Dec. 22, 2003

The major news this month is not that Saddam Hussein was captured, but that a silent coup took place in Russia, which confirms the building of a new dictatorship there.

First of all, the former communist "KGB elite" have confirmed their ongoing coup in parliamentary "elections".

Secondly, Russia remains one of the few countries that can destroy the United States in less than one hour, or send masses of well trained ground troops to the Middle East in just a few days.

Leading Russia to this end is president Vladimir Putin;  Putin is a "former" KGB official who has never hidden his goal of bringing Russia back to "the good old Soviet days".

This month, Putin's party won full control of the Duma.

Columnist William Safire detailed what happened: "By taking over the mass media and seizing the political opposition's source of funds, Vladimir Putin and KGB cohorts have brought back 'one-party rule' to Russia."

After the fall of the Wall, it appeared Russia was on the path to "democracy". Unfortunately, old habits don't die so easily.

Long before the Russian Duma election, 'Newsweek' offered a special report on Russia that received little media notice, but has grave
implications for Europe, the Middle East, and the West.

Newsweek revealed that Putin has "systematically filled positions in the Russian government" with dreaded "KGB henchmen" from the Soviet Union police state.

Newsweek stated that the Russian bureaucracy "teems with members of the 'siloviki'" - former officers of the Soviet secret police who have ties to anti-west and anti-Semitic hardliners.

One example is Vladimir Kulakov, who Newsweek identified  as a former midlevel KGB officer, who today is the elected leader of the 2.4 million
residents of Russia's southern Voronezh region. Kulakov is now in control of the military and nuclear arsenals of that region.

"At every level of government former secret police agents are grabbing power, digging in and recruiting old KGB friends. More and more they are stepping in to 'manage' Russia's fledgling democracy." -  Newsweek.

Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a top Russian sociologist, tracks the activities of these old KGB men.

She told Newsweek that rumours of what she called a "creeping KGB coup" are borne out by the facts.

At the top of the KGB pyramid is Putin, who has surrounded himself with former companions from "the Committee for State Security" (Komitet
Gosudarstvennoy Besopastnosti). [A Ministry similar in style and alleged objectives to the 'Homeland Security" of the West]

Kryshtanovskaya cited both 'deputy chiefs' of administration Igor Sechin and Viktor Ivanov as two top former KGB officers.

Newsweek notes that "half the members" of what she calls "Putin's de facto Politburo" are siloviki, or members of the military or the FSB - the new name for the KGB.

When Putin divided Russia into seven districts run by a bureaucracy of about 1,500 bureaucrats, he named members of the siloviki to head five of them. Said Kryshtanovskaya, the siloviki now account for fully 70 percent of all senior regional officials.

In addition, outside the Russian government, tens of thousands of ex-KGB officers now work for private security companies, which function as "sleeper cells" primed to spring to life when directed.

Says Kryshtanovskaya: "In the past we had a socialist totalitarian state". Now we have a "capitalist totalitarian state."

Notwithstanding the confused descriptive, this "monster" now developing in Russia, will become a danger - and soon.

For example, ex-KGB official Sergei Ivanov, who recently warned that Russia would re-examine "the defensive nature of its nuclear strategy" and spoke freely about taking "pre-emptive nuclear strikes" against unspecified international targets.

Such madmen, who made up the Old Soviet Union, are back in the driver's seat, and they control the world's greatest nuclear arsenal.

Russia's conventional army has weakened somewhat since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, but its nuclear forces have remained stout and may have even grown.

At the same time, America has been dismantling its nuclear deterrent.  For example, in the past 10 years, the U.S. scrapped nearly its
entire inventory of tactical nuclear weapons.

[Contributions from Robert Polton, and Cliff Duncan]
 

More on Putin


In Britain, Putin is honoured with a stay in Buckingham Palace and a carriage ride with the queen. His four-day trip is resplendent with pomp unseen since 1874 .

Putin's advantage:

Analysts say Putin has emerged in the post-Saddam Hussein world with a distinct advantage. Although his criticism of the U.S.-led war was sharp, he did not dig the diplomatic hole France and Germany’s leaders are still trying to climb out of.

Christopher Langton, a Russian expert at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Putin’s status as a European outsider — albeit one vitally important to European and U.S. foreign policy — was used to his benefit.

“Firstly, he’s not a leader of a mainstream European, NATO state,” Langton said. “One of the reasons France, Germany and United States came to such an impasse was because the United States expected more of the NATO allies to support the war. Russia is more outside that process.”

Shevtsova and Langton said, Putin preserved his growing ties with the West without, as Langton put it, “sacrificing relationships over a temporary disagreement.”

In a press conference on the eve of his departure to Britain, Putin said, “The situation around Iraq was a serious test for the Russian-American relations. . . . We emerged from this situation with minimal losses.”

Recovering losses:

Financially, the Kremlin’s losses are stratospheric. Russia stands to forfeit billions of dollars in contracts Russian oil companies signed with Saddam’s regime. And, given the amount of money needed to rebuild Iraq, Baghdad’s $9 billion debt to the Kremlin has slipped low on Washington’s list of priorities for the country’s future.

Putin reportedly has given up on resurrecting old contracts with Saddam, but only after extracting promises from Washington that Russia’s interests would be taken seriously. In fact, some Russian firms, with their longstanding ties to the Iraqi energy industry, may have an advantage over U.S. companies. Many of Iraq’s oil engineers were trained by Russians on Russian equipment.

Putin also may use his post-war pragmatism to force Washington to back off in its opposition to Russia’s support of Iran’s nuclear power program. The Russian president has sought to alleviate U.S. concerns that Iran will adapt Russian civilian technology for military use by advocating surprise inspections by international experts to Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

Putin’s approach “may help him to defend other markets for Russian exports, like the export of weapons, missiles and nuclear power. Those markets currently are under threat from the United States. Russia will have to defend its markets in Iran, India and China,” said Viktor Kremenuk, an expert at the Moscow’s U.S.A.-Canada Institute.

“Putin is a smart guy,” agreed analyst Shevtsova. “He understands diplomacy and Russia’s limitations.”

Post-war political chaos:

The post-Cold War bond between Moscow and Washington is pulling the Russian president in one direction, while Russia’s economic interests in Europe, which accounts for roughly half of Russia’s exports, tears him in the other.

Topics like human rights abuses in Chechnya and the Kremlin’s grip on the Russian media are getting scant attention amid the post-war political chaos in Europe and the United States.

“Nobody from the outside is forcing or pushing Russia toward changing the rules of the game,” she said.