Limonov vs. Putin

by Edward Limonov

  Actually, a part of the FSB old-timers kept their posts. The general-colonel Valentin Sobolev kept his post as the FSB deputy director. Just as Valery Pechenkin, general colonel, and head of the Counterintelligence Department.

  It is interesting that Putin’s post, head of the Central Department of Control, was later occupied by a person from the FSB – Nikolay Patrushev, Putin’s close friend. When Putin went ahead, Patrushev took the post of FSB director.

  On the post of FSB director Putin hushed up a big scandal and contributed to the development of another big scandal. This was the “Litvinenko case” and the “Prosecutor General Skuratov case”. I remind what the “Litvinenko case” was about: on November 17th 1998 there was a press conference, on which a group of FB officers (among them Trepashkin, recently released from prison and Litvinenko) affirmed that the management of the FSB counterintelligence ordered them to kill the businessman Boris Berezovsky. The officers present on the conference were A. Litvinenko, Shebalin, A. Ponkin, G. Sheglov, Latishenok (two lieutenant colonels, one colonel, major and a senior lieutenant). There was also an ex KGB investigator, an employee of the tax police M. Trepashkin. Litvinenko testifies in his book “Lubyanka’s criminal organization”: “Our goal was to address the parliament, the president and the public and tell them what is happening in the FSB and that with such special services it is inevitable that we will roll back to a totalitarian society… But on the following day I read in the newspapers that this is a provocation from Berezovsky…”

  The order to kill Berezovsky was given to Litvinenko on December 27th 1997 by A. P. Kapishnikov, deputy director of the FSB Department of organized crime, 1st rank captain, on an operative meeting in the presence of other people. On April 15th 1998 Berezovsky addressed the deputy manager of Yeltsin’s administration E. V. Savostyanov, demanding him to investigate the case. On October 2nd the central military prosecutors’ office replied to Berezovsky (document number 29/00/0008-98): “It was established that in 1997-1998 the management and the employees of the indicated Department did not plan or execute any illegal actions against you … concerning A. P. Kamishnikov’s thoughtless remarks in your address made on December 27th in the presence of the subordinates Litvinenko, Shebalin, Ponkin and Latishenko, these remarks discredit him as a leader, however this does not indicate the intention to organize a murder”. This is what the prosecutor’s office writes about a man who said to Litvinenko: “Since you know Berezovsky you will be the one to get rid of him”.

  This story began when N. D. Kovalev was the director. When Putin became the director Litvinenko went to see the new director on Berezovsky’s advice. “Putin agreed with everything I said, he kept the list (a corruption list brought by Litvinenko), he took my notice about the Uzbek criminal organization. He asked for my home telephone number. He promised to call me, but didn’t do it. Later, after reading the materials of my criminal case I realized that right after our meeting Putin ordered to continue spying on me,” - testifies A. Litvinenko in his book “Lubyanka’s criminal organization”, page 107. On the day following Putin’s appointment, says Litvinenko, the general colonel A. V. Trofimov, deputy director of the FSB, “called me and said: “Tell Berezovsky: did they lose their minds in the Kremlin?! Why did they appoint him? Don’t they understand what is happening in Saint Petersburg? These are bandits. ” Later Litvinenko spent eight months of detention in Lubyanka and finally escaped to London.

  In spring 1999 took place one of the biggest scandals in modern Russia: “Suratov’s case”. The central channels aired a videotape showing “a man looking like the Prosecutor General” in a bed with two prostitutes. On April 7th 1999 Putin spoke on television and said that a preliminary evaluation of FSB and police experts has confirmed the authenticity of the videotape, while in the press (Kommersant 4. 8. 99) he spoke in favor of Skuratov’s voluntary resignation. He also said that the videotaped “activity” was paid by “individuals presently under criminal charges” and declared that it was necessary to reunite the materials of both criminal cases – article 285 of the Criminal Code (“Abuse of official functions”) regarding Skuratov and article 137 (“Infringement on private life”) regarding the individuals who have illegally spied on the Prosecutor General. One would have thought that this is a Solomon’s decision from a wise and just FSB director. However if one is to remember that president Yeltsin wanted to obtain the dismissal of Prosecutor General Skuratov, then Skuratov’s case looks differently, like the “dirty” elimination of a big functionary who had fallen out of favor. Therefore it is not surprising that the individuals who have made the scandalous videotape remained undiscovered and that the identity of the “man looking like the Prosecutor General” was not legally confirmed as Skuratov’s. But the videotape had for result that Skuratov was discharged from his functions. The Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, the terrible weapon of the power and of Putin in particular, has now become odious.

  Thus, in Lubyanka Putin’s name is linked with the downsizing hated by the agents, with two enormous “dirty” scandals (one of them discrediting the FSB), but also with a positive change. In fact Putin managed to obtain that the officers from Lubyanka receive their paychecks on time. A real manager! Before paychecks to Lubyanka were sent irregularly, like to the rest of the country. “I must say that anywhere Putin worked, his employees started to receive their paychecks regularly,” notes Alexey Mukhin from the Center of political information. Well, he is the manager.

  During his service as FSB director, lasting one year and fifteen days, Putin was continuously appointed to all sorts of other posts: he was joined to the commission on the optimization of the State defense order and included in the international fund of protection against discrimination. He was even the secretary of the RF Security Council. There is no information available as to what he had achieved on these posts or did he achieve anything at all.

  As Putin started to occupy bigger posts in the hierarchy of the RF functionaries, obviously he made himself a lot of enemies among the big functionaries or even entire clans of functionaries competing with him. In spring 1999, right after Putin’s appointment as the secretary of the RF Security Council, rumors appeared in the press that there is a videotape showing Putin, similar to Skuratov’s. However nothing concrete was presented. Also at that time appeared information that the Stasi archives still keep compromising information about Putin. (Many FSB officers were of the opinion that this blow was made from Primakov’s side, since Putin was one of the few in the special services, on whom Primakov did not have an influence.) In April 1999 Moskovsky Komsomoletz published the information that Putin was discharged from the post of FSB director. Nezavisimaya Gazeta of 30th March 1999 published a testimony of a CIA officer in Brussels (he was serving in NATO’s headquarters) that the American special services tried to gather a compromising file on Putin but supposedly they did not succeed. According to the newspaper that testimony proves the contrary – that such a file does exist.

  In issue 31 of 1999 the Versia newspaper published a “Reference about V. V. Putin”. The origin of the reference is unknown. In the reference Putin is characterized very negatively.

  In 1999, right after Putin became prime minister (after august 16th 1999) Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service checked a certain SPAG company headed by the lawyer Rudolph Ritter. I will explain in the next chapter what is the link between Putin and SPAG, now I will only decipher the company’s full name: Sankt Peterburg Immobilien und Beteilgungen Aktiengesellshaft, i.e. Saint Petersburg’s real estate.

  In these years Edward Limonov was writing hundreds of letters to the regions, articles in the Limonka, painstakingly creating National-Bolshevik Party’s organizations in the regions. In April 1998 the Party split. Alexander Dugin left with twelve supporters. For some time he tried to fight for the NBP brand, and then he abandoned the fight. As a result of Dugin’s departure the Party shifted to the left. In these years I was meeting a lot of people with the goal of party building. On October 1st and
2nd these efforts were rewarded with the First All-Russian Congress of the National-Bolshevik Party. It took place in the Almaz Movie Theater near the Shabolovka subway station. About 600 delegates from 47 RF regions were present on the Congress. After the Congress we sent documents to the Justice Ministry for our registration as the National-Bolshevik Party. Just before November 7th the Justice Ministry refused to register us. Mr. Krashennikov, a puffy blond looking like a plumper Nicolas II, has put his hand to that decision. At that time he was a member of the Union of Rightist Forces, later conjectural considerations forced him to join United Russia, the party in power. On November 14th we have called a special congress in Saint Petersburg in order to modify the official documents (this is what the Justice Ministry formally required from us, although the reasons for the refusal were different – fear of the young growing Party uncontrolled by the Kremlin) and we have modified them according to the requirements. Why were we in such a hurry? The State Duma has adopted a law, according to which only those political parties could be allowed to run for the elections that have been registered as all-Russian a year before the elections. And the elections were supposed to be held in December 1999. The ministry headed by Krashennikov refused to register the NBP the second time as well. Then we sued the Ministry but the Taganski Court took its side.

  The position of the Justice ministry was justified in an original way by an old alcoholic functionary, gray-headed and red-faced: “They are over five thousand, they are all young, we don’t know what to expect from them”. Already there State violence was used against us. The lies of the official people who have blocked the young Party’s access to the elector was obvious.

  Already in 1999 the Party switched to direct actions. Since we were not given access to the elector and into State Duma’s political space we started to make political space for ourselves wherever we wanted. In February and March 1999 the NBP confronted Nikita Mikhalkov. We learned that this apology for a nationalist has campaigned for the reelection of president Nazarbaev in Kazakhstan in January 1999. This is why the NBP published the leaflet “A butcher’s friend”, in which all Nazarbaev’s crimes were listed and our leaflet was scattered on a presentation of a Mikhalkov’s movie. Our activists were then beaten by the police and almost on the same day somebody tried to throw a box of bottles with an explosive mix into our headquarters. A police and FSB team burst into the headquarters twenty minutes later and although they did not find anything illegal (the guys had already transported the box to the local police station), the headquarters were sealed. Actually two days later we obtained its reopening. And in March the nazbols Bakhur and Gorshkov took vengeance on Mikhalkov for the raid. On Mikhalkov’s master-course in the Kino House they threw eggs at the phony nationalist. For which they were beaten and thrown in jail. This is how gradually the relationship of the authorities and the National-Bolshevik Party were worsening by the fault of the power.

  THE PREMIER-HEIR TO THE THRONE

  I knew that there was a book by Korzhakov called “Boris Yeltsin: from dusk till dawn”, but I have not read it until lately. Only recently I fell upon it, living in a secret apartment, where I was hiding from repressions. The cover and the pictures first shocked me. The cover shows a probably sunbathing Yeltsin with the angry face of a criminal. And the pictures are so revealing that they could serve as evidence against Yeltsin and his people in a trial over them. Meaty, angry, drunken, baggy, looking like tramps and thugs, Yeltsin and the members of his government are odious. Visibly supposing to write an apology of himself, Korzhakov has in fact made an exposing book. Among others exposing himself, a dull-witted, unpleasant, simple half-police, half-FSB officer, and a man of violence, understanding only violence. Korzhakov is in such rapture when he describes the bloody events of October 1993, how glad he is at the proposition of a certain 1st rank captain Zakharov to shoot down the White House from tanks! As for Yeltsin he just appears like a boor, the regular of some foul cheburek-house. These are the kind of people who were governing us in 1991-1999. There is picture that is particularly impressive. There are three persons on it: a visibly frozen Yeltsin in a coat with hands under his armpits and wearing an ugly, shit-colored huge beret pushed on his front. He sits at a table with the rests of loathsome appetizers on it. Beside him sits Chernomirdin in a leather cap, with a beer and on the other side an anonymous alcoholic hiding his face with his hand. The leaders of Russia!

  Maybe it was on such a drunken council that Boris Nikolaevich has decided to leave the country to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. On august 9th 1999 Putin was appointed first vice-premier of the RF government and later, after the resignation of Sergey Stepashkin’s government, he was appointed prime minister. On August 16th Putin was confirmed by the State Duma in his post of chairman of the Russia Federation’s government. It was far from a unanimous decision. 233 votes were given “for”, 84 – “against” and 17 deputies “abstained”. It is useful to remember who voted how, not to reproach the deputies and political parties, but in order to define the historical experience of mistakes. From the Yabloko fraction 18 deputies, including Gregory Alexeevich Yavlinski have voted for the confirmation, 8 Yabloko members have voted against. 52 CPRF deputies (including A. Lukyanov and A. Makashov) have voted against. Gennady Zuyganov did not vote. 32 deputies from the CPRF fraction presided by the State Duma speaker Gennady Seleznev have unfortunately voted for Putin. A part of the deputies of the leftist Popular Power fraction have voted against as well. The other parties have voted almost unanimously for Putin’s confirmation as prime minister.

  It is interesting that in real fact Yeltsin had called Putin his successor on the presidential post back in August 9th and he has resigned only on December 31st. Here is what this monstrous man, Boris Yeltsin, has said in his television speech on august 9th 1999: “Now I decided to name the person who in my opinion is capable of consolidating the society and bearing on the largest political forces, gurantee the progress of reforms in Russia. He will be able to rally around him those who have the mission of renewing the great Russia in the new, XXI century. It is the secretary of the Security Council, FSB director – Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin… I have faith in him. But I want everybody who will come to the voting polls and make his choice in July to have faith in him as well. I think he has enough time for proving himself. ”

  On the same day, August 9th, in a TV interview Putin said that he accepts Yeltsin’s proposition and will run as president. So when they voted on August 16th, a week later, the State Duma deputies already knew that they were confirming a person named Putin, with the biography of V. Putin on the president’s functions. And still have not blocked him. It is interesting how many of those 233 who have voted for him realize today that they have committed a mistake bordering on crime?

  The mass media, at that time still not as subordinated to the Kremlin as today tried to warn society, inform it about the supposed new boss of the Kremlin. In the previous chapter we have already talked about the information that has appeared in the newspapers Versia, Stringer and others. I want to remind that the Versia newspaper, issue 31 1999 has published an article called “Reference about V. V. Putin”, in which he was quite negatively characterized. Let us return here to the scandal with the SPAG Company. After Putin became primer minister, i.e. after August 16th 1999, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has verified the SPAG Company. The company was created in 1992, when V. Putin has visited Frankfurt-on-the-Maine at the head of a delegation from Saint Petersburg’s city hall. There Putin and another delegation member Vladimir Smirnov convinced a group of Frankfurt investors to create the German company SPAG (Saint Petersburg’s real estate etc.) The company started to invest in Saint Petersburg’s real estate through branch Russian-German companies. At the same time four functionaries of Saint Petersburg’s city hall, among them Putin have entered SPAG’s “supervisory board” (as shown by the documents of Germany’s commercial registration chamber). The company was headed by the lawyer Rudolf Ritter. Saint Petersburg�
�s joint-stock company Znamenskaya, whose general director was A. Smirnov, became SPAG’s filial. Saint Petersburg’s city hall received two hundred SPAG actions transferred by Putin to A. Smirnov to manage. And in 1999 the BND has accused R. Ritter of laundering money for Russian criminal organizations as well as for Columbian drug dealers – The Kali cocaine cartel. In May 2000 Ritter was arrested in Liechtenstein and in summer 2001 he was charged with the mentioned accusations. Supposedly Putin formally remained SPAG’s adviser until March 2000. Western newspapers have written in detail about Putin and the SPAG Company. I will refer to the French Le Monde from June 25th 2000, the Italian La Republica from June 13th 2001, and the Newsweek from September 3rd 2001. In the Russian Kommersant information about SPAG appeared on May 16th 2003. By the way Newsweek from September 3rd 2001 affirmed that V. Kumarin-Barsukov, a criminal authority famous in Saint Petersburg was a direction member of the joint stock company Znamenskaya. The journalist Jurgen Roth from the Berliner Zeitung has received materials about SPAG. In 2003 he published the book “Gangsters from the East”. In an interview to the newspaper Sobesednik (2003, issue 33) Jurgen Roth affirmed that he has evidence of Putin’s ties with Russian organized crime – through his “adviser” Smirnov.

  Stringer wrote about Putin’s ties with the criminal world in July 2001, describing the so-called “criminal organization of Tambov” and mentioning the names of Vladimir Kumarin, Ilia Trauber and others. Supposedly it is through Trauber that Putin joined Pavel Borodin’s team – who then was the RF president’s manager. To their honor, even during the first year of Putin’s presidential term the journalists were not afraid to publish compromising materials about him. The Limonka newspaper was not afraid of the power then or today, this is why we were publishing risky materials about Putin in 1999 and in 2000. I will not cite Limonka; people will say that I cite myself as evidence. I will only talk about the article “Shoulder to shoulder” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 2002, March 13th), where the NG in its turn refers to publications in Perm’s newspapers Vechernyaya Perm and Rossiiskaya Gazeta and publishes photos where Putin is seen next to a certain Vladimir Plotnikov, a Perm businessman and the vice-president of Russia’s Judo Federation, known as “the Carpenter” and “the Director” in the region’s criminal world.