Warning: Opposing Putin Hazardous to Your Health
New evidence that standing up to the Kremlin can be a poisonous proposition — literally.
And the same is true of the Yushchenko attack. Not only did it offer the potential to silence, or at least intimidate, one of Russia’s thorniest opposition political leaders, but the chaos and tension that would naturally result could be taken by NATO as a sign that Ukraine is not yet stable enough for NATO membership. Blocking that ascension is one of Russia’s key foreign policy goals, along with achieving the same result in Georgia.
Seen in the context of the long string of domestic murders of political rivals that has continued throughout Putin’s time in Moscow, from Galina Starovoitova to Anna Politkovskaya, these foreign attacks form part of a consistent pattern of state-sponsored murder to achieve political goals.
How, then, can the G-7 democracies justify sitting down with Russia as an honorary eighth member in the face of these horrific allegations? It seems clear that John McCain’s call to evict Russia from the group is the right one. Barack Obama wants Russia to remain in the group in the hope that this will give the West increased leverage over Russia’s wayward nuclear materials and connections to terrorist organizations, but his platform is woefully barren of alternative proposals to bring pressure to bear on Russia’s neo-Soviet dictatorship.
Little wonder, then, that Russians favor Obama over McCain.
A pro-Kremlin propaganda website called Russia Blog and operated by one Yuri Mamchur, a Russian citizen who works for the Discovery Institute and in collaboration with Russia Today, has said that the Russians themselves are pulling for Obama (much as Castro, Qaddafi, Hamas, and even Kim Jong Il have done as well). Mamchur states: “After presenting the question to nearly 50 Russians, the answer is clear: one hundred percent of our not-so-random sampling said Senator Barack Obama is their first choice.”
Writing in the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, has the same view. He states: “Barack Obama looks like the candidate that can be expected to take the greatest strides toward Russia, since unlike McCain, he’s not infected with any Cold War phobias, and unlike Clinton, he won’t be tied down by the old habits of his advisors.”
With Kremlin sycophants slobbering all over Obama, it’s hard to put much faith in the hope expressed by some that another Obama Russia advisor, Michael McFaul of the Hoover Institution and Stanford University, may help him see the light. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also a Hoover and Stanford affiliate, but that didn’t help her keep the president from being hypnotized by Mr. Putin. True, McFaul has recently issued some stern criticism of the Kremlin, including an impressive essay in Foreign Affairs arguing that the Russian economy would be much better off but for Putin’s anti-democratic moves. But McFaul hasn’t succeeded, if he’s even tried, in getting Obama to lay out a specific plan of action for beating back the advances of dictatorship under Putin, much less in getting justice for Putin’s litany of victims. And it’s not clear to me whether McFaul himself has any such plan.
This may be another reason why those within the Kremlin find Mr. Obama so appealing.
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Kim Zigfeld is a New York City-based writer who publishes her own Russia specialty blog, La Russophobe. She also writes about Russia for the American Thinker and for Russia! magazine and is researching a book on the rise of dictatorship in Putin’s Russia.
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23 Comments
1. kabud:from the top specialist, who gave several testimonies to Senate and Congress of the USA
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/douglass/2004/1220.html
Some of the chemical and biological “weapons” designed to undermine the opposition were extremely sophisticated. They were developed to enable the target individual to “self-destruct.” Examples of such drugs were ones that would induce changes in mental attitude, acuity, or behavior.
Decision-making capability could be impaired. So-called “loosen the tongue” drugs caused people to speak what was on their minds without regard for the consequences – a great way to enable a politician to dig his or her own grave. These were truly covert weapons. The changes induced led to self-defeating behavior and attitudes without there being any physical manifestations such as became evident following the covert administration of dioxin, or similar substance, to Yushchenko.
Another family of drugs simply put a damp wash cloth on the drive and ambition of the undesirable opposition. These were as effective as liquidating the opposition. Indeed, they were more effective. When the leader of a cause or organization was covertly administered such a drug, his damaged state would undermine the effectiveness of the cause or organization. This was much more effective than simply killing him because in the latter case someone even better might step forward to take the dead person’s place.
None of the above is second-hand or hearsay information. It all came from a top former East European official who was active in exactly these development programs and operations. Its existence and nature has been confirmed by several former KGB officials and a key Russian scientist to defected to the West in 1992. The information that now exists on the Russian program is extensive and most troublesome – not merely because of the threat it poses to champions of free societies but, almost incomprehensibly, because the attitude of Western intelligence has been to bury such information.
We can only guess why. One explanation has been a fear that any unveiling of the serious nature of the psycho-active threat of special chemical and biological substances might trigger a backlash investigation of the accomplishments and practices in the similar U.S. and British programs that were also beginning in the 1950s and which have never been revealed.
The poisoning of candidate Yushchenko is not unusual. There is a long string of such events, some publicly known, but most not, going back fifty years. One classic example is the death of Pope John Paul I. (A wide variety of such examples can be found in the 1987 book America the Vulnerable: The Threat of Chemical and Biological Warfare.)
The uses are not limited to mere attacks on political opposition. A large number of targets include a wide variety of individuals in positions of power and influence. (Examples of actual operations here range from heads of state to diplomats, industry executives, bankers, religious leaders, scientists, government officials and even Congressional staffers. See my 2000 book Betrayed.)
Where events have been recognized (a small percentage of the total) the usual reaction is official silence and a near absence of any media curiosity. Because of this, threat and damage potential continues to grow. The subject is simply “not nice” and definitely not politically correct.
When chemical and other substances were used on individuals and officials who were on assignment in Russia, there were no U.S. government efforts to learn what happened. Rather, the victim was considered the criminal. More often than not, his or her career was terminated.
Jul 25, 2008 - 6:18 am 2. Disability’s at Home» Blog Archive » A taste for all the above-mentioned vegetables, eaten raw, is not:[...] Warning: Opposing Putin Hazardous to Your <b>Health</b> [...]
Jul 25, 2008 - 7:36 am 3. No Runny Eggs » Blog Archive » The Morning Scramble, part 2 - 7/25/2008:[...] Kim Zigfried has today’s episode of the Return of the Soviet Union. Guess McCain was right about what is in Mad Vladimir Putin’s eyes – “KGB”. [...]
Jul 25, 2008 - 9:15 am 4. Roark:Thuggery like the kind rampant in Russia is sending that nation back into the KGB as gods age. Trouble.
Jul 25, 2008 - 7:29 pm 5. Steve Nelson:Litvinenko worked closely with Boris Berezovsky, the man the late Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov called “The Godfather of the Kremlin”. Klebnikov had accused Berezovsky of ties to the Chechen jihadists, and of ordering contract killings before he was gunned down in 2004.
As Klebnikov reported, throughout his rise to power, lots of people around Berezovsky died under mysterious circumstances. To point out that there are many suspects in Mr. Litvinenko’s death while ignoring anonymous British government sources citing “state involvement” – whether that means someone at FSB going rogue or a death warrant signed at the highest levels – is not propaganda. It’s called not going into a crime with a foregone conclusion that certain parties are guilty until proven innocent. That’s what the American journalist Edward Jay Epstein has done, and he was interviewed on Russia Today – is he a Kremlin shill as well, Kim Zigfeld?
You’ll notice that after Mr. Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya died, Russia was no longer permitted to send legal delegations to London to present evidence as to why Mr. Berezovsky should be extradited to face charges in Moscow, or to Tel Aviv to present their case against Mr. Khodorkovsky’s associate Leonid Nevzlin. How convenient for them!
Also, where is the evidence that Russia Blog is affiliated with Russia Today TV? Is posting a YouTube video from any source make you an “affiliate”?
Pajamas Media is making itself look ridiculous for posting Zigfeld’s hateful, fact-deficient rants.
Jul 26, 2008 - 9:30 am 6. Steve Nelson:Was Litvinenko trying to smuggle polonium? Could he live in London, one of the world’s most expensive cities, on what meager salary Berezovsky or whomever was paying him? Was Lugovoi trying to find out who else was in on the polonium smuggling with Litvinenko? Did Litvinenko blackmail anyone with his FSB background knowledge? Questions you would rather not ask, everything is cut and dry, black and white, the Brits would definitely come clean it if there was a nuclear material smuggling ring in Londonistan, regardless of ongoing investigations, while the Russians would admit that a small amount of polonium was stolen from one of their labs rather than ignore accusations of state-sponsored murder.
Jul 26, 2008 - 9:41 am 7. kabud:Steve Nelson:
i know who u r
Jul 26, 2008 - 11:40 am 8. General Khlynov:u work for them. it will not last long, should remember
Any outlet that lets these people write on their site cannot possibly have much editorial control and/or credibility.
Jul 26, 2008 - 11:45 am 9. General Khlynov:One more thing – isn’t it funny that these events tend to happen every time there is a big international event in which Russia is taking place? The ‘unnamed source’ picked the G8 meeting as a time, exactly as the murder of Anna Politkovskaya.
I think anybody who believes the Kremlin killed Litvinenko with Polonium is no more to be taken serious than people who believe the US government did 9/11 or that Elvis is still alive. It’s simply absurd.
Jul 26, 2008 - 11:49 am 10. General Khlynov:Maybe I pressed the wrong button, but I also made a comment in which I pointed out that there is no such individual as Kim Zigfeld. Whoever writes these articles is neither a woman, nor called Kim Zigleld, and is certainly not Jewish, as the name so insidiously implies.
Jul 26, 2008 - 11:53 am 11. Michael T:The flag may have changed, but the Russkies are still the Russkies.
Jul 27, 2008 - 8:41 am 12. tanstaafl:I would agree, Michael T.
You can take the boy out of the KGB (there’s an effective replacement with different initials).
But, in the case of the mentality of Vladmir Putin, you cannot take the KGB out of the boy. There seems to be a sense of massive insecurity and fearfulness sitting at the base of his psychological make up, which will continue to hamstring Russia.
The chosen technique of destruction of Litvinenko and Yuschenko, especially heinous.
The slaughter of the incisive critic, Anna Politkovskaya, vicious and sub human.
Jul 28, 2008 - 9:56 am 13. Candide:OK, ‘kabud’, I say you did it.
I say you shot Politkovskaya, irradiated Litvinenko and deformed Yuschenko.
Prove it ain’t so.
Jul 28, 2008 - 10:31 am 14. kabud:major requirement for success is mere physical contact with the target
Rationale of assassinations as practiced by the KGB. According to the Anatoliy Golitsyn understanding the Soviet government and the KGB would resort to a political assassination of a Western leader only under the following conditions:
A. If a Western leader, who is a recruited Soviet agent, is threatened in office by a political rival. This is based on a statement made by Zhenikhov, a former KGB resident in Finland. He stated that if his agent, holding a high office, was threatened by an anticommunist social democrat during the elections, the latter would be poisoned by a trusted KGB agent.
B. If a Western leader became a serious obstacle to communist strategy and to the strategic disinformation program, he would be quietly poisoned at a summit meeting during negotiations or while visiting a communist country, since detente provides such opportunities in abundance.
The practical lesson here is that a Western leader who is involved in furthering an effective counterstrategy against the communists should not visit communist countries or take part in any summit meetings with their leaders.
The technique for a poisoning was described in a statement made by a KGB general, Zheleznyakov, at an operational briefing devoted to an assassination proposal against Tito in 1953 in Moscow.
Zheleznyakov stated that the major requirement for success is mere physical contact with the target, as the Soviet service has technical means (special poisons) to inflict mortal diseases without leaving traces of the poison, so that death will be attributed to natural causes.
C. If the assassination of a leader provides the opportunity for a controlled Soviet agent to take over the position. According to Levinov, a KGB adviser in Czechoslovakia, this rationale was used by both the Soviet and the Czech services in the assassination of President Benes, thus vacating a place for a communist leader, Gottwald.
D. If a communist leader decided to eliminate his communist rival. It is a well-known fact that, based on this rationale, Stalin got rid of many of his rivals, including Trotskiy in Mexico. According to the author, this rationale is not used any longer because of the cessation of the struggle for power in the Soviet party leadership.
from Anatoliy Golitsyn “New Lies For Old”, page 353
Jul 28, 2008 - 11:18 am 15. kabud:This is today’s reality in communist world:
recently a friend, a lawyer from NY traveled to Ukraine
in Kyiv he stayed at the Hilton hotel.
He and his lady friend went to a casino, the best in town.
he won $1000. had fun. had 1 drink each. Stayed may be for 3-4 hours. Everything was fine.
When leaving, at the door, they got into a cab that was waiting there for them. They did not call the cab, it was already there, waiting for clients.
They drove to Hilton.
last thing he and her remember: cab stopped across the street from the hotel. It was something they did not expect.
Then A BLACKOUT.
In 45 minutes they wake up in police. In front of them there is a police paperwork with their signatures:
admitting of jumping on someones car hood, damaging that car and resisting arrest.
They got booked for a night. Separately. many interesting things happen that night including a visit from SBU- ukrainian KGB, bargaining about how much it will cost them to go.
In the morning my friend payed $3000 and they left.
SOME AEROSOL OR GAS WAS USED ON THEM IN THE CAR
PEOPLE DON’T GO TO RUSSIA OR UKRAINE OR ANY SOVIET PLACE IN EASTERN EUROPE AND MAKE SURE IF THEY COME HERE: AVOID THEM
THE BEST WOULD BE TO THROW ALL SOVIET DIPLOMATS OUT
NO TRADE NO DIPLOMATIC RECOGNITION FOR BASTARDS
Jul 28, 2008 - 11:44 am 16. steve:Kabud,
There is no Hilton Hotel in Kyiv. It won’t be built until the end of 2009.
Nice try, though.
Jul 28, 2008 - 1:30 pm 17. kabud:who cares about the name of the hotel?
there are many stories of poisoning of different people under different circumstances
u steve are a fake and your `tries` will lead you to a very sad ending
Jul 28, 2008 - 4:13 pm 18. General Khlynov:Candide – actually, why don’t you prove first Berezovsky didn’t do it – silly russophobe clone.
Jul 28, 2008 - 5:44 pm 19. kabud:General Khlynov:
what do u mean PROVE?
if u mean proved in a court of law: british finished their part of investigation and as you know they named main suspects
berezovsky is not among them
Jul 28, 2008 - 8:01 pm 20. steve:Kabud,
Your story reeks of horse manure. Other than the non-existant hotel, which other points of the story did you make up?
I live in Kyiv and have yet to hear a story similar to the tale which allegedly occurred with your friend.
Jul 30, 2008 - 2:19 am 21. kabud:steve:
if u live in kyiv and read news papers you should read what happened to a witness in Yushenko poisoning investigation not long ago:
he died unexpectedly at the police station
he was a critical witness
And my lawyer friend DID get in trouble no matter was it hilton or shmilton
but i think u are a kgb fraud
Jul 30, 2008 - 11:50 am 22. steve:Kabud,
Yes, I’m well aware of that case – so? What has that to do with whether tourists come to Kyiv, or whether tourists from Kyiv go to the USA? Sweet F.A.
You are warning people away from visiting Kyiv and all of Eastern Europe and, what’s more, telling others that visitors from those countries should be avoided at all costs. To say that’s paranoid is an understatement.
As for your certainty that I work for the KGB, that goes into the same paranoic category.
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:18 am 23. kabud:kyiv is not safe
my friends report stories like i mentioned, it is true. Thats the point.
By the way just before it happened to lawyer i was in a contact with then interior minister mr. S.
I had to pull strings because ANOTHER friend was kidnapped for protesting Tender mafia.
Actually my plan worked and Gladchuk was immediately released.
IT IS NOT SAFE. CRIME LEVEL IS HIGH FOREIGNERS ARE A TARGET FOR EXTRACTION
AIDS REACHED AFRICAN PROPORTIONS
TUBERCULOSIS AS WELL REACHED ASTRONOMICAL PROPORTIONS
ESPECIALLY IN KYIV, ODESSA, DONBAS
You may be just a non-realizing “useful idiot”- who foolishly support their agenda
Jul 31, 2008 - 10:21 am