The British public inquiry into the murder of Russian whistleblower,
Alexander Litvinenko, (Litvinenko
Inquiry) has thrown up some interesting Kremlin insights.
The most dramatic insight is the number of Kremlin critics murdered
by exotic poisons and other means. That
the Kremlin is accused of murdering critics of President Putin is not new, but
the Litvinenko inquiry provides a breathtaking summary of the number and manner
of the killings. John Le Carré couldn’t write this
stuff.
The inquiry lists at least 13 murders, and there are
numerous more. The victims die from gunshot,
such as Anna Politovskaya, crusading journalist, and Boris Nemtsov, opposition
leader; or from poisons of various kinds, such as Ibn Khattab, Islamist guerrilla
leader, killed with a poison letter, or Alexander Perepilichny, businessman and
whistleblower, who may have died from ingesting a rare poison flower; or from
radioactive materials, such as Roman Tsepov, one time associate of Putin, who
died from an unknown material, and, of course, Alexander Litvinenko who died
from ingesting polonium 210 while drinking tea with two Russian agents at the Millennium
Hotel in London. The list goes on.
The inquiry observes,
“These cases
suggest that in the years prior to Mr. Litvinenko’s death, the Russian State
may have been involved in the assassination of Mr. Putin’s critics; they
suggest that those who were seeking to uncover the truth about the 1999
apartment bombings may have been targeted, and that living overseas may not
have provided complete protection. Lastly, these cases suggest that the Russian
State may have sponsored attacks against its opponents using poisons, including
radioactive poisons.”
Since Mr. Litvinenko’s death in 2006 the number of unsolved
murders has only grown.
The inquiry is quick to say that much of the evidence for
Kremlin involvement is circumstantial, as many of these murders are
unsolved. However, given that the
victims were all critics of Putin and the large number of deaths and exotic
methods, what are the odds that it is not the Kremlin? The Litvinenko inquiry points the finger
directly at the Kremlin and at Putin personally.
A second, intriguing insight is Putin’s
fastidiousness. Putin may have prepared
the way for Litvinenko’s murder and the murders of others by enacting laws that
legitimated murder by the FSB at home and abroad. In 2006, just before the murders of
Politovskaya and Litvinenko, Putin signed a Counteraction to Terrorism law that
permits the Russian military and “federal security services” (or FSB) to take
action against terrorism outside of Russia.
Putin also signed an amendment to a Counteracting Extremist Activity law
that one expert witness described as,
“Extravagantly
vague, and more than one category allows for unfettered repressive activity by
the authorities. The item on the slandering of holders of public office is
remarkable for the room it gives to treat any strident critique of the
President or other leading officials as extremism.”
There is disagreement about the scope of the laws, but the
upshot is that the laws are said to have created an atmosphere where the FSB
was free to act without constraint. In
short, the laws gave legal cover to Putin and the FSB to murder critics at home
and abroad.
However, if these murders had been going on for some years
already, why pass the laws? The explanation
may be that the inquiry learned that a list of targets had been drawn up in
2006 that included Politovskaya, Litvinenko and others. This suggests a systematic campaign seemingly
directed at critics of the 1999 Moscow bombings and Putin’s second Chechen war,
rather than ad hoc or opportunistic killings.
Moreover, the names on the list were prominent expatriates, some living in
London. For such high profile killings, Putin
may have felt he needed legal cover. Or,
it may be that, having perfected a regimen of political killings, it was time
to tidy up the practice with some authorizing legislation.
The murders of Putin critics may be immoral, objectively
illegal, or contrary to international law, but Putin may have felt the 2006
laws provided adequate cover for a willfully ignorant Russian population and
for an international community that is hesitant to out Mr. Putin’s rogue
behavior. One need look no further than
Putin’s high popularity ratings in Russia each time he goes rogue or at
Britain’s hesitancy to act on the compelling evidence of the Litvinenko
inquiry.
The third insight is
that this torturing of the law by Putin to suit base purposes has eroded the
basic logic that law serves to establish acceptable and commonly held norms of
civil conduct. Putin has used hastily
passed legislation on numerous occasions to cover actions well beyond the reach
of normal legal standards, including the annexation of Crimea and invasion of
eastern Ukraine. In Putin’s hands, the
law is a tool used to legitimate criminal acts, such as murder, or to deny
inconvenient truths, such as the deaths of Russian troops in eastern
Ukraine. Putin even turns the law on its
head to suppress opposition to his actions by criminalizing rights guaranteed
by the Russian constitution, such as free speech (Chapter 3, Article 29, of the
1993 Constitution).
The Russian Constitution is a sound document of high
principle, that provides “…for the rights and
freedoms of man and citizen according to the universally recognized principles
and norms of international law and according to the present Constitution.” Under the Russian constitution, the
President is guarantor of these principles. At the moment, it just doesn’t work that way.
Want to know what Putin will do next? Check his legislative
agenda.
Dirk Mattheisen
is a writer and blogger on political economy with a focus on European affairs. He is also an independent consultant on
institutional governance of international economic and financial institutions. Dirk Mattheisen is a former Assistant
Corporate Secretary of The World Bank Group.
