Saying No to Vladimir Putin
Bogus plot
March 1, 2012| Kyiv Post
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/editorial/detail/123507/
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If there are two law enforcement agencies
beyond the reach of politicians or society, they are the Security
Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Federal Security Service (FSB) of
Russia. Both are successor agencies to the Soviet-era KGB, whose agents
operated as state-sanctioned criminals and murderers for part of its
existence.
Even in the modern era in Ukraine and Russia, the two agencies seem to
be able to do what they want, say what they want and answer to no one.
That’s why we have a hard time believing the Feb. 27 announcement that
the agencies in both nations broke up a plot to kill Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin. The assassination attempt was supposed to
happen after the March 4 election that is being staged to return Putin
to the presidency.
If the three suspects were really intent on killing Putin, their
attempts were so lacking in credibility and competence as to undermine
the seriousness of the threat.
Police say they got on the trail of the plotters after a bomb exploded
in a central Odessa apartment on Jan. 4, killing one of the three
suspects, identified as Ruslan Madayev.
If these schemers are so foolish as to play with explosives so far from
the Kremlin, or too incompetent to handle the explosives properly, they
probably lacked any ability to kill Putin or bring harm to anybody
else, except themselves.
The surviving suspects, Chechen native Adam Osmayev and Kazakh citizen
Ilya Pyanzin, were paraded on state television. Their battered
appearance invited speculation of police abuse to extract confessions.Murad
Musayev, a lawyer for Osmayev, was quoted as calling the alleged
plot a fabrication by Russian intelligence services.
Other Russian journalists noted that one
of the suspects, Osmayev, comes from a prominent family known for its
close ties to Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s strongman leader and Putin’s
close ally.
The more likely explanation is that the people around Putin, who is
facing rising protests for corruption and authoritarianism, were
looking to stoke public fears ahead of Sunday’s vote.
They could also use the alleged assassination plot by terrorists to
justify a strong show of force after the vote.
Remember, this is the same Putin – a former FSB chief – who benefited from a series of residential
apartment bombings in Russia in 1999. Those blasts killed 293 people
and catapulted strongman Putin to the presidency.
Officials blamed Chechen terrorists. Others think the attacks were the
work of Russian special services, specifically the FSB that Putin
headed.
Those who investigated this angle ended up dead, including Anna
Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko.
Those charges are vehemently denied. But if these suspicions are true,
then progress has indeed taken place – from Soviet KGB mass murders to bombings of
their own citizens to the present day, when special services may merely
be guilty of trying to scare people.
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