It’s been less than a month since Vladimir Putin returned to the post of Russia’s president. In that time, he already managed to sign a degree indicating that Russia’s corrupt system of deciding which corporations should belong to the state and which should not is showing no sign of abating. As Yulia Latynina reports:

Legalizing the Loot
By Yulia Latynina
May 24, 2012
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

One of the first orders that Vladimir Putin signed as president instructed the government to “remove state investment from non-energy sector companies” by 2016. This included companies such as the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), and Rostechnology.

This order was no accident: literally one week later, Putin demanded that Rostechnology prepare proposals to privatize the assets of this state-owned corporation within the space of a month.

If you think about it, this is a very odd piece of news.

UAC, USC, and Rostechnology are not old companies like, for instance, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise, tucked away in state-owned silos since the Yeltsin era. These are companies that were created by Putin in 2006-2007 and headed, in a number of cases, by his close friends.

In many cases, private enterprises were incorporated into these companies in a way that was, more or less, violent. And the government declared that these enterprises held an important strategic purpose and should therefore be nationalized. And now after 3-5 years it turns out that they should be privatized again.

You know, only one of two things is possible. Either the government advocates a socialist ideology, in which case it nationalizes companies like Salvador Allende, or it advocates a market ideology, in which case it privatizes them like Margaret Thatcher. But if the government first takes companies from their owners and then privatizes them again, it means that it isn’t advocating either ideology. That means it’s just stealing. So UAC, USC, and Rostechnology are not state companies. They are just an instrument with which private companies are taken from their owners and given out to Putin’s friends.

Take, for example, UAC. Until it was created, the country had to deal with the difficult but necessary process of self-organizing the aviation industry. The weak companies died off, and then the country found itself with a few strong aviation companies: the company Russian Avionics, or Irkutsk Aviation Factory, privatized by management and having fallen on the procurement for the Su in India, which they themselves modernized.

After UAC was created (in November 2006), this process was interrupted. The owner of Irkut, Aleksei Fedorov, was made a proposal he couldn’t refuse: to transfer his private shares to the state, but head the entire company. Fedorov agreed.

The main force behind the pressure on the corporation was Mikhail Pogosyan’s Sukhoi Superjet 100 project. The Superjet turned out to be a super vacuum: the plane’s development cost, according to experts, around 7 million dollars, as opposed to the 1-1.5 million dollar estimates from its competitors. The plane was three years late and turned out to be three tons heavier than promised, but, clearly, from the point of view of the “economy of ROZ” [Stanislav Belkovsky’s characterization of the corrupt nature of the Russian economy – ed.], the project was successful: Fedorov left, and Mikhail Pogosyan took his place.

Or take another instance – the company AVISMA. In 2006, Russia’s largest titanium producer was purchased by the predecessor to Rostechnology – Rosoboronexport – with a 30 percent discount and market quotations of around 1.2 billion dollars.

This was preceded by a rather dramatic story. Sixty percent of AVISMA shares were divided equally between its two owners, Tetyukhin (“the red director”) and Bresht (“the young financier”). Another 13.4 percent of AVISMA shares belonged to Viktor Vekselberg, and between Vekselberg and the owners there was an agreement about “Russian roulette,” and it was specifically stipulated that when the company was purchased, nobody could borrow money from their own bundle.

Allow me to remind you that “Russian roulette” in this context is when you can propose that another owner buys his share at a certain price, and he in response can buy from you at the same price per share.

In May 2005, Vekselberg, having waited for an opportune moment in the market and thinking that AVISMA had less money than he did, offered to buy 60 percent of AVISMA at 96 dollars per share, which was, to put it lightly, inexpensive. However, Bresht and Tetyukhin refinanced through Renaissance and bought from Vekselberg instead.

Clearly, the oligarch found this insulting, and appealed to [Russian businessman Sergei] Chemezov. After that, the state suddenly discovered that AVISMA was a strategic company that should have belonged in the state’s coffers. Bresht and Tetyukhin were offered 700 million dollars for their bundle; they asked for 2 billion.

The matter went all the way to Putin. Putin supposedly said: “Pay them, so there’s no scandal.” But the ones who had taken AVISMA didn’t want to pay up: Bresht was supposedly called to the carpet of then-FSB head Patrushev, who, obviously, was at that moment the main arbiter to determine the price of companies listed on the market.

In the end, the case was settled in the middle: Bresht and Tetyukhin gave away their shares and left Russia, and you can’t say that 1.2 billion dollars is so little money. But you also can’t say that they would have sold any shares at that price in a sound state of mind and with a solid memory.

And now Vladimir Putin is signing an order to privatize state companies that were created 6 years ago. You have to agree that it turned out oddly. It’s not hard to guess that if the UAS assets are privatized that it could easily happen that the state would remain with the cost of developing the Superjet but that future profits from its sale will end up in the hands of future owners of its assets. Or look again at AVISMA. Six years ago it was taken into state coffers (on credit from state banks) as a strategically important enterprise, and now they’re selling it again?

The presidential order is just a continuation of the 180-degree turn in Putin’s economic policy going on before our eyes. Not long ago, all traders – let alone foreigners – were kicked out of the gas sector. And in March 2011 they sold 20 percent of Novatek to the company Total. Also recently we kicked Shell out of Sakhalin, and now Rosneft and Exxon have signed a cooperation agreement, rather similar essentially to what Mikhail Khodorkovsky was suspected of being prepared to sign.

In principle, this is how rulers behave whose thrones are tottering and who are worried about legalizing loot through privatization and through buying shares in the loot with foreign companies.

Translation by theotherrussia.org

In a recent article, Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov argued that the country’s ruling regime is degrading faster and faster every day. Indications of this, he wrote, include the government’s work to persecute lawyer and blogger Alexei Navalny and the unscrupulous behavior of backtracking police Sergeant Artem Charukhin. The overall picture is one of a government spiraling hopelessly into the abyss.

Kasparov isn’t alone in his assessment of the state of Russia’s regime. Writing in Yezhednevny Zhurnal, columnist Yulia Latynina remarked that Kasparov’s story of his 2007 arrest was a wake-up call for her: “The cops brought him coffee and asked: ‘So when’s it going to collapse?’ As I recall, it was only at that moment that I understood clearly that even the paid-off cops that the oppositionists hate and Russian citizens fear are in no way defenders of the government. They envy their bosses and hate them for zipping around in Mercedes while they do the hard work that has to be done.”

In this version of the same article written for the Moscow Times, Latynina offers a scathing assessment of “Russia’s extraordinarily weak leaders.”

It Smells Like February 1917
By Yulia Latynina
March 2, 2011
The Moscow Times

The smell of February is lingering in the air — February 1917, that is.

I am not talking about the revolutions in the Middle East but about Russia’s extraordinarily weak leaders and the growing contempt that the leading public figures and ordinary citizens are showing toward them.

Look how quickly the seemingly ironclad vertical power structure can evaporate into thin air. For example, Bolshoi prima-turned-celebrity Anastasia Volochkova had no qualms about publicly thumbing her nose at United Russia when she quit the party after revealing that she was “tricked” into signing a group letter in support of prosecuting former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In the 1970s, no Soviet citizen would have even thought about snubbing the Communist Party.

Then there was Natalya Vasilyeva, spokeswoman to Judge Viktor Danilkin in the second criminal case against Khodorkovsky, who revealed that the verdict was written by the Moscow City Court and forced on Danilkin. Certainly Vasilyeva would have never dared such a move if she thought that her life were at risk.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities are worried about their loss of control over citizens who blatantly display insolence and contempt toward the current regime. Pressed to the wall, the only thing President Dmitry Medvedev could say to deflect attention from these embarrassing weaknesses was his Putin-like bluster in Vladikavkaz last week, when he implied that foreign powers are conspiring (again) to disintegrate Russia.

Let’s not forget Russia’s courts. Billionaire Gennady Timchenko filed a libel lawsuit against opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, and Nemtsov turned around and filed a slander case against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Timchenko sued Nemtsov for writing that Putin’s old friends — himself, Yury Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers — were “nobodies” before Putin came to power but quickly became billionaires during his reign.

Nemtsov responded to the charges by presenting documents to the court showing that, before Putin came to power, Timchenko had a yearly income of 326,000 euros ($450,000) in 1999, while Forbes estimated his fortune at $1.9 billion in 2010. Nemtsov also presented a document showing that Timchenko had flown gymnast Alina Kabayeva along with Putin’s friend Nikolai Shamalov, the nominal owner of Putin’s $1 billion Black Sea palace, in his private jet.

Nemtsov filed a lawsuit against Putin for stating during his annual televised call-in show that Nemtsov and others had embezzled billions of dollars along with tycoon Boris Berezovsky in the 1990s.

The only thing Putin’s lawyers could present as evidence in court was a Wikipedia article about Berezovsky that made no mention of Nemtsov but did state that Berezovsky financed and organized Putin’s presidential election campaign in 2000.

The notion that Putin is a leader who instills fear and discipline among bureaucrats and citizens is a myth. One WikiLeaks diplomatic cable revealing that most of Putin’s decrees went unfulfilled is enough evidence in and of itself.

With Putin looking more like Tsar Nicholas II, the smell of February 1917 is clearly in the air. It is the smell of a confused, wounded and weakened leader and a bureaucratic class standing dazed before the public eye. It is the smell of blood in the water.

It is not an especially pleasant odor because as experience has shown in impoverished countries led by corrupt and incompetent rulers, this kind of February 1917 can easily bring about another October 1917.

Attacks on journalists are far from rare in Russia, and so is impunity. While suspects often abound, 94% of murder cases have never been resolved. Writing for Yezhednevny Zhurnal, noted journalist Yulia Latynina lays out the most likely perpetrators of Kashin’s brutal attack.

Kashin – Who Ordered the Attack?
By Yulia Latynina
November 8, 2010
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

The attack on Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin is notable for the fact that, like in an Agatha Christie novel, its circle of suspects is finite and small.

The first suspect is Khimki Mayor and Afghan war veteran Strelchenko. The same thing happens to all of Strelchenko’s opponents – their skulls get broken. Exactly two years ago, they broke the skull of Mikhail Beketov; on the anniversary of Beketov’s beating, they broke the skull of Khimki Right Cause leader Fetisov, and a day later – Oleg Kashin.

What do we have here in Khimki, Chechnya? Who is Mayor Strelchenko – Ramzan Kadyrov?

The second suspect is the manager of the Federal Agency for Youth Matters, a close associate of Surkov, the spiritual leader of the Putinjugend – Vasily Yakemenko.

In August 2010, Kashin uncovered and expanded upon an unappetizing story about Yakemenko.

A young girl attending Seliger, Anastasia Korchevskaya, decided to promote herself by bragging about her proximity to the top command, and posted a photo of herself with Yakemenko online with the caption: “Seliger 2008. Yakemenko still thinks I’m madly in love with him.” Yakemenko commented in response: “Korchevskaya, if you came to me two times at night in my tent, it doesn’t mean I think you’re in love with me.”

The page was then deleted, but Kashin managed to make a screenshot and generally did everything possible to expand upon the story. It turned out that Yakemenko not only uses his authority to sleep with schoolchildren, but he also brags on LiveJournal that he screws them in tents. Kashin is not a simple person; he has cooperated with the Kremlin on multiple occasions (it is only worth nothing how he insisted that Private Sychev’s legs fell off on their own accord), and his position could be seen not just as the position of an enemy, but worse – the position of a traitor.

To declare Kashin to be an enemy of the people as a result of this issue was awkward. In the pedofuhrer’s place, it was worth it to wait and latch onto some other one of Kashin’s writings. And, for sure, when Kashin did an interview for Kommersant with the head of the antifascists who were rampaging against the Khimki administration, the Young Guard website, which is under Yakemenko’s jurisdiction, came out with an article entitled “Journalist-traitors (my emphasis – Y.L.) must be punished!”

In the interview with Anonymous (an unprecedented step that Kommersant went ahead with the publication of an anonymous interview, but that’s just it – Anonymous’s name is well known), Khimki is called “absolute evil,” and Strelchenko – “a bandit from the 90s.” But the most important thing is that Anonymous marked the beginning of “a new level of social evolution in our country.” The very existence of these kinds of youth movements, capable of instantaneous organization, self-sacrifice, and going to prison, and the enthusiasm with which the anarchists were greeted by Khimki residents who happened along their path, was a threat to the status and the money that people who love to screwing schoolchildren in Seliger are accustomed to.

And this came through very clearly in the Young Guard article. The article ended like this: “We cannot be under the thumb of information extremists. They are enemies, and that means they will be punished.”

Punished – how? Here is just a shortened list of beatings whose authors have never been found. The epidemic of beatings of Polish diplomats, the beating of Marina Litvinovich (“You need to be more careful, Marina!” she was told by one of the men who was standing nearby when she woke up), the beating of Lev Ponomarev. The murder of antifascists; the investigation of their connections with the Kremlin needs to look at the organizations Russian Verdict and Russian Image, which were joined by Nikita Tikhomirov and Yevgeniya Khasis – the presumed murderers of Markelov and Baburova.

Finally, we mustn’t fail to mention the third candidate. Oleg Kashin is extremely well known as the creator of the expression “sh!tty Turchak,” referring to the governor of Pskovskaya Oblast, former coordinator of youth policy for United Russia, Seliger guest and son of Putin’s friend – Andrei Turchak.

The writing on Kashin’s blog, however, was not about Turchak, but about Kaliningrad Governor Boos: “Compare him with any governor, not even with Ramzan and not with Tuleyev, with any sh!tty Turchak – is this Boos uncompromising?” – wrote Kashin.

If you think about the tone used on the Internet, the remark can be seen almost as innocent: but the son of Putin’s friend suddenly personally demanded that Kashin “apologize within 24 hours,” and then even took the time to call a press conference, where he called Kashin’s retort “informational trash.” “Now I know what kind of person this is, he is not a journalist as I understand it.”

I mention Andrei Turchak, by the way, for the completeness of the list: since, although the epithet “sh!tty Turchak” is now stuck with the former coordinator of youth policy for United Russia, this whole story looks more like a routine dirty internet fight than anything else. As opposed to the stories of Strelchenko and Yakemenko.

And so, like in an Agatha Christie novel, the list of suspects has been defined, and there is no chance that the crime was committed by the yardkeeper on the side. Interrogations on this case need to be carried out on Khimki Mayor Strelchenko, youth movement leader Vasily Yakemenko, and Governor Andrei Turchak. In the best case scenario, there will be talk about a semi-independent initiative by some kind of fascist organizations who were upset about the interview with Anonymous. But it’s most likely that one of these two, and not three – either Strelchenko or Yakemenko – decided that he would get away with everything. And let’s note: all of this is connected to Khimki in one way or another.

And another thing. Yes, I understand that there is more than one suspect. But, in my view, it is stupid to walk around with signs saying “find the criminals” and “take measures,” refraining from naming the suspects. If you guys are going to ask them to “find the criminals,” then they’re going to respond “we’re looking.” Gelman deserves honor and praise for writing that he thinks Yakemenko is behind the attack.

Translation by theotherrussia.org

Western Russia has been suffering from unrelentingly scorching temperatures since mid-June, with no apparent end in sight. The heat has been so intense that spontaneous wildfires have been springing up over the past month both in large cities and more rural areas.

Aside from the resulting toxic air quality, the fires are responsible for the deaths of at least 48 people and the destruction of about 3,000 homes. The Emergency Situations Ministry has admitted that some of them are “out of control,” and a state of emergency has been declared in seven different regions. Critics blame the ministry and the Russian government overall for failing to properly fund and manage the country’s firefighting forces.

Writing for the Moscow Times, award-winning journalist Yulia Latynina discusses what the Russian government’s handling of the fire crisis says about its current state of development – and why it is totally unacceptable by contemporary standards.

Putin Sang Songs While Russia Burned
By Yulia Latynina
August 4, 2010
The Moscow Times

Since the first wildfires started a month ago, 125,000 hectares of Russia’s forest have been destroyed in 17 regions, and 40 people have died.

Russia’s statistics on casualties from fires have always differed drastically from those in the West. For example, four firefighters died during wildfires in Washington state in 2001. Nine firefighters died in Colorado in 2002. Eleven firefighters died during Spain’s fires of 2005. Only one firefighter has died during this summer’s fires in Russia.

In developed countries, citizens don’t perish in fires. Firefighters perish. In Russia, it is directly the opposite, and there is a very good reason for this. In so many cases, there are no firefighters to put out the fires. Take, for example, the village of Verkhnyaya Vereya in the Nizhny Novgorod region, where all of its 341 houses burned to the ground and seven people died. There was no fire station in the village, and the two firefighting vehicles on watch drove the other way when they were called to duty.

People don’t die this way in Europe or the United States. This is how people die in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Verkhnyaya Vereya. While wearing a neatly pressed button-down shirt, he promised to severely punish bureaucrats who did not properly fight the fires. In reality, there is really only one bureaucrat who is responsible for this tragedy — Putin himself. After all, it was Putin who signed the Forest Code in 2007. The code placed the responsibility for defending forestlands on those who had the rights to use them. What an ingenious idea. This means that the Forest Code allows the Khimki forest to be “protected” by those who are now cutting it down.

There were two main groups who lobbied Putin to pass the Forest Code: paper mill owners — one of the biggest being Oleg Deripaska — and real estate developers.

Independent analysts and environmentalists heavily criticized the Forest Code. They predicted several years ago that the code would inevitably result in an increase in wildfires. Even the most loyal United Russia members from heavily forested regions opposed the code, but it was shoved through the State Duma under strong pressure from Putin’s presidential administration.

Although Russia has been burning for a month, the army was ordered to join the firefighting battle only several days ago. Why was the army not called up three weeks ago? Because there is no fundamental system of controlling and managing the country. Putin decides everything in Russia, and he was too busy with other things during the first three weeks of the fires — for example, doing photo ops with bikers in Crimea or singing songs with the 10 spies who recently returned from captivity in U.S. detention centers.

In the modern world, there are no natural disasters but only social ones. For example, the number of victims in an earthquake depends less on its magnitude than on how effectively the state responds to the disaster. The Haiti earthquake is a case in point. And what is true for an earthquake is doubly true for forest fires.

In 2008, there were 200,386 fires in which 15,165 people died in Russia. In the United States for the same time period, there were 1,451,000 fires in which 3,320 people died. Here are the conclusions that can be drawn from these statistics: First, 99 percent of all fires in Russia are not registered. Second, the number of deaths from fires per 1,000 people is 10 times higher in Russia than in the United States.

“A modern transport infrastructure is the real road to Russia’s future,” said then-President Putin to a gathering of highway construction workers in the city of Krasnoyarsk in late 2007. And yet, not a single highway or expressway and only a smattering of smaller roads have been built in Russia over the past two decades. By comparison, China has laid more than 40,000 thousand miles of high-volume roadways over the same amount of time. “Naturally,” said Latynina, “this raises the question: Has anything been built in Russia with this money? And if yes, then what?”

It turns out that something was.

“For example, the presidential residence in the city of Yekaterinburg, which cost 1.2 billion rubles [about $40 million] to construct, and which President Medvedev has stayed in once,” said the journalist. A similar example was Konstantinovsky Palace in St. Petersburg, a crumbling historic landmark that Putin ordered be renovated in 2001 for use as a presidential residence. The official cost of renovation: $250 million.

There were more. One new presidential residence was constructed just two years ago. Another called Lunnaya Polyana is now in the works, blocked off from public view. An Olympic residence in Sochi is also planned for construction. All in all, said Latynina, Russia has built thirteen official residences for its president. Compare this, she proposed, to the number of official presidential residences in America: there are but two. And neither the White House nor Camp David is anything to rival the grandeur of Konstantinovsky Palace. “My point is that if you consider the number of residences, then Russia is a superpower and the United States just gets these two little things,” the journalist said.

On the topic of superpowers, Latynina questioned Putin’s declaration that Russia is a superpower in the raw materials market. “It’s very interesting to compare Russia with the production of natural gas in the United States,” she said, and followed to rattle off a list of figures: In 2008, Russia extracted 640 billion cubic meters of gas, 550 billion of which were from the state-owned company Gazprom – the latter figure being the more telling, as that’s what gets sold abroad. American production of gas totaled 582 billion cubic meters during the same year – less than Russia, but more than Gazprom. Then there’s the revenue: American gas sales totaled $185 billion in 2008, while Russian sales to Europe, its primary source of export, totaled only $47 billion. In addition, Russian production fell in 2009 to 575 billion cubic meters of gas, with 460 from Gazprom. America’s grew to 620 billion. “So why is Russia called a raw materials superpower?”

Russia, Latynina explained, has virtually no chemical industry. The United States, on the other hand, has the world’s most highly developed chemical industry. Thanks to its more energy-efficient facilities, she explained, the States are able to sell gas at a much higher price than Russia with its long, cold, ineffective pipelines. Meanwhile, instead of building more effective facilities, Gazprom built an exact replica of Konstantinovsky Palace for its CEO, Aleksei Miller. “I invite you to think about the philosophy of the matter,” said Latynina. “Bill Gates could not allow himself to build a Konstantinovsky Palace, because it’s a different philosophy of life… But Aleksei Miller could.”

Frivolous spending on the part of the Russian elite brought about the question of why the Russian government tells its citizens that “the West doesn’t love us.” If that were true, asks Latynina, then why would Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, Putin’s right-hand man, keep his plane in Helsinki and buy three different villas in Sardinia? Why are oligarch Roman Abromovich’s yachts registered in the West, including the $50 million one he gifted to Vladimir Putin? Why do all of the people who tell Russia’s citizens that the West doesn’t love them send their children to study in England? “Why don’t they keep their money in the banks of Iraq, North Korea, Venezuela, or the other wonderful countries that are friendly to Russia and love us a great deal?” asked Latynina.

In some cases, they do. On October 17, 2009, Prime Minister Putin announced the government’s decision to make a $500 million purchase of microprocessors with 90 nanometer process technology from the primarily government-supported French-Italian firm STMicroelectronics. Two weeks before this happened, Intel had announced that they were going to begin producing microprocessors with 32 nanometer technology. What was the point of buying something so expensive that was already out of date? According to Latynina, it was simply a way of transferring money abroad.

“In fact, for me it turns out to be a very sad story,” she went on. “It’s the story of the technical degradation of the foundation that we had from the Soviet Union.” While the STMicroelectronics purchase was sure to hinder the pace and efficiency of Russian industry and development, other instances of such degradation represented more direct threats to the safety of ordinary Russians. Poor construction and shoddy upkeep lead to the deaths of 75 people on August 17, 2009, when an old turbine in the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric dam spun out of control, breaking open the ceiling and flooding the facility. On the night of December 4, 2009, more than 150 people died in the Lame Horse club in the city of Perm when, having violated “every single possible fire safety regulation,” it shot up in flames. But most of the dead bodies dragged out of the club, Latynina pointed out, had no burn marks: the victims died almost instantly from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning that resulted from burning foam polystyrene insulation. A commission set up to investigate the fire released its findings on March 9, concluding that the club’s own management was to blame. “But the scariest part is that it said in this report, verbatim, that ‘we cannot establish how harmful the foam polystyrene insulation was, how chemically harmful it was for people, for the reason that there was a lack of men on whom we would have liked to conduct experiments.'”

Really? “After the fire in the Lame Horse,” Latynina went on, “the government made quite a big fuss, especially President Medvedev. He loves to stomp his feet, crying ‘I’m going to deal with it,’ he always yells in future tense. ‘We must put an end to terrorism; we must put an end to corruption.’ I still haven’t heard that we’ve put an end to it, so it’s always in future tense.” It was clear, Latynina said, that the government wanted the situation to go away, and suppliers of construction materials had paid off the commission to keep silent about the foam. “So it turns out that they don’t have any men,” she said. “The president stomps his feet.”

Thus, in a nutshell, was Latynina’s dour prognosis of Russia’s current state of affairs.

During the questions that followed, Latynina was asked who would make a worthy Russian president. Her response: “Khodorkovsky,” the former oil tycoon currently sitting in prison. And what is to become of him? “He’ll sit in prison as long as Putin is in power.”

Latynina played down the audience’s fears that her safety was at stake for criticizing the Russian government. Arguing that Russia lacks internet censorship (as opposed to China) and allows Ekho Moskvy radio to broadcast whatever it wants, Latynina linked fears that free speech was being suppressed to the legacy left over from Soviet times. Back then, she said, people were arrested or murdered for speaking out against the government. “The maximum now is that they turn off the broadcast.” When numerous members of the audience objected that Russia figures as the third most lethal country in the world for journalists, Latynina countered that Russia was a lethal country for everyone. “It’s more dangerous to be a citizen of Russia than to be a journalist,” she said. “If you drive down Leninsky Prospekt and meet Lukoil Vice President Barkov, he’s not going to ask if you’re a journalist or not.”

That said, Latynina was skeptical of the effectiveness of initiatives by the Russian opposition, including a petition calling for Putin to resign that has so far gathered more than 18,000 signatures.

Asked for her opinion on Moscow’s plan to put up posters of Josef Stalin for Victory Day celebrations in May, Latynina replied: “Every person who wants to has a right to march for Stalin, because unlike Hitler, Stalin was never sentenced for having committed any crime – there are no laws saying that he was a criminal. But when it’s state-sponsored… You know, when dealing with these situations, I always think: What would Stalin do with Putin? He would put him up against the wall!”

It became apparent during the question and answer session that Latynina’s cynicism had frightened at least some members of her audience into considering the prospect that democracy in Russia was simply not possible, leaving Putin’s regime as the only viable choice. She was quick to dispel this notion, and delivered a more hopeful version of events then one might otherwise have come to expect. “First of all, I maintain that democracy in Russia is of course possible,” the journalist said in response. “But, you know, democracy is like a refrigerator. You can’t say that a certain refrigerator doesn’t work in Russia; it’s just that in Russia the electricity flows different. No – the refrigerator works in Russia if it has the particular electrical wiring for the place where you want it to work. If it doesn’t have the wiring, then it isn’t going to work.”

The Ingush President has pledged full support for the investigation, but his ability to control the violence in Ingushetia is in doubt.

The Russian republic of Ingushetia borders Chechnya in the North Caucasus. Ingush security forces in charge of controlling spillover insurgent violence are blamed for hundreds of kidnappings and extrajudicial murders, but are rarely investigated.

“They killed this man two hours ago, but he walks among us here on film.”
Yulia Latynina
October 26, 2009
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

On Sunday, October 25, 2009, in the North Caucasian city of Nalchik, one of the most influential people in the Republic of Ingushetia was killed – Maksharip Aushev; the killers peppered his car with machine guns. It happened on the day after Maksharip appeared on Marianna Maksimovskaya’s REN TV news show and gave a piercing indictment of former republic president Murat Zyazikov.

“Nobody has established yet who to suspect,” said Yakhya Aushev, Maksharip’s father. “You could get bogged down in the fact that he just recently was speaking out against Zyazikov. Not long ago, a team from REN TV was photographing their [the Zyazikovs’] mansions, and there was an incident with Ruslanbek Zyazikov. It was as if there were forces hunting him down.”

Ruslanbek Zyazikov is the cousin and former chief security detail of former president Zyazikov.

“I have a feeling it’s because of us,” says Marianna Maksimovskaya. “Maksharip saved our film crew literally ten days ago.”

Leonid Kanfer’s film crew was shooting a story in Ingushetia on the corruption of the former president. Among other things, they filmed their mansions in the village of Barsuki. When the film crew returned to the hotel, armed men came for them.

“They beat up the driver. Ruslanbek Zyazikov beat him personally,” said Maksimovskaya. “Our journalists called Maksharip, he arrived by himself, drew out a Stechkin [automatic pistol], and in Ruslanbek’s eyes brought out our cameraman and correspondent to the presidential administration, where they their testimony was taken.”

On Maksimovskaya’s program, Maksharip had said that the republic’s old leadership gave money to militants and sabotaged the actions of the new president; he gave as an example the fate of Construction Minister Ruslan Amerkhanov. According to Maksharip, he was appointed by new president Yevkurov and shot in his own office after refusing to continue business as usual.

Two hours after Maksharip’s murder, a rerun was aired of “The Week with Marianna Maksimovskaya.” “They killed a man, but he walks among us here on film.”

Two people managed to remove former President Zyazikov: the first owner of Ingushetia.ru, Magomed Yevloyev, and the second owner of the site, Maksharip Aushev. Both are dead.

Warnings and Tanks

The site Ingushetiaru.org had reported on September 12 about plans to murder Maksharip. “The would-be murder was commissioned to a member of one of the ORB-2 units to be committed at the moment of Aushev’s departure outside the republic,” the site asserted [ORB-2 (Operations and Search Bureau) is a federal police bureau in Chechnya accused of flagrant and widespread violations of the law, including torture of civilian detainees].

Maksharip was stopped three days later on September 15 at the post office, alongside which stood federal BTR tanks and Gazelle light trucks. Men from the BTR attempted to apprehend Maksharip, but were beat off by friends and chance bystanders – including the vice chairman of the government of the republic.

Having barely escaped, Maksharip phoned the president of the republic, Yunus-bek Yevkurov. The president called the security forces to a meeting the next day. It became clear that the BTR had been placed so as to not fall within view of any cameras. However, authorities now assert that had been a routine security check, and that Maksharip, who had been warned about plans of an attempt on his life, simply lost his nerves. Furthermore, he for some reason presented the Russian inspectors with his son’s identification, and not his own.

Forty days later he was shot.

How Maksharip Became Engaged in Politics

Maksharip Aushev was not a professional politician. He became engaged in politics after a “death squad” abducted his nephew Magomed on June 17, 2007. Magomed was taken out to the forest, tortured by being shot point-blank while standing in a waist-deep hole (first being outfitted with two bulletproof vests), and then freed upon signing an agreement of cooperation. Instead of cooperating, Magomed submitted a written statement to the prosecutor’s office.

After that, Magomed was of course doomed, and was abducted once again on September 18, 2007. As he had been together in the car with Maksharip’s son – his cousin – both were abducted.

They were tortured for several hours in the Chechnyan village of Goyty, and afterwards brought to the mountains for “snickers” – a practice in which a murdered corpse is bound with explosives and blown up; animals eat up the scattered pieces of meat, and the person disappears without a trace.

While they were being tortured, however, Maksharip assembled a rally in the city of Nazran. The authorities spooked and freed the Aushev boys.

Maksharip began to investigate who had abducted his son and nephew, and determined that it was Urus-Martan District Department of Interior Ministry Chief Ramzan Dzhamalkhanov, who it appears was acting on order of the Ingush Interior Minister Musa Medov – in any event, it was after a personal phone call from Medov to Dzhamalkhanov that the boys were freed.

Whatever the relationship was between the Aushev family and regional militants (and at that time, thanks to the activity of president Zyazikov and his “death squads,” the militants had sympathy or approval from practically everyone besides their targets), it is important to note that Maksharip was actually a legal oppositionist. He did not run off to search through the forest; he investigated the kidnapping of his son, made the results public, and demanded the resignation of Zyazikov. He did what befits a father and a man, and he would not have gotten into politics if politics had not gotten into him.

In the Caucasus, where yesterday’s terrorists now lead anti-terrorism detachments, where family ties mean more than beliefs, and reputation means even more than family ties, Maksharip was one of the central figures in negotiations between the authorities and the militants; or at that time, if I may, between the authorities and the people.

As a legal oppositionist, Maksharip was a thorn in the side of the authorities. He was arrested on February 14, 2008, and the circumstances of this arrest were truly fantastical. Several dozen people accompanied by two BTR tanks arrived at Aushev’s village of Surkhakh, incinerated the house of his brother with a grenade launcher, and sat in wait for Maksharip to arrive on the scene. Maksharip did come, but so many people were with him that the men decided not to arrest him. They sat in ambush until evening, when Maksharip returned alone.

The authorities, however, made a strategic mistake: they had not dared to kill Maksharip immediately upon his arrest. The plan fell to pieces. This mistake was corrected for the following notorious murder – that of Maksharip’s friend and ally, Ingushetia.ru owner Magomed Yevloyev.

The Murder of Magomed Yevloyev

On August 31, 2008, Ingushetia.ru owner Magomed Yevloyev flew from Moscow to Ingushetia and by accidental coincidence wound up sitting in business class with President Zyazikov.

A quarrel arose between Zyazikov and Yevloyev, and Yevloyev left for a different cabin. According to the investigation undertaken by Yevloyev’s relatives, President Zyazikov called his chief of security and cousin Ruslanbek Zyazikov immediately after the argument and ordered him to take care of Magomed.

Ruslanbek then set out to find Ibragim Yevloyev, chief of security for Interior Minister Musa Medov, who had been at a wedding at the house of Medov’s uncle. Ruslanbek, Musa and Ibragim met Magomed Yevloyev at the airport; Magomed was dragged out of the cabin and put in a Volga armored car.

Seeing what was going on, Yevloyev’s armed followers – who were also Aushev’s – took off after him, but went for the wrong part of the motorcade. They were able to cut two armored Volgas away from the motorcade, dragged out Medov’s guards, and began to beat them. They cried out that “the blood is not on us!” which Aushev thought referred to the guards’ previously victims. In fact, it referred to Magomed Yevloyev. It seems that Ibragim Yevloyev shot Magomed in cold blood in the temple even before the motorcade left the airport.

The investigation of this murder itself became possible when the victim’s father, Yakhya Yevloyev, declared blood vengeance on Zyazikov. Almost immediately, participants of the murder, including the chief of police and President Zyazikov himself, came out of the woodwork and began dumping blame for the crime on each other. Topping of the list of Yevloyev’s murderers, published on Ingushetia.org, is Ingush President Murat Zyazikov.

Ten days after Magomed Yevloyev’s murder, Ruslan Zyazikov’s brother Bekkhan was shot by unknown assailants. It is important to note that Ruslan Zyazikov is the son of Uruskhan Zyazikov, who was kidnapped by militants on March 23, 2007. It was precisely after this abduction that “death squads” began abducting anyone who could possibly be to blame. A five million dollars ransom was apparently paid for Uruskhan.

The murder of Magomed Yevloyev was more than the Kremlin could tolerate. Zyazikov was removed two months later, and named in his place was Yunus-bek Yevkurov.

Yevkurov’s Appointment

That there is disorder and lawlessness in Ingushetia has long since been obvious. But the depth of the rot that was discovered when Yevkurov’s took office simply cannot be described. Ingushetia.org reported, for example, on the following incident: in December of last year in the central mosque of Nazran, around three thousand people had gathered, demanding that Ruslanbek Zyazikov return stolen budget money and swear on the Koran that he had not given the money to militants. Ruslanbek did not go to the mosque, but he did admit to a crowd that showed up outside his house that he had paid militants thirty million rubles a month to not harm his relatives.

The strategy of the new president was utterly severe: forgive those who may be forgiven, and kill those who had ought to be killed. And no corruption.

Yevkurov’s strategy split the opposition. Oppositionist Kaloy Akhilgov became press secretary for the new president. But oppositionist Magomed Khazbiev, a close friend of Maksharip, continued to indict Yevkurov as a murderer.

The strategy split not only the opposition, but also the militants and the security forces. Paradoxically, these latter two implacable opponents had one thing in common: they both favored a continuation of uncontrolled violence – the militants, because it builds a base for Islamic revolution, and the security forces, because it makes it so easy to earn stars for one’s uniform. They, as well as others still, needed for the deciding tool in the republic to be the axe of the slaughterer, not the knife of the surgeon. For them, violence that was targeted or deemed necessary would not be sufficient.

If militants have left Zyazikov untouched (which you’d figure, for 30 million rubles a month), then Yevkurov, having taken it upon himself to root out corruption and uncontrolled violence, now faces assassination attempts that have befallen him as if from a bucket. The first of these attempts was preceded by a fully incomprehensible – but undoubtedly very historically important – special operation on December 6, 2008. On that day in the town of Barsuki, another Magomed Aushev (please excuse the abundance of Aushevs in this story), right-hand man of the chief of Ingush militants in the village of Magas, was killed. Although actually, while Aushev was thought to be dead, he was really hiding in Barsuki (Zyazikov’s native city). He also at that time apparently had negotiations with President Yevkurov concerning possible surrender, as well as about a meeting that Maksharip Aushev would mediate.

Because of these negotiations, word spread by phone that Magomed Aushev had been killed by federal troops, who subsequently killed his brother Adam. Militants grabbed hold of the incident to blame the “kafir and apostates” of Yevkurov in the entire matter, and assassination attempts came one after another. It was a miracle that the heavily wounded Yevkurov survived after guards dragged him from his blazing car in June.

While Yevkurov lay in the hospital, a suicide bomber blew up a local police station in Nazran. The terrorist act shocked the Kremlin. Medvedev fired then-new Ingush Police Chief Meyriev and appointed Deputy Interior Minister Arkady Yedelev as coordinator for all security agencies in the Caucasus. The appointment was very strange, considering the reputation Yedelev enjoyed in the Caucasus. He is considered a man close to Chechen President Kadyrov and a patron of Musa Medov, that same former Ingush Chief of Police who figures in at number two after President Zyazikov on the list of Magomed Yevloyev’s murderers.

The murder of Maksharip Aushev is testimony to the fact that, aside from obvious discrepancies between Ingush President Yevkurov and the militants on the creation of a Caucasus Emirate, there exists another less obvious but very deep discrepancy between President Yevkurov and part of the former elite – the part wanting violence and impunity.

The murder of Maksharip Aushev is not one of those murders where everything is immediately clear. Like Yakhya Yevloyev, father of the murdered Magomed, said to me on Sunday: “Tomorrow, information should come out.” But this is a landmark murder. Whether or not President Yevkurov can find Maksharip Aushev’s murderers will determine who is in control of the republic. And for Yevkurov, this question is one of life and death – politically and literally.

On her Ekho Moskvy radio program, commentator Yulia Latynina spoke at length about the murder of rights activist Natalya Estemirova in Chechnya.  Latynina, who worked together with Estemirova on reporting rights abuses in the North Caucasus republic, was incredulous that an official investigation would find her killers.

Estemirova’s death is already having drastic consequences for the human rights community in the Northern Caucasus, as the Memorial rights group announced it would likely be closing its office in Chechnya.

Read more about the tragic murder from The Sunday Times (UK), and the New York Times.

Translated text follows.

—
Yulia Latynina – Access Code radio program
Ekho Moskvy Radio
July 18, 2009

“The most dreadful event of not only the last week but probably the last few years is Natalya Estemirova’s murder in the Caucasus. I think it is no exaggeration to say that Natalya Estemirova was the Memorial human rights centre in Chechnya. She is a person through whose hands passed the entire information about the horrors taking place in Chechnya. Anna Politkovskaya always stayed at her house. I think Anna would have been only glad to quote Estemirova in her publications, but it was too dangerous. And now, post factum, when Natalya is dead, we can say that a great deal of what Anna wrote was what Estemirova had told her.

“After Anna’s death, Estemirova published in Novaya Gazeta under an assumed name. By the way, on Monday (20 July) we (Novaya Gazeta) will publish a collection of Estemirova’s articles under an assumed name. But all we know about abductions, about burnt down houses of militants’ families, all this was reported by Estemirova. After Estemirova’s death, there will be no sources of information about what is happening in Chechnya that would be an alternative to the official point of view.

“Estemirova’s death completely changes the entire situation in the Caucasus, because it is one thing when militants’ houses are burnt down, but is another thing when a human rights activist who talks about it is killed. The former may be explained by political necessity, the latter can never be explained by anything.

“At the funeral of (murdered human rights lawyer) Stanislav Markelov, whom Estemirova knew well, both Memorial head Oleg Orlov and Novaya Gazeta’s editor-in-chief Dmitriy Muratov pleaded with her to leave Grozny. She refused. I’m saying this because now the Prosecutor-General’s Office cannot find evidence that there were threats against her. Well, apparently Muratov and Orlov were mad at that moment.

“Natalya Estemirova was abducted at 0830 in the morning of 15 July. She was snatched by people in a white Zhiguli car, who apparently did not know her because, according to eyewitnesses, she was being followed by a woman who reportedly pointed to Natalya.

“There is a bruise on her body – she was grabbed by the shoulder, and a bruise on her face – she was hit in the face. Her wrists were cuffed. She was taken though several checkpoints, including the main checkpoint Kavkaz. It looks like the people who were transporting her produced some service ID cards, thanks to which they were allowed to pass the checkpoint easily. They not only took her through the checkpoint easily but also moved her to another car. Because she was abducted in the white Zhiguli car, while the road in the area where she was killed, near the village of Gazi-Yurt, is so muddy that it must have been a jeep, something like Niva. She was killed where she was dumped, not far from the road, by two lethal shots in the chest and an insurance shot in the head.

“I’m saying this because investigators from the Investigations Committee under the prosecutor’s office are now telling us that they have already established that Estemirova was being kidnapped, but when the kidnappers saw police beacon lights on the Kavkaz highway, as someone else was shot there, they panicked. Well, the killers were not afraid of the checkpoints, but once they saw beacon lights – that’s a rare thing, a police beacon light on the Kavkaz highway – they panicked right away. This alone is enough to say that the investigation is telling obvious lies. It seems that soon we will be presented with some dead militant who had killed Estemirova, or a warrior from the (disbanded) Vostok battalion, or a saboteur sent by (Georgian President) Saakashvili. But I don’t think anyone will believe that.

“By the way, about theories: Deputy (Interior) Minister Arkadiy Yedelev, who told us a week ago that Georgian militants were fighting in the (North) Caucasus, has already voiced several theories of Natalya Estemirova’s murder. One of the theories was stunningly brilliant – she was robbed. You see, she had a lot of money from Western grants, she was scavenging around Western embassies like a jackal, and she was robbed. However, even her mobile phone was not touched by those strange robbers who abducted her at 0830 and already killed her by around 1000, quite far from where she was abducted, after taking her through checkpoints. This is one theory Yedelev has. According to another of his theories, militants did it. Right, I can easily imagine militants, who are currently cornered in Ingushetia’s forests, whose situation is really difficult, under permanent bombardment, sneaking out of there, obtaining some federal ID cards, going to Grozny and killing the only person in Chechnya who had been protecting their relatives whose houses are burnt down. It is strange that Yedelev, when talking about his theories, forgot about the Georgian militants he had mentioned earlier. Maybe it was they who killed Estemirova, Mr Yedelev?  How could you forget?”

translation by BBC Monitoring.

Journalist Yulia Latynina comments on the assassination attempt against Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the president of the Republic of Ingushetia.  Yevkurov, 45, is in serious condition, with a concussion and broken ribs, after a suicide bomber attacked his motorcade.  Two bodyguards were killed in the explosion.

The attack is a bloody reminder that violence continues unabated in Russia’s North Caucasus region.  Yevkurov, a former military intelligence officer, has served as president since October 2008, when the former President, Murat Zyazikov, was dismissed by the Kremlin.  Ingushetia had seen a gradual escalation of armed insurgency under Zyazikov’s six years in office, and Yevkurov was seen as a reformer intent on reining in heavy-handed police units and stabilizing the republic.

Latynina’s comments first appeared on the Grani.ru online newspaper (Rus).

Yulia Latynina:

What happened can be considered the start of the militants’ summer campaign.  This is a sign that [Yunus-Bek] Yevkurov represents a serious threat to the militants.  That he is actually fighting them.  And he is simultaneously fighting them on three fronts: first – he is actually rooting out corruption, which is also a resource base for the militants, because all of [Murat] Zyazikov’s officials paid the militants.  This isn’t a rumor, this isn’t libel, this is what the officials themselves admitted in the mosques when Zyazikov was dismissed.  They spread their arms and said: yes, we paid, or we would have been killed.

It is worth understanding that to be a militant in Ingushetia is a fairly lucrative business;  not so lucrative, of course, as robbing the budget, but lucrative enough.  So that besides Allah’s work, there are completely concrete material concerns and completely concrete problems that arise for the militants when their resource base dries up because of President Yevkurov.

Second: Yevkurov is actually hitting the militants with precision strikes.  Unlike the previous situation, when the siloviki said they hit a militant whenever they shot at anyone.  Now, one can only say that when Yevkurov travels out of Ingushetia, the siloviki just might shoot the wrong person: when the cat is away, the mice will play.  But Yevkurov strictly controls all operations, and I have a hard time remembering an incident where a person not connected with the militants was killed in the past two months.

Third: negotiations were held with the militants, explaining that those with the desire to could either return to a peaceful life or leave.  Clearly, neither the militant leadership nor the siloviki are happy with this.  It is hard to say who is less happy as result.  I’d like to mention an episode, from when the assassination attempts on Yevkurov began – in December 2008, when Yevkurov was supposed to meet with a person names Magomed Aushev – the right-hand man of the Ingush militants from [the city of] Magas.  This was preceded by other meetings between Yevkurov and militants or their representatives.  He went to these meetings either alone or with his brother – such is the man’s withdrawn courage, because it’s clear that the militants could simply shoot him.  He was supposed to meet, as far as I know, with Magomed Aushev.  Intensive radio traffic started in connection with this, because Aushev was believed dead, but in actual fact was hiding in Barsuki.  And during the meeting with the president, the siloviki took him out.  And literally a month and a half afterwards, three militants entered Ingushetia with a ton of explosives, to arrange for a major terrorist attack.  By all appearances, they planned to blow up the president along with everyone else.  They were discovered by accident.

Yevkurov is actually fighting the militants extremely actively, which is much more complicated for him that for [Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov].  Because Kadyrov is a person who knows all the militants, and can say: “Guys, that’s it.  Why don’t you work for me once again.”  Yevkurov can’t say this.  Furthermore, Kadyrov was up against militants who fought for Chechnya’s freedom, while Yevkurov is up against Wahhabis, who are fighting in exultation of Allah.  It really is much harder for him.  Aside from militants, Yevkurov must somehow restrain the appetites of the Russian siloviki, who are completely discontent when they are forced to work on dangerous tactical goals instead of receiving stars for mass murder.

Under these conditions, Yevkurov, in my opinion, did much more for Ingushetia that could have been expected.  Much less than is needed, because there is an extremely neglected situation there, but more than could be expected.

translation by theotherrussia.org

Since Latynina’s article was published, Putin has reiterated his comments, raising the pressure and sending Mechel’s stock on a continuing downward tumble. In line with Mechel’s collapse, much of the Russian market has fallen, as investors reassessed the risks of doing business in Russia.

As of July 28th 2008, Mechel had lost some 8 billion dollars net worth. Latynina’s article first ran in the Yezhednevny Zhurnal online newspaper.

Has the Doctor Been Called?
Yulia Latynina
July 28, 2008
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

Last week, at a meeting in Nizhny Novgorod, Prime Minister [Vladimir] Putin came down hard on a company which was damaging Russia’s economy with its work.

It turned out this company was by no means Baikalfinansgrup, which bought Yuganskneftegaz at a non-competitive auction on credit provided by the government. And it wasn’t the Gunvor group, which belongs to a friend of premier Putin and receives 70 billion dollars annual income from the export of Russian oil. And not RosUkrEnergo, whose right to deliver gas to the Ukraine using non-transparent arrangements is whole-heartedly defended by Russian bureaucrats at the highest level.

It turned out to be Mechel, condemned for selling coal abroad at prices two times lower than domestic ones. The company’s owner, Igor Zyuzin, did not appear at at the meeting, citing illness. “Of course, illness is illness,” premier [Putin] said, then recommending a speedy recovery for Mechel’s owner. “Otherwise we’ll have to send him a doctor to clear out all these problems.”

Putin’s promise to send Zyuzin a doctor cost Mr. Zyuzin 5 billion dollars — it was exactly this amount by which Mechel’s market capitalization collapsed that evening on the New York exchange.

The reason why Mechel in particular dissatisfied the premier was such: The largest Russian metallurgical giants, including the Novolipetsky [NLMK] and Magnitogorsky metallurgical complexes, buy up coal on the side, and as a consequence, are interested in long-term contracts for coal delivery during times of sharp price increases.

Mechel, which supplies them with coal, is a coal extracting company, and is accordingly interested in spot contracts for coal delivery, which allow it to maximize sales profit; And, should the opportunity arise, to use the deficit of coal as a lever to gain control over small factories (Gubakha, for instance).

It is clear that giants like NLMK and Magnitka are much closer to the Kremlin, and especially to Vice-Premier Sechin, who now oversees industry. It was precisely Sechin, who, with active participation of the metallurgical giants, prepared the report that has raised so much attention.

It sticks out like a sore thumb that this is already Premier Putin’s second attempt at direct interference in the economy. A week ago, high prices for jet fuel elicited his discontent. If earlier, during his presidency, President Putin underscored in every way that “the Yukos affair” was an exception, then now, it seems Premier Putin is making it clear to everyone that he is intent on directing the economy by hand.

Mechel, which was worth around 15 billion dollars just last week, recently laid out around 2.5 billion dollars for a controlling stake in two large coal companies –Yakutugol and Elgaugol –and in doing so, beat out the state-run ALROSA. Yakutugol has been online for a long while. Elgaugol is simply a section of taiga, and several billon dollars are needed to develop it.

It is obvious that in the near term, it will be hard for a company that paid money for non-operational assets in an open auction to raise the means to develop them. If Mechel goes bankrupt, and its assets are sold for peanuts, Mechel’s shareholders (I’ll remind you that the company had its IPO and lists its shares on the New York Stock Exchange), may well file against Premier Putin in the New York City court.

And if the Yukos shareholders, in filing their corresponding lawsuit, expect to prove that precisely Vladimir Putin or Igor Sechin are guilty for their misfortunes, then everything is available right here. It is hard to imagine George Bush, threatening to “send a doctor” to Bill Gates. One doesn’t speak to businessmen this way in the free world. Crime bosses speak this way to an out of line merchant. Usually, proof of these threats is obtained in a strategic way, wrapping oneself in microphones. Here the threats sounded right on the television.

One question –how much will this affair cost Mechel? Although in my opinion, something else is far more interesting –how much will it cost the Magnitka and Lipetsky [metallurgical plants]. What has happened comes out as the classic illustration of the proverb: don’t call a wolf to help you with the dogs. The metallurgical giants turned to Vice-Premier Sechin, to help him fight with inflation by forcing Mechel into long-term contracts. The general fall of the market has already cost Russia’s steel sector far more than the losses from spot contracts, by which Zyuzin sold coal. After all, zealous bureaucrats will now be checking everyone, not just Mechel. It is always this way with chekists and bandits: if you ask them for a favor, it’s uncertain if they will accommodate it or not. But you’re still certain to owe them.

But the most interesting part –how much will this affair cost Premier Putin? It isn’t a question of whether business will start to speak up in Mechel’s defense –no one has any illusions here. Business will be tearing chunks out of Mechel, and its mouth will be busy. But then Mechel will likely run for protection to President Medvedev, and there aren’t any reasons why President Medvedev wouldn’t provide it with protection. If nothing happens with Mechel, and prices for airline tickets don’t fall, this will mean that Premier Putin can’t regulate the prices of either jet fuel, or coking coal.

And this is very bad, when the premier sends a doctor every week, and the doctor just doesn’t arrive. This way one can quickly tumble down to the level of Premier [Mikhail] Fradkov, who every week would loudly censure [German] Gref, or [Alexei] Kudrin. But for some reason, he could never do anything to them.

translation by theotherrussia.org

A Record Harvest of Spies
April 1, 2008
Yulia Latynina
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

The number of foreign spies and Islamic terrorists being caught by the [security] agencies is growing with terrifying speed. The FSB had just managed to reveal a spy, buried within TNK-BP, when the head of this service, Nikolai Patrushev, announced the suppression of Islamic aggression in the Urals: in the past few years, more than 80 members of radical Islamic organizations “Hizb ut-Takhrir” and the “Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan” have been revealed there. If we add in the foreign spies that [Alexander] Bastrykin, the head of the [Prosecutor General’s] Investigative Committee, recognized in the midst of his own agency, and the Tajik national with the sniper rifle, who wanted to shoot [Vladimir] Putin and [Dmitri] Medvedev during their walk in the Vasilyevsky slope, then the March harvest was fantastic.

I do, however, have a few questions. The number of apprehended spies and terrorists is growing, yet the percentage of solved crimes perpetrated by skinheads is falling. This is very strange, since it is easy to catch the skinhead, who brags about his murders and generally kills without great qualifications, whereas the foreign spy, who has undergone training, is difficult to catch. And still, the spies are caught, and yet the murderers of Tajik nationals are not. All the more strange, since a murder committed for nationalist motives (not for robbery or domestic squabbles) – is also an act of terrorism. The amount of terrorist acts on Russia’s soil grows exponentially, but the FSB doesn’t just fail to solve these terrorist acts – it doesn’t pay them any attention. Instead, it catches British spies.

And it is not only the victims of skinheads that are multiplying. The violence index is growing as a whole. Since 1996, it has doubled. Crimes aren’t just unsolved, they aren’t even reported.

When the Vice President of Vneshtorgbank is found with his hands bound in a run-down house, the investigation finds that this was a suicide. And when for some reason or another, a case is opened (or at least investigated), the investigative process leaves one completely astonished. Let’s take, for example, the double murder of two Dagestani journalists – Ilyas Shurpaev, a correspondent for Channel One, in Moscow, and Gadzhi Abashilov, the head of the “Dagestan” state-owned media company, that same evening in Makhachkala. Shurpaev’s killers were apprehended in Tajikistan, and it immediately became known, that one of then was already detained in the act of a robbery. And the detainee, a Tajik national (!) who was caught red-handed (!) after a robbery (! — pardon the exclamation points, but we somehow though that the militsiya didn’t grant any rights to Tajik nationals) – was released for some unknown reason.

Abashilov’s killer will probably not be found –the murder was meticulously planned, but here’s what they discovered during the investigation. The car from which the killers fired had been stolen not four days before the murder, as was first reported, but ten years before. And when its owner had gone to the militsiya, he was told: “Why would you report the theft, there, take that one, we have another car in the yard, also stolen and nobody’s, just change the plates and don’t worry yourself.” The owner took the other car, and drove it for ten years. And the other, stolen one, had driven another 140 thousand kilometers before it surfaced in the murder case.

You may ask: can’t we take these people, who are so successfully battling the terrorists, and kick them over to those other crimes, whose numbers are growing? Alas, I have to disappoint you. Do you know who is battling terrorism in Dagestan? It’s that same cop, who so successfully solved the problem of the stolen “Zhigulis” ten years ago.

Of course, one could assume, that the number of exposed spies is growing because foreign agencies are disquieted by the fact that Russia is rising from her knees.

But here’s a question. There is this company – Guvnor. It, you could say, is the most strategic company in Russia. Earlier, the Arzamas-16 [nuclear weapons center] was strategic, and now Guvnor. All that is holy flows through this private company – government oil that once belonged to the private YUKOS and Sibneft companies. And yet this here company is registered in the West. How! Quick, move it to Ust-Uryupinsk, under the guard of Bastrykin and Patrushev, so that Western spies don’t reach it!

Or there is this person – Gennady Timchenko. A friend of president Putin and an official co-owner of Guvnor. This is the carrier of our major secrets! What if Western spies kidnap him and force him to denigrate the Kremlin, showing that he, Timchenko, isn’t any kind of owner, but simply a cover? Mister Timchenko needs to immediately go from him villa to some place where the spy-catchers can provide reliable protection. But Mr. Timchenko and those who stand with him aren’t hurrying. For some reason, all these people are starting companies in that damned West, and fear the spies there less than their loyal [Russian] servants and protectors.

Up to 10% of students in English private schools are currently comprised of the Russian elite’s children: not just businessmen, but civil servants too. Bureaucrats are buying homes in the West, castles and yachts; bureaucrats go there for vacation and leave their children there, and even our guarantor, as they say, is building a villa for himself in Europe, where he will relax from the presidency. And as for the herd, well the herd can go to lake Seliger and listen to the stories of how spies have been revealed in TNK-BP.