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 | | Increasing international attention to and condemnation of human rights abuses in Mari El, a Finno-Ugric republic in Russia's middle Volga region, has infuriated Russian commentators, three of whom have suggested that this focus is part of a broader plot to destabilize Russia, overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin, and seize control of Russia's nuclear weapons. |
 | | As he has in other articles, Yeliseyev answered in the negative, arguing that the Mari El issue and the involvement of Europeans in it reflects "a crisis of Russian statehood" which he says is just as clearly in evidence in foreign as in domestic affairs. |
 | | And so, working together, these enemies hope either to bring to power a new regime in Mari El that will be less interested in defending Russia's military interests or to destabilize the situation to the point that the international community might decide that UN "blue helmets" would have to be introduced. |
| www.rferl.org /newsline/2005/05/5-NOT/not-170505.asp?po=y (1404 words) |