In case you haven't heard, someone has tried to assassinate yet another out-spoken critic of Russia's president Vladimir Putin. Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB/FSB agent, who lives in exile in England was looking into last month's assassination of Anna Politkovskaya when someone slipped him what could turn out to be a lethal dose of thallium. Read the full article. Frankly, my money's on organized crime as the assassin, not the FSB, although whoever the culprit, I can't imagine Putin is particularly bent out of shape over this.
The next two items I found over at Global Voices Online:
(I'm trying to place this... is it Komsomolskaya?)
Interested in seeing what Moscow looked like in the late 1970s? Check out these pictures, scanned from a 1980 Moscow encyclopedia. Translations for the captions can be found here, for you non Russian-speakers. To me, the most poignant image was the one I've posted below. Anyone who has ever lived in Vladimir (where I spent last year) will be familiar with the Kurskii Vokzal (the Kursk Train Station) - this is where the train from Vladimir pulls into Moscow. Let's just say it doesn't quite look like this anymore. Well, the station looks just as 70s-Soviet-chic, but these days a ginormous modern shopping mall sits about 50 feet from the station's front wall. I'd say, right about where that orange car is.
The Kurskii Vokzal
And just because I'm mucking up my usually-about-Korea blog with all this Russia stuff, I figure I may as well go for the gold and give the die-hard Russophiles out there something to drool over:
9 comments:
Do you suppose that Putin might have had a hand in the incident? Or rather, do you think he might have enlisted some faction of organized crime to do him a "favor"?
Well, Litvinenko (like Politkovskaya) has not only done things to anger Putin and his administration, but he has also created enemies within the FSB (although many might say that the FSB and the Putin admin are the same!) and within the Russian mafia. The request for the hit could have originated anywhere within the administration or the world of Russian organized crime... While I personally doubt Putin ordered the hit, I can easily imagine that it was conducted with his tacit consent.
Awesome cartoon! Loved the music also.
You need to examine the motives of others on this issue. The world is not full of evil countries like Russia who bump people off and nice clean countries like the US and Britain who simply report on these affairs. Dig a little deeper.
Anonymous, I have NEVER characterized Russia as "evil" or the US and/or Britain as all "nice clean (good)" - Perhaps you should dig a little deeper into things I have written. You seem to have an idea of what "others" might have motives... care to share?
Sure. There was an article on the Guardian website this morning by Tom Parfitt entitled Litvinenko is not a heroic defector. Unfortunately, it has since been taken down. But it suggested there were other people who had motives.
As I said, dig a little deeper.
Actually, it's still there:
Litvinenko is no heroic defector
The article itself didn't really suggest anyone with a motive who wasn't affiliated w/ the Putin regime, the FSB or anyone else in Russia who might bear a grudge against Litvinenko. The only other possible motive pops up, not in the article, but in the comments: That Litvinenko's buddy Boris Berezovsky had him poisoned as a way to sour UK-Russia relations in an attempt to prevent the relaxation of extradition-to-Russia policies.
There is also an article in the London Daily Telegraph that details many of the shady connections this guy had. It suggests that he was simply a contract murderer with numerous potential enemies.
The article is entitled "Final Interview of the Poisoned Former Spy".
Dig deeper.
Anonymous, while the article (located here) does portray Litvinenko as a hired killer... it portrays him as one hired by the KGB/FSB, not as one contractng his services out to the highest bidder. It didn't present him as having potential enemies outside of the Putin administration, the FSB, or the realm of Russian oligarchs and mafia. It did discuss his prior persecutions of the Chechens; however, as Litvinenko seemed to change sides with regards to Chechnya (as evidenced by his friendship with Akhmed Zakayev and his allegations against the Putin administration in Blowing up Russia [link]), making it unlikely that Chechens are the guilty party.
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