Putin aide quits, saying Russia is no longer free   
 
 Andrei Illarionov, the economic adviser to President Vladimir Putin who resigned yesterday, was one of the few Russian politicians the West could do real business with.
 
His dramatic departure just as Russia prepares to take over the presidency of the G8 group of rich nations on Sunday, looks designed to cause Mr Putin maximum discomfort.
 
Mr Ilarionov was the only Kremlin figure ready to criticise its more draconian policies in public. And he often made life uncomfortable for Mr Putin by questioning the Kremlin's decision to renationalise many of Russia's largest private industries.
 
Last week he declared Russia "no longer a democratic country, no longer a free country".
 
An ardent proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, Mr Illarionov won respect by helping to set the agenda that turned Russia's economy around at the beginning of the decade.
 
He consolidated his reputation as Mr Putin's "sherpa", or representative to the G8, and won US approval with his attacks on the Kyoto Protocol.
 
Russia only joined the G8 club in 1998, has never before held its presidency and its year in the chair is being portrayed at home as a triumph for Moscow's diplomacy.
 
But Mr Ilarionov's departure amid accusations that Russia has "ceased to be politically free", represents a spectacularly bad start to its 12 months in charge.
 
Mr Illarionov seemed particularly incensed by the growing interference of the government in Russia's young private sector, saying that the country was now dominated by state-owned corporations.
 
He warned that the expanding presence of the state, exemplified by the swallowing up of independent oil companies and bureaucratic restrictions on private investors, could hurt Russia's economy.
 
As perhaps the only non-sycophant in Mr Putin's court who believed in telling the president what he believed he needed to hear, Mr Illarionov lashed out last week at the clamp down on free speech.
 
"Traditional feedback mechanisms of the type that exist in democratic societies are being removed," he said.
 
Mr Putin, a former KGB officer, has remorselessly tightened his grip on power over the past 18 months, stifling dissent in government and in the legislature as well as curtailing the independence of the media.
 
Yesterday, the upper house of parliament ratified a Bill that imposes strict controls on civil society, perhaps the last arena of relative free speech left in Russia.
 
While Mr Illarionov's comments again serve to highlight the increasingly Soviet style of the Putin administration, western governments may not be willing to become more vocal in their condemnation of the Kremlin.
 
"It will affect Putin's reputation somewhat in the short term," said Dmitry Oreshkin, an analyst with Mercator, a Moscow-based think-tank. "But Russian gas is more important for the West than Illarionov."
 
Mr Putin's aide first broke ranks with the government when it began its politically motivated fight with the oil firm Yukos and its former boss, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is serving a nine-year jail term for fraud.
 
Mr Illarionov was removed from his G8 role this year after describing the forced sale of Yukos's core asset as the "scam of the year".
 
But in some circles the political pressure on Mr Putin is growing. A group of US senators and congressmen has called for Russia to be excluded from the G8 because of democracy's embattled status there.
 
Those calls are likely to grow with the resignation of Mr Illarionov.
 
By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Portal.telegraph
2005-12-28 16:39:35
http://www.kavkazcenter.net/eng/content/2005/12/28/4327.shtml