FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
INSIDE TRACK ON WORLD NEWS
by international syndicated columnist & broadcaster Eric Margolis
December 5, 1999
Who's really in charge in Russia?
NEW YORK - A creeping coup in Moscow by military and security hardliners has been underway for the past three months, leaving President Boris Yeltsin an isolated, increasingly irrelevant figurehead.
Until recently, no one person or group was fully in charge of Russia's fragmented political system. Rival factions vied for power in a modern form of tribal warfare. Financial fortunes amassed through corruption and crime were used to buy political power, which was then used to make yet more illicit fortunes. The chief protagonists in this brutal Darwinist drama were Yeltsin and his coterie, financed by huge infusions of western cash; the military, interior ministry and security establishment; a group of business tycoons and their media networks; the state bureaucracy; and various mafias, who run 60% of Russia's business.
This barely controlled chaos began to change in late August. Boris Yeltsin, according to information this column has received from Moscow, was forced under threat of ouster, to appoint an unknown KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, as prime minister. At first, the hatchet-faced Putin was dismissed as non-entity who would soon be replaced in Yeltsin's game of musical prime ministers. But the dour Putin, displaying remarkable skill for a former intelligence appartchik, quickly solidified his power base and took charge.
In fact, Putin was the frontman for an ad hoc coalition of Russia's security organs: the armed forces, Ministry of the Interior, and the internal security service, FSB, and the external spy service, SVR --or KGB, as they are both still universally known.
One of the new coalition's first act was to go after key Yeltsin ally, billionaire robber baron Boris Berezovsky. He was accused of a variety of crimes and put under investigation. Curiously, Berezovsky had channeled US $1 million to the Chechens --for reasons that still remain obscure.
A series of mysterious bomb attacks on apartment buildings killed 300 people. Moscow blamed Chechens, who, after 250 years of bitter resistance, had broken away from Russian rule during a bitter war in 1994-1996. The awkward fact that a group of Russian security agents were caught red-handed planting explosives was covered up.
Taking a leaf from Serb propaganda strategy in Kosovo, Putin and his allies whipped up hatred of Chechens, inciting Slavic nationalism and traditional Russian racism against Muslims and darker-skinned people, and proclaimed a crusade against `Islamic terrorists' and `bandits' (Chechens).
Moscow's propaganda organs went into high gear, trumpeting Russia was waging a `war against terrorism,' and claiming, without any evidence, that the shadowy Osama Bin Laden was behind the Chechen insurgents. This clever ploy neatly scotched criticism from the Clinton Administration, which had also proclaimed a crusade against Islamic malefactors and was waging its own mini-war against Iraq.
The Russian armed forces and KGB thirsted for revenge for their previous defeat in Chechnya (Ishkeria, as Chechen call it). Using the apartment bombings and a minor Chechen incursion into Dagestan as a pretext, 100,000 Russian troops launched a massive, scorched earth campaign that seemed designed to kill as many Chechen as possible, raze all towns and villages that resisted, and bring the rebellious region to heel by making a desert and calling it peace. To date, 250,000 Chechens have become refugees.
In November, Yeltsin, under growing pressure from western public opinion, tried to rein in his generals. A number of senior officers, including the chief of staff and the commander of Russian forces in Chechnya, openly refused to obey Kremlin orders to relent, and threatened mass resignations or an outright putsch.
Meanwhile, the ailing, 68-year old Yeltsin, was increasingly sidelined while his allies were being steadily eliminated by the hard liners. This week, Yeltsin, whose immune system has been gravely weakened by heart bypass surgery, was in the hospital with pneumonia for the second time in two months. He is reported to be seriously ill. The triumverate of the military, interior ministry, and KGB led by Putin is now running day-to-day government business in Russia.
Neither Washington nor its allies, including Canada, know how to react to the stealthy coup. They keep pretending Yeltsin and his crew are still in full charge, and continue pouring money in to buy Russia's `good' behavior. Just as the US-controlled International Monetary Fund was announcing a further US$700 million `loan' to Moscow, Putin declared bankrupt Russia would spend another $US110 million on war in Chechnya, which has already cost Moscow some $1.2 billion.
Russian soldiers fighting in Chechnya receive a special US $1,000 monthly cash bonus --a whopping sum for Russia, where the average monthly salary is $60. Small wonder Chechen and their increasingly enraged supporters around the world believe the US is financing Russia's savage war in the Caucasus.
Putin's anti-Chechen crusade and resulting war hysteria in Russia has silenced all domestic criticism of the government. It has also taken the wind out of the sails of the major opposition political movement, led by Moscow's capable mayor, Yuri Luzkhov and former prime minister, Yevgenny Primakov. Even the huge theft and money laundering scandal that threatened to engulf the Yeltsin regime and curtail the inflow of US money has now been forgotten - thanks to the convenient little war in Chechnya.
Copyright Eric Margolis 1999 |
