Russians Outfox U.S. in Latest Great Game

By ALAN CULLISON
WSJ

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- One at a time the government's top critics seemed to go to jail, or simply disappear.

Syrgak Abdyldayev, a local journalist, began to investigate whether the attacks had anything to do with a team of Russian-speaking specialists who arrived last year to advise the Kyrgyz government. He published several scathing articles accusing the government of shunting aside its opponents and turning to Moscow for financial support, including one in February that likened Russian aid to "oxygen for a sinking submarine."

Then Mr. Abdyldayev became a victim. Three men attacked him with metal pipes as he left his newspaper one evening in March, broke both his arms, his ribs and a leg, and stabbed him 26 times in the buttocks.

Times are changing in Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous Central Asian republic that not long ago was a hoped-for springboard for Western-style democracy in the former Soviet Union.

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