From Russia, minus love

The Age ^ | November 25, 2006 | Vanora Bennett

[A. Pole]

IMAGINE you were a foreign power that wanted to get rid of a dissident who had set up home in London. Would you (a) push the troublemaker under a bus, (b) have him mown down by a hit-run driver, or (c) arrange for him to be poisoned while eating in a crowded restaurant?

If you wanted to make the death look natural, or just to keep things simple, you would presumably avoid the restaurant scenario. And yet, if many Russia-watchers are to be believed, the country's Federal Security Service (FSB) has carried out just such an assassination.

On November 1, Alexander Litvinenko, a 43-year-old Russian who used to work for the FSB — the post-Soviet version of the KGB — had breakfast with two Russian men, one a former KGB officer, at the Millennium hotel in Mayfair, then lunch at Itsu, a cheap and cheerful Japanese eatery in London, with an Italian defence consultant, Mario Scaramella. Litvinenko later claimed that Scaramella had shown him

a hit list featuring Litvinenko's name as well as that of murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

By that evening, he was so ill he was taken to hospital. Doctors wasted 10 days trying to treat him for food poisoning. His condition deteriorated — hair falling out, difficulty speaking, white blood cells disappearing, unable to eat, even nourishment from a drip causing him to vomit.

It wasn't until earlier this week, after listening to their patient's pleas, that doctors said they were investigating the possibility of poisoning. Initially they suspected thallium, a tasteless, odourless killer used in rat poison until it was banned in the 1970s. By Thursday, however, with Litvinenko's condition deteriorating rapidly, a hospital spokesman said the medical team had ruled out thallium but was still unclear about the cause of his condition. A friend said the former spy had suffered a cardiac arrest and was on an artificial heart support machine. Litvinenko died yesterday, at 8.21am Melbourne time.

Litvinenko's friends in London have been quick to accuse the Kremlin of being behind this poisoning. They say Russia wanted to stop Litvinenko investigating the assassination last month of another high-profile critic of the Russian Government — his friend, the campaigning journalist Politkovskaya. They believe the Kremlin was also to blame for Politkovskaya being shot outside her Moscow apartment door.

[...]

[A. Pole]

Who are you calling a paranoiac? Who have you be talking to? Did my wife talk to you?!?

Not yet:) Here you have real paranoiac thread on FR:

Did George W. Bush Kill JFK?

[Timedrifter]

I found out some interesting information today that seems to be missing (what a shocker!) from the mainstream media in both the US and the UK.

1. Russia and the UK were very close to coming to an extradition treaty agreement. This would put the entire Berezovsky gang under and increased risk of deportation to Russia, or having to relocate to another country at the very least.

2. Letvineko just happened to live right next door to Chechen terrorist Zakayev, who like Letvineko is on the payroll of Team Berezovsky. Even the Dr. who came out earlier in the week and claimed Thallium poisoning works directly for Berezovsky.

3. Russian officials seem to have finally noticed the pattern of these things happening when Putin is having meetings at overseas events. Almost every one of these relates to EU meetings. This goes back to the terrorist attacks on the Moscow subway and two aircraft a few years back as well as the Klebnikov, Politskaya and now Letvineko.

I am increasingly convinced that all of these things are linked. Of course I will not defnitively point the finger at Berezovsky, but he certainly has the clearest motive and the highest beneficiary ratio of any actor.

[A. Pole]

Very interesting!

[outofstyle]

Do you think that Putin is really so stupid...

Was Stalin so stupid? This is intimidation. If you cross Putin you die. What is the West going to do about it? Nothing. Putin is not stupid. He is a smart, ruthless dictator.

[uncbob]

If you cross Putin you die. What is the West going to do about it? Nothing.

What did Clinton do about Saddam trying to assassinate Former President Bush ?

[jess35]

Do you think that Putin is really so stupid as to order something bizarre like that at the time of EU/Russia meeting?

It's completely plausible as it sends a brutal message to all other dissidents. It's not even the slightest bit out of character for Putin and his toadies.

[RedStateRocker]

And there aren't a few of us who wouldn't mind seeing a few leakers of national intelligence, and other traitors, meet a similar fate?

[RedStateRocker]

I've said all along- the Russians (the smarter of them, anyway) know Communism sucks; that is not going to stop them from being Russians. They play chess as a national sport, lost 20 million people withing living memory, and regard an enormous empire at the least and world domination generally as their birthright just as much as we do, and have for far longer. Why anyone would ever expect the Russians to not act like Russians is beyond me; Lenin and Stalin were of a same kind with Ivan the Terrible, in a way. Putin is just as convinced that HE should be head of the world's sole superpower as President Bush is.

[GarySpFc]

Boris keeps popping up in the strangest places. Things are really getting interesting.

Notorious Oligarch Berezovsky Reveals Plans for Coup in Russia

The following is an excerpt.

Wanted Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has gone public with his plans to seize power in Russia by force. The London-based oligarch said in an interview with the Ekho Moskvy radio station Wednesday that he had been working on the coup plan for 18 months.

Berezovsky, a notorious critic of Putin’s regime, said he aimed to replace the “anti-constitutional regime” in Russia.

::snip::

Today’s regime would never allow a fair election, Berezovsky added, so the only way out is a coup.

“There is only one way out — a coup, a forced seizure of power,” he said.

The oligarch said he had plenty of supporters.

Continued

[M. Espinola]

A look at Kremlin critics who have been killed or died mysterious deaths

The Associated Press

Published: November 24th, 2006

Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who died Thursday after being poisoned with a radioactive substance, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him "barbaric and ruthless" in a deathbed statement. Several Kremlin critics have fled Russia or been imprisoned during Putin's time in office, and a few, listed below, have been killed or died mysterious deaths.

October 7th, 2006: Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya who exposed human rights abuses by Russian and Kremlin-backed Chechen authorities, is fatally shot in her apartment building. No suspects have been arrested, and Putin has suggested Russians seeking refuge from Russian law enforcement abroad could have been behind it.

Feb. 13th, 2004: Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former separatist president of Chechnya, is killed when a bomb blows his car apart as he leaves a mosque with his son in Qatar. Russian security services deny involvement, but two Russian intelligence agents are convicted in Qatar and later returned to Russia, where authorities suggest they are set free.

July 3rd, 2003: Yuri Shchekochikhin, a liberal lawmaker and journalist who investigated high-level corruption for Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya's newspaper, dies after a brief, mysterious ailment that causes him to loose his hair and suffer severe skin problems. Colleagues claim he was poisoned and that his autopsy was not released to relatives.

April 17th, 2003: Sergei Yushenkov, a liberal lawmaker and vocal critic of Putin, the Federal Security Service and the war in Chechnya, is gunned down in Moscow in a killing colleagues called an attack on democratic ideals. Mikhail Kodanyov, chairman a rival branch of his Liberal Russia party backed by self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, is convicted ordering the slaying and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

[GSlob]

"When an evil empire returns"
What do you mean - "returns", when it has never left? What did Reagan's words "evil empire" mean and refer to? - Landscape? Evil rivers, hills and lakes? Or maybe plants and animals? Evil birch trees and squirrels? Architecture? Cuisine? [Some of it is indeed, atrocious] - of course, not. It was the people there who were evil, or, more specifically, their way of life- how they saw themselves and the world and how they related to that world and to one another - the sociological essence of what Samuel Huntington would call their civilization.
Now, did that empire in 1991 overnight stopped being evil with Yeltsin's declaration of USSR dissolution? - of course, not, for it was populated by the same people who behaved pretty much as before. Nor did it suddenly become evil in 1917. It had been evil even before, but that evil merely became more manifest.

[M. Espinola]

You are fully correct in your overview. It's always been a despicable place with one beast or the other running the show. The problem is the current beast is arming Islamic madmen and having his vocal critics bumped off one after the other while the West sits there - silent.

[GSlob]

Every regime is an adequate reflection of the socially active part of its population. In simplified form the preceding statement is known as "every people deserves its government". A leader of a rats pack cannot be a lion - he can only be a rat. A beast runs a show, for it is a fundamentally beastly show, and no other show is, was, or will be, possible there, barring transcivilizing.

[M. Espinola]

We are continuously informed by the Putin promoters that 'at least 80% of the Russian population' supports their leader. That population with 70 years of brutal communist indoctrination will receive the results of the one they have sown and defend.

[A. Pole]

It's not even the slightest bit out of character for Putin and his toadies.

Actually is it out of character. You watch too many Hollywood movies and every foreign leader you do not like looks the same to you - he must be a "second Hitler". Whether Milosevic or Putin or else they are all identical, the same Hollywood cliche.

But the real world is very difference from schematic predicable movies.

[MadIvan]

Oh do take a massive dose of reality. This is a warning to other dissidents as much as it is a hit on Litvinenko himself. It's a message from the Russian government that they can get anyone, any time, anywhere.

It was a message that was effectively delivered. I know you don your kneepads for Putin on a daily basis, but no one should let you get away with passing this lie off.

Ivan

[A. Pole]

Today’s regime would never allow a fair election, Berezovsky added, so the only way out is a coup.

Disgusting

[A. Pole]

It's always been a despicable place with one beast or the other running the show.

Hatred is a very toxic passion.

[stevie_d_64]

I just about have to equate this whole idea of Putin's "gang" to a playground mentality...

The most popular and Toughest (by appearance) kid is going to rule the roost, until the kids that wnat to be on the monkey bars deside topick a few of those supporters off one by one...

Thus the kids on the monkey bars are going to do the same thing when they see the efforts of those that want to get on, so to speak...

Its almost that elementary when you look at its basic parts, its intelligence, and how it illustrates and demonstrates its ability to maintain its power...

There is really nothing democratic about it...And since its overall might and ability to project power and influence is still right up there with our ability, sure, everyone is going to do the things diplomatically to keep things stable...Its the nature of the beast...

And when wars, and rumor of wars, work alongside deals and pacts with a nieghbor to the south of them, begin to flourish...I'm sure a lot of us will tell the rest of the "head in the sand'ers":

"See, we told you so!"

I'd start looking at whom might come up after Putin's demise to see the true nature of what is to come and what has been driving this situation...(just a thought)

Putin is just the catalyst in this mix...

[kronos77]

Option:

Mugged and stabbed. No questions asked, stabb him, take wallet. Pure mug gone bad.


people, does anyone watches CSI? Scores of ideas, and noone would link a mureder to Russia.