Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 24 – One of the
most dangerous developments for which Vladimir Putin is responsible is that the
lies he and his regime regularly employ and the actions they take have made
what would be unthinkable under normal conditions something that most people
ignore what they would earlier have focused on, according to Aleksandr
Podrabinek.
Not only the yawning gap between
what the Kremlin says and what anyone’s eyes can see but also the revelations
about that gap and about the workings of the Kremlin which appear and then
often disappear without a trace are creating a world in which everything seems
equally possible and impossible and thus believable or incredible.
The latest example of this, the
Moscow analyst says, came last week when a witness in the Moscow trial of the
Militant Organization of Russian Nationalists (BORN) told the court that the
activities of this band were supervised and directed by officials in Putin’s
Presidential Administration (grani.ru/opinion/podrabinek/m.235226.html).
“In any civilized country, this
would have been sensation number one and would have led to talk about the immediate
retirement of senior officials or distrust in the president.” But in Russia, “this
news passed almost unnoticed.” The opposition media reported it, but the controlled
media carefully avoided anything which might “compromise the chief of state.”
Yevgenia Khasis, the BORN activist
who made this declaration, has already been convicted of the murder of lawyer
Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova and sentenced to 18 years
behind bars. Two months ago, she was
brought from the Mordvinian camps to give evidence against his former BORN
comrades.
According to Khasis, the man in the Presidential
Administration supervising BORN was Leonid Simulin, who provided some funding to
the group but who refused to provide the amount that its activists wanted
unless they carried out the murder of an FSB officer the Kremlin apparently
wanted out of the way.
If they did, the Kremlin official was
prepared to give the BORN people 5,000 euros. “Not all that much money for the
work of a killer, but one can imagine how much money would pass into the hands
of intermediaries on the path from those giving the orders and those carrying
them out,” Podrabinek observes.
What is especially concerning, the
Moscow analyst continues, is Khasis’ assertion that Simulin was close to
Vladislav Surkov and constantly told those from BORN with whom he was working
that he had “consulted the leadership” and “the leadership did not recommend”
this or that action. That takes the criminal world inside Putin’s closest
circles.
Links between the powers that be and
the criminal world will appear “unbelievable only to those who believe that the
authorities are really trying to defend the law.” There aren’t very many of
them in Russia now, Podrabinek says, with the majority now convinced that “bureaucrats
are corrupt” and that they are all thieves.”
“But few believe or want to believe
that the highest leadership of the country is involved with ideological maniacs
and murderers.” Now they may have to, just as they may have to recognize that
Putin and company were involved in the 1999 apartment bombings that reignited
the Chechen war or other crimes that the Kremlin has been only too ready to
exploit.
Of course, such links between those
in power and the criminal world “are not an exclusive aspect of the Russian
authoritarian regime.” All too many other countries provide evidence of this
dangerous trend. But those other
authoritarian regimes also provide another lesson which Russians need to learn:
The person who orders such crimes is
always the one at the top. “Executors can be sacrificed but those who do the
ordering are untouchable as far as the law is concerned.” And typically they
are protected from exposure by the fear of those below them. But Yegeniya
Khasis showed she wasn’t afraid. Now,
Putin and company should be.
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