Putin’s dirty washing

If they were genuine, said Peskov, it is
amazing how U.S. diplomats have such a “perverted understanding of reality” in
Russia.

Putin (aka
Batman) was on CNN defending Russia’s notion of “sovereign democracy” and
suggested that he is getting fed up with the United States using criticism of
Russian democracy as a foreign policy tool. Russia doesn’t criticize the shortcomings
of the U.S. political system, and the U.S. should butt out of Russia’s affairs,
he went on.

{mosads}But America
is right to keep up its criticism of Russia’s human rights violations. Here is
Putin’s own view of opponents, as expressed to an interviewer last August. If
the political opposition fails to obtain permission to demonstrate in central
Moscow, “alpha dog” Putin said, “you will be beaten upside the
head with a truncheon. And that’s it.”

Russia is ranked 140 out of 178 in the press freedom index of Reporters
without Borders. Oleg Kashin, who was beaten almost to death in Moscow last
month, is the latest of a sad list of journalists who have found themselves on
the wrong end of a truncheon in the line of duty.

But that’s not all. Even more serious is an allegation in the cables from a
senior U.S. official that Putin, a former KGB spy who previously headed the FSB — the successor organization of the
KGB’s domestic arm — would have been aware of the planned radiation attack on the exiled former FSB agent
Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006. He was assassinated by drinking tea
laced with polonium-210 in broad daylight in central London, an attack which
endangered the lives of British citizens and tourists.

(The former KGB officer suspected of delivering the coup de grâce, Andrei
Lugovoy, now benefits from immunity as a Russian MP).

Another piece in the puzzle came out at the end of last month with the
allegation in the Sunday Times that the FSB had received a container of
polonium-210 from the Russian Balakovo Nuclear Power Plant several weeks
before the poisoning. The report revived the speculation that the Litvinenko
murder may have been a state-sponsored act, and his widow has again accused
Putin of ordering it.

Rosatom, Russia’s state
nuclear corporation, has denied the report. But U.S. Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.),
who is the likely incoming chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has
her eye on the investigation in terms of future U.S. cooperation with Russia. She is right to hold Russia to observe the norms of international law.