The Siloviki spook rumoured to have ousted Vladimir Putin in Kremlin coup
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For over 10 days the Russian President Vladimir Putin was out of the public eye, fuelling speculation about his health and a coup d'etat.
Many thought Putin had ruffled too many ushankas in the Russian political, military and security network over his handling of the Ukraine crisis, the beleaguered economy and assassinations of some of his most high-profile critics.
Some said he was holed up in bed with the flu. Other suggested something far more serious, such as a stroke. One rumour was that he was at the birth of a secret lovechild in Switzerland. Then he turned up in public at a meeting with Almazbek Atambayev, president of Kyrgyzstan, apparently in good health, though he said little and looked to be sweating a lot.
But one rumour sparking much of the discussion since the weekend was that of the Patrushev Putsch, a coup purportedly led by a member of the Siloviki group of high-profile Kremlinites who used to work for the Russian security services and have been fingered before as the potential source of any Putin demise.
Nikolai Patrushev is the former head of the FSB, the fearsome Russian intelligence service which Putin himself once directed, and a member of the Siloviki. And he became frontrunner in the coup rumours after outlandish claims made on Georgian television by a Putin critic.
"I think that Putin is neutralised at the moment, but of course, he is alive," said Geydar Dzhemal, chairman of the National Islamic Committee in Russia, a group he founded, on Georgian TV channel Rustavi-2.
"He is under the control of the power-wielding agencies, who have, in my opinion, organised a coup d'etat [...] My information is that Patrushev met Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in Pyatigorsk on 11 March and tempted him over to his side."
Patrushev was born into the end of Stalinist Russia in 1951 in Leningrad, which is now St Petersburg and the city in which Putin was a major administrative player during his political rise in the early 1990s.
Soon after graduating from the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute, where he also worked for a brief while, Patrushev entered the KGB in 1974. And it was in the intelligence service that he stayed, working up through its different branches and incarnations, including the FSK and the FSB, taking ever more senior roles, employed under Putin in the 1990s.
Once Putin had moved on, the then president Boris Yeltsin promoted Patrushev to the role of director of the FSB until 2008.
"A month after [Patrushev's] appointment to the post of FSB director, a series of large-scale terrorist attacks occurred across Russia (explosions in apartment blocks in Buynaksk, Dagestan, in Moscow and in Volgodonsk, Rostov Region)," according to Russia Profile.
"Those declared responsible for the attacks were Chechen separatists. Such attacks were the basis for the initiation of the Second Chechen War."
The FSB had been accused in the media of having a hand in some of the terror attacks and the assassinated former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was murdered by polonium poisoning in London in 2006, claimed Patrushev had personal involvement in the plots. The Russian security services and Patrushev deny all the allegations.
Not long after taking over the FSB, Patrushev descibed security officials as the "new nobility" in Russia.
"Our best colleagues, the honour and pride of the FSB, don't do their work for the money," he said. "They all look different, but there is one very special characteristic that unites all these people, and it is a very important quality: It is their sense of service. They are, if you like, our new 'nobility'."
Since leaving the FSB directorship in 2008, Patrushev has been chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, a top-level body that advises the president. Patrushev also holds a law PhD and a number of military honours, including the title Hero of the Russian Federation for his part in the Second Chechen War.
In February 2015, Patrushev accused the US of trying to drag Russia into a war over the Ukraine crisis and bring about regime change in Moscow.
"For the US, Ukraine in and of itself is not a matter of interest. Their aim is to weaken our positions. The Americans are trying to drag the Russian Federation into an international military conflict, and with the help of events in Ukraine, bring about regime change [in Moscow] and ultimately dismember our country," he reportedly said.
"American experts [...] believe that Moscow has too many vast territories under its control. They see such a distribution of natural resources as unfair and believe that steps should be taken which would provide other states with free access to them."
Patrushev has two sons, Dimitry and Andrei. Dimitry is a top banker in Russia, while Andrei followed in his father's footsteps and works at the FSB.
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Moscow — The Kremlin's case against five Chechens accused of murdering liberal activist Boris Nemtsov for his "anti-Muslim" statements appears to be unraveling at lightning speed.
The alleged shooter, Zaur Dadayev, was likely tortured in custody and denied that he had confessed to the crime, a Russian human rights official said Tuesday after a prison visit.
Winston Churchill once said that following a Russian power struggle is like "watching two dogs fighting under a carpet," and Russians are now filling in the gaps in the official narrative of Mr. Nemtsov's death with a wave of speculation.
Most here believe that Mr. Nemtsov's assassination, a professional hit carried out under the Kremlin walls, is part of a deeper internecine battle. But there's little agreement or clarity on who is fighting who, and why.
Some experts see signs of blowback from Russia's covert war in Ukraine.
On Wednesday the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta published an unsigned analysis arguing that an extremist challenge to President Vladimir Putin's ruling circle could be underway. The paper suggests that ultra-nationalists, frustrated with Mr. Putin's failure to go all-out in support of eastern Ukrainian rebels and to silence fully his pro-Western domestic opponents, staged the killing of Nemtsov – in order to force the president to take responsibility for an act that to most Russians appeared to have official complicity.
"It's an unmistakable signal to the Kremlin that 'Russian patriots' are tired of waiting," the paper wrote. "[The message is that] If you don't do it somebody surely will. . . We are the force that protects your weakness and our task is to protect the Motherland from its enemies. . . Our work must be rewarded."
Free speech backlash
Last Sunday Russian investigators brought the five Chechen suspects to court, and charged two of them with carrying out the killing. The judge claimed that Mr. Dadayev had confessed to shooting Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister.
Then the pro-Putin leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, took to his Instagram account to claim that Dadayev, who had served as an officer in Chechnya's security forces, was a devout Muslim who'd been shocked by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and may have killed Nemtsov over his outspoken defense of free speech.
"All who know [Dadayev] confirm that he is a deep believer and also that he, like all Muslims, was shocked by the activities of Charlie and comments in support of printing the cartoons," Mr. Kadyrov wrote. "If the court confirms Dadayev’s guilt, then he’s committed a serious crime... But I want to point out that Dadayev was incapable of lifting so much as a finger against Russia, a country for which he spent many years risking his life."
That framed Nemtsov's killing in a way that let both the Kremlin and Kadyrov off the hook. The very next day Putin awarded Kadyrov with the Order of Honor, which recognizes exemplary public service.
Some speculate that Kadyrov, who has sent large numbers of Chechen fighters to aid east Ukrainian rebels, was behind Nemtsov's murder. Others suggest that Chechens opposed to Kadyrov, or even Russian security officials, may have done it to drive a wedge between the Chechen strongman and the Kremlin.
Kremlin loyalist
Kadyrov was left in near total charge of Chechnya after Russian forces pulled out in 2009 after pacifying the rebellious republic. He professes total loyalty to the Kremlin, yet has infuriated many by running Chechnya as his fiefdom, largely outside of Russian law.
"Chechnya is an enclave where power has been monopolized [by Kadyrov] to such an extent that the place can be described only with great reserve as part of Russia," says Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB officer and parliamentarian turned anti-Kremlin activist.
The theory advanced by Kadyrov is falling apart. Dadayev insisted Tuesday that he had not made a confession during a visit by Andrei Babushkin, a member of the Kremlin's human rights commission. Mr. Babushkin later told journalists that there were signs Dadayev had been tortured.
Meanwhile, Nemtsov's friends excavated his Facebook postings at the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and found that, aside from some generic affirmations of free speech, the liberal activist hadn't said anything that would likely rile Muslims.
Chechens have often been blamed for political killings in Russia, without the actual organizers ever being named or brought to justice. Notably, five Chechens were convicted in the 2006 slaying of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya; the crime's "mastermind" and his motives remain unknown.
"Chechens are used as killers, but also as smokescreens," says Andrei Soldatov, editor of the online security journal Agentura.ru. "Kadyrov protects his people, and that's why investigations of these murders stop at the immediate perpetrators and never go up the chain.
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Vladimir Putin may well be seriously ill, or worse.
He hasn't appeared in public in a week, he just canceled a trip to Kazakhstan and a series of meetings in Moscow, and the hashtag (Putin Died) is trending like mad on Twitter. There have been reports that he's had a stroke.
Whether Putin is sick, or "is feeling fine," as his spokesman Dmitry Peskov insists, the system he presides over is far from healthy. Even if Putin the man is in top form, the "collective Putin," Russia's informal ruling circle, is showing signs of deep distress.
In fact, over the past two weeks, since the February 27 assassination of opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, it has appeared to be in the throes of a crisis. Informal rules have been violated, rivalries among figures near the top of the power pyramid have escalated into open conflict, and Putin has been conspicuous by his absence.
And while it is impossible for outsiders to truly know what is going on in the opaque world of the Kremlin's inner sanctum, there seem to be two possible explanations for Putin's disappearance from public view.
Either he is fine and furiously working behind the scenes to calm the clan warfare that has emerged in the wake of the Nemtsov assassination.
Or Putin is truly sick and incapacitated and the recent turbulence we have witnessed -- from the assassination to the muddled narratives in the investigation to the open conflict between the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov -- are symptoms of a highly personalized system that has lost its head.
In a political system like Russia's, where formal institutions are weak, court politics are paramount, and personal ties mean everything, obscure signals and gestures matter a lot. So do informal rules. They have to, because the law doesn't apply to those on the top.
This was one of the reasons why the Nemtsov assassination was so shocking. Killing somebody this prominent -- and certainly doing the deed blocks from Red Square -- was against the rules.
As Ivan Yakovina, a former political correspondent for Lenta.ru, in the Ukrainian newspaper Novoye Vremya, "Moscow's unspoken rules" forbid killing those other top politicians. Even those such as Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, who had gone into opposition.
The killing, therefore, was "a signal to all representatives of this class," Yakovina added.
And if the Nemtsov assassination has violated one of the cardinal edicts of Putinism, the aftermath violated another: Clan warfare among top members of the elite must not be played out in public.
When the FSB named Zaur Dadayev -- a man with close ties to Kadyrov - as the mastermind of the Nemtsov assassination, it was interpreted in the elite as a direct assault on the Chechen strongman.
Kadyrov is powerful. Perhaps one of the most powerful men in Russia. He has thousands of loyal armed men at his disposal; he has a strong lobby in the Interior Ministry; he counts key Kremlin power brokers like Vladislav Surkov as his allies; and he has long enjoyed Putin's support.
But he has also acquired powerful enemies, including Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov, Kremlin political overlord Vyacheslav Volodin, and FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov.
And Kadyrov's enemies now appear to be using the Nemtsov assassination to take him down.
In a , the prominent journalist and Kremlin-watcher Oleg Kashin noted that it was significant that Dadayev and the other suspects in the Nemtsov case were arrested by the FSB and made public by Bortnikov himself.
"Up until now, Bortnikov was not a public person who announces somebody's arrest," Kashin said. "This is usually done by Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin."
This, Kashin added, also reeked of a "siloviki war" -- a showdown among the security services -- since Dadayev served as deputy commander of Battalion Sever, an Interior Ministry paramilitary unit formed by the Chechen leader.
"Bortnikov struck a blow against Kadyrov," journalist and political commentator Orkhan Dzhemal.
"There's a battle going on. The Spasskaya is fighting the Borovitskaya," he said, metaphorically referring to the two famous Kremlin towers.
The battle played out in media reports about the Nemtsov investigation, too. A report in the pro-Kremlin tabloid claimed that Dadayev had retracted his confession and claimed he was tortured
There was also in the opposition Novaya Gazeta that quoted unidentified law-enforcement officials who claimed the authorities know who really organized the Nemtsov hit -- a mysterious Chechen security officer, also with close ties to Kadyrov, identified only as "Major Ruslan."
In fact, the FSB assault on Kadyrov appeared to commence in earnest before the Nemtsov assassination.
In February, a Daghestani court sentenced two Chechens to nine and 12 years in prison on for plotting the assassination of Saigidpasha Umakhanov, a rival of Kadyrov's and the mayor of the region's third-largest city.
The FSB also took the lead role in that case. And in a report this week -- note the timing -- FSB officials as saying the assassination was ordered by Adam Delimkhanov, Kadyrov's cousin and close associate.
If a battle between Kadyrov and the FSB is about to go full-throttle, it would be a war of the titans that could shake the Putin system to its core.
And Kadyrov's behavior -- from his much-publicized this week to the where he wrote that he would lay down his life for Putin -- suggest that he senses the danger.
But for the time being, at least, Putin is nowhere in sight.
-- Brian Whitmore
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Yevgeny Razumny / VedomostiNemtsov was gunned down on the night of Feb. 27 on Moscow's Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, steps from the Kremlin.
Three more suspects in last month's assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov have been officially charged with his murder, the Interfax news agency reported Monday, as the main suspect's lawyer said his client had an alibi.
Zaur Dadayev's lawyer, Ivan Gerasimov, told the RBC newspaper Monday that his client had an alibi on the night Nemtsov was killed. Gerasimov told the newspaper that Dadayev was in Moscow, but nowhere near where the murder took place, without elaborating.
Earlier Monday, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov, Shagid Gubashev and Khamzat Bakhayev, three of the five Chechen men arrested earlier this month in connection with Nemtsov's murder, joined Dadayev — a senior police officer — and Anzor Gubashev in being charged with the killing.
An unnamed source close to the investigation told Interfax that law enforcement had changed the charges against the suspects, replacing the charge of murder motivated by greed or mercenary purposes with that of murder based on "political, ideological, racial, ethnic or religious hatred or enmity."
Nemtsov was gunned down on the night of Feb. 27 on Moscow's Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, steps from the Kremlin. He had been set to lead an anti-government protest on March 1.
Each of the suspects had a planned role in the assassination, according to an unnamed source familiar with the investigation quoted by Interfax.
According to Interfax's source, Dadayev, a former deputy commander of Chechnya's Sever police battalion, likely followed Nemtsov onto the bridge from the restaurant in the GUM shopping mall on Red Square where the politician was dining with his girlfriend, who was unharmed in the attack.
Brothers Shagid and Anzor Gubashev allegedly drove onto the bridge to pick up Dadayev in a getaway car after the latter fatally shot Nemtsov several times from behind.
The alleged roles of Bakhayev and Eskerkhanov in the murder were not detailed in the source's account.
Interfax's source also claimed that investigators had found a private property in the Moscow region where the suspects allegedly gathered to plot the murder.
Independent media reports have speculated about indirect links between the murder suspects and high-ranking Chechen officials. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov — who suggested earlier this month that Nemtsov's stance on religious-themed caricatures in French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo could have been the motive behind the murder — said in an Instagram post he knew Dadayev to be a "true Russian patriot."
According to independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Dadayev traveled to and from Moscow with the commander of the Sever battalion, Alibek Delimkhanov, who is the brother of State Duma Deputy Adam Delimkhanov.
RBC news agency reported Monday that Dadayev had been living in Moscow for the past six months, despite numerous previous media reports stating he was on vacation from Chechnya in the Moscow at the time of the murder. RBC cited a source as saying Dadayev likely cohabited with Ruslan Geremeyev, another member of the Sever battalion. Geremeyev, according to Novaya Gazeta, is the nephew of Adam Delimkhanov and Russian senator Suleiman Geremeyev. Ruslan Geremeyev is currently in the Chechen capital Grozny where he is under the close protection of Chechen security forces, Novaya Gazeta reported Monday.
Eskerkhanov, one of the men charged Monday, is a former local police officer in a unit headed by Vakha Geremeyev, another uncle of Ruslan Geremeyev, according to Novaya Gazeta.
Contact the author at g.tetraultfarber@imedia.ru
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The Chechen connection to the assassination of Russia's opposition leader Boris Nemtsov is pushing Russia's spooks into political battles they would rather avoid.
The FSB appears to have uncovered signs of a conspiracy that implicates Chechen leaders very close to Ramzan Kadyrov. According to Novaya Gazeta, investigators have found a sustained effort by elements in the Chechen security forces to track and target not only Nemtsov, but several prominent opposition figures and public personalities critical of President Vladimir Putin.
This raises the prospect of Kadyrov's direct involvement as part of his strategy to keep himself indispensable to the Kremlin as a force of violence against the regime's opponents.
If Kadyrov were indeed freelancing into political assassinations in Moscow and were allowed to walk away unpunished, he would be taking Putin and the entire Russian leadership hostage, which might be precisely his plan. This would be a threat to the Russian state that the FSB would be legally obligated to fight.
Kadyrov has been raising his political profile and sought to position himself as Putin's most trusted lieutenant and even a peer ruler, aiming at a higher federal role. His brazen forays into Russia's foreign and security policy, and his attempts to speak on behalf of all Russia's Muslims, unnerved many in Moscow.
His political alliance with Putin's aide Vladislav Surkov, who owes his return to the Kremlin to Kadyrov's intervention, has created a lock over Putin's succession plans, where any future Russian president should be acceptable to Kadyrov. His willingness to play a central role in physically suppressing anti-Putin opposition opened a horrifying prospect of a sectarian war in Russia.
The stakes are huge. Full investigation and arrests of co-conspirators risk destabilization in Chechnya escalating into war. A decision to freeze the investigation in its tracks and cover up would be extremely demoralizing for Russia's security services and essentially signal the disintegration of Putin's power vertical. It would expose Putin's humiliating dependency on Kadyrov, raising the risks of his seizure of power in Moscow.
For the spooks this creates a loyalty test between the Russian state and its leader who may have been taken hostage by Russia's enemies. There must be rich irony in the fact that the FSB, Russia's ruthless security service, is now acting as the last best hope for Russia's democracy.
Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government relations and PR company.
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По неподтвержденным данным, окружение российского президента Владимира Путина покинуло страну. Помощник президента российской федерации Владислав Сурков находится в Гонконге вместе со своими близкими. Об этом сообщил украинский волонтер Alex Noit
“Говорят что советник Путина Владислав Сурков срочно свалил в Гонконг вместе с семьей. Поездка оказалась настолько срочной, что о ней, на момент отъезда, не знало даже ближайшее окружение, а также администрация президента”, - опубликовано в сообщении.
Другой приближенный к Путину чиновник, его пресс-секретарь Дмитрий Песков экстренно вылетел во Францию.
“Руководитель пресс-службы президента России Дмитрий Песков якобы внезапно уехал из России во Францию “на несколько дней на отдых”. Последнее сообщение Песков якобы сделал уже, покинув страну. Он сообщил, что президент Путин “жив и здоров и вечером в воскресенье собирается посмотреть телевизор” - опубликовано в сообщении.
По сведениям инфсайдеров, свой последний пресс-релиз спикер Кремля опубликовал, будучи за пределами Родины. В нем говориться о сожалениях президента в связи со смертью писателя Валентина Распутина.
“Президент был хорошо знаком с писателем, является поклонником его творческого таланта и будет всегда помнить глубокие продолжительные беседы с Валентином Распутиным”, - опубликовано на сайте Кремля.
Кроме того, сайт президента сообщает о том, что Путин поздравил вице-президента Российской академии наук, академика РАН Жореса Алфёрова с 85-летним юбилеем.
Другой приближенный к Путину чиновник, его пресс-секретарь Дмитрий Песков экстренно вылетел во Францию.
“Руководитель пресс-службы президента России Дмитрий Песков якобы внезапно уехал из России во Францию “на несколько дней на отдых”. Последнее сообщение Песков якобы сделал уже, покинув страну. Он сообщил, что президент Путин “жив и здоров и вечером в воскресенье собирается посмотреть телевизор” - опубликовано в сообщении.
По сведениям инфсайдеров, свой последний пресс-релиз спикер Кремля опубликовал, будучи за пределами Родины. В нем говориться о сожалениях президента в связи со смертью писателя Валентина Распутина.
“Президент был хорошо знаком с писателем, является поклонником его творческого таланта и будет всегда помнить глубокие продолжительные беседы с Валентином Распутиным”, - опубликовано на сайте Кремля.
Кроме того, сайт президента сообщает о том, что Путин поздравил вице-президента Российской академии наук, академика РАН Жореса Алфёрова с 85-летним юбилеем.
Президентского оболезнования семьям 17-ти погибших при пожаре в казанском торговом центре "Адмирал" - нет. Фотографий, а также видеозаписей с участием президента в минувшие дни опубликовано не было. Последний раз Путин предстал перед телекамерами 5 марта.
Источник: amurburg.ru
Метки: СМИ; путин; сурков; песков
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For over 10 days the Russian President Vladimir Putin was out of the public eye, fuelling speculation about his health and a coup d'etat.
Many thought Putin had ruffled too many ushankas in the Russian political, military and security network over his handling of the Ukraine crisis, the beleaguered economy and assassinations of some of his most high-profile critics.
Some said he was holed up in bed with the flu. Other suggested something far more serious, such as a stroke. One rumour was that he was at the birth of a secret lovechild in Switzerland. Then he turned up in public at a meeting with Almazbek Atambayev, president of Kyrgyzstan, apparently in good health, though he said little and looked to be sweating a lot.
But one rumour sparking much of the discussion since the weekend was that of the Patrushev Putsch, a coup purportedly led by a member of the Siloviki group of high-profile Kremlinites who used to work for the Russian security services and have been fingered before as the potential source of any Putin demise.
Nikolai Patrushev is the former head of the FSB, the fearsome Russian intelligence service which Putin himself once directed, and a member of the Siloviki. And he became frontrunner in the coup rumours after outlandish claims made on Georgian television by a Putin critic.
"I think that Putin is neutralised at the moment, but of course, he is alive," said Geydar Dzhemal, chairman of the National Islamic Committee in Russia, a group he founded, on Georgian TV channel Rustavi-2.
"He is under the control of the power-wielding agencies, who have, in my opinion, organised a coup d'etat [...] My information is that Patrushev met Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in Pyatigorsk on 11 March and tempted him over to his side."
Patrushev was born into the end of Stalinist Russia in 1951 in Leningrad, which is now St Petersburg and the city in which Putin was a major administrative player during his political rise in the early 1990s.
Soon after graduating from the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute, where he also worked for a brief while, Patrushev entered the KGB in 1974. And it was in the intelligence service that he stayed, working up through its different branches and incarnations, including the FSK and the FSB, taking ever more senior roles, employed under Putin in the 1990s.
Once Putin had moved on, the then president Boris Yeltsin promoted Patrushev to the role of director of the FSB until 2008.
"A month after [Patrushev's] appointment to the post of FSB director, a series of large-scale terrorist attacks occurred across Russia (explosions in apartment blocks in Buynaksk, Dagestan, in Moscow and in Volgodonsk, Rostov Region)," according to Russia Profile.
"Those declared responsible for the attacks were Chechen separatists. Such attacks were the basis for the initiation of the Second Chechen War."
The FSB had been accused in the media of having a hand in some of the terror attacks and the assassinated former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was murdered by polonium poisoning in London in 2006, claimed Patrushev had personal involvement in the plots. The Russian security services and Patrushev deny all the allegations.
Not long after taking over the FSB, Patrushev descibed security officials as the "new nobility" in Russia.
"Our best colleagues, the honour and pride of the FSB, don't do their work for the money," he said. "They all look different, but there is one very special characteristic that unites all these people, and it is a very important quality: It is their sense of service. They are, if you like, our new 'nobility'."
Since leaving the FSB directorship in 2008, Patrushev has been chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, a top-level body that advises the president. Patrushev also holds a law PhD and a number of military honours, including the title Hero of the Russian Federation for his part in the Second Chechen War.
In February 2015, Patrushev accused the US of trying to drag Russia into a war over the Ukraine crisis and bring about regime change in Moscow.
"For the US, Ukraine in and of itself is not a matter of interest. Their aim is to weaken our positions. The Americans are trying to drag the Russian Federation into an international military conflict, and with the help of events in Ukraine, bring about regime change [in Moscow] and ultimately dismember our country," he reportedly said.
"American experts [...] believe that Moscow has too many vast territories under its control. They see such a distribution of natural resources as unfair and believe that steps should be taken which would provide other states with free access to them."
Patrushev has two sons, Dimitry and Andrei. Dimitry is a top banker in Russia, while Andrei followed in his father's footsteps and works at the FSB.
Moscow — The Kremlin's case against five Chechens accused of murdering liberal activist Boris Nemtsov for his "anti-Muslim" statements appears to be unraveling at lightning speed.
The alleged shooter, Zaur Dadayev, was likely tortured in custody and denied that he had confessed to the crime, a Russian human rights official said Tuesday after a prison visit.
Winston Churchill once said that following a Russian power struggle is like "watching two dogs fighting under a carpet," and Russians are now filling in the gaps in the official narrative of Mr. Nemtsov's death with a wave of speculation.
Most here believe that Mr. Nemtsov's assassination, a professional hit carried out under the Kremlin walls, is part of a deeper internecine battle. But there's little agreement or clarity on who is fighting who, and why.
Some experts see signs of blowback from Russia's covert war in Ukraine.
On Wednesday the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta published an unsigned analysis arguing that an extremist challenge to President Vladimir Putin's ruling circle could be underway. The paper suggests that ultra-nationalists, frustrated with Mr. Putin's failure to go all-out in support of eastern Ukrainian rebels and to silence fully his pro-Western domestic opponents, staged the killing of Nemtsov – in order to force the president to take responsibility for an act that to most Russians appeared to have official complicity.
"It's an unmistakable signal to the Kremlin that 'Russian patriots' are tired of waiting," the paper wrote. "[The message is that] If you don't do it somebody surely will. . . We are the force that protects your weakness and our task is to protect the Motherland from its enemies. . . Our work must be rewarded."
Free speech backlash
Last Sunday Russian investigators brought the five Chechen suspects to court, and charged two of them with carrying out the killing. The judge claimed that Mr. Dadayev had confessed to shooting Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister.
Then the pro-Putin leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, took to his Instagram account to claim that Dadayev, who had served as an officer in Chechnya's security forces, was a devout Muslim who'd been shocked by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and may have killed Nemtsov over his outspoken defense of free speech.
"All who know [Dadayev] confirm that he is a deep believer and also that he, like all Muslims, was shocked by the activities of Charlie and comments in support of printing the cartoons," Mr. Kadyrov wrote. "If the court confirms Dadayev’s guilt, then he’s committed a serious crime... But I want to point out that Dadayev was incapable of lifting so much as a finger against Russia, a country for which he spent many years risking his life."
That framed Nemtsov's killing in a way that let both the Kremlin and Kadyrov off the hook. The very next day Putin awarded Kadyrov with the Order of Honor, which recognizes exemplary public service.
Some speculate that Kadyrov, who has sent large numbers of Chechen fighters to aid east Ukrainian rebels, was behind Nemtsov's murder. Others suggest that Chechens opposed to Kadyrov, or even Russian security officials, may have done it to drive a wedge between the Chechen strongman and the Kremlin.
Kremlin loyalist
Kadyrov was left in near total charge of Chechnya after Russian forces pulled out in 2009 after pacifying the rebellious republic. He professes total loyalty to the Kremlin, yet has infuriated many by running Chechnya as his fiefdom, largely outside of Russian law.
"Chechnya is an enclave where power has been monopolized [by Kadyrov] to such an extent that the place can be described only with great reserve as part of Russia," says Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB officer and parliamentarian turned anti-Kremlin activist.
The theory advanced by Kadyrov is falling apart. Dadayev insisted Tuesday that he had not made a confession during a visit by Andrei Babushkin, a member of the Kremlin's human rights commission. Mr. Babushkin later told journalists that there were signs Dadayev had been tortured.
Meanwhile, Nemtsov's friends excavated his Facebook postings at the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and found that, aside from some generic affirmations of free speech, the liberal activist hadn't said anything that would likely rile Muslims.
Chechens have often been blamed for political killings in Russia, without the actual organizers ever being named or brought to justice. Notably, five Chechens were convicted in the 2006 slaying of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya; the crime's "mastermind" and his motives remain unknown.
"Chechens are used as killers, but also as smokescreens," says Andrei Soldatov, editor of the online security journal Agentura.ru. "Kadyrov protects his people, and that's why investigations of these murders stop at the immediate perpetrators and never go up the chain.
Vladimir Putin may well be seriously ill, or worse.
He hasn't appeared in public in a week, he just canceled a trip to Kazakhstan and a series of meetings in Moscow, and the hashtag (Putin Died) is trending like mad on Twitter. There have been reports that he's had a stroke.
Whether Putin is sick, or "is feeling fine," as his spokesman Dmitry Peskov insists, the system he presides over is far from healthy. Even if Putin the man is in top form, the "collective Putin," Russia's informal ruling circle, is showing signs of deep distress.
In fact, over the past two weeks, since the February 27 assassination of opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, it has appeared to be in the throes of a crisis. Informal rules have been violated, rivalries among figures near the top of the power pyramid have escalated into open conflict, and Putin has been conspicuous by his absence.
And while it is impossible for outsiders to truly know what is going on in the opaque world of the Kremlin's inner sanctum, there seem to be two possible explanations for Putin's disappearance from public view.
Either he is fine and furiously working behind the scenes to calm the clan warfare that has emerged in the wake of the Nemtsov assassination.
Or Putin is truly sick and incapacitated and the recent turbulence we have witnessed -- from the assassination to the muddled narratives in the investigation to the open conflict between the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov -- are symptoms of a highly personalized system that has lost its head.
In a political system like Russia's, where formal institutions are weak, court politics are paramount, and personal ties mean everything, obscure signals and gestures matter a lot. So do informal rules. They have to, because the law doesn't apply to those on the top.
This was one of the reasons why the Nemtsov assassination was so shocking. Killing somebody this prominent -- and certainly doing the deed blocks from Red Square -- was against the rules.
As Ivan Yakovina, a former political correspondent for Lenta.ru, in the Ukrainian newspaper Novoye Vremya, "Moscow's unspoken rules" forbid killing those other top politicians. Even those such as Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, who had gone into opposition.
The killing, therefore, was "a signal to all representatives of this class," Yakovina added.
And if the Nemtsov assassination has violated one of the cardinal edicts of Putinism, the aftermath violated another: Clan warfare among top members of the elite must not be played out in public.
When the FSB named Zaur Dadayev -- a man with close ties to Kadyrov - as the mastermind of the Nemtsov assassination, it was interpreted in the elite as a direct assault on the Chechen strongman.
Kadyrov is powerful. Perhaps one of the most powerful men in Russia. He has thousands of loyal armed men at his disposal; he has a strong lobby in the Interior Ministry; he counts key Kremlin power brokers like Vladislav Surkov as his allies; and he has long enjoyed Putin's support.
But he has also acquired powerful enemies, including Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov, Kremlin political overlord Vyacheslav Volodin, and FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov.
And Kadyrov's enemies now appear to be using the Nemtsov assassination to take him down.
In a , the prominent journalist and Kremlin-watcher Oleg Kashin noted that it was significant that Dadayev and the other suspects in the Nemtsov case were arrested by the FSB and made public by Bortnikov himself.
"Up until now, Bortnikov was not a public person who announces somebody's arrest," Kashin said. "This is usually done by Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin."
This, Kashin added, also reeked of a "siloviki war" -- a showdown among the security services -- since Dadayev served as deputy commander of Battalion Sever, an Interior Ministry paramilitary unit formed by the Chechen leader.
"Bortnikov struck a blow against Kadyrov," journalist and political commentator Orkhan Dzhemal.
"There's a battle going on. The Spasskaya is fighting the Borovitskaya," he said, metaphorically referring to the two famous Kremlin towers.
The battle played out in media reports about the Nemtsov investigation, too. A report in the pro-Kremlin tabloid claimed that Dadayev had retracted his confession and claimed he was tortured
There was also in the opposition Novaya Gazeta that quoted unidentified law-enforcement officials who claimed the authorities know who really organized the Nemtsov hit -- a mysterious Chechen security officer, also with close ties to Kadyrov, identified only as "Major Ruslan."
In fact, the FSB assault on Kadyrov appeared to commence in earnest before the Nemtsov assassination.
In February, a Daghestani court sentenced two Chechens to nine and 12 years in prison on for plotting the assassination of Saigidpasha Umakhanov, a rival of Kadyrov's and the mayor of the region's third-largest city.
The FSB also took the lead role in that case. And in a report this week -- note the timing -- FSB officials as saying the assassination was ordered by Adam Delimkhanov, Kadyrov's cousin and close associate.
If a battle between Kadyrov and the FSB is about to go full-throttle, it would be a war of the titans that could shake the Putin system to its core.
And Kadyrov's behavior -- from his much-publicized this week to the where he wrote that he would lay down his life for Putin -- suggest that he senses the danger.
But for the time being, at least, Putin is nowhere in sight.
-- Brian Whitmore
Yevgeny Razumny / VedomostiNemtsov was gunned down on the night of Feb. 27 on Moscow's Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, steps from the Kremlin.
Three more suspects in last month's assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov have been officially charged with his murder, the Interfax news agency reported Monday, as the main suspect's lawyer said his client had an alibi.
Zaur Dadayev's lawyer, Ivan Gerasimov, told the RBC newspaper Monday that his client had an alibi on the night Nemtsov was killed. Gerasimov told the newspaper that Dadayev was in Moscow, but nowhere near where the murder took place, without elaborating.
Earlier Monday, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov, Shagid Gubashev and Khamzat Bakhayev, three of the five Chechen men arrested earlier this month in connection with Nemtsov's murder, joined Dadayev — a senior police officer — and Anzor Gubashev in being charged with the killing.
An unnamed source close to the investigation told Interfax that law enforcement had changed the charges against the suspects, replacing the charge of murder motivated by greed or mercenary purposes with that of murder based on "political, ideological, racial, ethnic or religious hatred or enmity."
Nemtsov was gunned down on the night of Feb. 27 on Moscow's Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, steps from the Kremlin. He had been set to lead an anti-government protest on March 1.
Each of the suspects had a planned role in the assassination, according to an unnamed source familiar with the investigation quoted by Interfax.
According to Interfax's source, Dadayev, a former deputy commander of Chechnya's Sever police battalion, likely followed Nemtsov onto the bridge from the restaurant in the GUM shopping mall on Red Square where the politician was dining with his girlfriend, who was unharmed in the attack.
Brothers Shagid and Anzor Gubashev allegedly drove onto the bridge to pick up Dadayev in a getaway car after the latter fatally shot Nemtsov several times from behind.
The alleged roles of Bakhayev and Eskerkhanov in the murder were not detailed in the source's account.
Interfax's source also claimed that investigators had found a private property in the Moscow region where the suspects allegedly gathered to plot the murder.
Independent media reports have speculated about indirect links between the murder suspects and high-ranking Chechen officials. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov — who suggested earlier this month that Nemtsov's stance on religious-themed caricatures in French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo could have been the motive behind the murder — said in an Instagram post he knew Dadayev to be a "true Russian patriot."
According to independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Dadayev traveled to and from Moscow with the commander of the Sever battalion, Alibek Delimkhanov, who is the brother of State Duma Deputy Adam Delimkhanov.
RBC news agency reported Monday that Dadayev had been living in Moscow for the past six months, despite numerous previous media reports stating he was on vacation from Chechnya in the Moscow at the time of the murder. RBC cited a source as saying Dadayev likely cohabited with Ruslan Geremeyev, another member of the Sever battalion. Geremeyev, according to Novaya Gazeta, is the nephew of Adam Delimkhanov and Russian senator Suleiman Geremeyev. Ruslan Geremeyev is currently in the Chechen capital Grozny where he is under the close protection of Chechen security forces, Novaya Gazeta reported Monday.
Eskerkhanov, one of the men charged Monday, is a former local police officer in a unit headed by Vakha Geremeyev, another uncle of Ruslan Geremeyev, according to Novaya Gazeta.
Contact the author at g.tetraultfarber@imedia.ru
The Chechen connection to the assassination of Russia's opposition leader Boris Nemtsov is pushing Russia's spooks into political battles they would rather avoid.
The FSB appears to have uncovered signs of a conspiracy that implicates Chechen leaders very close to Ramzan Kadyrov. According to Novaya Gazeta, investigators have found a sustained effort by elements in the Chechen security forces to track and target not only Nemtsov, but several prominent opposition figures and public personalities critical of President Vladimir Putin.
This raises the prospect of Kadyrov's direct involvement as part of his strategy to keep himself indispensable to the Kremlin as a force of violence against the regime's opponents.
If Kadyrov were indeed freelancing into political assassinations in Moscow and were allowed to walk away unpunished, he would be taking Putin and the entire Russian leadership hostage, which might be precisely his plan. This would be a threat to the Russian state that the FSB would be legally obligated to fight.
Kadyrov has been raising his political profile and sought to position himself as Putin's most trusted lieutenant and even a peer ruler, aiming at a higher federal role. His brazen forays into Russia's foreign and security policy, and his attempts to speak on behalf of all Russia's Muslims, unnerved many in Moscow.
His political alliance with Putin's aide Vladislav Surkov, who owes his return to the Kremlin to Kadyrov's intervention, has created a lock over Putin's succession plans, where any future Russian president should be acceptable to Kadyrov. His willingness to play a central role in physically suppressing anti-Putin opposition opened a horrifying prospect of a sectarian war in Russia.
The stakes are huge. Full investigation and arrests of co-conspirators risk destabilization in Chechnya escalating into war. A decision to freeze the investigation in its tracks and cover up would be extremely demoralizing for Russia's security services and essentially signal the disintegration of Putin's power vertical. It would expose Putin's humiliating dependency on Kadyrov, raising the risks of his seizure of power in Moscow.
For the spooks this creates a loyalty test between the Russian state and its leader who may have been taken hostage by Russia's enemies. There must be rich irony in the fact that the FSB, Russia's ruthless security service, is now acting as the last best hope for Russia's democracy.
Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government relations and PR company.
По неподтвержденным данным, окружение российского президента Владимира Путина покинуло страну. Помощник президента российской федерации Владислав Сурков находится в Гонконге вместе со своими близкими. Об этом сообщил украинский волонтер Alex Noit
“Говорят что советник Путина Владислав Сурков срочно свалил в Гонконг вместе с семьей. Поездка оказалась настолько срочной, что о ней, на момент отъезда, не знало даже ближайшее окружение, а также администрация президента”, - опубликовано в сообщении.
Другой приближенный к Путину чиновник, его пресс-секретарь Дмитрий Песков экстренно вылетел во Францию.
“Руководитель пресс-службы президента России Дмитрий Песков якобы внезапно уехал из России во Францию “на несколько дней на отдых”. Последнее сообщение Песков якобы сделал уже, покинув страну. Он сообщил, что президент Путин “жив и здоров и вечером в воскресенье собирается посмотреть телевизор” - опубликовано в сообщении.
По сведениям инфсайдеров, свой последний пресс-релиз спикер Кремля опубликовал, будучи за пределами Родины. В нем говориться о сожалениях президента в связи со смертью писателя Валентина Распутина.
“Президент был хорошо знаком с писателем, является поклонником его творческого таланта и будет всегда помнить глубокие продолжительные беседы с Валентином Распутиным”, - опубликовано на сайте Кремля.
Кроме того, сайт президента сообщает о том, что Путин поздравил вице-президента Российской академии наук, академика РАН Жореса Алфёрова с 85-летним юбилеем.
Другой приближенный к Путину чиновник, его пресс-секретарь Дмитрий Песков экстренно вылетел во Францию.
“Руководитель пресс-службы президента России Дмитрий Песков якобы внезапно уехал из России во Францию “на несколько дней на отдых”. Последнее сообщение Песков якобы сделал уже, покинув страну. Он сообщил, что президент Путин “жив и здоров и вечером в воскресенье собирается посмотреть телевизор” - опубликовано в сообщении.
По сведениям инфсайдеров, свой последний пресс-релиз спикер Кремля опубликовал, будучи за пределами Родины. В нем говориться о сожалениях президента в связи со смертью писателя Валентина Распутина.
“Президент был хорошо знаком с писателем, является поклонником его творческого таланта и будет всегда помнить глубокие продолжительные беседы с Валентином Распутиным”, - опубликовано на сайте Кремля.
Кроме того, сайт президента сообщает о том, что Путин поздравил вице-президента Российской академии наук, академика РАН Жореса Алфёрова с 85-летним юбилеем.
Президентского оболезнования семьям 17-ти погибших при пожаре в казанском торговом центре "Адмирал" - нет. Фотографий, а также видеозаписей с участием президента в минувшие дни опубликовано не было. Последний раз Путин предстал перед телекамерами 5 марта.
Источник: amurburg.ru
Метки: СМИ; путин; сурков; песков
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Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t been seen in public since March 5, and depending on whom you ask, he’s either dead, has had a stroke, has cancer, is being overthrown in a palace coup, or, contrary to his spokesperson’s denials Friday, has been out of the public eye because he has fathered a lovechild.
“Information that a child has been born to Vladimir Putin is not true,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskovtold Forbes Russia. “I am planning to appeal to people who have money to organize a competition for the best journalistic hoax,” he added.
Speculation on Putin’s whereabouts began when he canceled a high-level trip to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, and then several other meetings this week, including the signing of a treaty with South Ossetia and an appearance at a meeting of top brass at the FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence service. Putin’s absence has sent the Russian Twitterverse and media into overdrive, sparking the trending hashtag #ПутинУмер (Putin Died), as well as a cottage industry of theories — some absurd and others more believable — to explain what is keeping the usually omnipresent Russian president from the public eye.
Peskov, meanwhile, has been on the offensive, steadfastly denying the Russian rumor mill — often with colorful details. After shooting down rumors about Putin’s ill health earlier this week on the radio station Ekho Moskvy, Peskov added that “his handshake is so strong he breaks hands with it.”
Yet despite Peskov’s best efforts, the theories about what could be behind Putin’s mysterious absence have continued to swirl. The Kremlin’s website has been posting photos of the Russian president attending meetings during his physical absence, but the Russian news outlet RBC investigated Putin’s schedule and found discrepancies. According to RBC, the meeting with the governor of the northwestern region of Karelia, reported on the official site as having taken place on March 11, had actually occurred a week earlier, and a Karelian website had actually already writtenabout it on March 4. On Thursday, the Kremlin claimed that Putin spoke on the phone with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. Sargsyan’s website issued the call with an identical transcript.
On Friday, the Kremlin issued three images showing Putin in a meeting with the head of the Supreme Court in Moscow. The state television channel, Rossiya 24, also aired video footage of the meeting. However, the dates of those photos have not been confirmed, and the footage has not been authenticated.
In all likelihood, Putin is alive, relatively healthy, and in Moscow. But the global hysteria points to how little is currently known about how the Kremlin actually functions. It’s also representative of the political fallout from the Feb. 27 assassination of opposition figure Boris Nemtsov.
In the weeks since Nemtsov’s death, cracks have begun to appear in the Kremlin’s typically ironclad foundations, exposing rivalries among Russia’s elite. The battle played out in media reports about theNemtsov investigation and the supposed killers, Zaur Dadayev and Anzor Gubashev. After his arrest, Dadayev retracted his confession and claimed it was issued under torture. In an interview with the Russian news site Gordon on Tuesday, prominent Russian journalist and Kremlin-watcher Oleg Kashin said it was noteworthy that Dadayev and the other suspects in the Nemtsov case were arrested by the FSB and made public by Aleksandr Bortnikov himself, the chief of the Russian intelligence service. Kashin said that pointed to a possible showdown between Kremlin elites, specifically Bortnikov and Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, under whom Dadayev served as deputy commander of a paramilitary battalion.
Putin is set to meet with Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev on March 16 in St. Petersburg to discuss further details on the Moscow-led Eurasian Union. But until then, the palace intrigue will continue to boil as the world wonders just what is going on with Russia’s president.
ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty Images
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Prescient or preposterous? Vladimir Putin’s absence from public life sparked a frenzy last week. Nobody agreed what was going on, but almost all commentators agreed that it was significant. As Leonid Bershidsky noted,
No other kind of state would be so opaque, nor its citizens so preoccupied with their ruler.
Andrei Illarionov, a former advisor to Putin and now a fierce critic of his regime, said he had beentoppled in a backstage coup. A well-connected Washington-based economist, Anders Aslund,suggested that a full-scale Kremlin power struggle was under way. On one side are Putin, his close ally Igor Sechin (head of the Rosneft energy company), the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the interior ministry; on the other, the security and criminal-justice agencies.
Others agree with at least the outlines of that: Stanislav Belkovsky, who has long played a role as a conduit for rumours and black PR from various Kremlin factions, said that Putin is stuck between a rock and a hard place. His reputation for stability rests on having “won” in Chechnya, so he cannot afford to cross Kadyrov. But he cannot side against the Siloviki because they would overthrow him. Those tensions are not new: the real question is whether they have increased to the point that Putin’s own position is threatened.
Some foresee bloodshed; critics of the regime have hurried abroad amid talk of a hardliners’ “hit list.” But not only opposition figures may be in danger. One rumour said that Putin’s long-time bodyguard, General Viktor Zolotov, was dead. Aslund tweeted (without a source) that Vladislav Surkov, once the “gray cardinal” of the Kremlin, had fled to Hong Kong with his family.
But Vladimir Milov, a close friend and ally of the murdered Boris Nemtsov, urged people to calm down. It was not the first time, he noted, that Putin had been in a funk after an upsetting event. Mark Galeotti, a British academic specialising in Russian security and intelligence, said the rhetoric (of “traitors” etc) and troop movements that would accompany a forced leadership change, or the quelling of a rebellion, were notably absent. Nina Ivanovna, a blogger, said that the whole episode might be designed to distract attention from the murder of Nemtsov and the war in Ukraine.
A happier explanation was that the Russian leader was in Switzerland celebrating the birth of a childby his secret lover, the gymnast Alina Kabaeva. Bershidsky said wryly that if this version were true it might make the Russian president more human.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, has snarlingly dismissed speculation and scaremongering with a dogged insistence that nothing is amiss: the president was simply working “exhaustively” with documents. The only real clue of a change in political direction came from a bland but sinister announcement on Tass that Putin wanted a new federal agency to deal with nationalities: perhaps to bring the Chechens to heel, or to stir up more trouble with “compatriots” abroad.
Who is right? As so often in Russia you can stitch the few available facts (and what seems to be misinformation) into a sinister pattern. Or discount them as random noise. Only afterwards, if ever, do you find out what really happened.
My hunch is that the shots that killed Boris Nemtsov, the opposition leader, last month were indeed the first salvo in an internal power struggle that will bring radical change in Russia’s leadership. But Kremlinology is barely more reliable than astrology. Maybe in a week’s time Putin will again be dominating the television news as usual, with politics continuing on the lines the world counts as “normal”.
For certain, though, Russia’s political life under Putin has been anything but “normal”. It has been secretive, paranoid and deceitful. The hybrid rule of political, bureaucratic, criminal and intelligence-service interests has destroyed the country’s political institutions, undermined the constitution, savaged the economy and enabled the greatest looting spree in history. The regime cowed critics with fear and masked the looting with lies: venomous propaganda against a mythical external enemy (the West) and against a demonised “fifth column” at home.
This system is inherently unstable and brittle. Feuds bubble, requiring constant personal intervention from the man in the centre. If he is distracted, either by mental or physical illness, or by something in his private life, factions polarise and the struggle for power intensifies. That leads to justified worries among outsiders about the security of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, and the prospect of the country’s disintegration.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the Kremlin’s deputy chief of staff, said last year: “there is no Russia today if there is no Putin.” That was meant to highlight public support for the Russian leader. But it could also be read another way: that without Putin at the helm, the Russian ship sinks. The Soviet Union had political institutions of a kind. True, they handled political transitions badly, but there were rules and clues which Putin’s Russia dangerously lacks.
As the former US government official Paul Goble notes, whoever comes after Putin is likely to be worse: more aggression abroad, and more repression at home, will be the easiest way to consolidate power:
many of the “siloviki” believe that Putin has failed to act in ways that would have brought Moscow a victory in Ukraine, and they will push for more aggressive moves in order to prove their point as well as to justify an increased role for themselves in the constellation of a post-Putin regime. And whether they are in the cautious or the aggressive camp, they are not liberals and they are not democrats. They are part and parcel of the authoritarian regime which was never completely dismantled in 1991 and which has been restored with extreme vigor by Putin over the last 15 years.
Whatever lies behind the Russian leader’s disappearance, the danger is that the West will respond in the wrong way: by easing sanctions. If Putin has been extinguishing rebellion or settling feuds, Western policymakers will want to cut him some slack. Stability is better than upheaval. If a new face appears at the top—whether a new president or a new prime minister—the West will hope that he will be a more predictable partner than the elusive and erratic Putin—and offer him an olive branch.
In truth the West has as little idea of Kremlin politics as we have chance of influencing it. Our real priority should be remedying our weaknesses (especially the ones that Russia exploits) and helping our allies and friends by raising the cost to the Kremlin (whoever is in charge there) of aggression abroad.
But we haven’t, and I fear we won’t. Ukrainians are paying the price for our illusions now; but the bill is growing, and it will come to us later.
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Kashin⚓Kashin⚓Kashin @KSHN 51 minutes ago
Как стало известно, на днях советник Путина Владислав Сурков срочно выехал в Гонконг вместе с семьей.
Kashin⚓Kashin⚓Kashin @KSHN 53 minutes ago
По словам источника в Кремле поездка оказалась настолько срочной, что о ней не знало ближайшее окружение, а также администрация президента.
Как стало известно, на днях советник Путина Владислав Сурков срочно выехал в Гонконг вместе с семьей.
Kashin⚓Kashin⚓Kashin @KSHN 53 minutes ago
По словам источника в Кремле поездка оказалась настолько срочной, что о ней не знало ближайшее окружение, а также администрация президента.
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cepa.org/content/where-putinCenter for European Policy AnalysisLoading...1 day ago - Aslund tweeted (without a source) that Vladislav Surkov, once the “gray cardinal” of the Kremlin, had fled to Hong Kong with his family. ... The only real clue of a change in political directioncame from a bland but sinister ...NWS / Waar is Putin? #2 - forum.fok.nl
2 days ago - 25 posts - 12 authorsEn toen dook Surkov ook weer eens op, van een Russische journalist: ... Vladislav Surkov immediately went to Hong Kong with his family.Abulsme.com
<a href="http://www.abulsme.com/" rel="nofollow">www.abulsme.com/</a>If that Google+Family Feud game is what people actually search for I'm a visitor to your ... on Walker not knowing if he was a Christian says his faith teaches forgiveness. ... since space bat went where no bat had gone before. <a href="http://t.co/" rel="nofollow">http://t.co/</a>V4t8PS9Fgu ... on Ukraine Vladislav Surkov flew suddenly w family to Hong Kong = Putin ... TopStocks > Politics > Russia replying to sanctions ??
<a href="http://www.topstocks.com.au/stock_discussion_forum.php?action=show" rel="nofollow">www.topstocks.com.au/stock_discussion_forum.php?action=show</a>...2 days ago - 12 posts - 4 authorsthe NEXT problem is this WON'T go away quickly , Russia will be very cautious ..... Aslund tweeted (without a source) that Vladislav Surkov, once the “gray cardinal” of the Kremlin, had fled to Hong Kong with his family.Vladislav Surkov (Upcoming Russian President) My GUESS ...
<a href="http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1595188/pg1" rel="nofollow">www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1595188/pg1</a>Aug 14, 2011 - 31 posts - 2 authors(SEE Surkov Posting as his lineage as a son of a widow) ... Rothchilds is a family name you have associated with the NWO or Illuminati, but ...
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Anatoly Karlin Blog Posts - The Unz Review
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Vladimir Putin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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