Tsar Putin
Friday, November 24, 2006 at 09:49AM Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly demonstrating not only that he is no friend to the United States, but that he is the latest manifestation of a long tradition of Russian tyrants. Perhaps the biggest distinction between Putin and some of his most infamous forebears is that Putin is more subtle in exercising his brutality and does so under a veneer of democracy.
British officials have discovered that former KGB man-turned-critic of the Putin government, Alexander Litvinenko, had high levels of radioactive poisoning in his body:
The Health Protection Agency said the radioactive element polonium-210 had been found in Litvinenko's urine.
The agency's chief executive, Pat Troop, said that the high level indicated Litvinenko "would either have to have eaten it, inhaled it or taken it in through a wound."
"We know he had a major dose," she said.
Putin, of course, denies any involvement. No surprise there. Keep in mind this incident from last October:
Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist whose byline defined the fading craft of investigative and crusading reporting in President Vladimir Putin's Russia, was fatally gunned down Saturday in the lobby of her apartment building in central Moscow.
Politkovskaya, 48, was renowned for her probes of the brutality of Russia's military campaign in Chechnya as well as the banality of corruption permeating Russian life, from the remote provinces to the bright lights of Moscow.
Poisonings, assassinations and hijinx in Russia, or those nations believed by the Russian leadership to be in their orbit of influence, are far from uncommon:
When it comes to modern Russian politics, the presidential vote earlier this year provided its own spectacle. Ivan Rybkin, a former speaker of the Duma and top Kremlin official under Boris Yeltsin who ran against President Vladimir Putin, disappeared for five days - about a month before the vote.
When Mr. Rybkin resurfaced, he first told a garbled tale about meeting friends in Kiev; later in London, he claimed that he was abducted by the FSB, drugged, and forced to make a compromising video.
More recently two different journalists covering the Beslan hostage crisis in September say they were drugged - one on a plane, another during an FSB interrogation - to prevent their coverage of the story. Medical tests later confirmed one of the cases.
Friends and family of Yury Shchekochikin, a Duma deputy and deputy editor of the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta in Moscow, believe that his death after an unexplained skin rash in July 2003 - while he was investigating a company owned by former KGB top brass - may have been due to dioxin poisoning.
Don't forget about the 2004 attempted assasination by poisoning of then candidate for the Ukrainian Presidency, Victor Yushchenko. The Western-influenced Yushchenko was challenging a candidate supported by the Russian government. Yushchenko survived and went on to win after massive election fraud was exposed.
The drift of the Russian government toward authoritarianism has not gone unnoticed by the Bush Administration. President Bush has made efforts to walk a balance beam between open criticism of Putin and the goal of keeping the Russian leader as an ally. That bit of diplomatic dexterity probably became more difficult in light of recent events. Tensions between Putin and the Bush Administration had already become evident after Putin made the following comment back in July:
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of Russia “an unsuccessful hunting shot,” a caustic comment that underlines tensions ahead of the Group of Eight summit this weekend.
The Bush Administration has in the past been very critical of Putin's growing authoritarianism, particularly his efforts to meddle in those nations that used to comprise the former Soviet Union.
Now, as the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko is announced, we learn that the Russians have agreed to send Tor-M1 Air Defense Rockets to Iran. These rockets, used for defensive purposes, will be strategically placed around Iranian nuclear sites. This is a direct slap at the United States. Not only are the Russians continuing to do business with the Tehran, but are providing weapons that apparently can be used to protect Iran's nuclear program from attack -- conceivably by the United States or Israel.
President Bush needs to outwardly condemn Putin for the provision of these missiles. The assassinations are more difficult to prove, but are blood-curdling nonetheless. I will be looking for any of the presumptive Republican presidential nominees to condemn the growing authoritarianism of the Putin regime. I can only speculate that there are many of us on the center-right who will be very disappointed if the candidates try and soft-pedal what looks to be a growing Russian menace within the former Soviet region, not to mention an unwillingness to prevent Iran from going nuclear.
Hugh Hewitt posts on the missile sale here. Ed Morrissey covers the poisoning story here.
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We can rest assured that the death was an assassination that required a person with high levels of access to radioactive substances as well as knowledge of how to handle it as a weapon. Litvinenko coincidentally became ill after meeting with former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi who denies any involvement in the death.
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