Russian methods ... still the USSR

Kevin O'Flynn at the Moscow Times reports on the expulsion of yet another reporter ... more than 40 publicly critical journalists, writers and public figures have been expelled from Russia in the past eight years.

...Natalya Morar, a Moldovan citizen who writes for Moscow-based magazine The New Times, was refused entry at Domodedovo Airport after returning from a business trip to Israel, she said by telephone from the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.

"They said, 'You are banned from entering the Russian Federation," said Morar, 23.
When she asked border guards why she was being barred, she was told that it was on orders from the Federal Security Service, she said....

...Morar said she believed that her recent report about the Kremlin slush fund prompted her expulsion. "I am certain -- I have no doubts that it has to do with my professional work," she said. "It is because of my last article."

The article, "The Black Till of the Kremlin," which cites numerous unidentified officials in political parties and the presidential administration, says the presidential administration has a huge cash fund from which it funded and controlled most of the parties that participated in the recent State Duma elections. It names Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin and Vladislav Surkov, one of his deputies, as the people who control the money....

...Morar is one of more than two dozen journalists who have been refused entry to Russia since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, including former Moscow Times reporter Thomas de Waal, now the Caucasus editor at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, who was refused a visa in 2006....

...The article was one of a series of that Morar has written investigating the financial transactions of the Russian elite. A story in May claimed that Kremlin officials were using dozens of banks to launder money. Her story linked the transfer of the funds with the murder last year of Andrei Kozlov, a senior central banker.

Robert Amsterdam's blog entry "Why Did the Kremlin Expel Natalia Morar?" contains some interesting analysis.

Two "Other Russia" activists have been committed to psychiatric institutions, along with a reporter: Artyom Basyrov, Larisa Arap, and the reporter - Andrei Novikov.