M A I N   N E W S

Landslide for Putin’s man Medvedev

Moscow, March 3
President Vladimir Putin’s hand-picked candidate, Dmitry Medvedev, won the ballot by a landslide yesterday. Russia’s liberals criticised the election as a farce, saying it was stage-managed by the Kremlin from the outset.

Western observers criticised Russia’s weekend presidential election today saying it was not fully fair or democratic, but said its outcome broadly reflected the will of the people.

“The results of the presidential election ... are a reflection of the will of an electorate whose democratic potential was unfortunately not tapped,’’ said Andreas Gross, head of a monitoring group from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

He told reporters the outcome of the election “amounted, in effect, to a vote of confidence in the incumbent president’’. — Reuters

We could call him ‘Honey’

Moscow: Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev apparently shares an India link unknown to many. The 42-year-old successor of Vladimir Putin has a surname which can trace its origin to Sanskrit.

Medvedev is derived from ‘medved’ the Russian word for bear. For pre-Christian call the animal “Medved’.

While in Russian, ‘Medved’ would have translated to “someone having the knowledge of honey”, in Sanskrit, the language of Aryans, the word “Madhu Vedi” has the same meaning.

Experts believe that Arctic Russia was the home of Indo-European Aryans tribes before they migrated to the South due to advent of Ice Age.

Outstanding Indian scholar of Vedas and freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak in his book ‘The Arctic Home in Vedas’ has also mentioned about the common roots of the Russians and Indians.

Ever since the rise of Nazi Germany and the Hitler’s crimes against the Jews during World War II anything Aryan had been a taboo in Russia and for the first time President Vladimir Putin had made a timid attempt to mention the Aryan roots of Russia during his visit to India. — PTI