The U.S. intelligence services get away with murder. The same is probably true of Russian intelligence services.
I recently read a biography of Putin which was very critical, fitting in with Nancy Pelosi's "one of the most evil men in the world" characterization. Yet one of the author's main criticism of Putin was that he didn't try to prosecute certain other Russians for crimes. In other words, certain allied groups in Russia are above the law.
Putin himself had been certain from the moment he was informed of Nemtsov’s murder that
night that it had been Kadyrov’s doing. The difficulty was what to do about it.
After previous political murders in which the Chechens had been implicated, including those
of Politkovskaya and Ruslan Yamadayev, another of Kadyrov’s opponents, who had been shot
dead when his car stopped at a traffic light in central Moscow in 2008, the killers themselves had
been arrested and sentenced to long prison terms but the investigators had made no attempt to
question those suspected of ordering the murders. Putin regarded Politkovskaya’s murder as
politically inept, but she had been a fierce critic of his regime and he cannot have been sorry to
see her silenced, even if he would have preferred it to happen in a different way. Yamadayev’s
killing had been an intra-Chechen affair, and in such matters he made it a principle not to get
involved.
After the President reappeared in public on March 16, he continued to refuse Kadyrov’s calls.
But the Chechen leader could play that game, too. Ten days later, he flew to Dubai, accompanied
by a large delegation, ostensibly to go to the races, in which some of his horses were running.
While there, he openly taunted Moscow. ‘Some media have even produced headlines, “Is the
Kremlin afraid of Chechnya?”’ he wrote. ‘This is a provocation … The Kremlin has nothing to
fear.’11 That hit very close to the bone. The liberal newspaper, Novaya gazeta, had written
earlier that month: ‘Power means the right to commit violence without punishment. The one
whose violence goes unpunished is the ruler. The murder of Boris Nemtsov suggests that Putin is
no longer the strongest man in Russia.’12
When Kadyrov returned, Putin made clear that he regarded the affair as closed
And yet, we in the West seem to see Putin as an all powerful dictator. As with our own leaders, however, there are limits to his power. We should not demonize Putin and the Russian system for the fact that such crimes occur, as the extralegal activity also happens in the West and is ignored by the political leaders. The more important consideration is the extent to which extralegal activity occurs and is condoned. From Stephen Cohen in 2018:
There’s an organization called the Committee to Protect American Journalists. It’s kind of iconic. It does good things, it says unwise things. Go on its website and look at the number of Russian journalists killed since 1991, since the end of the Soviet Union, under two leaders. Boris Yeltsin, whom we dearly loved and still mourn, and Putin, whom we hate. Last time I looked, the numbers may have changed, more were killed under Yeltsin than under Putin. Did Putin kill those in the 1990s?
So you should ask me, why did they die, then? And I can tell you the main reason. Corrupt business. Mafia-like business in Russia. Just like happened in the United States during our primitive accumulation days. Profit seekers killed rivals. Killed them dead in the streets. Killed them as demonstrations, as demonstrative acts. The only thing you could say about Putin is that he might have created an atmosphere that abets that sort of thing. To which I would say, maybe, but originally it was created with the oligarchical class under Boris Yeltsin, who remains for us the most beloved Russian leader in history. So that’s the long and the short of it. Go look at the listing on the Committee to Protect Journalists…
Similarly, Putin is demonized because the press and the political system is not entirely free in Russia. Opposition figures are marginalized and not given access to the biggest platforms. This happens everywhere to varying degrees including, of course, the United States. My impression is that, as with extra judicial killings, Russia is not that much different from the West. Russia is not the Soviet Union in this respect, and the Internet makes it much harder to keep a lid on the truth. Many in the West have, ironically, come to the conclusion that populist "misinformation" is a big problem and have supported direct and indirect censorship of opposition figures and opinions. There are sins on both sides, as well as legitimate restrictions, and the devil is in the details / extent of the sins.
I'll close with this Biblical quote from Matthew 7:3-5
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
