In the fall of 2006, there took place what can only be called an orgy of political killings committed for their shock effect. On October 7, the well-known opposition journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in the entryway to her house. Almost immediately, Putin cynically asserted that this murder would cause more harm than her activity as a journalist did. In Putin’s view, the harm Politkovskaya had caused was mostly because she had openly and fearlessly criticized him.
Mystery cloaked the investigation of this crime. For example, security cameras captured the car in which the killers had arrived, as well as a view of the house itself, but the license plate numbers were not visible. They tried to determine the numbers from other cameras, but everything was obscured. Forensic expertise was of no help. Nevertheless, they managed to determine the car in which the killers had arrived. Later it turned out that some time before the death of the journalist, Lt. Col. Pavel Ryaguzov of the FSB had extracted Politkovskaya’s address from an FSB database and immediately phoned his old acquaintance Shamil Buraev, the former head of the Achkhoi-Martanovskii district in Chechnya, who was loyal to the Russian Federation. When it turned out it was an old address, a police operation was mounted to discover the new one. Thus, two groups had Politkovskaya under observation: one was the killers; the other was responsible for surveillance and infiltration.
On November 23, 2006, former FSB officer, forty-four-year-old Alexander Litvinenko, who had fled to Great Britain in 2000 and received a British passport in October 2006, died in the hospital of University College London. A significant amount of the radioactive element polonium-21—a rare substance that is strictly controlled in the few countries, including Russia, that produce it—was found in his body. The English doctors and police unsettled Moscow, because they had not only found polonium-210 in Litvinenko’s body but also established where he had been poisoned and identified his suspected poisoners (former officers of the Russian special services Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun), and other victims, including the bartender who had served the poisoned tea. They also found traces of radioactive contamination in places Litvinenko, Lugovoi, and Kovtun had visited.
A rather striking illustration of what was going on was Russia’s dissemination, in various forms, of all kinds of improbable versions of the murder—for example, that Litvinenko had traded in polonium and didn’t know how to handle it, and that he had committed suicide (“to irritate Putin”). The poorly concealed disinclination of the Russian investigation organs to cooperate with the British and their categorical refusal to hand over to British justice the prime suspect Lugovoi were equally telling. (Lugovoi was transformed into virtually a national hero and elected a deputy to the Duma from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which, as noted previously, had been created with the help of the Soviet KGB.)
Soon the situation became quite Kafkaesque. At a conference in Dublin on November 24—that is, the day after Litvinenko died—Yegor Gaidar, the head of the first Yeltsin government, suddenly felt very ill and was rushed to a hospital with signs of poisoning. An examination by Irish doctors established that the patient had undergone a radical deterioration in his main bodily functions over a short period. However, they were unable to determine the cause, nor were traces of radiation found in Gaidar’s body or in places that he had visited. The doctors were also unable to give a diagnosis of the poisoning since there was no actual toxic substance in Gaidar’s system. Irish and British police conducted an investigation of the incident. For good reason, Gaidar was obviously frightened by what had happened to him and accused “the explicit or covert opponents of the Russian authorities who wish to promote the further radical deterioration of relations between Russia and the West.” That Gaidar’s condition improved while he was in a Moscow hospital and that an unusual statement later was issued in his name, one that unexpectedly echoed the official position that Litvinenko had been poisoned by notorious “enemies of Russia,” naturally raised serious questions. An author of political thrillers might depict the situation as resulting from the blackmail of a well-known Russian politician who had been given an antidote in exchange for issuing such a statement and stopping his criticism of Putin. The impunity of the killers and the anonymity of those who commissioned these crimes are the trademarks of political killings in Russia.
Nevertheless, occasionally the curtain of secrecy is raised, as happened with the murders of Litvinenko and Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, thanks to foreign special services and sometimes thanks to journalists. Thus, for example, a sensational article by Igor Korol’kov, published in Novaia gazeta, revealed that criminal gangs had been created in Russia that were working under the supervision of the special services and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.13 Their mission was the extrajudicial elimination of undesirables. Investigations into their crimes were obstructed and criminal cases collapsed. Witnesses who were prepared to give depositions about the involvement of the GRU (military intelligence) in these activities were eliminated. One gang had been assembled from veteran criminals who had been released early from prison and provided with arms to assist in the redistribution of property.
An investigation of the murder of the journalist Kholodov pointed to these organizations. Officers of the GRU who had been involved in special operations in Abkhazia in Georgia, the Trans-Dniestr region of Moldova, and in Chechnya, where they physically eliminated persons who had been fingered to them, fell under suspicion. One of the accused officers had once placed a magnetic explosive device under the car of Russia’s then deputy minister of finance Andrei Vavilov; fortunately, the deputy minister was not killed. While investigating the Kholodov case, apart from the GRU, the investigation also pointed to the organized crime division (GUBOP) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.14
Let us revisit the series of terrorist acts in Moscow in the mid-1990s that took place during Yeltsin’s presidency. The idea of a well-coordinated attack on Moscow by Chechen gunmen received wide currency. However, as an investigation and a court later proved, it was not Chechen fighters but a former KGB colonel who exploded the bus at the National Exhibition of Economic Achievements. It was also a former FSB officer who tried to blow up the railroad bridge across the Yauza River in Moscow. Both of these former employees of the special services were directly connected to Maxim Lazovsky’s criminal gang.15 At least eight active duty officers of the FSB worked in close contact with the gang. This was established by the chief of the Twelfth Section of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department Vladimir Tskhai, a lieutenant colonel in the militia. As soon as it became clear that the Moscow militia headquarters would not relinquish its spoils, Lazovsky and his closest accomplices were eliminated, while the teetotaler Tskhai died from cirrhosis of the liver.
Novaia gazeta possesses a document that appears to be a set of secret instructions. It refers to the creation of a completely secret, illegal, special subdivision and of several regional operational fighting groups. The organizational form of this body took the form of a private detective and security enterprise, and its leadership and core employees appear to be persons released from the operational services of the Ministry of the Interior, the FSB, the SVR, and the GRU.16 The plan is to establish a public organization—for example, the “Association of Veterans of Russian Special Services”—as a cover for its investigative and operational fighting activities. According to the plan, this organization will be utilized, in particular, in the creation of permanently operating pseudo detachments that will have strong operational contacts directly with the bandit wing of the OPGs and with the OPGs themselves, specializing in contract killings and terrorist acts.17 What was envisaged was an organization of “a fully equipped fictitious military unit both in the regions and in the center.” Utilization of the special forces’ extralegal reconnaissance “to neutralize or physically eliminate the leaders and active members of terrorist and intelligence-sabotage groups waging war against federal authorities” was not ruled out. Attention should be paid to the fact that murders would be committed “with the
goal of averting serious consequences.”18
Thus, in the view of Novaia gazeta, an integrated special services system has been created to carry out extrajudicial executions. According to Novaia gazeta’s sources, this document was signed by one of the then leaders of GUBOP, Colonel Seliverstov, and based on a secret resolution of the government. Yury Skokov, first deputy prime minister of Russia in the early 1990s, took part in drafting the resolution.
According to Novaia gazeta, this activity was coordinated by an FSB subunit, completely secret even by the organization’s own standards, that was established in the early 1990s as the Directorate for Working with Criminal Organizations and was headed by Gen. Yevgeny Khokhol’kov. The mission of this subunit, consisting of 150 persons, was to infiltrate secret agents into the criminal world. This extremely secretive subunit was revealed at a press conference in 1998, at which five employees discussed its involvement in extrajudicial killings. Specifically, the employees asserted that the leadership of the directorate had hatched plans to physically eliminate Boris Berezovsky. After the press conference, the newspaper noted that the directorate was quickly disbanded, and Nikolai Kovalev, who was then the director of the FSB, retired.
According to Novaia gazeta, the technology of extrajudicial killings was perfected in Chechnya. Prisoners were interrogated under torture, then transported to an uninhabited place, where they were blown to pieces in groups of three to five.19 As a result of such activity, criminality was elevated to what, in principle, was not only a new organizational but also political level.
On March 26, 2000, a tragedy occurred that was replicated on January 19, 2009. It started with Col. Yury Budanov. After getting thoroughly drunk while celebrating his daughter’s birthday, he ordered Lt. Roman Bagreev to shoot up a peaceful Chechen village. The lieutenant did not obey. Then Budanov and his deputy, Lt. Col. Ivan Fedorov, beat up Bagreev. Afterward Budanov ordered the crew of his own infantry fighting vehicle to grab the eldest daughter of the Kungaevs, eighteen-year-old Elza, and take her to regimental headquarters. Unable to endure the “interrogation” that lasted for many hours, Kungaeva died, and Budanov, who was later sentenced for kidnapping, rape, and murder, ordered that she be buried in the forest.
What happened subsequently is another mystery. Experts’ conclusions differ on Budanov’s responsibility. An examination “determined” that Budanov had not raped Kungaeva but that a certain soldier, Yegorov, had violated her corpse. Therefore, the charge of rape against Budanov was dismissed. Contrary to the findings of a court-ordered psychiatric examination, Budanov was sent for compulsory treatment. Then, under the influence of public opinion in Chechnya, the case was reexamined, and Budanov was sentenced to ten years in a hard labor penal colony, stripped of his state commendations, and denied the opportunity to hold leadership positions for three years after his release from confinement.
An overwhelming majority of the Russian public supported Budanov, and for many he became almost a national hero. After repeated requests for a pardon and conditional early release, in December 2008, the municipal court of Dimitrovgrad ruled that Budanov had repented of his crime and wholly absolved him of guilt. The authorities do not throw their own bastards to the wolves.
Then at a press conference in January 2009, in the Independent Press Center in Moscow, Stanislav Markelov, a well-known lawyer who had taken part in a series of high-profile cases and was an embarrassment to the authorities, announced his intention to dispute what he considered to be the illegal conditional early release of Budanov and, if necessary, to file a suit with the International Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg. After Markelov left the press conference, he was killed with a shot from a pistol fitted with a silencer. The Novaia gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova, who left the press conference with him, threw herself on the killer, who then shot her.
Naturally, the Budanov case could be used as a cover for other objectives of the murder. For example, Markelov was connected with the Nord-Ost case, was a lawyer for Anna Politkovskaya, and represented the interests of those who suffered the mass slaughter by the Blagoveshchensk special-purpose militia unit in Bashkortostan in December 2004. Lawyers from the Institute for the Supremacy of Law, which he founded and directed, were actively engaged in the case of former GRU special forces Capt. Eduard Ul’man, who confessed to the murder of six peaceful inhabitants of Chechnya as well as of Magomed Yevloev, owner of the website Ingushetiia.ru.20 In other words, Markelov was punished for defending human rights and the independence of the judiciary.
After the murder of Stanislav Markelov, the assailant went into hiding. Moreover, for a long time the investigation supposedly could not locate a single witness or a single clue. Clearly, it is impossible to kill two people in broad daylight in central Moscow, not far from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and a metro station, without being noticed.
These are only the most notorious cases. There are actually many, many more. I do not mean to imply that all the cases cited without exception are the result of actions by highly placed state authorities. It is another thing, however, to say that they have made the actions possible. Moreover, that people suspect their involvement itself speaks volumes. In sum, the orgy of killing “undesirables” began under Yeltsin and really took off during Putin’s presidency.
Naturally, murder is the most efficacious and effective means of eliminating those who defy the authorities. But there are also other options—for example, making someone’s life unbearable.
At the beginning of his administration, Putin was insufficiently skilled in the art of neutralizing those who stood in his way. Naive people interpreted his slogan of “Equidistance from the oligarchs” as a pledge not to make use of the oligarchs as his “money bags.” It turned out that such an interpretation was quite wrong. Vladimir Gusinskii, who opposed him, was stripped of his media empire in Russia, and Boris Berezovsky, who helped bring Putin to power and was subsequently forced to flee to London for this fatal mistake, was also stripped of a large part of his fortune. These oligarchs were kept at a distance from influence in Russian politics; they were replaced by others. Gusinskii may have quieted down, but Putin miscalculated with respect to Berezovsky, who would not forgive his former fair-haired boy and became an active opponent of the Putin regime.
Yet another misfire of the early Putin period was the kidnapping by the special services of Radio Liberty journalist Andrei Babitskii, who had sharply critiqued Russian policy and its machinations in Chechnya. Babitskii was held by the Russian special forces supposedly for not having proper documents. The instantaneous exchange of the journalist, allegedly on his initiative, for three Russian soldiers supposedly taken prisoner by a nonexistent Chechen field commander was unpersuasive. Babitskii’s release was secured solely due to the proactive stance taken by Russian and foreign journalists. There are grounds for suspecting that had the journalists been more passive, Babitskii would have been eliminated.
But Putin is educable. In February 2003 in a meeting with leading Russian businessmen in the Kremlin, the president of Russia asked, “Mr. Khodorkovsky, are you sure you’re in compliance with the Tax Department?”
“Absolutely,” replied the boss of the largest Russian oil company YUKOS and one of the richest men in Russia.
“Well, we’ll see about that,” Putin muttered ominously.
The result was that on October 25, 2003, the young oligarch, who had not concealed his presidential ambitions and who supported liberal political parties, was arrested. Prior to this, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Menatep Interbank Association Platon Lebedev was arrested.21 The core of the accusations against Khodorkovsky was that he had created an organized criminal group, by which, evidently, was meant his business partners, to evade taxes and engage in other improper activities.
Can anyone have the slightest doubt that YUKOS strove to maximize its profits or that the laws in force at the time these “crimes” were committed provided such an opportunity? The possibility that Khodorkovsky and
some among his associates did something illegal cannot be ruled out. But something else is troubling: almost all Russian entrepreneurs were engaged in the same or similar activities, but only Khodorkovsky and YUKOS were punished. No unprejudiced observer could doubt that the underlying reason was the Kremlin’s fear of Khodorkovsky’s presidential ambitions. The selectivity of the judicial system in and of itself is testimony to its incompetence.
As ordered, the court sentenced Khodorkovsky to nine years in a camp. To discourage Khodorkovsky from aspiring for early release, he was regularly placed in a punitive isolation cell. But the authorities considered all this insufficient.
In the winter of 2007, a scandal erupted. On December 27, Vasily Aleksanian, the executive vice president of YUKOS who had served in his position for only five days and had been arrested on April 6, 2006, lodged an official complaint that accused the investigators of pressuring him by refusing to provide him with medical assistance. Yet the condition of the virtually blind Aleksanian, who was suffering from cancer and AIDS, was deemed “satisfactory,” and he himself was judged “fit to undergo further inquiries.” Just what were these further inquiries regarding a mortally ill and unspeakably suffering man? It was all very simple. Aleksanian was refused medical assistance because he did not agree to give testimony against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev in exchange for that medical assistance. Or, in Aleksanian’s words, “in effect in exchange for my life.” According to Aleksanian, when he said he knew of no crimes committed in YUKOS or by its employees and refused to give testimony, the conditions of his confinement deteriorated. He was denied pain medicines and held in a near-freezing cell that was so cold he had to sleep in his overcoat for an entire year.
Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin Page 32