Normally the KGB isn't that stupid. So maybe I'm missing something when the Putin Administration blames someone with nothing to gain for the death of Aleksandr Litvinenko.
Vladimr Putin has recently started a campaign of "sovereign democracy". It sounds very lofty--perhaps meaning to some at first glance that Russia will make its own decisions unimpeded by the pressures of other nations. What is becoming more clear, however, is that "sovereign democracy" has become the mantra behind ensuring that Putin and his cabal will make their own decisions unimpeded by the pressures of the Russian people, whom he is supposed to be serving.
Several months ago, because he was becoming too much of a vocal critic of the Putin administration, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, CEO of Yukos Oil, was arrested for supposed income tax evasion. He is still in prison. Putin's government controls Yukos oil now. Today word is out that a partner of Khodorkovsky, Leonid B. Nevzlin is being charged with the assassination by radiation poisoning of former KGB officer Aleksandr Litvinenko. Nice job Nevzlin! You sure did an excellent job of making it look like Putin's people did it!! I'm glad Putin set me straight.
Litvinenko often told those willing to listen about the escapades of the KGB, by whom he had previously been employed.
The bombing of four Russian apartment buildings in 1999 that left hundreds dead; the Moscow theater siege that killed 129 people; the 2004 explosion on the Moscow metro that killed dozens of commuters -- all the work of one of the KGB's post-Soviet successors, the Federal Security Service (FSB), according to Litvinenko.
Litvinenko has been marginalized by some in the Soviet Union as a quack and a conspiracy theorist. But then why the lame attempt by the Kremlin at ascribing his death to someone who had no reason to kill him?
Litvinenko also claimed that the recent killing on Anna Politkovskaya was on the orders of the Kremlin as well. Based on her strong criticism of President Putin for his involvement in such things as the war in Chechnya, it is clear that the Kremlin would have a motive for the killing.
On December 29, Moscow news reported that closed-circuit television is being analyzed for possible clues to the man who flew from Moscow to London at about the same time traces of Polonium-210 were discovered on airplanes of recent British Airways flights.
Leonid B. Nevzlin has lived in Israel since 2003 and was recently on holiday in New Jersey. The Kremlin has for quite some time been attempting to extradite Nevzlin from Israel on other specious charges.
he more things change, the more they stay the same. We were so proud of ourselves for "defeating Communism" in the USSR, when in fact the USSR's biggest problem was not that it was "communist" but that it was a totalitarian dictatorship. Now Russia has another dictator...
ReplyDeleteGood point.
ReplyDeleteOld habits die hard. I have a friend from Russia who was surprised that I thought these things about Putin, but then he suggested that I not post this, because Putin's people might come looking for me.
Go figure.