Simon Tisdall - Putin's disturbing message: your rules don't apply
The official conclusion that Vladimir Putin “probably
approved” the murder of the former spy Alexander
Litvinenko in London in 2006 has again raised uncomfortable questions
about Russian exceptionalism – and how best to handle relations with what many
conservative western politicians regard as a rogue regime in Moscow.
Russia’s sense of detachment from the European mainstream,
or to put it another way, its self-created isolationism and separateness, is
nothing new. It dates back to the 1917 revolution and the communist era, or
even further, to the days of Tolstoy, Turgenev and the tsars. But there are particular doubts about Putin, his strange
brand of paranoid nationalism, and the state that has formed around the
president.
A key issue for Putin’s western interlocutors is that Litvinenko’s
death is not an isolated case, though the manner of his death was
exceptional. Prominent opponents and critics of Putin have frequently come to
grief, at home and abroad. Anna Politkovskaya, an award-winning journalist, made her
name reporting on Russian military abuses in the second Chechen war. She and
her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, fiercely opposed Putin’s actions.
In October 2006 – one month before Litvinenko died – Politkovskaya
was shot dead outside her home. Although five men were convicted of her
murder, it remains unclear who ordered the killing. Another cause célèbre was that of Sergei Magnitsky, who
investigated corruption at the heart of the Russian state. An accountant and
auditor, Magnitsky claimed to have uncovered large-scale theft of state funds
by highly placed officials. He was arrested, beaten and denied adequate medical
treatment. His
death in custody in 2009 provoked protests from western governments
and human rights groups.
And then there was the even more opaque case of Boris
Nemtsov, a leading political opponent of Putin’s, who was gunned down last
February hours after issuing an appeal for public support in opposing Russia’s
war in Ukraine. Although several suspects have been arrested or have died in violent
circumstances, no clear motive for the attack has been established. Putin’s apparent lack of respect for what most nations, and
the UN, regard as legal and democratic norms, and his apparent tolerance of
high-level corruption at home and in relation to Russian
state complicity in the Fifa World Cup and athletics drug abuse
scandals, have further set the country apart.
This exceptionalism has caused mounting problems on the
international stage. Putin’s support for pro-Russian secessionists in sovereign
Georgian territory led to war there in 2008, when he ordered a large-scale
invasion of the country following Georgian government provocations. The
breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia remain under de facto
Russian control... read more:
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