Why do I so dislike Putin? Because the years are passing. This summer it will be five since the Second Chechen War was instigated. It shows no sign of ending. At that time the babies who were to be declared shaheeds were yet unborn, but all the murders of children since 1999 in bombardments and purges remain unsolved, uninvestigated by the institutions of law and order. The infanticides have never had to stand where they belong, in the dock; Putin, that great "friend of all children", has never demanded that they should. The Army continues to rampage in Chechnya as it was allowed to at the beginning of the war, as if its operations were being conducted on a training ground empty of people.
This massacre of the innocents did not raise a storm in Russia. Not one television station broadcast images of the five little Chechens who had been slaughtered. The Minister of Defence did not resign. He is a personal friend of Putin and is even seen as a possible successor in 20o8. The head of the Air Force was not sacked. The Commander-in-Chief himself made no speech of condolence. Around us, indeed, it was business as usual in the rest of the world. Hostages were killed in Iraq. Nations and peoples demanded that their governments and international organisations withdraw troops in order to save the lives of people carrying out their duties. But in Russia all was quiet.
Why do I so dislike Putin? This is precisely why. I dislike him for a matter-of-factness worse than felony, for his cynicism, for his racism, for his lies, for the gas he used in the Nord-Ost siege, for the massacre of the innocents which went on throughout his first term as President.
This is how I see it. Others have different views. The killing of children has not put people off trying to have Putin's period in office extended to ten years. This is being done by creating new pro-Putin youth movements on instructions from the Kremlin. The deputy head of Putin's office is a certain Vladislav Surkov, the acknowledged doyen of PR in Russia. He spins webs consisting of pure deceit, lies in place of reality, words instead of deeds. There is a great fashion at the present for bogus political movements created by directive from the Kremlin. We don't want the West suspecting that we have a one-party system, that we lack pluralism and are relapsing into authoritarianism. There suddenly appear groups called "Marching Together", or "Singing Together" or "For Stability" or some other latter-day version of the Soviet Union's Pioneer movement. A distinctive feature of these pro-Putin quasi-political movements is the amazing speed with which, without any of the usual bureaucratic prevarication, they are legally registered by the Ministry of Justice, which is usually very chary of attempts to create anything remotely political. As its first public act the new movement usually announces that it will attempt to ensure the extension of the period of office of our beloved President. Putin was given just such a present for his inauguration on May 7. At the end of April the members of "For Stability" set in motion procedures for prolonging his term of office. Their underlying concept is that Putin is the guarantor of stability. At the same time the members of this pocket-sized movement demanded an inquiry into the results of privatisation. This showed them to be against Khodorkovsky, hence friends of Putin. The Moscow City Electoral Commission hastened to accept the application of the young inembers of "For Stability" to initiate procedures for a national referendum to extend the President's term of office.
Such was the state of play on inauguration day, May 7, 2004. Putin has, by chance, got his hands on enormous power and has used it to catastrophic effect. I dislike him because he does not like people. He despises us. He sees us as a means to his own ends, a means for the achievement and retention of personal power, no more than that. Accordingly, he believes he can do anything he likes with us, play with us as he sees fit, destroy us as he sees fit. We are nobody, while he whom chance has enabled to clamber to the top of the pile is today Tsar and God.
In Russia we have had leaders with this outlook before. It led to tragedy, to bloodshed on a huge scale, to civil wars. I want no more of that. That is why I so dislike this typical Soviet Chekist as he struts down the red carpet in the Kremlin on his way to the throne of Russia.
Anna Politkovskaya, in Putin's Russia (2004) (tr. Arch Tait)
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