EDITORIAL
Reading Vladimir Putin’s “Mind”
It’s quite beautiful, really, if you think about it.
There’s this guy, this American, Pavel Klebnikov. He’s writing all these nasty stories about corruption in my Kremlin, and so forth. You tell them to stop, but they won’t listen of course, these Americans. They think they’re invulnerable.
So, of course, I have to kill him, and I do. And you might think that would be risky for me, but surprisingly it’s just the opposite. Because here’s what I do.
I arrest these two Chechens, see, I blame it on Chechen terrorists. And with Beslan and Dubrovka and what all, nobody thinks twice. This Dukuzov and Vakhaeyev, they didn’t do it of course, but they’re expendable. And this is the great part: I win no matter what.
If the jury convicts them, I say: “See! See how dangerous those nasty Chechens are! Aren’t you glad I’m taking a tough line against them?” And then maybe they meet with a fatal accident in prison — you know, all these skinheads we have and such — and before anyone can be the wiser.
And what if the jury lets them off? Maybe I even fix it so the jury does let them off, and then they conveniently disappear. Then I say: “See, I told you this American jury business was for the birds! How can I protect journalists if the silly juries keep letting them go free? I say we scrap the whole deal and go back to the Soviet way, when we had law and order!” And then when the time is right, I just scrap the whole “investigation.”
Kind of neat, isn’ t it? Sometimes I amaze myself with how clever I am.
And meanwhile, of course, everybody gets the message that it’s probably best not to offend the Kremlin, be patriotic, and everybody will get along just fine.
29 responses so far ↓
Natalie // July 6, 2009 at 6:02 pm |
You do realize that Klebnikov was pro-Putin, right?
bob // July 6, 2009 at 10:32 pm |
So why do they say in Russia that Boris Berezovsky killed Klebnikov in order to make Putin look bad in the west?
So why would Berezovsky kill Klebnikov if Klebnikov was pro-Putin?
La Russophobe // July 6, 2009 at 6:27 pm |
You do realize your repeating the Kremlin’s idiotic propaganda like a silly goose, right? Try reading our content about him before you babble such drivel. When he was shot, he was working on a highly critical story about corruption in the highest levels of the Kremlin.
Natalie // July 7, 2009 at 3:18 am |
Bob: Berezovsky is the most likely candidate for Klebnikov’s murder. After all, Klebnikov really, really slams him in his book Godfather of the Kremlin (which I reviewed on my website a little while ago). He exposes Berezovsky for the crude thug he is. Berezovsky didn’t take too kindly to that. And by the way, Berezovsky and Putin HATE each other right now. They were previously on good terms, but not anymore. I believe the book Kremlin Rising has a pretty good amount of detail about their falling out.
La Russophobe: Klebnikov wrote extensively about the corruption of the oligarchs, especially under the Yeltsin era. He did like what Putin was doing–even Steve LeVine, author of Putin’s Labyrinth says so (see Chapter 8 of the book). And don’t forget that Klebnikov also wrote the controversial article “Millionaire Mullahs” about corruption in Iran. And just out of curiosity, have you read Godfather of the Kremlin?
penny // July 6, 2009 at 6:50 pm |
Natalie, Klebnikov will be dead five years this week. A lot of nasty Putin behavior has happened since his death. It’s unlikely Klebnikov would be pro-Putin, which really needs a specific context rather than your generality, if he were alive now.
How about suppling us with that Klebnikov=pro-Putin link because it matters a lot to see the date and context.
penny // July 6, 2009 at 8:33 pm |
“There is a Chechen link to the Klebnikov killing, too. At the time of his death, Klebnikov had been working on a story about the theft by Russian officials of funds for the reconstruction of Chechnya. In May, 2006, a Russian jury acquitted the two men indicted for Klebnikov’s murder. By remarkable coincidence, the same jury had previously acquitted the same two men for killing one of Klebnikov’s most important sources, a former deputy prime minister in the pro-Russian Chechen government”
http://www.aei.org/article/25187
Like Politkovskaya, Klebnikov’s investigating the Kremlin’s affairs in Chechnya may have been the reason for his murder too.
Klebnikov may have initially supported Putin’s reforms, but, five years later I have no doubt he would have called him the autocratic fascist that he is.
Robert // July 7, 2009 at 12:04 pm |
@Penny
From Forbes article:
In July 2004, on a dark Moscow street, Paul Klebnikov–the American editor of Forbes Russia and one of the leading investigative reporters in business journalism–was shot nine times from a semiautomatic Russian Makarov pistol. He held on as long as he could, only to die in a stuck elevator, lodged between two floors of a hospital. Last week, in a darkened Moscow courtroom, hopes for justice were quashed in similar mystery with the acquittal of the two suspected Chechen hit men–Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhaev.
If the verdict hasn’t exactly created shock waves, that’s because few people know the details. The Klebnikov trial was closed to the press and the public, with all the participants under a strict gag order imposed by the judge. That’s unfortunate, because what went down in that courtroom should send shivers down the spine of anyone worried about the state of criminal justice in Russia today–or, for that matter, in any society that believes a fair trial can be conducted in secrecy.
A reconstruction of the case from sources–including members of the Klebnikov family, insiders in Washington, court officers in Moscow and a range of law enforcement officials in Russia and the West–suggests that a seemingly solid case presented by a team of the country’s best prosecutors led to entirely unexpected verdicts, raising unnerving questions about what happened and why.
For starters, the trial was sealed to protect sensitive trial evidence and to protect jurors and witnesses from intimidation. A lawyer for the Klebnikov family had proposed that the courtroom be closed only for those moments when confidential evidence was presented (just as the “in camera” system works in the West), but the idea was rejected by the government. As for the intimidation of participants, that concern was valid, as even legal representatives of the Klebnikov family say they suffered harassing phone calls and smashed-in car windows.
But Russian officials hardly bent over backward to protect anybody. The jurors were never sequestered, and some were even spotted by a court officer riding the subways alone to the courthouse. Moreover, the jurors were required to pass through a room in the court building that was teeming with the hostile glares of the defendants’ relatives–a scene about as intimidating as possible. It didn’t help that the trial had initially been delayed by a bomb threat, as well as the impaneling of a new judge and jury for reasons that remain hazy.
The prosecution, portraying the defendants as part of a criminal tribe specializing in contract murders, had charged them with a series of violent crimes. Thus, they were acquitted not only of the murder of Klebnikov but also of the attempted murder of a businessman, who survived to identify Dukuzov in the courtroom as the shooter. They were also acquitted of a 1997 attack on a woman who testified that it was Dukuzov who held the knife to her throat and also threatened her family. And they were acquitted of the murder of a former deputy prime minister of Chechnya–it took place two weeks before Klebnikov was killed–despite a witness who placed one of the defendants in a restaurant where the minister and his wife were dining shortly before the murder.
A reasonable observer may wonder: Just what does it take to find someone guilty of a crime in Moscow? Curiously, it was the same eight (of 12) jurors who voted to clear the defendants of every count. One court observer says that guilty verdicts seemed all but assured until the mood in the room shifted several days before the verdict. The defense seemed to rest–literally–reading newspapers in the courtroom, appearing almost disinterested, making fewer motions, rarely leaping up to object as they had during the first part of the trial. The defendants themselves suddenly brimmed with an aggressive confidence, as if the verdict was in the bag. Indeed, one juror was even spotted waving to the defendants.
Robert // July 7, 2009 at 12:12 pm |
Continued:
There are lessons to be learned here. For one, sealing a trial is a bad idea. It raises suspicions that the government is trying to hide a lousy case (which I believe was not the situation here), and it sends a message to jurors that they really may be in danger if they choose to convict.
A sealed trial is also pointless without adequate protection systems in place for witnesses and jurors. With billions of dollars in windfalls now flowing into Russia’s coffers from soaring energy prices, it’s high time the government enacts a long-promised serious revamping of its justice system.
Ironically, this is just the sort of criminal case that Paul Klebnikov himself would have jumped on. But there aren’t many investigative reporters with that appetite in Russia today. A dozen reporters have been killed since Putin came to power, and not one such murder has been solved. The government’s clampdown on press freedom continues unabated.
“The press here is so cowed, it’s disgusting,” says a top U.S. official in Moscow. “Everyone is terrified of Putin now.”
http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/17/klebnikov-verdict-justice-cx_rb_0518kleb.html
Robert // July 7, 2009 at 2:08 pm |
And btw the corruption in Chechnya – Jonathan Littel for Prague Watchdog (LR has PW linked but never uses their articles):
http://www.watchdog.cz/index.php?show=000000-000024-000007-000001&lang=1
“Corruption is taking such a firm hold of people’s lives that they can scarcely draw breath. (…) It’s gotten to the point where it’s almost as though the republic has become the private property of one man. (…) Everyone knows who Ramzan is and what he is – they only have to look at the patronage he gets from influential people in Moscow to understand that.”
Robert // July 7, 2009 at 2:43 pm |
From an another PW article:
Kadyrov does not just break the rules – he has managed to build an entire Byzantium on government territory. Racehorses are a very expensive hobby. The prices of elite thoroughbreds range from hundreds of thousands of dollars well into the millions. There is also the fact that Kadyrov has long felt constricted by the racecourses of Russia. As it came to light after the assassination attempt on Sulim Yamadayev, he has his own stables in Dubai. The cost of keeping the horses there is also doubtless not a modest sum.
But the list of Kadyrov’s hobbies does not end with horses. Photographs of the cars that belong to him have long been circulating on the Internet. The Chechen President’s personal garage boasts a Lamborghini Reventon worth over a million euros (only twenty have ever been made), exclusive models of a slightly less extravagant kind (with prices starting at several hundred thousand dollars), and of course the countless Porsche Cayennes, Mercedes and Lexuses, of which in his motorcade there are about fifty.
The register of Kadyrov’s excesses also includes a private zoo, residential properties that resemble castles, and a passion for giving expensive presents. The cars and personal cash gifts lavished upon Chechnya soccer players, captains of industry, senior law enforcers and ordinary citizens cannot be counted. A separate category of gift recipients is occupied by exalted guests. The Moscow hair stylist Sergei Zverev was given watches worth about a hundred thousand dollars. There is already a special tradition associated with the Chechen leader’s name: at informal events – birthdays, weddings, private parties – Kadyrov and his inner circle shower the guests with banknotes, covering the floors with tens and even hundreds of thousands of rubles.
Wicked tongues say that the cost of the high-class building materials for the Akhmat Kadyrov Mosque which stands in the centre of Grozny exceeded all conceivable limits. But there are no precise figures for the budgets of the construction industry in Chechnya, because it is run on a highly complicated and confusing system of financing that does not permit the tracking of the amounts that are spent. And in any case, no one makes much effort to track them. Kadyrov has been given carte blanche not just for violence against his opponents but also for a stupid, offensive luxury which has become a hallmark of his style of government.
The question of where Kadyrov actually gets the vast amounts of money he spends with a truly crass bravado is one that no one even asks.
John Q. Public // July 6, 2009 at 10:24 pm |
Thank you, my dear, for this delightful trollercoaster ride.
Could you oblige me by showing your extreme benevolence to watch this humble cinematographic buff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju3h7yk4Hcg&feature=related
[Wink, wink] This reminds me of some person. [wink, wink]
probablyabogusname // July 7, 2009 at 1:59 am |
Excellent link……..and very funny.
penny // July 6, 2009 at 11:34 pm |
Hey, John, time to update your outdated mental landscape, Communism is dead, no one in hundreds of posts here is ranting about Russian Communism.
Your post is two decades late.
Wink, Wink, who’s the fool?
rts // July 7, 2009 at 5:49 am |
penny: “COMMUNISMis dead, no one in hundreds of posts here is ranting about RUSSIAN COMMUNISM.”
I see Americans are prone to using terminology they don’t understand on conceptional level and mindless rhetoric . Ask them what’s COMMUNISM and you’ll hear some rubber stamp primitive blsht their mentality is based on.
There are forty-four million Americans who cannot read and write above a fourth-grade level-in other words, who are functional illiterates. I’ve also read that only 11 percent of the American public bothers to read a daily newspaper, beyond the funny pages or the used car ads. So if you live in a country where forty-four million can’t read and perhaps dose to another two hundred million can read but usually don’t you are living in one very scary place. Their former idiot leader of an idiot nation – G.W.Bush still thinks Africa is a nation, not a continent.
:-)
6 more “college money collectors” are reported to be dead in Kunduz province of Afganistan
WASHINGTON (CNN) — “After more then five years of combat and nearly 4000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq, nearly two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 still cannot find Iraq on a map, a study released Tuesday showed.”
Kaktuss // July 7, 2009 at 5:57 am |
In a class of adult Russians that I was teaching in early 1980s, a vast majority could not find Moscow on the map. And a few years earlier, among LGU students more than a half were sure that New York was the capital of the US.
Andrew // July 7, 2009 at 5:59 am |
At least they are not murdering backstabbing Russians
61,911,000 dead as a result of Russian opression 1917-1991.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM
And then there are all the good Putinists & Kadyrovites being killed in the caucasus.
http://www.rferl.org/content/Nine_Chechen_Police_Killed_In_Russias_Ingushetia/1769239.html
As for the “mission accomplished in Chechnya” LOL
Hail Columbia // July 7, 2009 at 11:49 am |
You have people in your country who think that India is a continent, what do you have to say about that?
Asehpe // July 7, 2009 at 3:10 pm |
If you compare that to the number of Russians who can’t find Chechnya on a map (which is actually higher)…
Kaktuss // July 7, 2009 at 5:52 am |
If Monty Python spent a week in the Gulag he would probably be less lighthearted about Communists. Probably even 24 hours would suffice.
Robert // July 7, 2009 at 7:10 am |
Well, the FBI should now conduct a real (even if late) investigation into the murder.
Forbes in 2006:
In private talks with the family, as well as with U.S. President George W. Bush last year, Putin expressed full confidence that the mastermind behind the murder was a fugitive Chechen rebel leader and onetime Moscow gang boss named Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev–and he vowed that Nukhaev would be captured. But the Russian government has continually declined offers of assistance from the U.S. and other countries in the hunt for Nukhaev, who was killed, according to some reports, even before Klebnikov’s murder in 2004.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/17/klebnikov-verdict-justice-cx_rb_0518kleb.html
sascha // July 7, 2009 at 2:42 pm |
After today´s meeting the new Georgia-invasion will be unavoidable.Obama´s speech was not enough to stop the russians.Next week the war will start. Pavel Felgenhauer declared minutes ago on radio svoboda,that according to his sources in the russian army-staff the invasion will take place next week,after some kind of arranged “provocation”
Karma // July 7, 2009 at 5:17 pm |
Do you have any proof Putin killed these people? No. Just your fevered imagination.
La Russophobe // July 7, 2009 at 7:40 pm |
It’s not a question you get to ask until you’re prepared to say what you would be prepared to support by way of retaliation against Putin once you had the “proof” you require.
Putin has remained silent and no killers have been brought to justice. He had motive, and he had opportunity. That’s all the “proof” we need.
ditt0head // July 8, 2009 at 6:54 am |
Brilliant, as always! ‘I don’t need to think, I’m convinced’ (c) Chernomyrdin.
You push people to provide some prooflinks, while resorting yourself to such feeble arguments that fail under elemtary qui prodest tests.
LES // July 8, 2009 at 1:37 pm |
Hi dilldohead,
Why is it that I see so many red herrings in your comments? Does Eugene give you lessons?
ditt0head // July 8, 2009 at 4:45 pm |
1. Are you able to read and comprehend? Guess no. Read this again.
2. Well, why? Because you’re so arrogant, emotion-driven and thus hilarious guys so it’s pretty pointless to have any serious conversation with ya. I’m here just for lulz.
Be cool, calm and, for God’s sake, don’t respond. Get a life! :-)
With best regards,
Sincerely yours,
A member of the KGB Internet Propaganda Dept.
Lt.Col. N, aka ditt0head
Andrew // July 8, 2009 at 5:26 pm |
It could be worse, we could be useless Greek socialists.
Robert // July 8, 2009 at 8:57 am |
During those five years, Russian investigators refused to cooperate with their U.S. counterparts, but on Tuesday they finally agreed.
The Klebnikov family said they hoped the agreement would bring some results. Both the brother and widow had tears in their eyes as they left the cathedral.
“We’d like to hear from [President Dmitry] Medvedev that something will change,” the widow told journalists.
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1010/42/379382.htm
InCountryVlad // July 8, 2009 at 9:06 am |
@rt…Quote”I see Americans are prone to using terminology they don’t understand on conceptional level and mindless rhetoric . Ask them what’s COMMUNISM and you’ll hear some rubber stamp primitive blsht their mentality is based on.”end Quote.
I experience the same phenomenon as you when I ask Russians about democracy..odd!!!
………………………………………………………………
@rt…Quote”There are forty-four million Americans who cannot read and write above a fourth-grade level-in other words, who are functional illiterates. I’ve also read that only 11 percent of the American public bothers to read a daily newspaper, beyond the funny pages or the used car ads.”"end Quote.
The literacy rates are identical for both the US and the RF….97% +……as quoted by more sources than you can READ!! Which obviously you haven’t. You must be able to comprehend what you read also to be functional.