The murder of Russian liberal reformer Boris Nemtsov

Yours truly has been more active lately on Twitter than his blog, even though I am on record saying Twitter is dumb. Mea culpa. So I want to get a post on the books for February.

The murder of Russian liberal "reformer" Boris Nemtsov seems like a good thing to comment on in more than 140 characters.

Most of you will never see the snarky left's or the conspiratorial right's comments to knock the deceased Nemtsov down, may he RIP. I'm here to tell you that you should know they are out there. 

They're saying or going to say he was a Yelstin-era fake "reformer" who didn't always walk the talk. True. They'll say he was probably involved in corruption and lining his own pockets as governor of Nizhny Novgorod and as a Duma state deputy. Also probably true. They're saying he was a known womanizer. True. They're saying he supported Putin back in 2000.  True.  And he even seemed to backtrack on Ukraine after the fire and fighting in Odesa last year. True.

But everything is relative. I'm a liberal, so I can say that and not risk crucifixion.  

Relatively speaking, Nemtsov was a Russian liberal. And he was brave by anyone's standards. He exposed the collossal corruption of the Sochi Olympics where literally billions of dollars were transferred to Putin's cronies to run the winter games in a sub-tropical, 3rd-tier resort city. The night he was gunned down on the street he gave an outspoken radio interview on independent Echo of Moscow. He called Putin a despot and a murderer. He called for Putin's regime to be taken down, democratically, but also certainly by using massive street protests and community organizing. 

He went to Ukraine in 2004 during the Orange Revolution and said he "envied" Ukrainians for what they were doing there, demanding political change and free and fair elections. (I know, I was there and heard it with my own ears, to roaring cheers from the Ukrainian crowd.) He came and said much the same thing during the Maidan Revolution in 2013-14.

Relatively speaking, and not just relative to other Russians, Nemtsov was braver than you or I or 99 percent of the people in the world, because he was a direct critic of the absolute ruler of a country where he lived that was known to jail and murder dissidents with impunity. 

He wasn't afraid to stand with strange bedfellows in favor of democracy. He stood with Marxist thug and faux intellectual Eduard Limonov (who had the gall to cast aspersions on Nemtsov immediately after his death, calling him a skirt-chaser and "not innocent".) He stood with Russian chess grand master and dissident Gary Kasparov. Nemtsov, it seemed, was ready to stand with anybody -- or with nobody at all, as one person remembered, seeing him picket alone on the street at a sparsely attended rally -- who was against the current non-democratic Putin regime.

Personally, I believe Putin ordered the hit on Nemtsov. Now was an opportune time. Only the West would care about Nemtsov's murder, not some 80 percent of Russians, and Putin is already in the West's doghouse. Western economic sanctions against Russia won't get any worse for this. The West would fall on its knees in gratitude if only Putin would seem to observe the unjust ceasefire agreement in Minsk II and keep a "frozen conflict" in the Donbas and occupied Crimea. Western leaders are hardly going to make Nemtsov's killing an issue (an "internal Russian problem") when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine -- and perhaps the entire post-Cold War order -- are on the line. So I suspect that this was just a timely moment for Putin to cross an old enemy off his list. KGB guys do that kind of thing.

Others say it was fanatics who were motivated by Russian state propaganda-media to kill the "traitorous" Nemtsov who represented the Western "Fifth Column" in Russia. That's possible. But the fact that this happened meters away from the Kremlin, one of the most heavily-policed and surveiled places on Earth, makes me suspicious. Whoever did this was either crazy/reckless, or pretty sure they wouldn't be caught. The killers also left Nemtsov's female companion alive while managing to put four bullets into him. Would somebody worried about getting caught leave an eyewitness alive?

It's not inconceivable, however, that the "real killers" will be caught (I mean betrayed by their mafia dons). There was camera footage, apparently. Not surprisingly, since it was right by the Kremlin. But these killers will never tell the truth, even if they were indeed put up to it by the Kremlin. That's just the way things happen in despotic regimes. Witnesses can be made to appear -- or disappear -- and the guilty may be innocent or they may be guilty but not necessarily of the crimes for which they were charged.... 

(In a classic example of Putin-era propaganda, where the goal is not to advance a lie (an alternative version of events) but to make the truth unknowable, already the Kremlin is advancing at least three different fictional scenarios of Nemtsov's killing, while Putin's chosen henchman/ruler in Chechnya has come right out and said it was Western spies who killed Nemtsov to make Putin look bad.)

As with so much involving Russia, a mysterious violent event begets conspiracy theories because we know that virtually all decisions are made by a cabal of corrupt Kremlin insiders; therefore it's hard to believe that anything happens without their say-so. In a way, this attitude even augments the Kremlin's power, while giving them deniability.  

Time will tell, I hope, and reveal more facts, but it's likely that we'll never know the real truth.  All is speculation except that an outspoken critic of the ruler has been murdered in public, steps from the ruler's palace.  Even if Putin didn't order this killing, it serves his purposes: it augments fear of him among his opponents, and bolsters the brazenness of his cronies. In the end it doesn't really matter who pulled the trigger, argued Gary Kasparov: Putin is responsible. That's what today's sober analysts and future historians will say.

Putin: Separatism in Chechnya is bad but good in Ukraine

[HT: DK]. Putin's authoritarian logic of anti-separatism in rebel Chechnya contradicts his official logic in rebel-held Donbas and Russia-annexed Crimea: "There is no one who can explain to the Chechen people why (separatism) is acceptable for Crimea and the Donbas but not for them."

It's unassailable. And as I wrote recently, likewise the logic of the Western leftwing press that once criticized "Putin's War" in Chechnya, (part of Russia), becomes illogical in their misguided defense of Putin's aggression in sovereign Ukraine.

Crisis in the Caucasus — Putin, Kadyrov and Ukraine

By Vitaliy Portnikov

December 6, 2014 | Euromaidan Press

The hysterical reaction of Ramzan Kadyrov to the events that took place in Grozny on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly even more than the fighting itself in the Chechen capital indicates that we are dealing with a new round of tension in the North Caucasus.

It appears that the battle between the Chechen security forces and the militants has ended. This would be the time to speak about stability and peace. However, Kadyrov cannot control himself. He has threatened to destroy the homes of the families of suspected militants and to expel them from Chechnya (and this despite the fact that they are leaving the republic as soon as possible). He is even threatening Ukrainian parliamentarians who dared to compare the situation in Chechnya with the situation in the occupied regions of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the comparison is clearly not to Kadyrov’s advantage. On the one hand, he is fighting for the territorial integrity of Russia and is ready to destroy fellow citizens who are advocating the independence of Chechnya. On the other hand, he is sending Chechen forces to fight against the territorial integrity of Ukraine and supporting other militants. Where is the logic?

There is logic here, however. Kadyrov is Putin’s vassal and ready to carry out any order of the Kremlin lord. It is more than logical. It is inevitable. If Putin goes, Kadyrov’s regime either will  be replaced by a new Russian president or it will be swept away by civil war in Chechnya. The conditions for such a war existed earlier as well. However,  they have only increased with the new unstable situation. The battles in Grozny are only the first drops of rain on the red-hot roof of new clashes in the long-suffering republic.

Kadyrov has established a real personal dictatorship in Chechnya . It was only through dictatorial powers and the support of his own clan from the Tsentoroi village that he has been able to suppress the resistance  of the supporters of independence and the opposition of the representatives from other clans, including those loyal to Moscow. But such a dictatorship is possible only when there is a relationship with a strong center. What happened in Grozny has demonstrated that Kadyrov’s enemies are no longer convinced of Putin’s power nor in the prospects of his vassal. Otherwise, they would not have succeeded in carrying out a daring operation on the very eve of a very important event for Putin and Kadyrov.

The fact that any crisis in Russia inevitably leads to destabilization in the Caucasus is not news. What is newsworthy is the fact that Putin, who has represented himself as the chief enemy of separatism, is also the main sponsor of separatism. It is this fact that may undermine further crackdowns by Kadyrov. There is no one who can explain to the Chechen people why (separatism) is acceptable for Crimea and the Donbas but not for them.

Putin and Kadyrov have destroyed their own glass house with the heavy stones of shortsightedness.

Ex-CIA chief: Russian action in Ukraine 'is a classic covert operation'

The Secret Players In The Russia-Ukraine Game  

By Lorena O'Neil

May 20, 2014 | NPR

Keeping up with the battle in Ukraine? Then you must know of a man named Ramzan Kadyrov. No? Well, that's because he's the Instagram dictator staying in the background, behind the curtain, asking people to pay no mind to the Chechen military fighters he might be ordering over to fight for Russia.

Ramzan Kadyrov is the president of Chechnya, a Russian republic situated in the North Caucasus region. Multiple reports from Russia, Chechnya and Ukraine suggest that there is Chechen military involvement in the eastern part of Ukraine, fighting on the pro-Russia side. While the number of Chechens in Ukraine is hard to gauge and their existence difficult to prove, even a small number could have a deep significance.

To understand why this is important, one must first understand how Russia (and many of its supporters) plays ball. In a word? Subversively.

"What's going on with Ukraine is a classic covert operation," says OZY contributor and former deputy director of the CIA John McLaughlin. "The Russians probably won't have to go in militarily with special forces because they are gradually stirring it up, co-opting it." Multiple Russian experts assume that what we see on television from Ukraine has been influenced by Vladimir Putin's intervention.

"Everyone assumes this is not spontaneously generated by someone who woke up and said, 'Hey, I'd like to be a part of Russia,' " says McLaughlin. "They are doing this very indirectly. Involving the Chechens in that would be also kind of classic, to the extent that you can confuse the adversary." He explains that confusion makes it harder for those who oppose Russia to know what to do next, which is ultimately the aim of covert actions.

There are a host of reasons why Chechens in Ukraine could add confusion. It would mean introducing fighters of a different nationality with motives that seem to clash with Russia's. Chechnya itself fought a separatist war against Russia in 1994-1996, briefly winning until it lost a second war in 1999-2000.

The wars turned into an Islamic insurgency in response to the Kremlin's actions, geographically and politically. Kadyrov and his father, both Muslim, fought against Russia in the first war, but changed sides in the second. Given this recent history, it seems like many Chechens would be sympathetic to those fighting against Russia in Ukraine, and not willing to take up arms on behalf of Russia.

So what would motivate Chechens to fight for Russia?

"Kadyrov is a man who has survived by taking positions that are more pro-Russia than Russia," says Paul Goble, a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in the post-Soviet world. He says the Chechen Republic is vastly more Islamic today than it ever was before, and Putin looks the other way because Kadyrov constantly expresses his undying love for Russia.

Additionally, deploying fighters works to Chechnya's advantage because it gives them military experience in the field, something the Russian government denies them by hesitating to draft North Caucasians in big numbers, Chechens in particular. The government is worried that if it trains Chechens to use its weapons, they may turn around and use their training against Russia.

Chechen forces in the Ukraine can also serve as an implied threat to Russia itself, proving [to Putin - J] how many able-bodied men Kadyrov has at his beck and call. "I find it a fascinating play by Kadyrov, a very evil man who is not stupid," says Goble.

Goble points out that it may be hard for observers to distinguish Chechen forces in the eastern regions of Ukraine from the Crimean Tatars, since both groups are Muslim. "They look similar. They could do something, and the Crimean Tatars could be blamed," says Goble. "Then there'd be more support for tough measures against the Tatars because they [would be seen as] dangerous Muslims, like the Chechens."

The introduction of foreign fighters would eerily resemble the events leading to the escalation of the ongoing Syrian civil war.

The Tatars were deported from their homeland of Crimea by Stalin in 1944, but have returned en masse since 1989. They make up about 12.1 percent of the Crimean population and have been consistent allies of the Ukrainian government against Russia. Sunday marked the 70th anniversary of their mass expulsion, and thousands gathered in commemoration.

Adding Chechens to the mix could intensify instability yet have minimal consequences for Russia. Goble explains that Chechens have a reputation for being brutal fighters. Kadyrov himself has been suspected of horrific human rights abuses and runs an intensely thuggish regime. (He tries to counterbalance this reputation with pictures of fluffy kittens on Instagram.) However,Moscow could easily deny any responsibility for actions taken by Chechens, as nothing has been officially ordered by Putin.

In fact, Kadyrov himself is denying official Chechen military involvement. When acting Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Chechens were fighting alongside pro-Russian rebels in Slovyansk, a town in east Ukraine, Kadyrov took to his Instagram to call this allegation "absurd." As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Liz Fuller points out, Kadyrov was careful to say "Chechen battalions" are not currently deployed in Ukraine, which does not really touch on the issue of informal military units.

Right now there is no definitive proof that Chechens are in Ukraine, just hearsay and YouTube videos. Kavkazcenter, the official website of the North Caucasus Islamic insurgency, posted a letter from a man who claims he was sent to Crimea and then to Slovyansk as part of a Chechen security force. Reuters spoke with a soldier who says he went to Crimea ahead of its voter referendum.

Recruitment centers in Grozny were reportedly asking for volunteer soldiers to fight in Ukraine, but the offices suddenly closed after stories about them were published. A Chechen student in Grozny alleges, via Russian blogger Oleg Leusenko, that residents were reluctant to volunteer, and recruiters called those people cowards and violently beat a man who refused to sign up.

Of course, this is not the world according to Kadyrov. "There are tens of thousands of volunteers in Chechnya who are ready to help those who are being abused by fascistic thugs, whose blood is being shed by the unlawful government of Kiev," writes Kadyrov, who can't resist a not-at-all-veiled threat even in a denial. "And if the Chechens really go to Slavyansk and other cities, you will see how people like Avakov flee from there, and will not stop even at the Western border of Ukraine."

Translation: We're not there — but if we were, you would know because you would be fleeing in terror. How thoughtful of the totally trustworthy Kadyrov to provide such ... reassurance.