Friday, October 13, 2006

Kallas: Echoes of 1930s Russia

Via Postimees (my tr.):

European Commission Vice President Siim Kallas called the murder of the well-known Russian woman journalist Anna Politkovskaya “a great shock”, and compared the position in Russia with that of the 1930s.

“This (Politkovskaya’s murder - ed.) was a very great shock. This is an infamous event ,” Kallas said a press conference yesterday.

He says that the murder of the well-known woman journalist will affect relations between the countries of the West and Russia.

Kallas said that the actions of the Russian leadership in strengthening state control did not remain unnoticed in the West. At the same time, the question at the same time arises, Kallas noted, of the fact that this strengthening of state control seems to be connected with the regular killing of people who are inconvenient to the ruling circles. As examples, he cited not only the murder of Politkovskaya, but also the murder of the editor of the Russian-language edition of Forbes magazine Paul Khlebnikov and deputy chief of Tsentrobank Andrey Kozlov.

Kallas also noted that in Russia there is a law that permits the murder of people beyond the country’s borders of the country. Recalling the murder of Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, whom Moscow did not recognize, in Qatar, and also mentioning Pavel Sudoplatov [the notorious KGB-NKVD lieutenant general], Kallas found a sad similarity between the situation in present-day Russia and Russia of the 1930s. [Sudoplatov directed the NKVD operation that resulted in the murder of Leon Trotsky].

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