The
election of 2016 was in many ways one of the most controversial in American
history. It became apparent to many observers that there were highly unusual
factors at work in the campaign, particularly what appeared to be an
extraordinary effort on the part of coordinated groups outside of the United
States to attack a specific candidate and aid her opponent. Therefore, in order
to understand the current mass of scandals and controversies surrounding Donald
Trump, his principal associates, and a variety of figures in Russia, it will be
necessary to understand the historical background of the situation.
Why does all of this matter?
Because
to my knowledge, this is the first instance in American history where it can be
credibly demonstrated that one of the two major candidates for president was
aided by a foreign power with the knowledge, cooperation, and collusion of that
candidate. If this matter were allowed to simply pass, it would permanently
undermine the integrity of the U.S. electoral process itself and open the U.S.
Government to even more foreign lobbyist influence than the considerable amount
we see already. It would put U.S. foreign policy effectively under the control
of one our adversaries, specifically a
nation led by a sworn enemy of the United States. This matter is therefore
quite possibly one of the most serious political scandals in American history,
dwarfing such scandals as those which ruined the Grant Administration, the
various financial scandals under Harding, and the sordid Watergate episode. It
is equaled perhaps only by the deliberate effort on the part of Richard Nixon
to destroy a potential settlement to the Vietnam War in order to aid his
election in 1968.
How will my examination proceed?
There
are a great many variables at work here, so sorting all of this out is
challenging. I have decided on the following course of action:
1.
I will try to explain why the rise and fall of the USSR was so consequential to
its most fervent loyalists, and trace the political career of the figure who
views the collapse of the Soviet Union as a catastrophe that must be reversed:
Vladimir Putin. I will also try to put Russia's current geopolitical and
economic situations in their proper context. I've decided to concentrate on the
events that, in my view, led the Russian government in general, and Vladimir
Putin specifically, to consciously interfere with and attempt to influence a
presidential election in the United States as part of a larger program to
weaken the United States politically.
2.
I will give a brief outline of the
strange, duplicitous, and often mysterious career of Donald Trump, who is,
despite his boasting, a failed businessman, and attempt to explain why Trump
was so open to the blandishments of Putin's government.
3.
I will examine the careers of those with
whom Trump has surrounded himself, especially those with extensive ties to
Russian interests. I will also look at the financial machinations of
institutions that Trump has used.
4.
I will trace the very serious
accusations of money laundering that surround Trump and his associates.
5. I will
give as much detail as I can about the Russian cyber war on the West and the
ways in which the Russian propaganda machine utilizes social media to advance
Russian policy objectives.
6. I will examine the roles of Julian Assange
and Wikileaks which, despite protestations of neutrality, are actually
conscious instruments of Russian policy.
7. I will examine the increasingly compelling
evidence that the Trump campaign and those allied to it actively welcomed, and
quite possibly sought out, the assistance of the Russian government in winning
the 2016 election.
8. I will look at the disquieting ties between
elements of the American Right and Putin's Russia.
9. I will look at the onslaught of attacks the
Russian cyber warriors launched against Hillary Clinton and the deliberate aid
that was given to Trump. I will make note of one fact that rises above any
others: The Russian effort was 100%
designed to harm Clinton and aid Trump.
10. I will
look at the ways in which Donald Trump has acted to support Russian interests
and has rewarded Vladimir Putin for his help.
11.
I will finally examine the ways in which Trump and his associates have tried to
hinder the investigation into these matters, and the potential Constitutional
crisis the United States may be headed for.
Let
me say at every juncture I will try to use the best available sources. I will
not use information from conspiracy sites or the peddlers of conspiracy
hypotheses. I will try to maintain high standards, and I will only say what I
can back up with solid data.
So
let's begin.
Some Brief Background on Russian
Political and Social Norms
Russia
has always been ruled by absolute monarchies, oligarchies, aristocracies, or
dictatorships. The norms of democratic behavior we associate with the free
Western nations are alien to Russian culture, although they are growing in some
places within Russia. Russians, in their history, have seen (and perpetrated)
an unbelievable amount of violence and brutality. They have been at war with
virtually every one of their many, many neighbors at some time in their
national story. As a consequence many of them highly value strength and
stability, and view excessive personal freedom as disruptive to group unity. Russia's
expansion from the area immediately surrounding Moscow in the 15th century to
significant territories on three different continents (before Russia sold
Alaska to the United States) is perhaps the greatest political expansion in
world history, rivaling that of the Mongol Empire of which Russia was once a
part. Many Russians think of the amassing of this empire as a great
achievement, one which made their nation a global power. A great many Russians
are very proud of their nation's culture as well. An unfortunate element of
that culture has been devotion to the idea of a man who "rules with a
strong hand". Many Russians (not all) have been conditioned to believe
that such a figure is necessary to govern such a sprawling country, and assert
Russian influence in world affairs.
Moreover,
many Russians have been brought up in deeply religious or socially conservative
contexts. Many are disdainful of ethnic or racial minorities, and many find
homosexuality and other forms of "deviance" deeply disturbing.
Paradoxically, bribery and corruption are so deeply embedded in Russian society
as to constitute expected norms of behavior. Alcoholism is a severe problem. There
is widespread anti-Semitism as well.
For
more than 350 years Russians were governed by figures who called themselves
Tsar or Tsarina. And it was the collapse of the Tsarist system that brought
about huge consequences, ones which are still being felt a century later.
The Communists in Power
The
following information may seem superfluous to you. Trust me, there is a point
to it.
The
catastrophes of the First World War led to the downfall of Russia's monarchy in
February/March 1917. A short-lived democratic government took over, the first
true democratic state in Russian history, the Provisional Government. In this
turbulent period a small, ruthlessly disciplined group, led by an unwavering,
politically brilliant fanatic named Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, emerged as a
powerful force. Calling themselves the Bolsheviks, they stood for a Marxist
economic vision combined with a willingness to use any tactics, however brutal,
to win. The Bolsheviks—the Russian Communists—seized control of St. Petersburg
in a coup d'état against the Provisional Government in October/November 1917,
and won control of Moscow soon after. This seizure led to a horrifying civil
war that swept over much of Russia, a war that saw many sides contending for
power. The Communists and their sympathizers were known as the Reds. Their very
diverse opposition, the members of which sometimes worked at cross purposes,
were known as the Whites. (The United States briefly but ineffectively
intervened on behalf of the Whites.) During this struggle the Tsar and his
family were captured, and eventually murdered, by the Bolsheviks. The Red-White
civil war lasted until 1921, and was marked by hideous atrocities, some of
which were unthinkably barbaric, on both sides. After 7,000,000 people had died
of war, famine, and disease, the Reds emerged triumphant. They inherited a
ruined and prostrate land. Lenin's government ruled by terror to an amazing
degree, formally executing in five years' time 40 times the number of people the Tsarist government had executed
in the previous 50. The instrument of terror was known as The Cheka, the Soviet
Secret Police. The name The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to designate
the country was formally adopted in 1922. Lenin died in 1924 and was entombed
in a mausoleum off of Red Square in Moscow, where his (alleged) corpse remains
to this day.
In
the 1920s, a figure who had been a minor player in the revolution and civil war
quietly gathered power and influence, and in December 1927 he seized control of
the leadership. A Georgian by birth, his adopted name was Joseph Stalin. Stalin
rapidly consolidated power, killing, imprisoning, or exiling his principal
opponents. Leon Trotsky, who had been Lenin's right-hand man, was exiled and
then chased across the world, until the Soviet secret police caught up with him
in 1940 and split his head open with an axe. In the USSR itself Stalin
instituted astonishingly sweeping changes, carried out with maximum cruelty and
coercion. Industry was expanded at break-neck speed, often with the help of
American technical experts and finance. Millions of farmers died in the forced
collectivization of agriculture, culminating in a horrific famine in 1932-33
that may have starved more than 5,000,000 people to death, particularly in Ukraine. Stalin lashed out against his potential enemies in the Party by
initiating a sweeping purge, which eventually cast its net wider and wider,
devouring millions of victims. The horrible forced labor camp system, started
under Lenin, expanded to monstrous size and deadliness under Stalin. It was
known by its notorious acronym: The GULAG. Its deadliest branch, Kolyma, in
northeastern Siberia, exterminated over one million people between 1932 and
1954.
Overseeing
the purges, the savage persecution of religion, the murder of farmers who
resisted having their land stolen, and the forced labor camps was the successor
to the Cheka: The NKVD. The NKVD, itself purged on occasion, had unlimited
power of arrest and interrogation, often using the most terrible tortures imaginable
on its victims. It struck fear in the hearts of most Soviets. Stalin had
crushed all real or imagined opposition by the late 1930s, using NKVD savagery
on a wide scale.
Stalin
struck a deal with Adolf Hitler in 1939 that made Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union allies. It was during this period, 1939-41, that Stalin seized control of
the Baltic States and other territories in eastern Europe. Hitler
double-crossed Stalin in 1941, invading Russia, a move that shocked Stalin even
though he had received immense amounts of intelligence about the impending
attack. As the Germans advanced into Soviet territory, the NKVD massacred
entire prisons rather than let the prisoners fall into German hands. The USSR
was in a desperate war for survival. The land war in Russia dwarfed any other
struggle the world had seen. By its end, Russia and its Western allies (chiefly
the U.S., the U.K., and Canada) had crushed Nazi Germany. Stalin refused to let
the West know what kind of losses the USSR had sustained, for fear of revealing
Russia's true weakness. We now believe somewhere between 27,000,000 and
32,000,000 Soviet citizens died in World War II. (By comparison the U.S. lost
400,000. Over twice that many died in one Soviet city, Leningrad, alone.) The
Red Army seized control of Poland, Czechoslovakia, the eastern part of Germany,
Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania. By 1948 Communist
governments were firmly in charge in all of them. (The last two states broke
from Soviet control, but remained Communist.)
The
USSR was challenged by the United States and its postwar president Harry
Truman. Greece and Turkey were saved from Communist seizure. NATO was
established. The Marshall Plan helped rebuild Western Europe. An attempted Soviet
blockade of Berlin was broken in 1948-49. In Korea, a war of conquest launched
by the North's Communist government in June 1950 was stopped, after 3 million
dead. The NKVD waged war not just against Stalin's internal enemies but the
nation referred to in NKVD documents as "The Main Enemy"—the United
States. The U.S. had decided on a program called containment to restrict the growth of Soviet power. There would be
no attempt by the U.S. to invade Soviet territory, but the U.S. would resist
that territory's expansion. The covert arm of the U.S. effort was called the
CIA, an offshoot of the wartime Office of Strategic Services. The CIA and the
NKVD (renamed and reorganized after the war, but with the same functions) were mortal enemies, and waged a bitter clandestine war against each
other. In the early 1950s, the Soviet Secret Police adopted yet another name:
The KGB.
It
was into this history and into this background that Vladimir Vladimirovich
Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg again) in 1952, in the final
months of Stalin's terrible reign.
When
Stalin died (finally!) in March 1953, a vicious power struggle ensued in which
one of Stalin's henchmen, Nikita S. Khrushchev, eventually emerged victorious.
The Soviet Union crushed rebellions in Eastern Europe (East Germany 1953,
Hungary and Poland 1956) and sought to keep pace with the growing nuclear might
of the United States. Khrushchev denounced Stalin, while omitting the crimes he
himself had committed. China, which had come under the control of the homicidal
Mao Zedong in 1949, split with the USSR in 1960. Khrushchev erected the Berlin
Wall in 1961 and helped bring the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in
1962 (The Cuban Missile Crisis). Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev,
drastically expanded the USSR's military power in an effort the make it the equal
of the United States.
The
USSR aided the U.S.'s opponents in Vietnam, propped up the Castro dictatorship
in Cuba and supported the Kim family in North Korea. It financed terrorist
movements against the West (at least according to some observers) and backed
"liberation movements in Africa. The USSR's military growth came at the
expense of the civilian population's prosperity, and the USSR was quite
accurately described as "a Third World nation with nuclear weapons".
Brezhnev brutally cracked down on domestic dissent, using all the terrible
methods of the authoritarian state to silence and intimidate critics. Reform in Czechoslovakia was crushed in 1968. In 1979
the USSR intervened in a domestic crisis in Afghanistan, and in the years that
followed unleashed a barbaric war on the Afghan people in an effort to forcibly
impose a Communist state. In 1982 Yuri Andropov, the KGB chairman, succeeded
Brezhnev in power but only lasted briefly. After another elderly leader died
soon after, the Communist Party chose a younger, more dynamic man, Mikhail
Gorbachev, as leader of the USSR. Gorbachev initiated serious reforms, which Vladimir Putin hated and despised.
Among Gorbachev's policies was the withdrawal of Soviet support for East
Germany's decaying government. (See below.) Despite Gorbachev's efforts, the rot
and corruption and economic idiocy of the USSR could not be corrected. After a
failed coup by Communist die-hards in August 1991, Gorbachev's power
diminished, and he was ultimately forced to watch the USSR disintegrate. The
secession of Ukraine was absolutely key in this process. The Soviet
Union formally collapse on 25 December 1991. Boris Yeltsin became the leader of
the new Russian Federation. There were many Russians now living in the newly
liberated republics of the former USSR.
What
was the legacy of the USSR? Lenin, Stalin, and the other Communist leaders may
have caused the deaths of 30,000,000 Soviet citizens in famines, forced labor
camps, mass shootings, and various methods of secret police terror. Add to this
the 30,000,000 or so dead in the Second World War which Stalin helped bring
about, and it is likely that SIXTY
MILLION people lost their lives on account of the actions of the Soviet
government. The environment of Russia was horrendously polluted, perhaps even
permanently damaged in many areas. It was estimated that, by Western standards,
85% of the Soviet people lived in
poverty. The infant mortality rate was so bad that Russia stopped
publishing it. Corruption reached fantastic levels, permeating every corner of
Russian life. The infrastructure of the USSR was on the point of collapse in
many areas, many Russian cities were little better than mass slums, life
expectancy was below that of any nation in the developed world, and much of the
Communist party's membership drifted into organized crime of a particularly
nasty variety.
And
what was Vladimir Putin's judgment about all this? Let me quote him directly,
from 2005:
"Above
all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major
geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a
genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found
themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration
infected Russia itself."
The
statement is chilling and clear in its meaning. Its implication is deeply
troubling: Putin intends to restore Russia to its former glory. He intends to
restore Russian hegemony in the territory of the old USSR while crushing
independence movements within Russia itself, and he is ready to use any means he
has to in order to do so.
The Life and Mindset of Vladimir Putin
So
it is important to understand the world in which Putin grew up, and the ideas
that were firmly inculcated in his brain. In my view the following statements
reflect Putin's mentality:
A. By
1991, with the exception of a few months, Russia had always been an autocracy
or oligarchy of some sort, and had never had a freely chosen government—and this was the natural order of things.
The "democratization" of Russia after December 1991 was both
unnatural and undesirable.
B. Russia
was one of the world's great powers, and its status as such had to be
maintained.
C. The chief barrier to Russia becoming even
more powerful and influential was the United States of America, a state which had
challenged Soviet power everywhere in the world, and had helped push the USSR
to collapse.
D. The Cold War was Putin's reality from the
time he was young until December 1991, when the USSR formally disintegrated. His
worldview was shaped by the struggle against the U.S. Putin's entire ethos is
that of the old Soviet Secret Police.
E. How did the successful ruler govern? With a
strong hand, brooking no opposition. And that ruler had the right to take
whatever he saw fit by way of wealth and power.
F.
And this point is absolutely key:
Putin sees the West in general, and the
United States in particular, as the enemy of Russian power and ambition. He
sees it as his job to weaken the power of both.
Putin's Character: The Assessment of a
Russian Author
Having
said that, let's examine an excerpt from an incisive biography of Putin by
author Masha Gessen. This excerpt is from The Telegraph (UK) for 25 February
2012.
Gessen’s
book, The Man Without a Face: The
Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, provides a compelling and exhaustive
portrait of a man who rose without trace from being a minor KGB and St
Petersburg bureaucrat to become what Gessen describes as 'the godfather of a
mafia clan’, who has amassed a personal fortune that in 2007 was estimated by one
Kremlin insider to be $40 billion...
'I
remember in 2005 I was asked to write a piece about Putin as a threat to
democracy. I said, you’ve missed the story – he’s not a threat, there is no
democracy. And then I realised that the real story was to try and explain who
this man was. Because really, nobody knew.’
Gessen
argues that as the product of a highly secretive institution, the KGB, Putin
has been able to control the details of his life, and shape his own mythology,
more than almost any other modern politician – certainly any Western one.
Putin,
she writes, was 'a faceless man’ promoted by people who wanted to 'invent’ a
president. But that plan was subverted by the man himself and the secret-police
apparatus that formed him and continues to sustain him. Rather than being the
safeholder of a new era of democracy, as his sponsors had hoped, Putin has
turned Russia into 'a supersize model of the KGB’, where there can be no room
for dissent or even independent action...
'I
think a lot of his resentment goes back directly to that period,’[the fall of
the Soviet Union] Gessen says. 'Having been in the KGB at a bad time, having
been outside the country when everything was changing… He’s a very vengeful man
– that’s one of his particular traits of character. And that vengefulness has
carried through. He’s pursuing a
vendetta against everybody who was ever opposed to the Soviet Union.’... [My
emphasis]
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.
'He’s
a tiny, mean guy who will bite you if you get too close; and that’s the kind of
country he’s tried to build. And that’s been the extent of Russian foreign
policy for the last 12 years. What is Russia’s foreign policy agenda? You can’t
figure it out from who Russia becomes friends with or sells arms to or
negotiates with, because it’s really simple. Russia wants to be feared. That’s
it.’
Gessen
likens Putin to 'the godfather of a mafia clan’ ruling Russia. And 'like all
mafia bosses, he barely distinguishes between his personal property, the
property of his clan and the property of those beholden to his clan.’
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.
Putin’s
own acquisitiveness is typified, Gessen says, in two apparently minor but
telling incidents. In 2005, while hosting a group of American businessmen in St
Petersburg, Putin pocketed a diamond-encrusted ring belonging to Robert Kraft,
the owner of the New England Patriots American football team, after asking to
try it on, and allegedly saying, 'I could kill someone with this.’ After a
flurry of articles in the US press, Kraft announced the ring had been a gift,
preventing an uncomfortable situation from spiralling out of control.
Later
that year, Putin was a guest at the Guggenheim museum in New York. At one point
his hosts brought out a conversation piece – a glass replica of a Kalashnikov
automatic weapon filled with vodka (which can be picked up in Russia for about
$300). According to Gessen, Putin nodded to his bodyguards, who took the piece
away, 'leaving the hosts speechless’. 'I do suspect it’s a compulsion,’ she
says...
She
pauses. '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.’ [End]
PUTIN'S SWIFT RISE TO POWER
1975: Joins the KGB, the direct successor to the Cheka and NKVD. He spies
on foreigners visiting Leningrad for the first few years of his career.
1984: Putin is assigned to the KGB station in Dresden, East Germany. He
becomes fluent in German. Putin's outpost works extensively with the East
German secret police, the Stasi. It is said that Putin became involved with
industrial espionage during this time.
1989: Soon
after the Berlin Wall is opened up, Germans
begin demonstrating against the KGB in Dresden. Putin is said to be enraged and
humiliated by the fact that Mikhail Gorbachev's government does nothing to
defend the station.
1990: Putin is literally the last KGB
agent out the door of the Dresden headquarters. He is a Lt. Colonel by this time. Putin bitterly resents leaving under the circumstances of Soviet
collapse.
1990: Putin becomes a senior advisor to St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who had once been his
mentor.
1991: Putin formally resigns from the KGB.
1994: Putin becomes deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.
1996: Putin is transferred to Moscow to work as President Boris Yeltsin's
first deputy manager.
1998: Putin is named presidential first deputy chief of staff in charge of
Russian regions.
July 1998 to August 1999: Putin serves as director of the Federal Security
Service, a successor agency to the KGB.
August 1999: Boris Yeltsin appoints Putin prime minister.
Yeltsin's regime is noted both for its disarray and its amazing levels of
corruption.
4, 9, and 13 September 1999: A horrific string of apartment bombings in three
different Russian cities kills 272 people. Prime Minister Putin is quick to
blame Chechen separatists for the terror. On 18 September a truck bomb kills 17
more. Evidence will later emerge that shows the FSB was actually behind the
operation. Several people investigating the matter are killed under suspicious
circumstances in subsequent years. Putin's popularity soars in the wake of the
bombings. Putin authorizes a renewed campaign against Chechnya. In the years to
follow, tens of thousands of Chechen civilians will be wiped out.
March 2000: Putin is elected President of the Russian Federation.
Yes,
in ten years, Putin went from a minor official to the Russian presidency, a
meteoric rise.
PUTIN IN POWER
Control of the Media
Putin
has relentlessly moved to put Russia's independent media under government
control. If you're interested in pursuing this in detail, let me suggest the
following links to you:
"How the Media Became One of Putin’s Most
Powerful Weapons"
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/how-the-media-became-putins-most-powerful-weapon/391062/
"The Bloodless Murder of Russia’s Independent
Media"
https://freedomhouse.org/blog/bloodless-murder-russia-s-independent-media
"List
of journalists killed in Russia"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia
The
International Federation of Journalists, the world's largest organization of
journalists, has also kept close track of the shocking destruction of press
freedom in Russia under Putin.
And
here is a quote about this situation:
“In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I
haven’t seen that. I don’t know that he has. Have you been able to prove that?
Do you know the names of the reporters that he’s killed? Because I’ve been –
you know, you’ve been hearing this, but I haven’t seen the names."--Donald
Trump, December 2015
Treatment of Opposition Figures
Putin
has been brutal toward his political opponents, crushing all efforts to mount
an effective political resistance to his program. If you are interested in the
details, there are many places you can find them. I've included a list from an
Australian news site:
(Here:
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/heres-a-list-of-all-the-putin-critics-who-wound-up-murdered/news-story/4e2952b107b0c7159887e303062c9694)
Here’s a list of all the
Putin critics who wound up murdered
NOBODY
knows if or when Russian activist and writer Vladmir Kara-Murza will emerge
from the coma he slipped into last week following his suspected poisoning with
an “unknown substance”.
But Mr Kara-Murza’s wife Evgenia is
certain he was targeted for his role in convincing the US to impose sanctions
on Russian officials over the 2009 death of another vocal opponent of Russian
President Vladimir Putin — Sergei Magnitsky.
The 35-year-old remains on life support
in a Moscow hospital after suddenly falling ill on February 2 as he prepared to
fly home to the US for his daughter's birthday. He survived similar suspected
poisoning two years ago.
Mr Kara-Murza had been travelling around
Russia in recent weeks to promote his documentary about his friend Boris
Nemtsov, a liberal opposition politician who was assassinated near the Kremlin
in 2015.
Hours before he fell ill, Mr Kara-Murza
had paid tribute to Mr Nemtsov on Facebook, posting a photograph of roses and a
portrait of his dead friend with the caption: “We’re here. We remember”.
Like Evgenia Kara-Murza, Russian
opposition MP Ilya Ponomarev believes Mr Putin’s cronies are responsible for Mr
Kara-Murza’s current condition, just as they were allegedly behind the murders
of Mr Magnitsky and Mr Nemtsov.
“For me, there is no doubt that
authorisation for such a thing and for the (attempted) assassination of such a
public figure like Vladimir (Kara-Murza) could have only come from higher
circles of the current authorities,” Mr Ponomarev told the ABC on Wednesday.
“I am not saying it was ordered directly
by (Russian President) Vladimir Putin, but it has to be ordered by somebody
very close to him.”
Here is a list of the 10 most prominent
Putin critics who wound up dead. We can only hope Mr Kara-Murza does not join
them.
THE PUTIN CRITICS WHO ENDED UP MURDERED
Boris Nemtsov 2015
Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov was a Russian physicist,
statesman and liberal politician opposed to the Putin Government.
He was shot four times in the back by an unknown
assailant metres from the Kremlin, just hours after urging the public to
support a march against Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Despite Mr Putin taking “personal control” of the
investigation into Mr Nemtsov’s murder, the killer remains at large.
Boris Berezovsky 2013
Boris Berezovsky was a Russian billionaire who fled to
Britain after falling out with Mr Putin. While in exile he threatened to bring
down the Russian president by force.
He was found dead inside a locked bathroom at his
Berkshire home, with a ligature around his neck, in an apparent suicide.
However, a coronial inquest into his death recorded an
open verdict after his cause of death could not be established.
The British police had investigated several previous
alleged assassination attempts against him.
Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova 2009
Human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov represented
journalists (including murdered reporter Anna Politkovskaya) who found
themselves in hot water after writing articles critical of Mr Putin. He was
shot by a masked gunman near the Kremlin.
Journalist Anastasia Baburova, who was walking with him,
was gunned down as she tried to help him.
Sergei Magnitsky 2009
Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in police custody after he
was allegedly subject to a brutal beating and then denied medical treatment.
Just before his death he had been hired by
British-American businessman William Browder to investigate a multi-million tax
fraud against the Russian state which Mr Browder’s businesses had become
unwittingly involved in.
Mr Magnitsky was allegedly arrested after uncovering
evidence suggesting that police officials were behind the fraud.
In July 2012 he was posthumously convicted of tax
evasion. Mr Browder successfully lobbied the US government to impose sanctions
on those linked to Magnitsky’s death, sanctions which have been linked to the
suspected poisoning of Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Natalia Estemirova 2009
Natalia Estemirova was a journalist who sometimes worked
with Anna Politkovskaya (who was also assassinated). She specialised in
uncovering human rights abuses carried out by the Russian state in Chechnya. Ms
Estemirova was kidnapped outside her home before being shot in the head and
dumped in nearby woodland. Nobody has been convicted of her murder.
Anna Politkovskaya 2006
Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist who was
critical of Putin, accusing him of turning his country into a police state in
her book Putin's Russia. She was murdered by contract killers
who shot her at point blank range in an elevator in her building.
Five men were convicted of her murder, but the judge found
that it was a contract killing, with $150,000 paid by “a person unknown.
Alexander Litvinenko 2006
Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB agent who died
three weeks after drinking a cup of tea at a London hotel that had been laced
with deadly polonium-210. A British inquiry found that Mr Litvinenko was
poisoned by Russian agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, who were acting on
orders that had “probably been approved by President Putin.”
Mr Litvinenko was a vocal opponent of Mr Putin, accusing
him of blowing up an apartment block and ordering the murder of journalist Anna
Politkovskaya.
Paul Klebnikov — 2004
An American investigative journalist of Russian descent,
Paul Klebnikov was killed outside his office in a drive-by shooting in Moscow.
He was editor in chief of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. He had written about corruption
and the personal lives of wealthy Russians, publishing a list of the country’s
richest people.
Sergei Yushenkov 2003
Sergei Yushenkov was a Russian politician shot dead as he
tried to gather evidence proving the Putin government was behind the bombing of
a residential apartment block. He was killed with a single bullet to the chest
just hours after his organisation Liberal Russia had been recognised by the
Justice Ministry as a political party. [End article]
And
then there is this interesting tidbit from USA
Today from 2 May 2017, which I am including verbatim:
A
former member of the Russian parliament is gunned down in broad daylight
in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. A longtime Russian ambassador to
the United Nations drops dead at work. A Russian-backed commander in the
breakaway Ukrainian province of Donetsk is blown up in an elevator. A Russian
media executive is found dead in his Washington, D.C., hotel room.
What
do they have in common? They are among 38 prominent Russians who are
victims of unsolved murders or suspicious deaths since the beginning of 2014,
according to a list compiled by USA TODAY and British journalist Sarah
Hurst, who has done research in Russia.
The
list contains 10 high-profile critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin,
seven diplomats, six associates of Kremlin power brokers who had a falling
out — often over corruption — and 13 military or political leaders
involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, including commanders
of Russian-backed separatist forces. Two are possibly connected to a dossier alleging connections
between President Trump's campaign staff and Kremlin officials that was
produced by a former British spy and shared with the FBI. [Emphasis added]
Twelve
were shot, stabbed or beaten to death. Six were blown up. Ten died
allegedly of natural causes. One died of mysterious head injuries, one
reportedly slipped and hit his head in a public bath, one was hanged in his
jail cell, and one died after drinking coffee. The cause of
six deaths was reported as unknown. [End]
In
short, Putin has been willing to resort to the most brutal methods, and has
unhesitatingly had his opponents and critics silenced permanently.
And
here is yet another pertinent quote about all this:
[In
response to a statement that Putin is a killer]:
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot
of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?”--Donald Trump, February 2017
THE GEOPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC STATUS OF
RUSSIA TODAY
Russia's
economy underwent a near-total collapse following the disintegration of the
USSR. It has recovered strongly, but a striking fact remains: The United States
dwarfs Russia economically. Further, Russia's economy has stalled, and has
actually contracted in recent years Here are the figures, direct from the CIA
World Factbook:
GDP (purchasing power parity):
$3.862
trillion (2016 est.)
$3.822
trillion (2015 est.)
$3.891
trillion (2014 est.) This ranked Russia 194th among the world's
economies for growth.
GDP (official exchange rate):
$1.283
trillion (2016 est.)
Per capita GDP: $26,900
By
way of comparison, the U.S. GDP in 2016 was $18.62 trillion, with a per capita
GDP of $57,600.
Russia
has been plagued by serious inflation in recent years as well. Its largest
exports are petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas. (This is
important.) Financial experts consider Russia far too reliant on oil for revenue,
and therefore highly vulnerable to declines in the price of oil.
The
Factbook's assessment:
A combination of falling oil prices, international sanctions, [my emphasis] and
structural limitations pushed Russia into a deep recession in 2015, with the
GDP falling by close to 4%. The downturn continued through 2016, with GDP
contracting by 0.6%. Government support for import substitution has increased
recently in an effort to diversify the economy away from extractive industries.
Russia is heavily dependent on the movement of world commodity prices and the
Central Bank of Russia estimates that if oil prices remain below $40 per barrel
in 2017, the resulting shock would cause GDP to fall by up to 5%.
Geopolitically,
Russia has felt threatened by the expansion of NATO eastward since the fall of
the USSR. All of the former Soviet-controlled states of East Europe are in it
now, as well as the Baltic states. Political
observers agree that weakening or destroying NATO is a key Russian objective.
Russia
has acted to undermine the European Union as well, which I will detail later.
It has supported political movements aimed at breaking up the EU, especially in
support of the Brexit Referendum in the UK in 2016.
Putin's
Russia has acted aggressively not only in Chechnya, where it waged a brutal war
between 1999 and 2009 (the Second Chechen War), which may have caused anywhere
from 25,000 to 80,000 deaths, but it also waged a very brief, ugly conflict
with Georgia in August 2008. Most alarmingly, perhaps, has been the clash with
Ukraine. Ukraine gained independence in 1991. In 2004 an election now widely
viewed as rigged installed a pro-Russian president named Viktor Yanukovych. The disputed election triggered massive
demonstrations, and soon Yanukovych stepped down. However, in 2010, he was
elected president in a non-controversial election. In 2013 his government began
to move away from the EU and toward closer relations with Russia. Demonstrations
erupted in Kiev. Vladimir Putin gave Yanukovych significant economic help. In early
2014 protests became deadly. Yanukovych was driven out. Violence seemed to be
along ethnic lines, with ethnic Russians supporting Yanukovych and ethnic
Ukrainians opposing him. The president was deposed. To quote the BBC on what
happened next, "27-28 February [2014]: Pro-Russian gunmen
seize key buildings in the Crimean capital, Simferopol. Unidentified gunmen in
combat uniforms appear outside Crimea's main airports. 1 March: Russia's
parliament approves President Vladimir Putin's request to use force in Ukraine
to protect Russian interests. 16 March: Crimea's secession
referendum on joining Russia is backed by 97% of voters, organisers say, but
vote condemned by West as a sham. 17 March: The EU and US impose
travel bans and asset freezes on several officials from Russia and Ukraine over
the Crimea referendum. 18 March: President Putin signs a bill to
absorb Crimea into the Russian Federation."
Pro-Russian
separatists have been active in Ukraine, and despite Putin's denials, Russian
military forces appear to have invaded areas of eastern Ukraine, aiding the
rebels. The U.S. pledged aid for Ukraine in 2014. Both the U.S. and the EU
imposed significant economic sanctions. You'll see later why all this matters
so much. Oh, one note: a key figure in getting Viktor Yanukovych elected was a
man named Paul Manafort. We'll come
across him later, in much greater detail. But just a brief quote from a Time
magazine article:
A U.S. embassy cable sent from Kiev to
Washington in 2006 described Manafort’s job as giving an “extreme makeover” to
a presidential hopeful named Viktor Yanukovych, who had the backing of the
Kremlin and most of Ukraine’s wealthiest tycoons. His Party of Regions, the
cable said, was “a haven” for “mobsters and oligarchs.”
Much
more to come later.
In
sum:
--Vladimir
Putin is an iron-fisted ruler in the long and tragic Russian tradition. He does
not hesitate to kill or imprison those who oppose him.
--He
sees the fall of the USSR, one of the worst polities in human history, as a
catastrophe.
--Putin
views the West, especially the United States, with hostility. He is an enemy of
the U.S.
--Russia's
economic situation is precarious.
--Putin's
foreign policy has been aggressive, as he answers what he sees as threats to
Russian hegemony in East Europe and to Russia's internal stability.
Into
this picture will enter a very interesting figure. We'll deal with his career
next.
Here is Part Two: http://jmillersexcerpts.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-strange-election-of-2016-part-two.html
Here is Part Two: http://jmillersexcerpts.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-strange-election-of-2016-part-two.html