Epicenter 2.0

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Also deeply disturbing was both the presence and the use of Russian arms on the Lebanon battlefield in 2006, arms that apparently had been sold originally to Iran and Syria but were later either sold or given to Hezbollah. No sooner did Israeli ground forces enter the theater than they found themselves facing Russian antitank missiles that were being used against them to deadly effect. “The anti-tank missiles proved to be one of Hezbollah’s most effective weapons in combat in south Lebanon, killing many of the 118 Israeli soldiers who died in the clashes,” reported the Associated Press.366

  In mid-August 2006, a senior Israeli delegation was sent to Moscow by Prime Minister Olmert to give the Kremlin evidence that Russian arms were being used to kill Jews. Publicly, the Russian government initially denied this was even possible. But Shimon Peres, then Israel’s vice premier, stated flatly, “We saw these weapons, they had certain markings.”367

  Have the Russians since convinced Israel they are complying with UN Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701 not to rearm militias in Lebanon? Hardly. On March 21, 2008, as I was finishing this update for Epicenter, a new headline popped up in Haaretz, one of Israel’s leading daily newspapers: “[Israeli] PM Says Worried Russian Arms Will Reach Hezbollah.”

  A CZAR IS BORN

  The most significant development that has occurred since the completion of the first edition of Epicenter is the fact that Vladimir Putin has chosen to stay in office and further centralize all power and wealth unto himself and is, in fact, fashioning himself as a twenty-first-century czar, an absolute dictator who can barely be criticized much less stopped.

  Am I saying that Putin is Gog, the Russian dictator described by the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel who will form an alliance with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries and attack Israel in “the last days”? I am not. As of this edition of Epicenter, it remains too early to draw such a firm conclusion. But I maintain that such a possibility cannot be ruled out. For though it is not yet clear that Putin is Gog, he most certainly is Gog-esque.

  Though his formal title has changed from president to prime minister, there is no doubt that Putin has more power than ever before. It is Putin who runs the Kremlin. It is Putin who runs the Russian military. He runs the Russian economy, Russia’s domestic policy, Russia’s foreign policy, and he appears willing to run down anyone who stands in his way, be they an opposition political leader or a critical journalist. More than two hundred journalists have been killed since the fall of Communism in 1991. Yet, while Russian police reportedly solve 80 percent of all murders, the number drops to only 6 percent when the victim is a journalist.368

  Among the highest-profile unsolved cases in Moscow is the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, Russia’s most famous investigative reporter. In December 2005, Politkovskaya published a book entitled Putin’s Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy, a scathing and highly detailed attack on Putin’s antidemocratic, dictatorial behavior both as head of the Russian intelligence services and as president of the Russian Federation that made headlines around the world. In the book she pulled no punches about her deep disdain for Putin. “I dislike him for . . . his cynicism, for his racism, for his lies . . . for the massacre of the innocents which went on throughout his first term as president.”369 Less than a year later, on October 7, 2006, she was found shot to death in the elevator shaft of her Moscow apartment. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev denounced the crime as “a blow to the entire democratic, independent press. . . . It is a grave crime against the country, against all of us.”370

  One month later, the assassination in London of Alexander Litvinenko—an ex–KGB operative turned critic of Putin and a man who was investigating the murder of Anna Politkovskaya—stunned the West and raised chilling new questions about who Putin is, what he wants, and how far he is willing to go to get it.

  “The story would be fit for a spy novel if it weren’t so implausible,” reported Bob Simon in a 60 Minutes story. “A Russian ex-KGB agent turns against the Kremlin and flees Moscow. He continues his attacks from exile in London, until he is poisoned with a rare radioactive isotope and dies a slow painful death.”371

  British authorities concluded Litvinenko was killed by swallowing polonium-210, an almost impossible to obtain radioactive substance that was traced back to Russian nuclear facilities. It was as if a small nuclear bomb had been detonated in a man publicly accusing Putin of becoming an all-powerful dictator. “Litvinenko was fired in 1998 from the FSB security police, post-Soviet successor to the KGB, which Putin ran before becoming president,” reported the Daily Mail, a London newspaper. “He spent the next eight years trying to publicise his belief that Putin was presiding over a return to a KGB-style state.”372

  But why would Litvinenko’s enemies—or enemy—choose to launch a highly targeted nuclear attack? Why would they choose a weapon of micro destruction? Some believe, as do I, that someone was trying to send a message, not just to Litvinenko but to anyone and everyone choosing to criticize the Kremlin and the man at its helm: there is nowhere we cannot find you and kill you.

  Was Putin actually and ultimately responsible for Litvinenko’s death? Litvinenko certainly believed so. The Associated Press reported that “in a dramatic statement written before he died, Litvinenko . . . blamed [Putin] personally for the poisoning. The 43-year-old Litvinenko, who fiercely criticized Putin’s government from his refuge in London since 2000, told police he believed he was poisoned November 1 while investigating the October slaying of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.” Litvinenko’s last words accused Putin of having “no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value,” and he added, “You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. . . . You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.”373

  British investigators announced in 2007 that they believed they had solved the case and requested that Russia extradite a former FSB official to stand trial for Litvinenko’s murder. The Putin government denied the extradition request.374

  Given the moves made by Putin, his advisors, and his government in recent years—as well as those actions Putin’s team is suspected though not proven of—there is a steadily growing consensus among international journalists and analysts that a new czar is, in fact, emerging in Moscow, the first since the reign of Nicholas II ended disastrously in the October Revolution of 1917. Consider these headlines:

  CZAR VLADIMIR

  CBS News.com, October 3, 2007

  CZAR VLADIMIR

  New York Post, October 7, 2007

  CZAR PUTIN

  CNN Special Report, November 20, 2007

  PUTIN, THE CZAR

  Pravda (Moscow), November 26, 2007

  PUTIN FOR CZAR?

  Khaleej Times (Dubai), December 2, 2007

  A CZAR IN THE MAKING:

  The Cold War Is Dead, but Vladimir Putin Is Very Much With Us

  Air Force Magazine, December 2007

  On December 4, 2007, Time magazine named Putin its “Person of the Year.” The title of the cover story that followed? “A Tsar Is Born.”

  In the story, Time reported:

  To achieve stability, Putin and his administration have dramatically curtailed freedoms. . . . Yet this grand bargain—of freedom for security—appeals to his Russian subjects, who had grown cynical over earlier regimes’ promises of the magical fruits of Western-style democracy. Putin’s popularity ratings are routinely around 70%. “He is emerging as an elected emperor, whom many people compare to Peter the Great,” says Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center and a well-connected expert on contemporary Russia. . . .

  How do Russians see Putin? For generations they have defined their leaders through political jokes. It’s partly a coping mechanism, partly a glimpse into the Russian soul. In the oft told anecdotes, Leonid Brezhnev was always the dolt, Gorbachev the bumbling
reformer, Yeltsin the drunk. Putin, in current punch lines, is the despot. Here’s an example: Stalin’s ghost appears to Putin in a dream, and Putin asks for his help running the country. Stalin says, “Round up and shoot all the democrats, and then paint the inside of the Kremlin blue.” “Why blue?” Putin asks. “Ha!” says Stalin. “I knew you wouldn’t ask me about the first part.”375

  Despite his cruel and heavy-handed tactics, by the beginning of 2008, Putin’s approval rating was a stunning 81 percent. It was not, therefore, difficult in the slightest for Putin to effectively install a puppet president and promote himself to the unequalled Ruler of Russia, regardless of specific rank or title.376

  Mikhail Kasyanov, who once served as prime minister under Putin, was fired in 2004, and is now a fierce Putin opponent, warned: “The person who sits in the Kremlin is a czar. . . . De facto Putin is going to keep all the presidential powers. This will prolong the current political crisis which will lead the country along the path to destruction.”377

  Could Dmitry Medvedev, the baby-faced former law professor whom Putin handpicked and personally anointed to take his place as president, eventually find a way to ice his benefactor out of the way and seize full control of Russia himself? It is conceivable, perhaps, but as of this writing seems unlikely.

  For starters, Medvedev is in every way Putin’s junior. He is twelve years younger than Putin, just forty-two at the time of his “landslide” victory in a rigged election in March 2008. Medvedev is three inches shorter than his mentor, clocking in at five foot four as compared to Putin’s already diminutive five foot seven. What’s more, while Medvedev has spent the last several years running Gazprom for Putin—the behemoth state-run gas monopoly that supplies 30 percent of Europe’s gas and has a market capitalization of $345 billion—he has precious little experience in the cutthroat, winner-take-all worlds of FSB intelligence or Kremlin palace politics.

  No sooner did Putin select Medvedev for the job of president than his puppet blurted out that Putin would and should run the country anyway. “In order to stay on this path [of foreign and economic policy strength], it is not enough to elect a new president who shares this ideology,” Medvedev told reporters. “It is not less important to maintain the efficiency of the team formed by the incumbent president. That is why I find it extremely important for our country to keep Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin at the most important position in the executive power, at the post of the chairman of the government.”378

  Putin, for his part, has made no bones about how long he plans to stay in power or whether he will be subservient to Medvedev. “I formulated the objectives for the development of Russia from 2010 to 2020,” he has told reporters, and “if I see that I can realize these goals in this position [of prime minister], then I will work as long as this is possible.” Will he hang President Medvedev’s portrait in his office? “I do not have to bow to [Medvedev’s] portraits,” Putin stated without apparent humor.379

  RUSSIAN LEADERS FUEL FEARS OF A NEW COLD WAR

  It is not simply the fact that Vladimir Putin is systematically centralizing all power in Russia to himself that worries Western leaders and geopolitical analysts. It is the fact that Putin seems intent on projecting power in all kinds of new and destabilizing ways. Both by his words and his actions, Putin is fueling fears of a new Cold War in Europe, in the Middle East, and around the globe.

  Consider, for example, these headlines, published since the original edition of Epicenter was completed:

  PUTIN’S SPEECH: BACK TO COLD WAR?

  BBC, February 10, 2007

  PUTIN THREAT RAISES COLD WAR SPECTRE

  Times of India, April 27, 2007

  RUSSIA’S COLD WAR HANGOVER

  Time magazine, April 27, 2007

  PUTIN INVOKES THE LANGUAGE OF THE COLD WAR

  London Telegraph, April 28, 2007

  RUSSIA-BRITISH TIES HIT POST COLD WAR LOW

  Gulf Times, May 1, 2007

  RICE, PUTIN TRADE COLD WAR WORDS

  Washington Post, June 1, 2007

  PUTIN RAISES SPECTRE OF NUCLEAR WAR IN EUROPE

  London Times, June 4, 2007

  GATES TO PUTIN: “ONE COLD WAR IS ENOUGH”

  China Daily, December 2, 2007

  What is driving such headlines?

  The list of provocative statements and actions by Putin and his Kremlin team grows longer by the month. Consider a sampling:

  February 2007: Putin launches a vehement attack on Washington for pursuing, in his view, a U.S.-dominated “uni-polar” world. “What is a uni-polar world?” he asks. “No matter how we beautify this term, it means one single centre of power, one single centre of force and one single master. . . . The United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres—economic, political and humanitarian, and has imposed itself on other states. . . . Local and regional wars did not get fewer, the number of people who died did not get less but increased. We see no kind of restraint—a hyper-inflated use of force.”380

  February 2007: News reports indicate that Russia is preparing “to sell Syria thousands of advanced anti-tank missiles, despite Israeli charges that in the past Syria has transferred those missiles to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.”381 The following month, a Russian journalist working on the story of Russian arms sales to Iran and Syria is found dead in Moscow.382

  April 2007: Putin threatens to pull out of a major arms-control treaty if the U.S. and NATO build a missile defense system in Europe.383

  May 2007: Putin and his aides refuse to extradite the suspect British authorities have accused of murdering leading Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko.384

  June 2007: Putin threatens to aim Russian missiles armed with nuclear warheads at European cities if the U.S. and her allies proceed with building a ballistic missile defense system to protect the Western alliance from rogue regimes such as Iran and North Korea. “It’s obvious that if part of the strategic nuclear potential of the U.S. is located in Europe, which in the opinion of our military experts represents a threat, we will take the corresponding steps in response,” Putin told reporters at the time. “Of course we will have to get new targets in Europe.”385

  June 2007: Russia begins delivery of “top-of-the-line fighter jets to Syria under a new deal estimated to be worth U.S. $1 billion,” reports the Associated Press.386

  June 2007: That same month, Russia unveils and successfully tests a new breed of sea-based ballistic missiles with a range of 6,200 miles and capable of carrying six nuclear warheads each. Putin declares the missiles capable of penetrating any ballistic missile defense shield.387

  June 2007: Putin stuns the world by declaring that Russia owns the North Pole and the entire Arctic circle. “Russian President Vladimir Putin is making an astonishing bid to grab a vast chunk of the Arctic—so he can tap its vast potential oil, gas and mineral wealth,” reports the U.K’s Daily Mail. “His scientists claim an underwater ridge near the North Pole is really part of Russia’s continental shelf. One newspaper printed a map of the ‘new addition,’ a triangle five times the size of Britain with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia. . . . Observers say the move is typical of Putin’s muscle-flexing as he tries to increase Russian power.”388

  July 2007: Word leaks that Russia is preparing to sell “250 advanced long-range Sukhoi-30 fighter jets to Iran in an unprecedented billion-dollar deal.”389

  July 2007: Putin and his aides declare they are breaking with the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, a major peace accord signed with NATO in 1990. They threaten to move large numbers of conventional forces from the Asian sectors of Russia back into the European sectors, raising fears throughout Georgia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the rest of Europe of a possible future Russian invasion. The Associated Press notes that the move “threatened to further aggravate Moscow’s already tense relations with the West.”390

  August 2007: News leaks out of Moscow that “for [the] first time since [the] fall of [the] Iron Curtain, Russia plans to build permanent bases on Syrian so
il as part of [a] large arms deal between [the] two countries,” including two ports for the Russian navy in Tartus and Latakia.391

  August 2007: Putin meets with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to oversee a series of large-scale war games in Central Asia involving some 6,000 troops and more than 100 aircraft from nations that could prove to be Ezekiel 38 coalition countries. Putin proposes the war games occur on an annual basis. Joining Russian forces are troops from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Communist China also participates in the military exercises, as founding member of the new alliance. In Bishkek, Ahmadinejad is merely an observer. But Iran has applied to be a full-fledged member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the umbrella organization of this Central Asian military alliance that was officially announced on June 15, 2001. Turkmenistan also holds observer status. As the SCO event ends, Putin announces that the 2009 summit will be held in Moscow.392

  October 2007: Putin and the other heads of the SCO sign an agreement effectively joining forces with another (and at times overlapping) Russian-dominated military and political alliance known as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).393 As one Russian news agency noted: “CSTO members . . . use the organization as a platform for fighting drug trafficking, terrorism, and organized crime, and have pledged to provide immediate military assistance to each other in the event of an attack. The bloc has a Collective Rapid Reaction Force deployed in Central Asia, and is continuing to build up its military forces.394

  December 2007: Immediately after anointing Dmitry Medvedev as his presidential successor, Putin makes a state visit to neighboring Belarus. This prompts the Kremlin to strenuously deny that Putin is planning to “swallow” the country and preside over a Russia-Belarus union, but given that high-level discussions between the governments of both countries have been occurring on and off since the late 1990s, rumors of a back room deal continue to fly.395

  December 2007: With Putin’s blessing, Russia begins delivering enriched uranium to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.396