It’s arguable that an opposition leader in Putin-controlled Russia is an even more endangered species than a Christian leader in ISIL-controlled Syria.
But the best way to understand why opposition leaders in Russia invariably end up in prison, hopelessly marginalized, or dead is to understand that Putin eliminates them for the same reason the scorpion stings the frog….
I coined the term ‘putinization’ to describe Putin’s neo-Stalinist tactics, which were (and are) clearly aimed at neutralizing all political dissent, quashing all civil liberties, and making him a latter-day Czar.
(“Hail Putin,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 3, 2007)
Nine years ago, an assassin took out former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. I commented back then in “Putin Probably Ordered the Hit. But No One Will Do Anything about It,” November 28, 2006.
Here is an excerpt.
____________________
Everyone – from government ministers to Litvinenko’s fellow defectors from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB, the successor agency to its infamous KGB) – has already fingered Putin, himself a former KGB spy, for this crime.
Litvinenko fled Russia in 2000, after accusing the FSB of killing over 300 Russians in 1999 in a Machiavellian scheme to frame and discredit Chechen rebels. The prevailing suspicion is that Putin targeted him because Litvinenko was becoming too public (and credible) in his criticisms of the Kremlin. Further, that it was Litvinenko’s high-profile investigation into what many suspect was an FSB hit last month on another Kremlin critic, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, that prompted Putin to silence him now.
___________________
Now comes this:
Boris Nemtsov, a charismatic Russian opposition leader and sharp critic of President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down Saturday near the Kremlin, just a day before a planned protest against the government…
Russia’s top investigative body said Saturday it is looking into several possible motives for the killing … including an attempt to destabilize the state, Islamic extremism, the Ukraine conflict and his personal life.
(The Associated Press, February 28, 2015)
But all you need to know about this investigative body is Putin’s declared intent to head it:
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the president would take the investigation into Nemtsov’s death under personal control….
(The Guardian, February 28, 2015)
Clearly, most world leaders would be loath to act as investigator, prosecutor, judge, and jury in a murder case, where he’s the prime suspect. But it’s an indication of the totalitarian power he wields at home, and of the respect that power has earned him abroad, that Putin has no compunctions whatsoever.
This is why you can bet this body will investigate every motive except the most obvious one: another hit Putin ordered to silence another Kremlin critic who became too credible for his own good.
After all, it’s no coincidence that, like Litvinenko, Nemtsov was set to release irrefutable evidence affirming widely held suspicions about nefarious Kremlin activities. According to BBC reports, the evidence in this case shows the presence of Russian soldiers and armaments on battlefields all across eastern Ukraine, giving the “big lie” to Putin’s adamant and persistent denials.
Incidentally, it might be helpful to highlight two points at this juncture:
- Nemtsov’s girlfriend, who was strolling with him when he was assassinated, is Ukrainian.
- The aforementioned Politkovskaya was assassinated in central Moscow in eerily similar fashion in October 2006 — complete with four bullets, just like Nemtsov. Prevailing suspicion was, and remains, that Putin ordered the hit as punishment for her reporting on war crimes the pro-Russian regime and Kremlin-dispatched mercenaries were committing in Chechnya.
Unfortunately, Putin has gotten away with so many big lies, one can hardly blame him for thinking he can get away with another one in this case. Therefore, don’t be surprised if he blames pro-Western forces for hiring a Russian (or Ukrainian) hitman to assassinate Nemtsov in a misguided attempt to frame him and destabilize Russia. Putin could then use this big lie as a pretext to turn the country into even more of a police state to prevent such politically motivated assassinations … betraying no hint of irony or hypocrisy. And if you think this is just too cynical, how do you think Putin – who has never held a non-government job in his life – has gotten away with amassing a personal fortune, which Forbes estimates at $40 billion…?
Trust me, Putin lords over a kleptocracy that has fleeced public funds on such an unprecedented scale, it makes the kleptocracies African despots lord over seem petty. Which of course is why he is so anxious to stoke the combustible geopolitical crisis in Ukraine to deflect the international media from drawing unavoidable parallels between Yanukovych’s illegal accumulation of wealth and his. Far better, for example, to get Russians drunk with pan-Russian pride than to have them pose sober questions about the billions he and his cronies embezzled from the $50-billion price tag for the Sochi Olympics.
(“Ukraine’s (Peaceful) Orange Revolution Turns Red … with Blood,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 25, 2014)
But you don’t have to take my word on the perfidy of this Putin regime. Because here is the extraordinary way America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, accused Russia — during congressional testimony just this week — of telling bold-faced lies about its involvement in Ukraine:
Russia has engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I’ve seen since the very height of the Cold War.
And they have been persisting in their misrepresentations, lies, whatever you want to call them, about their activities there to my face, to the face of others, on many different occasions.
(The Associated Press, February 24, 2015)
Alas, Nemtsov is on record bemoaning that Russians have become so cowered and brainwashed by Putin’s thuggish rule and shameless propaganda, they’ll believe any lie he propagates. Even I bemoaned this North Korean-like transformation of Russia’s national consciousness, which has even turned redoubtable Putin critic Mikhail Gorbachev into a Putin apologist.
Many people were seized with shock and dismay yesterday as they listened to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev deliver his keynote speech at a forum marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall…
Gorbachev delivered an anti-Western diatribe that one could be forgiven for thinking was written by Putin himself. He seemed primarily interested in chastising the West for dancing on the grave of the Soviet Union, ignoring the inconvenient truth that his Glasnost and Perestroika policies did more than anything else to bury it.
(“Berlin Wall 2014: Mr. Gorbachev, Take Back that Speech,” November 10, 2014)
Meanwhile, even more farcical than Putin heading the investigation into this murder are foreign heads of state, led by British Prime Minister David Cameron, calling on him to conduct a full, rapid, and transparent investigation to bring those responsible to justice. Never mind that, despite evidence showing that Litvinenko “was murdered by the Russian government” (as the December 12, 2012, edition of The Guardian reported), the British government has yet to bring anyone to justice. In fact, the British government waited until last July, nearly eight years after his murder, to announce that it was finally launching a formal investigation….
Except that this patent farce is entirely consistent with European leaders, on the one hand, blaming Putin for orchestrating the rebellion in eastern Ukraine, while on the other hand, hailing him as an impartial peace broker to help end that rebellion. This, after all, is rather like “chickens” relying on the fox to free those in the chicken coop it’s “guarding.”
But nothing could have been more frustrating to Nemtsov than watching Putin toy with world leaders, while Russian soldiers are wreaking havoc in eastern Ukraine for the pyrrhic glory of helping Putin create his Novorossiya (New Russia).
It just so happens that, from the outset of the conflict in Ukraine, I’ve been channeling his frustration in such commentaries as “Putin as Hitler; Crimea as Sudetenland,” February 26, 2014; “Europeans Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish Appeasement of Putin,” May 3, 2014; “A Ukraine Divided Is the Only Way It Will Stand,” May 6, 2014; “Russia Gobbling Up Ukraine: First Crimea, Now Donetsk … Next Odessa?” May 13, 2014; “Ukraine: a New (Post-War) Germany in the Making,” August 30, 2014; and “Russia’s Valentine to Ukraine: Be Mine, or I Kill You!” February 14, 2015, to name just a few.
My abiding lament/foreboding throughout has been that European leaders seem to think they can stop Putin’s military aggression with diplomatic negotiations. This, notwithstanding the tragic folly of their predecessors thinking they could stop Hitler’s the same way. Instead, today’s leaders should have acted from the outset pursuant to the categorical imperative of standing up to Putin with military power worthy of the Cold-War principle of Mutual Assured Destruction.
Mind you, given the congenital appeasement European leaders are displaying, I wish Obama had seized this opportunity to show appropriate contempt for Putin’s criminal syndicate masquerading as a democratic government.
For example, instead of parroting their pleas for Putin to conduct a prompt and transparent investigation, Obama should have dared Putin to allow a U.N. special tribunal to investigate. And he could have neutralized Putin’s PR machine by noting that only this could dispel reasonable suspicions that he’s only interested in covering up this sensational crime.
But let me hasten to clarify that standing up to Putin does not require the kind of D-Day mobilization it eventually took to stand up to Hitler. All it requires is Western leaders, collectively, doing as much for pro-Ukrainian forces as Putin is doing for pro-Russian rebels. To date, they’ve done nothing but impose economic sanctions, which are having even less effect on Putin’s extraterritorial ambitions than the U.S. embargo had on Castro’s political ideology.
Everyone should know by now that only one thing will force Putin to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty: sending so many Russian mercenaries home in body bags that even their brained-washed compatriots could no longer deny their foolish sacrifice. This, you may recall, is the strategy former President Reagan deployed to help the (then) pro-Western Mujahideen force leaders of the former Soviet Union to respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty – as chronicled, in instructive fashion, in George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War. European leaders would do well to take heed.
All else is folly.
Related commentaries:
Putinization of Russia…
Litvinenko…
Ukraine’s Revolution…
Berlin Wall: Gorbachev…
Russia’s valentine…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Saturday, at 3:16 p.m.