Belarus bombing suspects

Both of the detained suspects in the April 11 Minsk metro bombing are native citizens of Belarus, Kommersant reports.

Update (4.14): the number of suspects has now risen to 5.

From an interview - 4

Yuri Felshtinsky: Where I see the main problem, of course, is that the government hoodwinks the people and the people go along with it. In other words, the people have no objection in principle to such an approach. I personally don’t like it, but on the other hand I find myself imagining someone who fell asleep in 1988, say, during perestroika, waking up in 2001 or 2008, under Putin, anyway. And this person had slept through the whole of the Yeltsin era, slept and didn’t even know that the Yeltsin era had ever existed. Imagine newsreels where someone just took a pair of scissors and cut out all the Yeltsin-era material from 1990 to 2000. And actually, let's be honest, the picture we see today is absolutely wonderful, if we compare it with the Soviet era, or the period  of 1988-89-90. There's no Communist Party, or at least, the CP exists only as one of numerous political parties. There's no ideology. There’s a market economy, there’s freedom to travel abroad. The elections can’t really be called elections, of course, but that’s only if we compare them with elections in France, or America, or Britain. And if we compare them with the elections there were in the Soviet Union, the elections in Russia nowadays are simply beyond one’s wildest dreams. Both at a local and at a national level.

There is absolutely no freedom of speech, of course, let's be frank about that. Nevertheless, there is a sort of opposition press, there’s Novaya Gazeta, there are some journalists, there's Latynina. Yes, journalist are killed from time to time. But even so, we're not talking about the millions of people who lost their lives in the purges of the Stalin era – we can speak, we can have different opinions, these statistics are always sad, and some of the people who’ve been killed were my very close friends, Anya Politkovskaya, for example (that was a personal loss) but we are nevertheless talking about 200-300 journalists being killed,  not about total political control.

And while there is absolutely no question that some politicians have been murdered, there is no global political terror of the kind there was in the former Soviet Union.

So you know, it all depends on how we compare those different eras. And perhaps we really need to agree that yes, Russia is not capable – at this point in history, at least. and we’re not talking about 10-30 or even 50 years – Russia is not capable of becoming some European, civilized, democratic country, it's not ready to become that yet.

Russia is still trying to find its place in history and its path in history. Another thing is that, as history shows, Russians must constantly pay for this quest. Russia’s search for its path in history is an expensive venture in the world of today. Of course, I would prefer it if Russia and the Russian people, or the Russians, would calm down and realize that they don’t have a path of their own in history.

Mikhail Sokolov: A special one.

Yuri Felshtinsky: They have no special path.

http://felshtinsky.livejournal.com/2434.html

"Nationalists" blamed for killings of Markelov and Baburova

Investigators in Moscow have pinned the blame for the January murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova on Russian nationalists, the New York Times reports.

Then and now

Commenting on Russia's continuing stream of political murders, the Washington Post notes that

Not since the time of Joseph Stalin, however, have the political killings been so blatant -- or so chillingly common.

Opposition activist assassinated in Russia

Earlier today, the Ingush rights activist Maksharip Aushev was killed by automatic gunfire near Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkariya. The New York Times has a report.

Kremlin-backed Chechen leader threatens human rights workers

The website of the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus has published video footage (YouTube) of Moscow-backed Ramzan Kadyrov's second-in-command, Adam Delimkhanov, issuing threats to human rights workers on Grozny TV, 11 days before the execution of Natalya Estemirova, and little over a month before the execution of Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband Umar Dzhabrailov. In the video, Delimkhanov, speaking in Chechen, says:

There are certain people who call themselves ‘human rights defenders,’ who actually help these militant scum [sic], these criminal-militants, who work for them and do their dirty work, promote their politics,… they carry on various dialogues…, [sic]

But I know the mood among the security services, the society; I know what the simple folk are saying. They’re saying that the claims made by these people [human rights workers], and a certain Aushev and others, in other words, what they’re saying and doing, their evil deeds are no better than those of the militants hiding out in the forest.

These people [human rights activists] are confusing the people with their rhetoric, are deceiving them. But they won’t fool the people. They won’t succeed in this. Truth and justice will always prevail… Our soldiers here, commanders, our guys are always asking me, ‘what do these people (activists) want?’ and I tell them that they’re not worth a penny to me. [sic]

God willing, all those that support evil, we will hold responsible. Each one of them, be they Chechen or Ingush or whom have you, should know, that they will pay for their words…”

New extrajudicial execution in Chechnya

Via the BBC:

The head of a Russian charity and her husband have been found dead in Chechnya a day after their abduction, activists and officials said.

The bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband were found with gunshot wounds in a car boot near the Chechen capital Grozny, the interior ministry said.

Armed men seized the two on Monday from the offices of Ms Sadulayeva's charity, Let's Save the Generation.

The case follows July's abduction and killing of activist Natalia Estemirova.

Ms Sadulayeva and her husband Alek Djabrailov were in their mid-20s and had just got married, reports say.

Their bodies were found in the boot of Mr Djabrailov's car in the Chernorechye suburb of Grozny early on Tuesday, an official at the Chechen prosecutor's office said.

The official, quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency, said the armed kidnappers had been wearing camouflage uniforms.

Political repression increasing in Russia

More signs that the assault on public and personal freedoms in the Russian Federation is gathering place in a truly unpleasant way. Khpg.org, the website which monitors civil liberty in Ukraine, has a report on the case of Alexei Sokolov, a Russian civil activist in Yekaterinburg who is involved in the defence of prisoners' rights. A group led by Ludmila Alexeeva (head of the Moscow Helsinki Committee), Lev Ponomyarov and Ella Kesayeva (co-chair of Voice of Beslan) says that "imprisoning people well-known for their principled civic stand, respected civic figures, fuels disgruntlement in society and increases disillusionment in the justice system.”

Alexei Sokolov, who was appointed by the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation to a civic supervisory committee, was arrested in his own home in the morning of 13 May. The police’s version is that he is suspected of being involved in an attack in 2004 on the industrial base “UralTermoSvar” during which welding equipment and a cable were stolen.

The statement stresses that Alexei was treated roughly, beaten, pushed to the ground and handcuffs placed on him. All of this was in front of his two-year-old daughter who was wrenched from his arms. The police also tried to frisk Alexei’s wife who rushed out onto the street to her husband. 

The whole report can be read here.

Puppeteers

At KHPG.org, Halya Coynash considers the place of the Holocaust in the 20th century history of Eastern Europe and Ukraine, and shows how the almost unimaginable forces of evil that worked together to create the atrocities engendered by Hitler and Stalin are still at work in contemporary society:

It is entirely unrealistic, I believe, to hope to convince people that there was no difference at that time between Hitler and Stalin, that it was necessary to fight both simultaneously. This is not necessarily because people don’t know about Holodomor, the Terror and the camps, but because the Nazi plague was in their country, bombing their cities, and we know that the death machine was murdering ever more people by the day. I am on principle not prepared to place different manifestations of evil on any scale of importance however I also believe at that historical moment it was first of all necessary to destroy Hitler and his evil. On the other hand, I can, and believe we all must, try to understand and respect people who in view of different, no less difficult circumstances decided to fight all those whom they saw as occupiers of their country. That is assuming, of course, that they took no part in the Holocaust, punitive actions against the civilian population or other military crimes.

Unqualified evil did not end with Nazi capitulation and was not eradicated at Nuremberg. We need to fight it together and for that we have to understand one another. Some find it convenient that there should be no such understanding and would seem to have their own reasons for perpetuating rancid lies and stereotypes. We are seeing the old, painfully familiar, puppeteers, as well, it would seem, as some new figures on the scene with no less dubious motives. Let’s not help them – in memory of the victims of unqualified evil and to ensure that there are no more.

Russian newspaper worker beaten to death

According to this AP news report

The editor of a suburban Moscow newspaper that has criticized local authorities says its page designer has been beaten to death.

Anatoly Yurov of the newspaper Grazhdanskoye Soglasiye (Civil Concord) says Sergei Protazanov was beaten on Saturday, and died Monday after being discharged from the hospital.

Yurov said Wednesday that Protazanov was compiling an issue including reports on alleged falsifications in mayoral elections in the Khimki suburb.

Police refused to comment to The Associated Press, but the state RIA-Novosti agency cited police as denying Protazanov was beaten and saying he died from an unidentified toxic substance.

Novaya Gazeta's report says that the attackers removed the victim's internal organs.

9/11 and the heirs of Stalin

The historian and Soviet GRU defector Victor Suvorov (pen-name of Vladimir Rezun) has published another controversial book which examines the origins of the Second World War and purports to show that far from fearing Hitler or mistrusting him, Stalin saw Germany's aggressive moves in 1939 as a valuable pretext for a major war against Germany, which would ultimately lead to a Soviet conquest of Europe. It was this, Suvorov argues, that led to Germany's preemptive war plan and the Nazi invasion of the USSR.

On his website, JR Nyquist reviews the book, and draws some parallels with the present day:

When asked by a journalist why so many historians missed the role that Stalin played in starting World War II, Suvorov responded: “Are you asking why they are all so brilliant?” If someone asks today why the CIA and FBI haven’t grasped Moscow’s role in 9/11, I must give Suvorov’s answer. It is an amazing truth, that most events aren’t properly examined after the fact. Myths are propagated and false interpretations become set in stone. This is because normal people don’t question first impressions. They are superficial in their analysis. That is the way the world works. To question a myth, one has to have a questioning mind. Facts speak truth only to the few. As Suvorov points out, “Poland was divided not in the Imperial Chancellery, but in the Kremlin.” We might also recall that modern terrorism wasn’t invented in Baghdad or Kabul, but in Moscow.

(via Mark)

Terror continues to increase in Russian Federation

At Maidan, Halya Coynash writes about the mounting terror in the Russian Federation. Excerpt:

Those who ordered and who carried out the murder of Anna Politkovskaya remain at large, as do those guilty of many similar crimes against Russian journalists, human rights defenders and civic activists. There have been calls for a thorough investigation into the killing of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova. This is quite correct and to be wholeheartedly endorsed.

Only nobody expects them to find the killers. A young Chechen refugee, Umar Israilov, was gunned down a week ago in Vienna. There were equally correct calls for the Austrian authorities to investigate given the allegations the young man had made against the current Kremlin-supported President of the Chechen Republic. However, if their investigations hit another dead end as did the British investigation into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, what then?

How many more people need to die in Russia before others are fully terrified into meek submission? How many more killings will the world tolerate on other countries’ territory?

20 January marked a very special day for the USA and the world. It was a day many of us who grew up knowing Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech never imagined we would live to see.

It is almost 20 years since the events which culminated in the freeing of Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet empire. The latter also seemed impossible to dream of in our lifetime. The world hailed the victory of democratic values in the new republics. Everybody knows that momentous change comes hard and we all knew that stumbling steps, not strides, were to be expected.

However what is happening in Russia, still ruled to a large extent by Vladimir Putin who openly called the breakdown of the USSR the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century, is about the systematic destruction of the fragile buds of democracy, and in many aspects a return to methods not seen for decades. We are seeing the State using aggression, terror and repression against its own people and against any whom it regards as its enemies.