Dec 15 2006
Lugovoi Definitely Berezovsky Ally
I was going to add this in a long line of comments to answer someone’s question, and decided to make a post for everyone to find. Lugovoi was definitely an ally of Berezovsky’s – so the assassination theory seems a little more stretched than it was before. And it explains why Goldfarb first tried to divert suspicion from Lugovoi. Now that Lugovoi is a participating witness (prossibly under a plea agreement) Berezvosky’s mouth piece is having to change tactics. Looks like everyman is now out for themselves in a battle that could put someone away for life. I am wondering more and more whether the Litvinenko incident and the spat of killings is really the preparation for some kind of coup d’etat in Russia.
Kasperov prominent in the opposition to Putin:
“As the world’s greatest chess player, Garry Kasparov employed his formidable intellect to outwit rivals before seizing on a weakness to crush them.
The Russian grandmaster is now applying those skills to a new game of strategy aimed at defeating his toughest opponent of all — President Putin. At stake, he argues, is the fate of Russian democracy.
Mr Kasparov has devoted himself to politics since retiring from professional chess last year. He regards Mr Putin as a dictator whose authoritarian rule threatens to return Russia to a dark past.
Mr Kasparov, 43, is the most prominent name in The Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups formed in an attempt to break Mr Putin’s grip on the Kremlin at the presidential elections in March 2008. The gambit begins today when The Other Russia attempts to demonstrate in Moscow under the banner of the March of Dissenters. The authorities have banned the march and warned the organisers of criminal charges against anyone taking part.
In an interview with The Times Mr Kasparov compared Mr Putin’s Russia to Pinochet’s Chile and the Communist regimes swept away by the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe.
“We are not fighting to win elections in Russia, we are fighting to have elections,†he said.”
(snip)
“He sees the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London as evidence of the power struggle. Mr Kasparov said: “All the theories about what happened to him have in common that it was initiated by some Kremlin forces. The danger is there and that is what Western leaders fail to recognise, that Putin is not in control even in the Kremlin itself”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2507556,00.html
I recall reading his home was stormed and search a few days ago.
“Jeez. The amount that killed Litvinenko was less than 1/100 the size of the period at the end of this sentance.”
I meant to suggest that either a smuggling ring might be moving much larger amounts of Po, AJs initial idea… or also the alternative, that just bringing something into the UK to kill Sasha would fit the contamination trails.
Likbez, do you think that someone in part of the Russian government who has an interest in what happens after Putin next year would smuggle Po210 for this?
I think you asked a very important question, Jerry:
“do you think that someone in part of the Russian government who has an interest in what happens after Putin next year would smuggle Po210 for this?”
Ok Gotta Know, what seemed sensible was true after all! Here’s the article saying that the French guy isn’t hiding and is changing the document story:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/13/europe/EU_GEN_France_Russia_Poisoned_Spy.php
That Scaramella sure is a tricky character, whatever side he is on.
*****DING DING****
“A special unit of the Russian secret service could have provided the polonium that killed the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
Sources in Russia have suggested that a secret unit called Department V could have obtained the radioactive substance that has left a trail across Europe.
Polonium 210 is only produced in a small number of state-controlled facilities and Department V, also known as Vympel, is charged with guarding Russia’s nuclear installations.
The “Spetsnaz”, or special forces unit was responsible for assassination operations abroad in the Soviet era and is supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One man, who had previously warned Mr Litvinenko that his life was in danger, said: “This is such a serious operation that it must be connected to the secret service.
“It has taken place at such a level that my sources no longer believe the siloviki [former military] were responsible and we now believe it was the secret service, probably Vympel.”
Vladimir Kozlov, a former deputy head of the Federal Press Agency, held a press conference in August accompanied by former senior members of Vympel.
He said Department V was well financed and added: “I must say that this is largely because of our president who knows the unit well and pays much attention to it.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/16/wrussia16.xml
VYMPEL–
Mariposa,
“do you think that someone in part of the Russian government who has an interest in what happens after Putin next year would smuggle Po210 for this?â€
Depends on how monolithic the government is. I have no clue.
IMHO if there are two wings that are ready to fight each other to death then any dirty trick is part of the game.
““do you think that someone in part of the Russian government who has an interest in what happens after Putin next year would smuggle Po210 for this?â€
My answer would be “possibly”. But I also think it likely that someone who isn’t currently in part of the Russian government who has an interest in what happens after Putin next year could have the connections to smuggle Po-210 for this.
More from Jerry;s IHT article:
“Limarev said he works as an independent consultant, specializing in Russian politics and security issues. He said Scaramella is among his clients.
Little is certain about his past. He worked at a sugar refinery in Belgorod in western Russia in the 1990s, and regional prosecutors opened two criminal cases against him for financial wrongdoing linked to the refinery in 1995 and 1996. It is unclear if the cases are still open.
Limarev later traveled to Switzerland and then to France. Russian media reported that he is in contact with tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who was also associated with Litvinenko and is one of the fiercest critics of today’s Russian leadership. Berezovsky made fortunes in shady privatization deals in the 1990s and was a key player in Boris Yeltsin’s Kremlin, but fell out of favor under current President Vladimir Putin.
From their home in Cluses in the French Alps, Limarev and his wife operated a Web-based consultancy, Rusglobus.net, reportedly funded by Berezovsky.
Among staff members listed on the site are two names French police believe are Limarev’s aliases, Evgueni Kholodov and Evgueni Limanov.
Limarev said he believes that Litvinenko’s poisoning “was ordered and effected from Russia” although he did not believe that Putin “or any big chief of the government” was directly involved.
He said he believes that Litvinenko was killed to frighten Kremlin critics and “to distance Putin from the West.””
Weren’t we considering an article by Limanov today or yesterday?
Whatever Limarov gave Scaramella SY has it. I tend to think he’s trying to cover himself right now because he’s terrified.
_________
CopyDude, I notice on your blogspot you identify yourself as a pr man who travels between Brit and Leningrad..and you are a Russophile. If that’s you, do you mind telling us who you do pr for?
I also see a “copydude” posting his articles
all over the Web in anti-conservative (Western politics) blogs and journals.And that one of “CopyDude’s” fellow authors at Atlantic Free Press is none other than the notorious Jason Leopold.Is this you, too?
VYMPEL, creepy… this is better than a spy novel!
I guess that Russian law passed last summer, authorizing assassinations abroad, is an important issue in this discussion that’s been neglected.
Goldfarb’s PR machine is in high gear this weekend:
‘Putin murdered my son’ is on the front page of the Independent
Litvinenko is back to being described as a ‘dissident’ and he’s converted to Islam. Again.
The BBC has been supplied with a fresh motive for Putin:
Litvinenko spied for UK company
Yuri Shvets now says Litvinenko was killed because of a dossier he compiled for a British firm was somehow leaked to the Kremlin.
Hmmmm. All the motives so far have been rubbished:
Payback for a defector
Was on a hit list
Was investigating Politkovskaya
Was a fierce critc
Jerry–I didn’t ignore that assassination law. NRO cited it almost from the first. I cited that and mentioned it several times but no one paid attention!
Hello Clarice
I don’t know where else I get posted. There are plenty of ‘feed stealers’. The editor of Atlantic Free Press is an old friend from Holland, a Canadian journalist. Don’t know anyone else.
Actually, I do very little advertising now. I am more interested in travel writing about Eastern Europe. This somehow got interesting. And the manipulation of the media is interesting – in a sickening way.
After this I’m sure I’ll go back to quietly writing about Soviet trivia.
Soviet “trivia” indeed.
http://www.thecopydude.com/?p=168
I can’t imagine how a propaganda piece for Putin could be more partisan this this.
I’m still sticking with the assassination, and I still think it is tied to the Putin/Chechnya/Politkovskaya/FSB. It almost appears that of all the dissidents that have accused the Kremlin of the Chechnya apartment bombings – they are all dead. Except Boris.
AS SOME SAID HE WAS AN EX-FSB AGENT AND PROVOCATEUR…
Also in April, former FSB Colonel Aleksandr Litvinenko, who now lives in London and who has repeatedly charged that the FSB was involved in the 1999 apartment-building bombings that served as a pretext for the latest Russian military incursion into Chechnya, said he had given Liberal Russia co-Chairman Sergei Yushenkov information about Khanpash Terkibaev shortly before Yushenkov was shot dead in Moscow on 17 April (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” 28 and 29 April 2003). Litvinenko described Terkibaev as a former FSB agent who specialized in penetrating Chechen rebel groups to organize provocations. Litvinenko also said that Terkibaev had worked in the press service of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and that in March, he accompanied Dmitrii Rogozin, then chairman of the State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, to a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Terkibaev claimed in his interview with Politkovskaya that he had been working closely with top Kremlin officials, including presidential spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembskii and deputy presidential administration head Vladislav Surkov, to arrange peace talks with Chechen groups. JB
…AND OTHERS SAY HE WAS A ‘DOUBLE AGENT’
On 16 December, following news of Terkibaev’s death, Politkovskaya told Ekho Moskvy, “It is a shame to speak ill of a dead person, but a person who betrays many different sides condemns himself.” She said that after her interview with Terkibaev was published, “very many people, both from the Chechen side and from Russia’s special services, said he wouldn’t live much longer.” “I was told that [radical Chechen field commander Shamil] Basaev had condemned him and that the [Russian] special services had condemned him,” Politkovskaya said. “He was in Baku for a while, and people who were also there said things were not so good for him. As result, he wound up in Chechnya.” Politkovskaya called Terkibaev “a kind of double agent.” “Nevertheless,” she added. “I deeply regret that this last witness was killed.” JB
http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2003/12/171203.asp
As for claims that Litvinenko was some kind of KGB torturer–all the evidence is that he was a bodyguard in the KGB. Like Enlightened I think anyone who spoke out on the Moscow bombings seems to be dead except for berezovsky who fled with enough assets to afford more protection.
I cannot find one credible bit of information that Litvinenko was a bad guy.
No matter who one thinks killed him or why, I regard the stuff being said about him–psycho, “tor nail puller, smuggler–to be totally unsubstantiated slander of a man who was just horribly murdered.
It is simply amazing how many murders are attached to that alleged Kremlin bombing.
I think the FSB is indeed striking back at defectors, whistleblowers if-you-will – that have portrayed them in a very bad light. First they accuse, then they charge in absentia, then they convict in absentia, then they assassinate.
“FSB never forgets insults”
The history of state security has seen numerous deserters. There are those who left for financial reasons, others for political. To stay in the home country and oppose the KGB was too risky. From Soviet times one may remember the captain of the KGB, Viktor Orekhov, who in the 1970’s went over to the dissidents and secretly cooperated with them. 8 years in the Gulag was the outcome of Orekhov’s having decided not to defend the CPSU, but instead the dissident movement.
http://www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/articles/2003/11/3/26484.html
Hmmm….Another poison death linked to the Chechen bombing –
Misfortune has followed many members of the Duma commission looking into the bombings. Yushenkov was killed near the entrance to his apartment building in April, and [Shchekochikhin died in a hospital later that year after apparently suffering food poisoning.]
After Trepashkin’s arrest, another member, Otto Latsis, editor of the liberal Russky Kuryer newspaper, was beaten unconsciousness. Kovalyov and Rybakov failed to win re-election to the Duma in last month’s elections.
Several other people have suspected that there was a connection between the bombings and the FSB. One of them is former FSB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, who fled to Britain and was granted asylum. Last year, a Moscow court convicted him in absentia on charges of abuse of office and stealing explosives and sentenced him to 3 1/2 years in prison.
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/8014-18.cfm
There’s an old Russian saying–each ruler is worst than the prior one. Unfortunately, there is more than a grain of truth to it.
It will be interesting to see if Putin leaves at the end of the term as Russian law requires or if he wiol just ignore the law and stay on. It will be interesting to see if he just rules thru control of all of Russia’s major assets–all the petro companies; the leading press, etc.
I suppose of Kasparov gets murdered for opposing him, the Russian flaks, added by know-nothings in the Wesr will start rumors that he was smuggling cocaine in his chess sets or something.
Keep your eyes open and your thinking caps on–the Russians are reverting to form–at least as many Russian spies in the West as there were in the Cold War era when citizens were less stupid and understood the need to protect state secrets. And the Russian disinfo machine is as good as ever with the IT and the leftist western press their playthings.
“Jerry–I didn’t ignore that assassination law. NRO cited it almost from the first. I cited that and mentioned it several times but no one paid attention! ”
Sorry, there’s been miles of threads over the past few weeks.
RE: Sasha as bad guy… AJs always seemed to think Sasha’s an insignificant pipsqueak not worth anyones attention, I never could figure that out….
Maybe it’s IT sweeps week. %^) (Actually, it is,