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Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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| By israelinsider staff December 28, 2006 |
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In the latest installment in the bizarre and seemingly unending case of the former Russian spy who was poisoned to death by a rare radioactive substance, a report was released today stating that Moscow is pointing accusatory fingers at a Russian Jew living in Israel.
Russia's prosecutor general said that the government was investigating the possibility that Leonid Nezvlin, a Russian business tycoon who fled Russia when the government began arresting his Yukos Oil colleagues, had a connection to the poisoning.
"By accusing Nevzlin, the Kremlin is just trying to cover up," said Alex Goldfarb, who was close to Litvinenko. He also said that the move, "just raises the suspicion that the government is trying to hide its responsibility."
The accusation by the Russian government provided no details about the connection between Nevzlin and Litvinenko, but only made vague claims about traces of mercury found in London and Moscow.
Litvinenko, who on his deathbed accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of murdering him, was killed by polonium-210, not mercury.
The affair has had many in the political and security spheres raising their eyebrows at a trend of Russian return to a Soviet-styled government and world-approach. Official finger-pointing at a man who is known to have been an anti-Kremlin ally of the dead spy has only heightened concerns.
Under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, a protege of the notoriously anti-Semitic KGB, Russia has seen the nationalization of natural resources, tightened control of the media, and an eagerness to project power onto the world stage while silencing outspoken critics.
Litvinenko was an unforgiving critic of Putin and the Kremlin. He wrote "Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within," in which he accused the Putin government of orchestrating deadly terror attacks in Russia in order garner support for the government's harsh stance against Chechen rebels.
Connections between Litvinenko and Nevzlin initially arose when Debka reported that the ex-spy had traveled to Israel weeks before his death to hand off a secret oil dossier to the Jewish-Russian former oil tycoon.
Nezvlin, the former second-in-command of the Yukos Oil company, told reporters that the document contained information regarding the Kremlin's involvement in a conspiracy to break up and force the sale of Yukos and imprison its owners and executives.
Nevzlin escaped to Israel before he could be arrested but his partner, Yukos Oil chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was tried and sentenced to nine years in a Siberian labor camp on alleged tax evasion charges.
This week, additional charges were levied against Khodorkovsky, which could add 15 years to his term.
Yukos Oil, the largest oil company in Russia, was bought by a state-owned firm for less than half its value in an auction that had only one bidder.
Currently, oil and other natural energy concerns that have been nationalized by the state have brought huge revenue to the formerly financially desiccated Russian government.
Earlier this month, only weeks before commandeering a controlling share in Shell's Russia operation, Russian President Vladimir Putin dedicated the opening of a new $300M state of the art headquarters for the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU, prompting interest from Western security analysts.
In his dedication speech to the staff of the GRU (founded by V.I. Lenin in 1918), Putin remarked that during his first visit to the intelligence organization as head of state in 2001 there were "more pressing tasks, even in the military sphere, than building new administrative buildings, and that it would be hard to find the money for such large-scale projects."
Today, only five years later, the massive investment in just a single 'administrative building' represents a milestone in a Russian journey towards revitalization and the re-projection of power on the world stage.
Putin began taking steps early in the second term of his presidency to rearm the government with the kind of centralized authority it enjoyed during the Soviet era.
Most notably, he replaced the system of election of regional governors with one in which the president has direct involvement in the appointment of these positions.
Putin also took a number of controversial steps towards constraining the Russian media (a good portion of which is state-owned).
Recent backlash against Putin's consolidation of power has included a major protest on December 16th in which prominent politicians and intellectuals spoke out against the Putin government.
Although more than 100 people were arrested prior to the event, many still came.
Former chess grandmaster, Gary Kasparov -- also a staunch critic of the Kremlin -- spoke out at the Moscow protest: "We are protesting and it means that authorities are not as monolithic and powerful" as they believe, he said. "They are afraid that one day we will tell them 'enough.'"
However, with the Kremlin's most damaging critics winding up stabbed, shot, poisoned, or imprisoned, and international attention focused on the Middle East, it is unlikely that President Putin will have much to be concerned about. |
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