Russia: Hammered in parliamentary elections and with little hope for March's presidential vote, Russian liberals led by chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov said yesterday they would have to wait until 2008 to crush the Kremlin's creeping authoritarianism.
Mr Kasparov is to chair Committee 2008, a group of politicians and journalists appalled by a crackdown on independent media under President Vladimir Putin and by his supporters' crushing victory in last month's parliamentary poll.
"The founders of the committee state that the main result of the recent past was the creation and consolidation of President Vladimir Putin's personal power," the group said.
"They are convinced that many basic democratic values are under threat or being demolished in present-day Russia."
Several prominent journalists are on the committee, having seen independent national television eradicated during Mr Putin's first term in office, and watched the former KGB spy install many old security service colleagues in key political positions.
Elements in the security service are accused of orchestrating a recent crackdown on several tycoons linked to Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man and a Kremlin critic who helps fund liberal opposition parties. The oil baron was jailed on fraud and tax evasion charges last October.
Mr Boris Nemtsov, a leading centre-right politician, is also part of Committee 2008, having been kicked out of parliament last month in elections that ousted all Russia's liberals and handed overwhelming control of the legislature to Mr Putin's supporters.
They will chair all 29 influential parliamentary committees, and potentially have enough power to change the constitution.
Mr Kasparov and others fear they may seek such a change to keep Mr Putin in power after 2008, when he is constitutionally obliged to step down.