Putinova Rusija

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On the twelfth anniversary of the terrorist siege which ended with the deaths of their children, five of the mothers took off their cardigans as the remembrance service began. They were all wearing T-Shirts with the words: “Putin is the Executioner of Beslan’ [Путин – палач Беслана].

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The only two journalists who did not turn their cameras away from the women’s silent protest were taken away and held for two hours before being released.

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The women were immediately surrounded by FSB officers who then tried to stop Novaya Gazeta’s Yelena Kostyuchenko and Diana Khatcharian from videoing the scene. The women were pushed into the corner so that the message on their T-Shirt would not be seen by the official delegation.

An attempt was made to detain the women then, but they began shouting and the FSB backed off.

They were roughly seized when they left the school grounds. They told Novaya Gazeta that they had been surrounded by a large number of officers, many in plain clothes, and pushed into a car. Svetlana Margiyeva was hit on the back so hard that she vomited, and at least two of the women have serious bruising.

They were held at the police station for 5 hours, and charged under Articles 19.3 and 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences, for supposedly ‘not obeying a police officer’ and ‘violating the procedure for holding meetings’.

The police report read out in court says: “A police swift response special forces unit was called in to stop unlawful actions. Physical force was applied in accordance with the Law on the Police”.

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Novaya Gazeta reports that the hearing finally ended at around 3 a.m. on Friday morning. Three women: Svetlana Margiyeva, Ella Kesayeva and Emilia Bzarova asked for an alternative sentence since they could not pay fines, and were sentenced to 20 hours community work Emma Betrozova and Zhanna Tsirikhova did not realize they needed to apply for an alternative sentence, and were fined 20 thousand roubles. Zemfira Tsirikhova was not wearing one of the T-shirts, but was sentenced to 20 hours’ labour for being next to one of the other women and for “making comments”.

The women were against their will for 14.5 hours. They plan to appeal against the rulings.

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Citat:
In March 2010, when Clinton visited Russia, Putin summoned her to his luxurious residence outside Moscow. Knowing her fondness for wildlife elephants, in particular — Putin invited Clinton to a basement trophy room filled with mounted animal heads. (A Clinton aide later described the gesture, though well meaning, as having a Bond villain feel.)

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(...)Putin, she says, was 'a grey, ordinary man’ with no articulated political vision and no identifiable political ambition, on to whom everybody could project whatever they wished to see in him. Berezovsky, who had thrown his Channel One television station behind Putin, believed that 'being devoid of personality and personal interest’, he would be both malleable and disciplined.

The Foundation for Effective Politics, the organisation set up to promote Putin, was made up primarily of young, idealistic liberals who were prepared to overlook his KGB past. 'The reason the ground was primed for him was that people needed to feel a sort of limited nostalgia for the Soviet Union, and someone who was very sure of what he was doing and saying,’ Gessen says. 'Everyone was tired of Yeltsin, his erratic behaviour, his total unpredictability, the fact that he was a total embarrassment on the international stage.’

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Within weeks of his appointment as prime minister Putin had demonstrated just how decisive he could be. In September 1999 Russia was shocked by a series of bombings of apartment blocks that killed more than 300 people and left more than 1,900 injured. The bombings were immediately blamed on Chechen terrorists – and provided an opportunity for Putin to demonstrate his credentials as a strong leader.

On September 23 a group of 24 governors – more than a quarter of the federation – had written to Yeltsin asking him to yield power to Putin. The same day, Yeltsin issued a secret decree authorising the army to resume combat in Chechnya, and Russian planes began bombing the capital, Grozny. The following day Putin issued his own order authorising Russian troops to engage in combat – even though the prime minister has no legal authority over the military – and made one of his first television appearances, promising to hunt down the terrorists: 'Even if we find them in the toilet. We will rub them out in the outhouse.’

'His popularity,’ Gessen writes, 'began to soar.’

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Putin has never commented on the speculation that the FSB was implicated in the bombings. Nor has the suggestion ever gained any traction among the Russian populace. One television channel that did investigate the bombings was NTV, part of a media conglomerate, Media-Most, owned by Vladimir Gusinsky.

Within days of Putin’s inauguration as president in May 2000, armed militia raided the offices of Media-Most, intimidating staff and seizing papers. The raid, Gessen writes, was a threat: its alleged initiator, Putin. Within a matter of weeks, Gusinsky was arrested on trumped-up charges stemming from the privatisation some years earlier of a company called Russkoye Video.

Gusinsky spent three days in jail and then fled the country, having apparently agreed to cede his majority share in his media empire to the state gas company, Gazprom. 'In other words,’ Gessen writes, 'this was a classic organised-crime contract, formalising the exchange of one’s business for one’s personal safety: and the state was party to it.’

When Gessen began investigating the Russkoye Video story, uncovering documents that implicated Putin, she was threatened over the telephone by the prosecutor involved in the case. 'He told me I’d be sorry. Just like that.’ A 'workman’ suddenly appeared at her apartment door – 24 hours a day. Her telephone was mysteriously cut off.

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In a sense, Gessen says, Putin’s methods are in a long and ignoble tradition of Russian politics: the exercise of fear. 'That’s true of his private way of conducting politics, and it’s true of his public rhetoric. He is the heir to the great Russian tradition of “we are a country under siege” poli­tical rhetoric, which has been used throughout Russian history.

'And I think Putin believes that. It’s an assumption he was born and bred with, and he’s never thought to challenge it. I don’t think he is a very smart man, nor a very educated man. He’s an average Soviet functionary with stronger than average emotions, and higher than average vindictiveness.

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Corruption has been virtually institutionalised under his regime. Last year the Transparency International 'Corruptions Perception Index’ ranked Russia joint 143rd out of the 182 countries listed, along with Nigeria and Mauritania.

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'There is a theory that is popular among journalists that to Putin there are enemies and there are traitors. And enemies have a right to exist; he might not like them, but they have a right to exist. Traitors don’t have a right to exist. It’s a nice theory. I like it because I’m such a clear-cut enemy that I should be safe.’

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