men in the room said they easily coalesced around the idea of a common enemy, even though they have long seen the enemy in each other.
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Russia's president installs a trusted ally, rather than one of the top contenders for the presidency, in the crucial post of prime minister. But does that really make him Putin's successor?
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Critics see Moscow's hand in the poisoning, while Putin supporters point to an anti-Russia conspiracy.
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Critics say Putin's regime stifles dissent in the press.
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The popularity of Russia's First Deputy  Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has more than doubled since  President Vladimir Putin named him his preferred successor two  weeks ago, an opinion poll showed on Thursday.
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VLADIMIR Putin, the Russian president, yesterday ordered a drastic centralisation of government power that is likely to strengthen the Kremlinâs grip over every aspect of political life.
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MOSCOW -- Russian voters went to the polls yesterday in regional elections dominated by two pro-Kremlin parties, a result that critics said presented the appearance of democracy without its substance.
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GROZNY, Russia -- President Vladimir Putin gave power in Chechnya yesterday to a widely feared pro-Russian strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, even as Europe's human rights chief warned of widespread torture and other abuses allegedly committed by Kadyrov's henchmen.