Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda
Tuesday, July 23, 2002

'The [FSB] Empire Strikes Back!'

So, millions of people – mostly those with access to information and the capacity for critical perception of information – are very inclined to consider the top leader of Russia as Mr. Hegoxen. Indeed, they have solid ground for it. At the same time, this is a Russian top secret, and anybody trying to unveil it becomes an object of prosecution … or worse.

Moscow and the Kremlin don't limit their activity to pure defense. On the contrary, the FSB (Russia's Federal Security Service) and supportive organizations are spreading their tentacles to Europe and America.

Look at the fate of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB high-ranking officer engaged in infiltrating and toppling the terrorist networks. He fled to London in November 2000 and brought many documents showing the real role of the FSB in the Moscow and Volgodonsk apartment bombings. Today he is fighting against the FSB, which he claims is Russia's biggest terrorist group.

In 2001-early 2002, Litvinenko provided copies of these documents to some groups in Russia and the U.K. independently investigating the apartment explosions. He also published in the U.K. and U.S. (Liberty Publishing House, in Russian) the book "FSB explodes Russia," which examines all the assembled documents and comments.

Litvinenko – like other critics of the FSB and the Kremlin – bases his allegations on an incident in the city of Ryazan (about 200 km southeast of Moscow) in September 1999, shortly after the bombings. Police there discovered what they took to be explosives in an apartment building basement and ordered an evacuation. Afterward, FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev said the alleged explosives were only sacks of sugar planted as an anti-terrorism drill.

"I have direct proof that in Ryazan there was not sugar in the building, but hexogen; that the explosive device was not a dummy, but real; and that the explosive device was put there by FSB officers on instructions from their superiors,'' Litvinenko said.

In March 2002, the Kremlin-obedient Russian General Prosecutor's Office started a case against Alexandr Litvinenko. He is accused of state betrayal, power abuse while working in FSB, etc. Nobody doubts the result of this "trial."

Simultaneously, the Russian General Prosecutor's Office started a criminal case against Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general who has lived in America for many years and is openly hostile to the present Russian regime.

Formally, Kalugin is accused of helping the FBI during the trial of Soviet-Russian spy George Trofimoff in Florida. In reality, the FSB wants to "silence" a dangerous person, a former KGB insider, who knows many secrets and is capable of supporting the claims against the FSB in the apartment bombing case. Indeed, Kalugin stated that he considers FSB participation in these explosions rather probable.

president Putin himself and FSB director Patrushev made several statements corroborating their direct interest in this case.

On June 26, Kalugin was sentenced by a Moscow court to 15 years in a "labor camp with a strict regime." According to the New York-based Russian-language "Novoye Russkoye Slovo" newspaper (June 27, 2002), the same day dozens of people called Kalugin to congratulate him on the amount of Kremlin attention.

Kalugin told the newspaper's correspondent that he considers this sentence as "political action of the KGB regime; the monstrous KGB stayed in the shadow for a while, now it is ruling supreme again." Chances of Kalugin's extradition to Moscow are close to zero, however … KGB has some tools in reserve.

Lessons for America

Perhaps it would be good for America to ignore all this?

Most of the U.S. mainstream media – and even some conservative magazines – are inclined to do so. They use the following arguments:

1. The Putin (Russian President Vladimir Putin) regime is nice to the West, particularly to America. Russia is now our "half-ally" or even more than half.

2. Russia has begun deliveries of crude oil to the U.S. This decreases U.S. "oil dependence" on Middle Eastern countries.

3. The Russian "capitalist revolution" goes ahead. So many good laws have been adopted by the Russian Duma during the last several months – for example, the law about land trading! And the influence of Communists in the State Duma and elsewhere is greatly diminished.

4. Putin is a close friend of President Bush, and this is a decisive factor.

a. Russia is our ally.

The two-headed eagle is a symbol of present-day Russia, just as it was a symbol of czarist Russia from the mid-15th century up to 1917. As Putin himself stated at the beginning of June (quoted in one of our recent articles), "In the West, Russia makes friends with the West – in the East, with the East."

In other words, one head of the eagle is "West-oriented" – it produces sweet words about capitalist reforms, cooperation in the struggle against terrorism, etc. The second head is turned to the East, i.e. to China, Iran, North Korea; this head provides high-quality weapons and weapon production technology to China's PLA (People's Liberation Army) as well as dual-use technologies, including nuclear ones, for the "axis of evil."

At the end of the 19th century, Russian revolutionaries used to call the two-headed eagle a symbol of lying and betrayal. Presently, the "nice birdie" is engaged in the same activity.

b. Russia sells us oil.

Indeed, at the beginning of July, the first tanker of Russian oil – belonging to the Yukos Corp. – arrived in Houston, Texas. At the same time, LUKOIL, the leader of the Russian oil industry, sent its first supertanker of crude oil to China. Here we observe, once again, the "two-headed eagle trick": Russian oil could reduce the price at American gas stations by a penny or two per gallon, while China obtains – through many channels – a new sound source of oil supply.

c. Russia is adopting good laws.

Some two weeks ago, the State Duma approved "The Law Against Extremism." According to independent observers, adoption of such a law, jointly with the "KGB regime" establishment, gives the Kremlin unlimited opportunities to suppress opposition of any kind (this should be analyzed in a special article). The combination of totalitarian regime and "wild capitalism" is just what Germany got in 1933.

Moreover, Moscow and other large Russian cities are reacting to the new laws and "reforms" by a rising wave of radical protests. And this wave is, generally, uncontrolled by weakened Communists. Some new, much more radical powers emerge!

d. Putin and Bush are close friends.

As is emphasized in the recently published book of Strobe Talbott, "The Russia Hand," the Russian diplomacy of President Clinton was based exclusively on friendship with former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Clinton merely ignored all other Russians and all the problems of Russia.

This resulted in a great failure of American policy in Russia in 1998-2000 – and almost certainly cost Al Gore, the major proponent of U.S.-Russian "rapprochement at any cost," the presidency. Need we say more?

Putin's Cult

Let's give the essence of reports related to the "Putin cult" from major Moscow newspapers for the period June 15-25, 2002:

The portrait of the head of the Russian state is a sure thing in officials' offices. There is a strong aspiration to immortalize Putin on calendars and portraits, on carpets and even matryoshkas (popular Russian wooden dolls). As assistant to the president Sergey Yastrzhembsky claimed, Putin did not like these tasteless attempts to immortalize his persona (just as Stalin used to say "I don't like all these portraits of a man with big mustaches").

Carpets that depict the image of the Russian president are rather popular among Moscow officials and company managers. Some of them are unique and are produced exclusively – either in small series, or just one single item is manufactured. For example, the State Duma special ordered a carpet with Putin's portrait at a factory in Yekaterinburg.

Putin probably isn't against those carpet portraits, but he did not at all like Easter eggs which depicted his image. When he saw them at the exhibition, he asked the organizers to remove them immediately. If Putin walks along Arbat Street in Moscow, he would see a lot of matryoshkas with his face. The Russian people and foreign tourists eagerly buy them.

One of the leading Russian oil and gas companies, Surgutneftegaz, made a real breakthrough in this area. There are calendars hanging in the offices of the company and those calendars are called "Putin's Twelve Moods." So, each month is associated with a certain facial expression of Russian President Putin: thinking, laughing, in sorrow, etc.

(end of reports)

Remarkably, whatever the results of official Russian polls (broadcast by Moscow TV channels at least once a week), Putin's real popularity is in decline. One of the authors (Nemets) spoke with some people from Nizhny Novgorod, the "dungeon of Russian reforms," who say: "Putin was really popular in 2000 to the first half of 2001. But in 2002, the Russian people are becoming tired of him because of his inability to struggle against poverty, illnesses and pandemic corruption. People are feeling an absence of perspective under Putin's rule."

By the way, during Putin's period as president, between mid-1999 and late April 2002, the population of Russia, by official figures, decreased from 146 million to 143.7 million (the level in early 1985) and is still falling. Simultaneously, the number of registered HIV-infected persons increased from 20,000 to about 200,000; the real figure is some 10 times greater.

The opposition media claim that real support for Putin in Russia, by June 2002, fell to as low as 8 percent and that Putin's staff is taking urgent measures to improve the situation:

• The Pro-Kremlin media publish stories about Putin's "heavy childhood" as well as his "triumphal visit" to the flood-stricken Stavropol region.

• Putin publicly criticized the visceral Anatoly Chubais, president of Russian power monopoly RAO UES.

• The huge increase in apartment rents (elimination of state subsidies) has been delayed.

Dr. Alexandr V. Nemets is co-author of "Chinese-Russian Military Relations, Fate of Taiwan and New Geopolitics."

Dr. Thomas J. Torda is a Chinese defense technology and language consultant with a Northern Virginia firm.

You may contact Dr. Torda at ThomasJTorda@cs.com.

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