Is This the Same Man?
Reading the recent news coming out of Russia, I cannot help but be reminded of this exchange between Tom Hagen (Robert Duval) and Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in The Godfather II:
Tom: Now Roth and the Rosatos are on the run. Are they worth it? And are we strong? Is it worth it? I mean you've won...you want to wipe everybody out?
Michael: I don't feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies, that's all.
It really does seem like this conversation took place in the Kremlin several months ago, with "enemies" of the Russian government seemingly being taken out one-by-one, Mafia-style, all over the world . The first major victim was Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter who had been extremely critical of the Russian governments actions in general and in Chechnya in particular. She was found shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow on October 7, 2006. The next domino to fall was Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB spy who was poisoned by Polonium-210 shortly after having suggested that President Putin had personally ordered her assassination. We have already reported on this remarkable story.
In the week following our original story, several more notable developments have taken place. On March 3, Paul Joyal, an expert in Russian intelligence who had participated in a major recent Dateline NBC piece on the Litvinenko affair, was shot twice and critically injured in the course of an "apparent robbery." In his interview with Dateline, Joyal, who was an acquaintance of Litvinenko's, accused the Russian government of trying to systematically wipe out its critics. His exact statement was:
A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you in the most horrible way possible,"
While the police have so far been mum on what exactly happened to Joyal, rumors and suspicions are floating everywhere. One particularly disturbing fact about this "robbery" is that according to Joyal's wife, the perpetrators did not take Joyal's wallet, briefcase or any of his other belongings. Fortunately, Joyal seems to have been very, very lucky and should recover. One is somewhat tempted to argue that the fact that he is still breathing is evidence that he was not a victim of the Kremlin. The Russians are professionals and they seem to finish the job. This case is still ongoing and we will keep you posted.
One day earlier, on March 2, Ivan Safronov, a reporter for Kommersant (a Russian business daily somewhat equivalent to the Wall Street Journal or The Financial Times) took a dive out of the window of his Moscow apartment. At the time of his death, Safronov had been working on a huge story about Russian weapon sales to Syria and Iran, which were being made via a Belorussian intermediary. While the American media coverage of this story was limited to a blurb on all the major news sources, the journalists at Kommersant, naturally perturbed at the murder of one of their friends and colleagues and probably fearing for their own lives, have been doing some excellent reporting on this story. An in-depth report on his last few days alive, as well as on the circumstances surrounding his death, can be found here. Another Kommersant story about the Belorussians' frantic denial in any involvement in the weapon scheme, can be found here. Finally, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontiers) conducted a fascinating interview with the deputy editor of Kommersant. As always, the Russian government is denying any involvement and an investigation of Safronov's death is being carried out. The official presumed cause of death is "forcible suicide," which strikes one more like a Soviet-era euphemism than anything else.
Finally, there is the case of the family poisoning in Moscow, with Marina Kovalevsky, 42, and her daughter Yanna, 26, both Americans of Russian origin curently residing in L.A., being poisoned by Thallium, a colorless, odorless and tasteless metal. They are both recovering but the suspicious nature of their illness, as well as the fact that they are both Americans, has attracted a lot of attention to this case. While it is very tempting to attribute their poisoning to some nefarious sources in the FSB, who has any real interest in killing some random women from L.A., except maybe their husbands and/or boyfriends?