Goodfella Putin

I

The findings of the public inquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident and former KGB/FSB officer, killed in London in November 2006 are not so surprising, although the inquiry’s frankness in pointing fingers has surprised some.  More unsettling is what to make of Russia’s behavior.

The inquiry finds that Mr. Litvinenko was murdered by two Russians, Andrey Lugovoi, currently a Russian MP and former KGB officer, and Dmitry Kovtun, a Russian businessman.  Sir Richard Owen, the inquiry’s author, concludes that the two probably acted on orders from the Russian government, likely at the express instruction of President Putin.

Putin already has a reputation for ruthlessness based on suppressing dissent in Russia, for conducting a brutal military campaign in Chechnya in 1999, and for aggression against a number of countries, including Georgia and Ukraine.  He is believed by many to have been the actual instigator of a series of bombings, with many Russian deaths, in Moscow in 1999 as a pretext for the Chechnya conflict.  He is also believed responsible, directly or indirectly, for a number of political murders in Russia, including opposition figure, Boris Nemtsov, who was shot down in February 2015 in the shadow of the Kremlin itself.

Why have Litvinenko killed?  Sir Owen writes that certain members of Russian intelligence and the military viewed Litvinenko as a traitor for exposing corruption in the FSB.  Litvinenko claimed that Putin was involved in criminal activities from his time in St. Petersburg, as head of the FSB and after becoming president.  Litvinenko made other claims about activities of the Russian mafia and connections to Putin.  Litvinenko also asserted there was evidence that Putin was a pedophile.  Given Putin’s death grip on Russia, what did it matter?  Who in Russia was going to anything about it?  The answer is that Litvinenko’s murder fits a pattern of murder within Russia and abroad.

Putin has faced serious accusations before, including, for instance, from crusading journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, herself murdered in October 2006, who accused Putin of tolerating atrocities in Chechnya.  Boris Nemtsov was murdered as he was about to release a report on Russian soldiers’ deaths in eastern Ukraine.  It seems that if you have dirt to spill on Putin, you end up dead.

The picture of Putin that emerges is more Don Corleone than Peter the Great.  The inquiry reinforces the impression that Putin lacks the majesty or gravitas of a national leader. The overall impression is of thuggishness, a low-level intelligence operative from the KGB busy in St. Petersburg with his own little extortion rackets who is propelled to the pinnacle of state power by a series-of-curious-events, who then builds a national criminal empire on steroids (apparently both figuratively and literally in view of systemic doping in Russian’s national sports program).  The impression is reinforced by Putin’s fascination with manliness, including a fondness for martial arts, cozying up to the Night Wolves, a belligerent Russian nationalist motorcycle club, and his “street” affection for crude and vulgar expression.  His bromance with Mario Berlusconi, former Italian Prime Minister, another miscreant, only rounds out the impression of base impulses and corruption.  If Russia had the same standard of judicial integrity as Britain, what would we learn about the perpetrators and motives of Politkovskaya and Nemtsov’s murders and many others?

The inquiry is as interesting, though, for what it says about the underlying integrity of the Russian people.  That the inquiry took place at all is due to the perseverance of Litvinenko himself as he was dying from poisoning and his wife, Marina Litvinenko, who forced an unwilling British government to conduct the inquiry through a High Court ruling in 2014 after six years of effort.  There are other heroes.  Surprising perhaps to many are the FSB officers who stood up to their superiors along with Litvinenko to complain of corruption in the FSB.  Unfortunately, their faith in justice and trust in the integrity of their superiors, including Putin, is almost quaint in the face of their superior’s subsequent easy brutality.  That such faith in justice exists among ordinary Russians, especially in the FSB, demonstrates that there is an underlying decency in Russian society that lies submerged beneath Putin’s criminal enterprise.

Marina Litvinenko is currently pressuring the British government to take action on the inquiry’s findings.  She is prodding a “craven”--as one of her lawyers describes it--British government into responding to the murder of one of its citizens (Alexander and his wife had taken UK citizenship) with the appropriate level of indignation at the violation of British law and of fundamental human rights.

Edward Lucas in the British Daily Mail, Russia Has Murdered a British Citizen, makes the point that the British financial and political classes’ sense of moral outrage has been dulled by years of complicity in openness to Russian money from questionable sources, disguised interest property sales, offshore Commonwealth tax dodges, and well-lubricated influence peddling.  The British government’s complicit attitude after the fact is neatly laid out in an article by Peter Pomerantsev in Foreign Policy magazine, So Putin Killed Litvinenko.  Carry On.  He puts the question well; if the British government does not act forcefully to Litvinenko’s murder, “Now, when China murders a dissident in London, what will the UK do?”  For a racier take, read Michael Weiss in TheDailyBeast, Britain's KGB Sugar Daddy http.........

Litvinenko's murder is not about the compromises necessary in international relations or for political advantage.  Now that the facts have been established, it is about upholding the rule of law and fundamental Western values against the corrosive influence of a criminal empire,.


Postscript. Alexander Litvinenko's son, Anatoly, has the last word.  In the inquiry Anatoly had this to say about his father when they got their British citizenship,

0. “... he would always go on about the integrity of this nation... the honesty and transparency with which judicial processes were carried out as well as the honesty of the police and how deeply [this] contrasted with the regime under which he grew up and the system in which he served.”  

Postscript.  Sir Owen's inquiry has unleashed intense comment in the UK of British and Western complicity in Russian criminality. The following is a good example.  Litvinenko's Murder is the Reason Putin's Russia Will Never Prosper.  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/24/litvinenko-murder-putin-russia

Russia's Dual Economic Crisis

According to the latest update of the IMF's World Economic Outlook (WEO), released yesterday, Russian GDP will not only decline by -1.0% in 2016 (after falling -3.7% in 2015), it will lag the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which will grow by 2.3% (excluding Russia).  The CIS (excluding Russia) is also projected to grow more than three times faster than Russia in 2017.  

Russia's economic crisis is a problem of growth and of relative growth as it struggles with a falling GDP and falling behind neighboring economies and behind global growth.  Poor economic management and a confrontational foreign policy are undermining Russia's ability to maintain economic growth and to achieve domestic and international political goals, which if prolonged threaten state cohesion.

The Economic Cost of Putin's Miscalculations

http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/01/13/the-economic-cost-of-putins-miscalculations/

Ground Zero With Kim Jung Un and Vladimir Putin

Kim Jung Un, North Korea’s totalitarian leader, and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s evolving totalitarian leader, may be more alike than is commonly thought.

Kim claimed this week that North Korea had detonated its first hydrogen bomb.  If true, it would be a huge increase in Korea’s war making capability.  Although North Korea does seem to have detonated something, its claim of a hydrogen bomb appears to be greatly exaggerated in order to grab international attention.

Putin also likes attention and boasts often of Russia’s nuclear and military capability.  Like North Korea, Russia recently claimed impressive but doubtful nuclear and military advances, including a tactical nuclear torpedo, fleets of next generation battle tanks, and a super-sized aircraft carrier.

Kim and Putin are similar in other ways, as well.  They both rule over increasingly oppressive regimes and increasingly desperate economies that would be of little importance if not for their military power.  Both suppress opposition and appear to use murder as a tool of state.  Both exercise almost absolute control over information and national media in their countries. Both maintain a posture of belligerence toward the West, and toward the United States in particular, while constantly seeking recognition from the US as equals to establish their legitimacy and importance on the global stage.  Despite appallingly badly managed economies, they both maintain high levels of military spending.  Each rattles his saber when he feels he is not getting enough attention.

Kim is one of Putin’s few remaining BFFs on the planet.  Putin has visited North Korea and cozied up to Kim while promoting cooperation and sales of Russian military hardware.   Russia even trumpeted Kim’s intention to attend Russia’s victory day celebrations in May last year—only to be embarrassed when Kim became a no-show.

There are differences to be sure.  Putin has experience with international cooperation, and many Russians have traveled outside Russia and are aware that living standards are higher elsewhere in the world.   Kim inherited a hermetic nation with nearly no outside contact and for most North Koreans the larger world is an almost mythic place populated by demons.  However, given the abstruse natures of their regimes, it is impossible to know whether the differences or the similarities are more important.

Most alarming is that Kim and Putin have each threatened to use their nuclear weapons to advance their political agendas if and when it suits them.  Their like-mindedness would be comic if not for it’s also being terribly real and dangerous.  Their words and deeds to date suggest they are capable of miscalculation verging on recklessness.  No national leader can afford to ignore the possibility of erratic or irrational behavior by one or both of them.  There is a chance one or both is mad.  But the greater likelihood is that--in their dark, medieval world where the only crime is to disagree with the boss--Kim and Putin are perilously close to destructive self-delusion.