For four long days in November, Andrei Nekrasov stayed at the bedside of dying Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, watching helplessly as his friend Sacha's condition steadily and implacably deteriorated. All the while, Nekrasov had to face the massive army of media present at the University College Hospital in London.
On last Thursday, though, after Litvinenko's death, Nekrasov was rushing through jam-packed Terminal 1 at London's Heathrow Airport. Two British Airways Boeing 767s stood outside on the tarmac. London police had ordered them taken out of service after traces of the same radioactive metal that killed Litvinenko, polonium 210, had been detected in the two aircraft. The airline set up a hotline in an effort to contact more than 30,000 people throughout Europe who been passengers on either of the two aircraft since Oct. 25 and may have been exposed to radiation.
Although fear of this ominous threat had already spread far beyond London, film director Nekrasov, on his way to an appointment in Milan, was unafraid. Given the magnitude of the dramatic events he had witnessed, the thought that he himself could have been exposed to radiation at Litvinenko's deathbed seemed to him ridiculous. Officials in London had offered to test him for possible exposure, but Nekrasov turned them down. He was in Ukraine after the Chernobyl accident where he was "of course exposed," he says, matter-of-factly. "What I could have gotten from Alexander is minimal."
Nekrasov first met Litvinenko in 2002 when he was filming a documentary called "Disbelief." The two men spent entire nights talking and eventually became friends. They also attended a memorial service for murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Westminster Abbey together. As they were leaving the church after the service, Litvinenko said: "It's quite clear that they are working down a list of targets. The state has become a serial killer." But unlike his dead friend, who, until his last breath, had accused the Russian president directly of having ordered the murder, Nekrasov finds it difficult to believe that Vladimir Putin was directly responsible for ordering the poisoning. Instead, said Nekrasov, Putin is unable to control certain elements among his allies, "people who sit in their dachas and saunas, bragging that they can find and destroy anyone -- anywhere in the world -- who displeases them."
The list
In other words, Litvinenko wasn't the only one. Politkovskaya may also have been on this suspected list. Journalist Jan Travinsky, shot to death in the Siberian city of Irkutsk in 2004, is another possibility. And what about the former Chechen head of security Movladi Baisarov, who, after being arrested, was shot in Moscow in broad daylight on Nov. 18? And Andrey Kozlov, the deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank, who fell victim to assassins on Sept. 13? Was a powerful clique behind all those murders?
The ongoing series of murders -- a series which may have found its most recent victim on Monday with the murder of Alexander Samoilenko, the general director of the gas company Itera-Samara -- has many suspecting that doing away with political opponents may once again be a favored strategy inside the Kremlin. Former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was famous for it -- and now, it seems as though the baton has been passed, with dissidents in President Vladimir Putin's Russia once again having to fear for their lives. Even former political leaders may not be safe -- doctors have been unable to diagnose a mysterious illness which befell ex-premier Yegor Gaidar in Ireland last week. Poisoning is a leading candidate.
The series of gruesome attacks in recent years goes on and on -- and the majority of them have never been solved. As a pro-Western presidential candidate in 2004, Viktor Yushchenko barely survived a poison attack during his campaign against the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych. In July 2003, journalist and human rights activist Yuri Shchekochikin died of something his doctors defined as an "allergic reaction." Many in Russia think they know who is responsible for these and other, similar murders -- and their fingers generally point to Moscow. Putin, for his part, insists that such accusations are completely unfounded. At the European Union summit meeting in Helsinki in late November, the Russian president pointed out drolly that other countries also have their share of unsolved murders. Still, his apparent lack of interest in the Politkovskaya murder -- and the conspiracy theories flourishing as a result -- is doing him no favors in the global court of public opinion. That and the fact that at least 13 Russian journalists have lost their lives under peculiar circumstances since 2000. An official investigation, it seems, might not be such a bad idea.
The Litvinenko affair is only the most recent evoking uncomfortable memories of the Cold War -- casting a sinister light on post-Soviet Russia. It has also raised eyebrows among Russia's allies abroad.
"Very, very serious matter"
"It is obviously a very, very serious matter indeed," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in Copenhagen while en route to the NATO summit in Riga, Latvia. "We are determined to find out what happened and who is responsible," he added before assuring that "no diplomatic or political barrier" would stand in the way of the investigation.
Peter Hain, Blair's Northern Ireland secretary, was even more direct. "The promise that President Putin brought to Russia when he came to power has been clouded by what has happened since, including some extremely murky murders," Hain said, in what many have interpreted as an insinuation of Kremlin involvement.
Putin himself has seemed oddly indifferent to the international outcry and accusations against his person and government, almost as if he is not taking them seriously. He shows no sign of concern for his country's reputation, let alone compassion for the murder victims. Indeed, his pokerfaced demeanor in recent days has been much more reminiscent of a cold-hearted, former KGB colonel then a head of state.
His only reaction to the murder of journalist Politkovskaya was to critique her work as being "extremely insignificant." On the Litvinenko case, Sergei Ivanov, a spokesman for the Russian foreign intelligence service, commented that the man was "not the kind of person for whose sake we would spoil bilateral relations (with Great Britain)."
When pressed for a personal reaction by journalists at the EU-Russia summit, Putin called the death a "tragedy" and expressed his sparsely worded condolences for the family. But, in the same breath, he also questioned the authenticity of Litvinenko's deathbed letter and warned the British authorities not to
"fuel groundless political scandals." Instead of appointing a high-profile commission to investigate the ongoing series of murders, Putin merely promised to "support the British, if possible."
What is going on here? When Putin came to power at the very end of 1999, Europe saw him and Russia as a partner and ally. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, his country made giant steps toward the West through various treaties and agreements, and by becoming Europe's single most important energy supplier. Not only that, but the Russian economy finally regained its strength and the government seemed to have at least the rudiments of a free and open democracy. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder even famously called him a "flawless democrat." Nowadays, it looks more than ever that the West was merely being naďve.
Memories of gulags
Still, the West needs Russia. The vast country is more than just an energy superpower, the world's second-largest petroleum producer and the country with far and away the planet's largest natural gas reserves. It has since become a political heavyweight. If any power can prevent Iran from going nuclear and convince Syria to help bring peace to the Middle East, that power is Russia. Moscow's help is likewise indispensable when it comes to controlling the highly dangerous North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and his weapons arsenal.
The ailing United States now needs Russia more than it could ever have wanted. "Whatever the final outcome of the cases, the deaths of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya have chilled Russia's already frosty civil society, and revived memories most Russians would prefer to forget," wrote US news magazine Time in late November.
The memories Time refers to are those of gulags, and of the days when fear was a part of everyday life. They are memories of the Soviet days when dissidents -- aside from a handful of heroes like Andrey Sakharov and Natan Sharansky, who risked their lives to oppose the state -- only dared express their views in the absolute privacy of their kitchens and only to those they truly trusted.
Anyone who visits Moscow today sees a gleaming, cosmopolitan city that seems to differ from Paris, London or New York in only one respect: the higher hotel and restaurant prices. Every major global corporation has an office in the Russian capital, and leading fashion houses Gucci, Hermčs and Dior sell more at the city's "Millionaires' Trade Show" than in any other city on earth. Lavish wealth is as much in evidence as the rise of a new middle class which, at least in the capital, can afford its growing devotion to all things Western, from McDonald's to Microsoft.
Soviet-style press censorship no longer exists. Russian television viewers can watch any channel they want, including CNN, BBC and Deutsche Welle. Fifteen years after the Soviet Union faded into history, Russia is transformed. The country has become vastly wealthier, repays its debts early and, thanks to its oil and natural gas bonanza, now has huge foreign currency reserves (currently estimated at more than $272 billion). And it is undoubtedly far more cosmopolitan than the Soviet Union ever was.
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