NOV. 16 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A row over Tajikistan’s imprisonment of two ethnic Russian pilots for smuggling has escalated and threatens to do long-term damage to Tajik-Russian relations.

As reported in the Conway Bulletin issue of Nov. 8, Russia reacted with indignant fury at the 8-1/2 year prison sentences handed out by a provincial Tajik court on Nov. 8 2011 to Vladimir Sadovnichy, a Russian citizen, and Alexei Rudenko, an Estonian citizen.

The Russian foreign ministry said the sentences would damage Tajikistan. Since then immigration officers in Russia have rounded up hundreds of Tajik workers.

Around 300 have already been expelled for not having the correct paperwork, according to Russian media. If many more are sent back home it will begin to hurt Tajikistan as almost half its national income derives from remittances.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says the immigration officials’ actions are a coincidence and not revenge for the prison sentences.

Most commentators, though, don’t see it that way.

Central to the row is what Sadvonichy and Rudenko were doing when they landed their two cargo planes in Tajikistan without permission on a routine Kabul-Moscow flight. They say they desperately needed fuel. Tajik officials say they were trying to smuggle in a jet engine.

Already strained by negotiations earlier this year over Russia’s lease of a military base in Tajikistan, Tajik-Russian relations are now taking another battering.

ENDS