assassination of russia
the assassination is used as an excuse for further democratic repression in both turkey and russia .
monday’s assassination of russia’s ambassador to turkey came just as relations between the two countries were warming up following a cold war over the turkish downing of a russian fighter jet .
5 russia' s soldiers prepare russia' s air defence system s - 400 triumf launch vehicles on august 13, 2014 in elektrostal, russia .
it may not spell a third world war. but here' s what could happen after the assassination .
the assassination came after days of protests by turks angry over russia’s support for the syrian government in the conflict and the russian role in the killings and destruction in aleppo, the northern syrian city .
but mr amsterdam said his assassination is not a one - off and cannot be ignored by the international community .
mohammed al - shibli, a syrian activist who participated, said, “i felt extreme happiness when i heard the news” of the assassination .
the assassination, an embarrassing security failure in the turkish capital, forced turkey and russia to confront a new crisis tied directly to the syrian conflict, now in its sixth year .
russia’s tass news agency said that mr. karlov had been shot from behind while finishing remarks at the opening of an art exhibition titled “russia through turks’ eyes. ”
mr. erdogan, in a speech late monday night, said the assassination was a provocation meant to derail efforts by turkey and russia to collaborate more closely on regional issues and economic ties .
in 2004, the notion of fsb involvement in the apartment bombings re - surfaced in a film with the title disbelief directed by andrei nekrasov. berezovsky had backed a shorter film alleging an fsb hand in the bombing called the assassination of russia, based on a book by one - time kgb officer alexander litvinenko, the fsb blow up russia .
the assassination also illustrated the long reach of the syrian war. it has destabilized europe with hundreds of thousands of refugees, spawned terrorist attacks in paris and brussels, and led to the rise of the islamic state, which controls territory across iraq and syria .
some of the most famous of these have been the deaths of boris berezovsky and alexander litvinenko .
the attack was a rare instance of an assassination of a russian envoy. historians said it might have been the first since pyotr voykov, a soviet ambassador to poland, was shot to death in warsaw in 1927 .
“turkey is very aware of the size of this failure, and i think the government will make every effort to investigate this fully, ” sinan ulgen, a turkish former diplomat who is the chairman of the center for economics and foreign policy studies, an istanbul research organization, said of the russian diplomat’s assassination. “i don’t expect any crisis between turkey and russia. ”
amy knight ,
the concealed battle to run russia ,
the new york review of books, 13 january 2011 .
since the turkish military incursion into syria in august, mr. erdogan’s criticism of russia over syria had been muted. but mr. erdogan faced a dilemma: even as he was warming to russia, he faced a turkish public, not to mention the syrian refugees within turkey, angry over russia’s role in the bombing of aleppo .
for many russians, the assassination is likely to recall the 19th - century killing in tehran of aleksandr griboyedov, a poet and diplomat who died after a mob stormed the russian embassy. that episode is remembered as the most severe insult to russia’s diplomatic corps in the country’s history .
max george to ditch the wanted tom' s wedding to jet to russia ...
numerous people in trump' s top team, including us secretary of state rex tillerson, have been accused of having close ties to russia' s leadership .
over 57, 000 emails of berat albayrak, turkey’s minister of energy and natural resources and also president recep tayyip erdogan’s son - in - law. with indications of russia cooperating with wikileaks to publicize
the united states, which has tangled bitterly with russia over the syrian conflict, quickly condemned the assassination in ankara. in a statement, secretary of state john kerry called it a “despicable attack, which was also an assault on the right of all diplomats to safely and securely advance and represent their nations around the world. ”
mr amsterdam believes us inaction is giving russia no holds barred permission to do what it wants .
, the gunman said “we’ll make you pay for aleppo” before firing at the ambassador, likely referring to russia’s backing of the syrian government in its brutal siege of aleppo .
russia and turkey are on opposite sides of the syrian civil war, but both helped broker the latest ceasefire that allowed rebels and civilians to leave aleppo. the assassination could cause the ceasefire collapse anew, or lead to renewed fighting elsewhere in syria. russian forces are operational in northeast syria, not far from where
but citing the number of diplomats killed in just the last two months alone, mr amsterdam said it is evidence russia will take bold actions in terms of its foreign policy .
russia was accused of violating turkish airspace in october 2015 — during the start of moscow’s intervention in the syrian civil war — leading turkey to warn that it would open fire the next time .
in the fall of 2015, russia entered the conflict in support of the syrian government, reinforcing mr. assad at a weak moment and dealing a blow to turkey’s ambitions in syria. relations between turkey and russia reached a low point in november 2015 after turkey shot down a russian jet near the syrian border .
istanbul — russia’s ambassador to turkey was assassinated at an ankara art exhibit on monday evening by a lone turkish gunman shouting “god is great! ” and “don’t forget aleppo, don’t forget syria! ” in what the leaders of turkey and russia called a provocative terrorist attack .
the longer - term implications for the russia - turkey relationship, which had been warming recently after plunging a year ago, were not immediately clear. but some analysts played down the notion that the assassination would lead to a new rupture, saying it could conversely bring the countries closer together in a shared fight against terrorism .
james nixey of the british think tank chatham house predicted russia would “paint it as part of a wider war on terror” and use it to leverage support for its syrian policy from president - elect donald trump .
he had previously accused putin of being behind the brutal slaying of investigative journalist anna politkovskaya .
dl: the writer peter maass cites experts who think russia with its oil reserves could become a dictatorial rentier state like angola .
an earlier version of this article misidentified the government that has collaborated with russia even though it backs a different side in the syrian conflict. it is turkey, not syria .
russia then announced it was ending a long delay in shipping an s - 300 ground - to - air missile system to iran — one of turkey’s main regional rivals — and imposed a slew of economic sanctions and travel restrictions .
2015, when turkish f - 16s shot down a russian bomber on the border of syria. in response, russia embargoed many turkish goods, turkish exports to russia fell $ 737 million. further, the turkish stream natural gas pipeline, meant to be part of the two countries’ “strategic partnership, ” was put on hold. the economic situation did not improve until erdogan apologized
theresa may first jeers of “resign” and mps waving “goodbye” as she made her first appearance in the house of commons since the resignations of dav ...
president - elect donald j. trump, who has been accused by critics of aligning with russia, said in a statement that mr. karlov had been “assassinated by a radical islamic terrorist. ”
turkey accused russia of again violating its airspace in january, but after moscow moved to ally itself with syria’s kurds — who seek to carve out a country that would cross into turkey — erdogan backed down and in june apologized over the downing of the russian jet .
other prominent officials who often criticize russia’s actions in syria and elsewhere also offered their condolences. “no justification for such a heinous act, ” jens stoltenberg, the secretary general of nato, said on twitter. secretary general ban ki - moon of the united nations said he was “appalled by this senseless act of terror. ”
the russian strongman' s government has been linked to the deaths of numerous critics of his leadership over the years .
news corp. is a network of leading companies in the world of diversified media, news, and information services .
after the failed coup against his government this july, a putsch that included an attempt on his own life. putin came to power in part by cracking down against perceived insubordination by violence in chechnya. whatever else, the assassination does not bode well for russian or turkish civil society .
the death of alexander litvinenko in london in november 2006 occurred a month and a half after the assassination of journalist anna politkovskaya. a post - mortem proved his body contained fatal amounts of polonium 210, a nuclear substance, that killed him slowly and extremely painfully. with the chechen opposition apparently crushed and khodorkovsky in a siberian prison the war against the foes of putinopia had moved on. in 2007, andrei nekrasov, now living in london, a litvinenko friend and pallbearer, agreed to talk to me about these things by telephone from london .
on monday evening in istanbul, just after the assassination, a group of protesters gathered outside the russian consulate on istiklal avenue, the city’s largest pedestrian street. the gathering was more street theater than protest, with two men lying on the street, shrouded in bloody sheets and the syrian flag, and surrounded by candles, to represent the killings in aleppo .
more recently, the lebanese shiite militia hezbollah, now allied with russia in syria, kidnapped four soviet diplomats in 1985, killing one and releasing three a month later .
“we know that this is a provocation aiming to destroy the normalization process of turkey - russia relations, ” mr. erdogan said. “but the russian government and the turkish republic have the will to not fall into that provocation. ”
days later, putin ratcheted up tensions by accusing turkey of letting isis operate a “living oil pipe” across the syrian border, and the head of russia’s state - owned news agency blasted turkish president recep tayyip erdogan on tv as “an unrestrained and deceitful man hooked on cheap oil from the barbaric caliphate. ’’
russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, maria zakharova, told the rossiya 24 news channel that mr. karlov had died of his wounds in what she described as a terrorist attack. turkey’s interior ministry said the ambassador had died at guven hospital in ankara .
robert amsterdam, a renowned international lawyer, said the murder of outspoken putin critic denis voronenkov is a sign of things to come .
russian president vladimir putin meets with deputy prime minister alexander khloponin in the kremlin in moscow, russia, friday, march 3, 2017. (mikhail klimentyev / pool photo via ap )
turkey is a nato member, making it highly unlikely that russia would consider starting an out and out war with turkey itself. karlov is probably not, in other words, another archduke franz ferdinand .
listeria outbreak: list of vegetables recalled by tesco, lidl, ...
“there are a lot of killers. we’ve got a lot of killers. what do you think? our country’s so innocent? ” mr. trump responded .
after a number of attempts i was able to arrange a telephone conversation with robert amsterdam, a khodorkovsky lawyer. why, i asked him, did his client choose to remain in russia following the july 2003 arrest of his colleague platon lebedev and the arrest of the morozova lawyer mikhail trepashkin only a few days before he himself was seized in novosibirsk. didn' t he understand the danger? amsterdam :
absolutely. but this is a man who doesn' t see a life for himself outside russia. he believed he could get a fair trial. remember that russia was a completely different country then. there may have been other calculations he made i wasn' t privy to. we discussed the decision. he thought he could remain and fight the charges .
does he have second thoughts ?
i can' t talk about things he' s told me .
dl: do you think khodorkovsky will ever get out of prison alive? he has been transferred from a population of political prisoners to one of thieves and killers, he has suffered at least one physical attack from a fellow inmate ...
but this year, in an effort to restore relations, mr. erdogan, now turkey’s president, met with mr. putin in st. petersburg, and ever since the two countries have largely put aside their differences on syria and focused on improving economic ties. in august, when turkey’s military went into syria to push the islamic state out of the border town of jarabulus, the move was widely seen as having been made with the tacit approval of russia .
president vladimir v. putin of russia said on russian television that mr. karlov had been “despicably killed” to sabotage ties with turkey. mr. putin spoke with the turkish president, recep tayyip erdogan, by phone, and the two leaders agreed to cooperate in investigating the killing, and in combating terrorism broadly .
does khodorkovsky believe he will get out alive? amsterdam said it was something he dealt with everyday ,
kodorkovsky is being held by a completely mercenary, merciless group of people .
after the murders of anna polikovskaya in moscow and alexander litvinenko in london, the shooting of paul joyal outside washington d. c. , who' d appeared on nbc' s dateline to accuse the putin regime of murdering litvinenko, and the more recent death in questionable circumstances of moscow journalist ivan sofranov who' d published a story about russian weapons sales to iran and syria, does he, given that those judged enemies of the regime living outside russia can be effectively targeted, feel concern for his own safety .
if you were me would you be concerned ?
i would, i said, be very concerned. odd though how hope endures. khodorkovsky follows newspaper reports of events, tries to reply to the dozens of letters he receives each week. a lawyer visits regularly. amsterdam, who is banned from russia, continues to work on the case in the belief that he may one day succeed in securing his client' s freedom .
the hero of ilya kabakov' s 1985 installation the man who flew into space from his apartment
. didn' t want to wait until the whole of the rest of the society was ready for utopia; he wanted to head off for utopia there and then - flying out into cosmic space where he would no longer be tied to a particular place, a particular topos, but would be in an ou - topos, a' not - place', weightless, floating free in the cosmic infinitude. so he built an apparatus that was capable of catapulting him straight from his bed into outer space. and the experiment evidently worked - all we see is the room the man used to occupy. the walls of the room are plastered with soviet posters designed to communicate a sense of historical optimism. inside the room we see the bed and the remains of the apparatus, along with some technical drawings showing how the apparatus functioned. a section of the ceiling directly above the bed has been destroyed. it was through this hole that the man shot out into space. visitors cannot enter the room, but they can look into it from a small vestibule outside. on the walls of the vestibule there are texts describing this event from the point of view of the man' s neighbours and acquaintances. . in his installation kabakov uses images of red square and other symbols of the communist, soviet utopia in order to tell the story of the individual, private fate of the hero of the installation. the great utopian narrative describing how all of humanity would one day be collectively propelled out of the gravitational pull of oppression and misery and into the cosmos of a new, free, weightless life ...
boris groys
some parts of this page won' t work property. please reload or try later .
mr voronenkov was gunned down in broad daylight on thursday in the ukrainian capital of kiev .
former lawmaker of the russian state duma, denis voronenkov was brutally gunned down in broad daylight in kiev. ukrainian president petro poroshenko says the murder is' an act of state terrorism'
while it was too early to tell if the gunman acted alone, his use of jihadist slogans and his invocation of syria raised the possibility that he was a member, or at least a sympathizer, of an islamist group like al qaeda’s syria affiliate or the islamic state, two organizations that turkey has been accused by allies, including the united states, of supporting in the past .
an: russia has an enormous number of problems that are just swept under the carpet, not seen or reflected in official statistics. it' s a real disaster in the making. problems are not faced the way they would be by the more or less responsible institutions in the west, because in russia there are none. the duma and a lot of the commissions are phony. people use them to launder money, to get into positions to take bribes. the result of all that at one level are the murders of politkovskaya and litvinenko. abortion in russian is like a dental extraction. it is a false freedom, permissiveness of the worst kind. in fact it has nothing to do with freedom. women get pregnant, men don' t bother with contraception. aids is huge. not like in africa because of the macho tradition. it' s russian chaos. the average life expectancy for men is less than 60. why? alcoholism, smoking. illness but not just illness. accidents, petty crime, murder from brawls, especially in the provinces. it is a very brutal life outside the glamorous centres of st. petersburg, moscow and a few other places .
so far, russia and turkey have said that this is a move meant to weaken ties between the two countries, and the u. s. department of state said in a statement that it is ready to provide assistance to the two countries. it is unclear what will be said, or happen, next. but given tense relations between ankara and moscow over the past year, centuries of historical rivalry and animosity, and colliding foreign policies in the carnage of the syrian civil war, there are a few potential escalatory scenarios to keep in mind .
khodorkovsky, an ex - oligarch, is among those men who grew fantastically wealthy in the yeltsin era. through a series of complex financial manipulations of borderline legality, he was able to buy his way into a dominant position in the russian oil business worth billions. he headed yukos, russia' s largest oil company, fourth largest in the world, a position from which he resigned following his arrest. had he been attempting to leverage his clout to forestall a new round of state oil industry taxes? was khodorkovsky' s real crime simply launching a political challenge to the putin regime? in the days leading up to his arrest there were threats of arrests of yukos executives, allusions to tax arrears, to cheating and stealing and prison time for khodorkovsky .
a man, reported by the associated press to be the gunman, after the shooting of the russian ambassador, on the floor, on monday at a gallery in ankara, the capital of turkey .
an explosion near a courthouse in izmir was the latest in a series of deadly attacks in turkey .
an: one of the things russians find shocking about america is the attitude towards alcohol. americans appear prudish and overly moralistic, not just with alcohol, with other things. it' s a very important cultural point. in its political essence, russia is very unfree, in fact absolutely despotic. it is a condition best described by the word vlast - absolute totalitarian power, the deification of the physical power of the state. on the other hand, there is a completely lax attitude towards abortion, alcohol, prostitution... russians who have a little money or a lot of money feel themselves perfectly free. it is in a sense really a completely free and easy sort of place. you can get alcohol 24 - hours a day, any time, and its cheap. what russians take for freedom is irresponsibility. what is not of immediate interest to the state is left unregulated. there is for example a huge demographic problem russia is facing and nothing is being done about it. the population is in decline. every russian woman now has 0. 7 children. population maintenance requires two point something. it could be rectifiable .
mikhail trepashkin, a lawyer and former kgb employee, was engaged by the sisters and given power of attorney to investigate. on october 22, 2003, three days before the arrest of khodorkovsky, trepashkin was himself arrested. held in the same jail that holds khodorkovsky, trepashkin was charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm and ammunition, possessing state secrets, and the communication of those secrets to british intelligence .
a tale of unknowables, disbelief makes the point that the assumption following the explosions was that they were gas explosions. suspicion about the involvement of the fsb surfaced when officials began blaming the explosions on chechen terrorists .
boris johnson has said the
dream of brexit is dying
in his resignation letter as foreign secretary .
the russian envoy was shot from behind and immediately fell to the floor while speaking at an exhibition of photographs, according to multiple accounts from the scene, the contemporary arts center in the cankaya area of ankara .
how to explain the arrests of khodorkovsky and trepashkin coming within a few days of each other? the only link, the journalist thought, was a regime intent on silencing the voices of opposition .
they don' t care what is said abroad. khodorkovsky and trepashkin are being held in the same jail, one with a notorious reputation in russia, where people the regime wanted to silence have always been held. it doesn' t look like trepashkin will get out of jail soon. the likelihood is that he will be kept under lock and key for a long time .
the russian president, he said, has played his cards very cleverly, claiming that the war in chechnya is part of the war against international terrorism. a more powerful putin has emerged with the fsb as his power base .
we finally decide not to go out to toshino, mostly out of fear of moscow traffic. then too, i hadn' t been able to make contact with anyone who knew anything much about the heavy metal concert .
analysts told agence france - presse that monday’s murder of russian envoy andrei karlov was unlikely to reverse the thaw .
he added :
if mr putin' s gang believe they can act with impunity, they will become more active in libya and the middle east and attempt to upset the balance of power in the rest of the world .
vesselin nedkov, 57 hours: a survivor' s account of the moscow hostage drama, viking canada, 2003 .
). the turkish government has been on the receiving end of such hacks before; on dec. 7, wikileaks
later that evening the private plane of mikhail khodorkovsky, russia' s richest man, was on a re - fueling stop in novosibirsk when it was suddenly surrounded by military vehicles. khodorkovsky was seized by armed men in masks. we watched it on the tv set in our hotel room. denied bail, the russian billionaire sat for many months in a small jail cell dining on convict fish soup. he would be charged with fraud and tax evasion .
mr. kara - murza ’s conversation with richard engel is scheduled to air during friday evening’s episode of “nbc nightly news. ”
an: the release date is too far away. you know, the guys in power are very short term, they are obsessed with money, big money. the putin people just want to survive the next election, then they' ll see. there is another tendency that has accelerated: to get capital out of the country. to buy into western businesses, to buy property, just in case, so if anything goes wrong in russia they have somewhere to run to .
an: well, they have an interest in having him disappear. he' s been in for over three years. once he' s out, if he ever gets out, he' s going to become one of those like politkovskaya and litvinenko, one of those outspoken critics continuing his campaign of criticism. they are not looking forward to it, especially with the elections coming up .
“it’s pure nonsense to make any connection of this unfortunate case with president putin, ” kremlin spokesman dmitry peskov told cnn last month .
an: tarkovsky was certainly interested in asia, in the traditions of japan and china, he was obsessed with that. he felt a strong empathy. i think he would have been interested in learning about the interest of chinese and cambodian cinema people in his work .
in the past, russian cyber surrogates could target turkey, revealing more unflattering secrets about people in the orbit of president recep tayyip erdogan .
an: it was in a non - descript working class district. the circumstantial evidence is that the bombing was done by a rogue element in the fsb. if indeed it was them they needed an absolutely typical moscow apartment building that all russians could identify themselves with. the majority of russians live in those buildings, even if they live in smaller towns or some villages. that' s what soviet civilization did for russians. before the revolution, the majority lived in wooden huts, a minority in palaces, in apartments in st petersburg, grand apartments, in moscow town - houses. the typical soviet man lived in this tiny flat, with its tiny kitchen, tiny bathroom, a couple of rooms. he would be provided with plenty of hot water, heating, because russia is after all an energy giant. he' d have this minimum of private space. but it is all completely anonymous. they are all the same, standardized. an explosion in a building like that would go straight to the nerves and psyche of the typical russian person .
he was identified by turkey’s interior minister as mevlut mert altintas, from the western province of aydin and a graduate of a police college in izmir. local news reports said that mr. altintas’s mother and sister had been arrested and that a computer had been confiscated from their house .
an: disbelief was not shown in a theatre or on tv. it is available on dvd in a sort of media samizdat. there is a certain amount of scope, some people would always find it possible to sell the dvds. you can even download it. the main influence is television. only five or seven percent of the population has access to the internet, not the way it is in the west .
the two leaders then sat next to each other and enjoyed a few laughs at an october meeting of the world energy congress in istanbul, with anna glazova, a foreign - relations expert at the russian institute of strategic studies, later noting that putin could easily have sent an underling .
dl: in the film tatyana morozova says :
i could not believe people would do this to people .
which seems to be where the title of the film comes from. on the other hand, the film includes an encounter with clearly disingenuous fsb officials about a related incident, and in light of the recent murders of anna politkovskaya and alexander litvinenko, and the imprisonment of mikhail khodorkovsky and mikhail trepashkin, suggests that what is in fact at issue is not an isolated apartment bombing but a condition. disbelief seems less a film about individuals than about the terrible circumstance they find themselves in .
an: you call it a condition, tarkovsky would have said it is about a certain kind of reality where individuals may not be the main subject, a higher reality. he would very often say that he felt himself a medium, somebody who reacts, who listens, who doesn' t act as a main protagonist of his own will, but who is a listener, trying to transmit something, to understand the meaning of what' s going on instead of acting willfully. he saw his heroes, his protagonists not as pawns but as figures placed almost in a greek tragedy, subject to certain forces and circumstances .
dl: i saw disbelief a year or so ago. it has since occurred to me that it is a film much like the films of andrei tarkovsky .
he told daily star online :
my opinion is very simple – what is alarming is how mr putin is taking advantage of the american [ inaction ] .
an: i really don' t like thinking that i' ve left russia, that i am an émigré. even though i' ve lived in the west, i' ve kept my russian base. a lot of people don' t advise me to go back, that it is dangerous, especially after the politkovskaya and litvinenko murders. well, go back just briefly they say, and leave. get your stuff out. this involves a very painful decision because it is one thing to leave and travel in the west and not be completely cut off. i was happy in the 1990s, i thought a new era had begun, when it would be possible to feel at home in the country of my birth. but we are reverting to the bad old days at the moment, which is a very sad and unwelcome development, not just for me but for a whole group of people .
tatyana morozova, whose mother had occupied an apartment in one of the nine - story buildings destroyed by the blast, lived in milwaukee, was married, had a child. now her mother along with149 others was dead. she learned of the tragedy in a cnn - assisted phone call from alyona, a sister. the russian government claim that the bombing was the work of chechens was dismissed as a cover - up. in the words of a morozova uncle who lived in the urals :
there are bigger fish involved .
a chechen living in moscow named timur dakhkilgov was arrested for the bombing, jailed, beaten and later released .
“given the sophistication of the poison, and it seems to be very sophisticated, because first of all, we don’t know what it is, and secondly that, you know, when it methodically shuts down all of your organs one after another within the space of a few hours, that’s sophisticated, ” he told nbc news in an interview scheduled to air friday. “given that, and given that i have no idea how or where it happened, so the way it was done was also sophisticated, i can only presume, that this, this was done by people, with at least, with connections to the russian special services .
dl: in a survey done the following february, five months later, 70% of the people surveyed said that it was chechens! only 8% blamed russian authorities .
nothing has to involve a direct order from putin but those around him seem to feel they have impunity – that is very dangerous for the rest of the world .
berezovsky was found in 2013 with a ligature around his neck in the locked bathroom of his berkshire mansion after the billionaire threatened to bring down putin' s government by force .
please make sure your browser supports javascript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. for more information you can review the terms of service and cookie policy .
dl: you know people i met in china fifteen or so years ago, the late film director zhang nuanxin and her husband, the literary critic li tuo, regarded tarkovsky' s films as a model for their work. they were looking to free the chinese cinema from the maoism of low angles, clean uniforms, and perfect teeth, as well as the influence of hollywood. the cambodian director rithy panh told me that he was inspired to become a filmmaker by a screening of tarkovsky' s andrei rublev in paris .
i have lost touch with my russian friends. at some point sergei and the others became suddenly distant, incommunicado. who was the associate we met a couple of times in london? didn' t seem to be the same person i saw in the photo riding a motorcycle. how heavy a guy could he be if he always showed up on time for our dinner meetings? did they think i was some kind of clandestine agent? or, as jeannie suspected, did they decide i could be of very little further use to them. .
when boris yeltsin was in and out of hospital, staggering around hammered, pinching secretaries' s toocheses in plain view of tv cameras, the yeltsin
family
became convinced that his deteriorating condition threatened family interests. boris berezovsky' s choice to replace yeltsin and protect those interests was kgb man vladimir putin, mistakenly judged a willing puppet. berezovsky, now a fierce putin adversary, lives in exile in surrey, outside of london, drinking thousand - dollar cognacs and consumed, one hears, with regret and a hatred that eats away at him like a cancer .
“and as for the reason, this is what i really do have no doubt about, ” he said. “this is because of, uh, my involvement in the russian opposition. ”
saturday, 25 october. in the hotel lobby matt damon was organizing a tour with members of a stunt crew. the actor was in moscow to shoot scenes for the bourne supremacy. jeannie picked him out. it was, she said, the smile. not very tall, wearing a black north face down jacket and cap, he looked like an ordinary american kid. a large sour - faced russian bodyguard in a black leather jacket was positioned close by .
we' re going to red square. cool .
said matt, leading the gang out of the hotel into a waiting white van. matt was staying at the hotel along with the second unit stunt crew. the wife of a member of the crew told us they' d been there for months. i could only imagine the bill. the film' s american audiences would have no idea that all those cars with the small blue dome lights chasing matt all over moscow were more than pals, more likely, very tight buddies of the czar .
a month later, a female suicide bomber pulled up in a big black benz outside the five - star national hotel down the street from the metropol. metropol guests would have heard the explosion. a report claimed the benz had pretty much disappeared in the blast. the russian foreign ministry denied chechen involvement; the incident, they said, was the work of international terrorists, perhaps a settling of accounts in a business dispute .
it made good on the threat less than three months later, when turkish f - 16 fighters shot down a russian sukhoi su - 24 warplane near the border of turkey’s hatay region on nov. 24, 2015 .
david satter, a wall street journal reporter who appears in the film speaking at a hudson institute public lecture, described the discovery of a bomb found in an apartment building in ryazan, 200 kms southeast of moscow, placed there by fsb agents who were apprehended by ryazan police. the bomb contained the military explosive hexogen manufactured in a factory guarded by the fsb. a tv channel that broadcast a report on the ryazan affair was shut down .
vladimir kara - murza, a pro - democracy crusader and one of mr. putin ’s fiercest critics, became critically ill while in moscow last month and within hours was diagnosed with organ failure and placed on life support .
russian news agencies said the ambassador’s wife fainted and was hospitalized after learning of her husband’s death. they also said that as a precaution, russian tourists in turkey had been advised against leaving their hotel rooms or visiting public places .
an: you know people are now slagging litvinenko, after the first wave of praise there is now a lot of interest in blacking his reputation. there were claims from a suspicious russian lady who said she was a journalist but who was hiding the fact that she was working for the government. she claimed litvinenko told her he had some evidence and was going to use it to blackmail some russian politicians and business people. which i don' t believe. . these are very bad times that are beginning. there is uncertainty as to what putin is going to do. it' s illegal for him to run again. his own policies have deprived public life of a credible figure to replace him. it' s a big problem for him, even with the absence of free media and his party being very influential and having all the resources of the state. those guys in his immediate entourage are mediocre. people just don' t like them, even though with his popularity he' s supposed to be able to just point at somebody and say: this is my heir, that this would work, but it may not work .
an: yes and no. how can one say somebody' s popular when the statistics and the tv channels are controlled? it' s like in the last days of the soviet union. they ran a referendum six months before the dissolution in december 1991 and 90% said, yes we want the soviet union to exist forever. six months later it was gone because in reality everyone, every individual, every republic was fed up with it. now it' s the same, so it is difficult to judge. western observers may say, well putin seems really popular. where do they get this information? i' d say he probably would have won the last election, but not by a margin of 80% . his actual popularity may be in decline. there is intimidation, the glorification of putin, like in the old brezhnev days: the visits of foreign dignitaries, the awards, the ceremonies .
the gunman, wearing a dark suit and tie, was seen in video footage of the assault waving a pistol and shouting in arabic: “god is great! those who pledged allegiance to muhammad for jihad. god is great! ”
as the war ground on, the consequences for turkey were profound. it was overwhelmed with refugees — more than three million now reside in the country — and the rise of the islamic state led to terrorist attacks within turkey’s borders .
an: we are very, very worried about him. he did nothing. i could vouch for his integrity. i knew him to be pretty straight, an absolutely transparent guy, a person of perfect integrity. maybe a little obstinate, somebody who can get into trouble for being too honest, not diplomatic enough. he' s serving time for nothing. he has terrible asthma. where he sleeps is close to a source of fine dust which is killing him .
in november, 2007 mikhail trepashkin was freed following the completion of his four - year prison term. he continues to pursue legal work defending civil rights activists. in march 2010 trepashkin added his name to an online anti - putin manifesto .
in the wall street journal - europe, david ignatius observed that the oil oligarchs were beginning to understand that crime didn' t pay enough, that there was even more money to be made by joining the global economy. but the business climate might not have changed all that much. there was the case of a fellow who chained the wife of a one - time business partner to a radiator to collect on a $ 24, 000 debt. the debt paid, the wife was unchained. after a time the creditor was found dead, murdered execution - style. the rule of russian business thumb: when working with a partner one needs to build the business in such a way that your partner will find it unprofitable to kill you .
russian president vladimir putin condemned that incident as a “stab in the back delivered by the accomplices of terrorists, ” and moscow quickly announced it was moving a naval cruiser loaded with high - tech missiles closer to syria’s latakia province to protect its aircraft .
the conditions under which khodorkovsky is being held are severe. there was an incident in which a cellmate attempted to stab him in the eye with a shoemaker' s knife while he slept; he awakened suddenly and the knife caught him across the bridge of the nose .
dl: i thought a key moment in the film occurred during the fsb pr man alexander zdanovich' s meeting with the residents of a ryazan apartment building about a foiled fsb bombing attempt and the claim that this was really a training exercise. at a certain point his face goes flat .
he continued: “this is the first step in getting justice for the syrian people. the ambassador is not innocent. he represents the foreign policy of his murderous state and thus he is a murderer, as well. now we are waiting for revenge against everyone who shed blood in syria. ”
back home, i got in touch with sasha, a chechen banker from grozny, a different sasha, to tell him about my trip. sasha had helped me with some contacts. chechens, sasha said over coffee, are proud of their untrustworthiness. what did sasha make of the khodorkovsky business? he himself, he said, had been investigated. $ 2 million in cash had been seized from his moscow apartment. it happened as he was planning to emigrate to canada. someone in the embassy tipped off interpol who then informed russian authorities. russians, he said disdainfully, create problems and then solve them .
an: what tatyana' s uncle said and the chechen akhmed zakayev re - iterated—remember they had never met or ever discussed the incident together—was that it would have been possible for the chechens at that point to blow up just about any building in moscow with the exception of the kremlin. there were a lot of buildings where the military and government officials lived, that were completely unguarded. everyone knew where those buildings were, where the military, except for the higher ranks, and the wealthier people lived, people the chechens believed were responsible for the first chechen war and the atrocities of that war. it made absolutely no sense in terms of revenge for the chechens to destroy an ordinary apartment building, it could only provoke a russian reaction. besides, the chechen terrorists were famous for bragging about what they did. all their attacks were quite spectacular, like the nord ost incident. these things were done for effect, for show, and were brutal like beslan. the chechens were never known for doing something and not claiming responsibility. in fact shamil basayev who was killed, our number one terrorist, had often claimed responsibility for incidents he had nothing to do with, like beslan. he said it was him but in fact it was some sort of splinter group. the only attack he said he had nothing to do with whatsoever was the one at 19 gurianova street. it was strange and very atypical. the chechens had absolutely nothing to gain from such an attack. which is what zakayev said; they very much feared a second chechen war .
is there any truth to the claim of al qaeda involvement on the chechen side? there may, he said, be limited financial backing, between five and ten percent. the rest comes from corruption, theft, kickbacks. money transferred from moscow for re - construction projects in chechnya winds up in chechen hands .
a russian journalist i met said he didn' t think the putin people were directly responsible, that perhaps it was the work of a rogue element within the government. among the suspicions that floated about unconfirmed was that russian security knew the chechens were planning the incident but did nothing to stop it. on the other hand, trepashkin is, as he put it ,
a berezovsky guy .
aside from the 1998 debt default, the situation had become very difficult. a parliamentary election was scheduled for the coming winter, 1999, a presidential election a year later. there were at the time two strong contending groups in russian political and business life he referred to as clans: the kremlin clan, meaning the yeltsin
family
who were prepared to do anything - he emphasized the word - to hold on to power. to lose power meant they could all be jailed or exiled, in other words left with less than nothing. the opposing clan was led by yuri lushkov, the mayor of moscow and included yevgeny primakov, a former prime minister, fired by yeltsin in may of that year. have you, he asked me, seen the film wag the dog? that was the situation. the yeltsin clan needed a virtual war to distract the electorate. were the apartment bombings the work of an administration desperate to protect the yeltsin family ?
we have no evidence, we can' t say that .
the yukos people were reported to be re - grouping in london. they' d be unlikely to run off to madrid or paris. london is where their children attend private schools, where they own property, the reverse itinerary of philby, maclean, and burgess. in 1907, stalin himself sought sanctuary from the czar' s secret police in london' s east end.
assassination of russia ( also known as blowing up russia ) is a 2002 documentary film that describes the september 1999 russian apartment bombings as a terrorism act committed by russian state security services . the film was created in 2001 by french producers jean-charles deniau and charles gazelle . yuri felshtinsky and alexander litvinenko worked as consultants for the film ; the film was made on the basis of their book blowing up russia : terror from within . the french producers initially worked for russian tv company ntv to expand their program " sugar of ryazan " and later to tv-6 . when tv-6 channel was closed by russian authorities , the film was 70 % completed . the remaining funds were provided by boris berezovsky . leader of party liberal russia , sergei yushenkov flew to the premier on march 5 , 2002 in london , to announce that his party is going to distribute copies of the film around the country to demonstrate " how the secret services deceived russian citizens " . this film was broadcast by the main tv channels of estonia , latvia , and lithuania . russian deputy yuli rybakov brought a hundred copies to st. petersburg , but the copies were confiscated at customs in violation of his parliamentary immunity . no tv station in russia was able to show the film . tens of thousands of copies were sold in russia in 2002 . sergei yushenkov presented the film at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars in 2002 , decrying lack of civilian control over the russian armed forces including the secret services . a staffer in senate foreign relations committee said , " we just can not go out and say that the president of russia is a mass murderer . but it is important that we know it . " 
assassination of russia (also known as blowing up russia) is a 2002 documentary film that describes the september 1999 russian apartment bombings as a terrorism act committed by russian state security services. the film was created in 2001 by french producers jean-charles deniau and charles gazelle. yuri felshtinsky and alexander litvinenko worked as consultants for the film; the film was made on the basis of their book blowing up russia: terror from within. the french producers initially worked for russian tv company ntv to expand their program " sugar of ryazan " and later to tv-6. when tv-6 channel was closed by russian authorities, the film was 70% completed. the remaining funds were provided by boris berezovsky. leader of party liberal russia, sergei yushenkov flew to the premier on march 5, 2002 in london, to announce that his party is going to distribute copies of the film around the country to demonstrate " how the secret services deceived russian citizens ". this film was broadcast by the main tv channels of estonia, latvia, and lithuania. russian deputy yuli rybakov brought a hundred copies to st. petersburg, but the copies were confiscated at customs in violation of his parliamentary immunity. no tv station in russia was able to show the film. tens of thousands of copies were sold in russia in 2002. sergei yushenkov presented the film at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars in 2002, decrying lack of civilian control over the russian armed forces including the secret services. a staffer in senate foreign relations committee said, " we just cannot go out and say that the president of russia is a mass murderer. but it is important that we know it. "
assassination of russia (also known as blowing up russia) is a 2002 documentary film that describes the september 1999 russian apartment bombings as a terrorism act committed by russian state security services. the film was created in 2001 by french producers jean-charles deniau and charles gazelle. yuri felshtinsky and alexander litvinenko worked as consultants for the film; the film was made on the basis of their book blowing up russia: terror from within. the french producers initially worked for russian tv company ntv to expand their program " sugar of ryazan " and later to tv-6. when tv-6 channel was closed by russian authorities, the film was 70% completed. the remaining funds were provided by boris berezovsky. leader of party liberal russia, sergei yushenkov flew to the premier on march 5, 2002 in london, to announce that his party is going to distribute copies of the film around the country to demonstrate " how the secret services deceived russian citizens ". this film was broadcast by the main tv channels of estonia, latvia, and lithuania. russian deputy yuli rybakov brought a hundred copies to st. petersburg, but the copies were confiscated at customs in violation of his parliamentary immunity. no tv station in russia was able to show the film. tens of thousands of copies were sold in russia in 2002. sergei yushenkov presented the film at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars in 2002, decrying lack of civilian control over the russian armed forces including the secret services. a staffer in senate foreign relations committee said, " we just cannot go out and say that the president of russia is a mass murderer. but it is important that we know it. "