July 18
The hunger-striking Heroes face a stalemate. The authorities contemptuously ignore all their suggestions.
“What's the point?” I ask Svetlana Gannushkina in bewilderment. We are talking shortly before a meeting, attended by Putin, of the improbably named Presidential Commission for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, of which Svetlana is a member. “Why can't they just listen? Why do they always insist on doing everything in the worst possible manner? Why do they force one stalemate after another?”
“Why? Because they want to create a country it is impossible to live in,” Svetlana replies sadly. She is the only member of the human rights commission brave enough to agree to hand Putin the Heroes’ appeal. Perhaps the barin is a good man after all.
This afternoon a jury at the Moscow City Court acquits Vyacheslav Ivankov, also known as Yaponchik, of shooting dead two Turkish citizens in a Moscow restaurant in 1992. All the television stations lead with this, with live link-ups to the court. They also report that Mr. Ivankov is intending to write a book. The hunger strike doesn't get a mention, and the trial of the National Bolsheviks gets just a couple of words here and there. We hear nothing of what they might be planning to do if they were to get out of prison.
How can we go on living such a lie? We pretend that justice has been done in the case of Yaponchik, we rejoice that justice was not done in the case of Khodorkovsky We applaud both these just outcomes. This is not your enigmatic Russian soul; this is the long-standing tradition of living a lie about which Solzhenitsyn wrote long ago, mixed with a lazy refusal to take your backside off your chair in a warm kitchen until they take the warm kitchen away from you. At that point you might join a revolution, but not before.
July 19
The fourteenth day of the hunger strike. Surkov, Putin's chief ideologist, calls them blackmailers: “We will not allow anyone to twist our arms.”
Actually, what has Surkov to do with anything? Why should it depend on this political manipulator, who has to his credit only the virtual achievements of United Russia and the bloody Chechenization of Chechnya—the same Surkov who dares to think this makes him a political heavyweight—why should it depend on him whether 204 Heroes of the country get a hearing or not?
*
In the course of the hunger strike, they have written many letters, sending them by fax, e-mail, and even by hand to the offices of important persons. They have given many interviews mentioning these letters, although few were ever broadcast.
What this episode has demonstrated is that many of our most prominent figures, leaders, and deputy leaders of parties inside the Duma and out, of movements and alliances, and even the leader of the Soviet of the Federation, Sergey Mironov himself, who, according to the Constitution, is the third most powerful man in the country, seem to sympathize with the hunger strikers, their demands, their feelings, their desire to serve the country. They do so, however, only in private. Publicly, for the television cameras and information agencies, for the president, they stand united in opposition to it. They voted in favor of the humiliating amendments that sparked this whole confrontation, one that shows no signs of concluding in dialogue.
Why are the independently minded of our political establishment so two-faced? That is the question. Is it not a matter of straightforward blackmail by the administration: if you do not say what we require you to, we will take away your perks?
Nobody wants to go without their perks nowadays. Our political “elite” is profoundly infected with cowardice and scared stiff of losing its power. Not of losing the respect of the people, just its seat. They have no more to them than that.
*
A terrorist act in the Chechen village of Znamenskoye. A vehicle was seen at the central crossroads, in the front passenger seat of which was a dead body. The militia were called, but, when they approached the vehicle, it was blown up, killing fourteen of them. A child was also killed, and many, including young boys, were injured.
It turned out that in the early evening of July 13 Alexey Semenenko, twenty-three, was abducted from the hill village of Novoshchedrinskaya. The kidnapping took place in front of his younger sisters. In recent months, Alexey and his young wife had been saving up to get out of Chechnya. His relatives had lived in Novoshchedrinskaya for a hundred years and it was a large, united, hardworking family, but what could they do? The more firmly Kadyrov becomes ensconced, the greater the lawlessness and the more remote the hope that life will come right. That was what Alexey had decided.
He decided to take seasonal employment reaping the harvest, which can bring in good money in a short time. Alexey returned home from the fields on July 13 to find four armed men in combat fatigues waiting for him. They were Chechens and had arrived in two silver UAZ off-road vehicles. Nearly everyone in Novoshchedrinskaya is certain these were Kadyrov's troops. Anyone living in Chechnya can distinguish Kadyrov's from Yamadaev's troops, the OMON from Baisarov's or Kokiev's troops (all of them paramilitaries of the “Chechen Federal Security Units,” as they are called) by the vehicles they drive and the weapons they favor. The paramilitaries talked to Alexey, then bundled him into one of the vehicles and drove off. The neighbors memorized the number plates, but they turned out to be false.
The following morning, the family notified the authorities of the abduction, and Chechen local militiamen who had known Alexey from childhood spent two days looking for him in all the security subdivisions. They didn't find him. At this point the local procurator's office scented danger and reverted to its usual cataleptic state.
On July 19, the first person to approach the vehicle was a nearby militiaman. He opened the door and saw a corpse in the passenger seat, which, judging by the smell and state of decomposition, had been dead for a considerable time. He also noticed that the body had bullet wounds to the face.
He went to call reinforcements, and thereby saved his own life. When a crowd of his colleagues arrived to inspect the vehicle, it was blown up. The button was pressed by someone who could see it and intended to kill as many militiamen as possible. After the explosion, Sergey Abramov, the Moscow-appointed Chechen prime minister, made some dark remarks about Basaev and Umarov, but did not himself go near the scene. A state of mourning was declared.
The Semenenko family, meanwhile, had been continuing to scour Chechnya for Alexey. Two days later they were visited at home and asked to go to Mozdok in neighboring North Ossetia to identify a body. All murder victims are taken to the forensic medical center there, as Chechnya does not have one of its own.
Tatyana Semenenko, Alexey's mother, still not suspecting any link with the bomb in Znamenskoye, found the victims of the explosion laid out in the mortuary refrigerators, except for one bag of remains that had been dumped on the floor in a puddle of water.
In this bag, which was being treated as if it contained the body of a terrorist, she found the remains of her son. She was able to identify him only from a tattooed letter “L” on his arm. There was no face to speak of. The family subsequently buried this arm and the head. The militiaman who had first approached the vehicle, and seen Alexey's body while it was still in one piece, said it had been dressed in combat fatigues. His kidnappers had evidently dressed him this way before shoving him in the mined vehicle.
That is the end of the story, The Semenenkos have nowhere to turn. There was no public reaction. Nobody—not Kadyrov, Alkhanov, or Kozak— bothered to offer their condolences to the family. Nobody offered to compensate them for the death of their son. Nobody tried to pay them just to keep quiet. A criminal case in respect of the abduction of Alexey Semenenko was opened and closed, but they didn't even bother to open a criminal case in respect of his murder. Because he killed militiamen, Semenenko is officially classified as a terrorist. Admittedly, he was dead at the time of committing this crime.
There are really only two possibilities as to what happened. If those who kidnapped Alexey were indeed Kadyrov's troops, as everybody in the village believes, then the Ka
dyrov gunmen may themselves have staged this terrorist act, knowing that for as long as there is terrorism, paramilitaries are in work. If peace were to return, they would all be thrown straight in prison.
The second possibility is that the paramilitaries sold Alexey's body to the fighters, Basaev's or others. This is also plausible, because it has long been known that the dividing line between Kadyrov's troops and Basaev's is increasingly permeable, despite Kadyrov Junior's endless idiotic talk of how he dreams of shooting Basaev. Those preferred by Putin's regime are the most sly, cynical, and criminal elements in the land.
Who now in Chechnya is protesting about the saga of Alexey Semenenko? Nobody. His family are terrified of Kadyrov's paramilitaries because his two younger sisters saw the faces of the abductors. It is more prudent to forget their son than to risk making waves. These are the effects of Putin's war, on the way people think in Chechnya, and it is a way of thinking that is rapidly spreading to the rest of Russia. You find a similar blind panic gripping the families of those abducted throughout the North Caucasus, in all those towns and villages where Chechnya-style mass “cleansings” have been taking place.
The more violent the rampaging of the security agencies, the higher Putin's approval rating, for the simple reason that very few people want to risk life and limb by opposing him.
Such is daily life in Russia today. Crimes, a lack of honest investigation, and even a lack of any attempt at it. The result is the endless replication of tragedies and terrorism.
For the first time in recent years, my newspaper refused to print the story about Alexey Semenenko. Novaya Gazeta wants to stay out of trouble, so it is best not to give Ramzan Kadyrov too much grief, since he is in favor with the president.
July 20
Today Putin received human rights campaigners and members of his Presidential Commission on Human Rights in the Kremlin. Svetlana Gannushkina was not allowed to speak, but handed Putin the letter from the hunger-striking Heroes. The matter was also raised directly by Alexander Auzan, another activist present. Putin was not pleased. He stated, “Everything has settled down there now. I have had a report.” Auzan was insistent, however, and repeated what he thought the president ought to be told on the subject. Ella Pamfilova, the chairwoman, became impatient and demanded that no further time be spent on the topic. The argument came to an end and Putin continued to regard the Heroes as part of the enemy opposition.
The discussion then moved on to ecological matters. The human rights campaigners missed their one opportunity to speak openly to him. Many of them are too afraid they might not be invited back.
According to Svyatoslav Zabelin, cochairman of the Socio-Ecological Alliance,
Putin raised three issues: first, how best to inform citizens about reforms being implemented; second, how the Social Chamber could be used as a channel to make public opinion more influential; third, how the voluntary sector in Russia could be developed with less reliance on Western resources.
On the second question, about the Social Chamber, the campaigners maintained a collective silence. On the third, Putin unexpectedly announced that he was prepared personally to oblige the government to find ways of empowering voluntary associations by channeling state and private sector resources. He seemed to me to be genuinely concerned that this support should not be seen as an attempt to bribe civil society and public associations. He was being very practical.
On the subject of ecology, I told Putin: “We need public ecological accountability, and public ecological audits. We have neither of these things at present. As a result, there are quite extraordinary things going on in the state sector. In 2002 the public sector had four ecological inspectors per district, but in 2005 there are four districts per inspector. How can we hope to avoid violation of ecological guidelines without public participation?
“We also find extraordinary liberties being taken with ecological audit. Here the problem is that businesses are required by law to take reasonable steps to ensure that industrial projects are discussed with the public, so that the interests of society and the overall interests of the state are properly considered. This is simply not happening. Most worryingly, the worst offenders are those companies in which the state has the largest financial stake.
“One well-known company involved with the pipeline from East Siberia to the Pacific is said to be behaving in a thoroughly devious manner. In order to comply with the requirement for a public ecological audit, it has set up a ‘public’ association of its own and registered it in Moscow. This body has made decisions on what should be done for people living on the coast, what should be done for people in Irkutsk, what should be done for the Buryats, and where it would be in their best interests for the pipeline to pass. When a project of this kind is being built in Russia, there are international repercussions. Their behavior is now common knowledge, there is a lot of fuss, and that can only be to our disadvantage. These companies, in which the state has a substantial presence, need to be told politely that this kind of conduct is just not acceptable.
“We have a system for assessing ecological costs. Eighty-five percent of the private companies we approached were prepared to give us, the public, access to their own ecological accounts: not a single state enterprise would do so.”
Putin replied, “I would like you to understand the logic of the situation in which state organizations find themselves in respect of ecological audit. You have just mentioned one of our most vital projects, comparable in importance with the Baikal-Amur Highway, which took decades to build. I hope this will not be such a mega-project, but its value to the state might eventually be much greater than the BAH itself, which is already struggling to cope with the demands on it. This pipeline gives us an outlet for our energy resources to the markets of the rapidly developing countries of the Asia-Pacific region, to the Chinese market where we are both buyer and seller, to South Asia, Japan, and so forth.
“Let me draw your attention to the fact that our country lost five major seaports in the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In effect, we became dependent on the countries through which our energy resources have to pass, and they abuse their geopolitical situation. We come up against this all the time. It is extremely important for Russia to have a direct outlet to other markets. When we were talking about a pipeline from East Siberia directly to Datsin, in China, along the southern end of Lake Baikal, we decided to diverge from that route after taking account of the opinions of ecological associations, ecologists, and inspectors. The cost went up by hundreds of millions of dollars. It was decided to skirt the northern shore of Lake Baikal and go farther to the east.
“These ecological audits should not be allowed to hold back the development of the country and the economy. I do not for a moment question what you have just said. No doubt we need to look very closely at the situation, but one of the ways of attacking us is invariably by raising ecological issues. When we started building a port adjacent to Finland, our partners in the neighboring countries (and I have this from reliable sources) put money into ecological associations purely in order to torpedo the project, because it would create competition for them in the Baltic. Our partners, including those from Finland, came and inspected ten times, but in the end were unable to find anything to object to. Now the ‘ecological problems’ have moved to the Danish Straits, and there is some objection to the vessels we are using. These are not even Russian vessels, they are leased from international companies. In the Turkish Straits, the Bosporus, there are ‘ecological problems’ too.
“Why do I mention this? I mention it because, of course, we need more contact and trust if we are to interact properly with national ecological associations working in the interests of our country, and not as agents whom our competitors can use to obstruct the development of our economy. This is precisely why I said that when this kind of ecological work is financed from abroad, it raises suspicions and ends up compromising all sorts of voluntary associations. That is what I am talking about. We need ass
ociations that help to resolve our own problems, so that major decisions can be taken optimally. For that, of course, we need them to have more contact with state organizations too.”
ZABELIN: “Certainly, the most important thing is establishing contact, and our national interests. As far as that great pipeline is concerned, the main thing is that it should be built. No reputable ecological association is saying it is not needed. We are talking about specific issues of routing and where the terminal should be located. The current choice, purely from the viewpoint of minimizing ecological damage, is the very worst option. There are plenty of alternatives, and I am prepared simply to hand over to you the analysis of those scientists in the Far East who say there are other options that are more beneficial economically, socially, and ecologically. We are partners in this, just as in respect of public ecological monitoring. As regards ecological audits, people just need to obey the law. We have an excellent law on ecological auditing, dating from 1995. It needs to be observed.”
PUTIN:“I would like to return to this in the future. I think it would be right to establish a more sensitive mechanism for interacting with our national ecological associations, because we cannot afford to make mistakes, and at the same time we cannot allow this issue to be used, as I have said, as a lever by our competitors. Just look at what is happening in the Caspian: Lukoil had only to erect an oil rig there to be told the ecology meant they couldn't. None of the other companies there have technologies as clean as ours. It is more expensive, but we have taken that on board. The same thing is going on now in the Baltic Sea.”
July 21
In Astrakhan, as throughout the country, the authorities are waging a war on the people for money and property. There the main weapon is arson. It is a war in which people die, looters sift the ruins, and ordinary people become homeless refugees.
A Russian Diary Page 34
