This weekend another critic of
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was found dead, this time in his apartment in
Kiev, the capital city of the Ukraine. Journalist Alexander Shchetinin died of
a gunshot to the head; because the door was locked, initial “speculation” was
that he committed suicide, although by now such explanations for the ever
increasing list of the dead should be taken for the propaganda tales that they
are. Ever since Boris Yeltsin incomprehensibly appointed Putin as the head of
the KGB/FSB in 1998, and eventually as his political successor, a list of the
dead makes it seem as if a serial killer is on the loose in Russia.
Just
four months after Putin’s appointment as head of the state security services,
pro-democracy activist and Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova was found murdered in her apartment; it
was known that she had opposed Putin’s appointment. Two “hitmen” were convicted
of her murder, although who ordered the “hit” remains “unknown.” In 2003, Sergei
Yushenkov of the Liberal Russia party, was
murdered during the course of investigating two apartment building bombings
that killed more than 200 people soon after Putin became president of Russia, which
he used to rationalize indiscriminate bombings in Chechnya during the course of
an unpopular war in that breakaway republic. Many suspected the apartment bombings
were actually planned and carried out by the KGB in order to raise popular
support for the war.
Also
in 2003, journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin—who had accused the FSB (the former
KGB) of money laundering and other crimes—apparently died of poisoning. In
2004, despite poor poll numbers, Putin won re-election as president by a huge
margin, followed by more “mysterious” killings, like that of the editor of the
Russian edition of Forbes magazine, and a prominent anti-racism and human
rights activist. In three straight months in 2006, prominent anti-Putin
activists were killed: in September, Andrei Kozlov, head of Russia’s Central Bank, was
assassinated in the course of attempting to stop a money laundering trail that
led directly to the Kremlin; in October, Anna Politkovskaya, who was
busy writing how Putin’s Russia was quickly slipping back into the “bad old
days” of the Soviet era, was murdered; and in November, Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB
agent who accused the Kremlin of masterminding the two apartment complex
bombings, died of apparent poisoning in London.
The list goes on and on. During
Putin’s first two terms of office, 77 journalists alone were murdered, and
nothing much has changed since he was re-elected to a third term. The brazen
murder of Putin critic Boris Nemtsov right in the sights of the Kremlin last
year has yet to be solved, not surprising since Putin himself took “personal”
charge of the investigation of the crime.
Looking back, one wonders why
Yeltsin “chose” Putin. The West generally had a “favorable” view of Yeltsin, a “hard-partier”
who liked the good life, which many mistook to be “pro-West” proclivities. But
Yeltsin was more of an opportunist who chose to identify with whatever ideology
was suitable for his needs at the moment, and he could be easily led in his
later years, when some wondered if he was losing his mind. Yeltsin apparently
wanted a “strong” personality to continue his “legacy,” although Putin himself
was an even greater opportunist whose only interest (much like Hillary Clinton)
is the accumulation of power without principle.
Also like Clinton, Putin has left
a trail of corruption so thick that his own people refuse to believe that
anyone can be so vile, or choose to believe that the “interests” of the state
are being “served.”
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