#12 - JRL 2006-257 - JRL Home
Russia Profile
November 14, 2006
Cracks in the Power Vertical
Recent Assassinations Shake Confidence in Putin’s System
By Paul Abelsky

A succession of brazen high-profile assassinations in Russia in recent months has shaken up public opinion both inside the country and abroad. The string of murders on the eve of the 2007-2008 electoral season raised questions about the much-vaunted stability of Russia’s political and social order under President Vladimir Putin, as well as the system’s capacity to mediate conflicts in a non-violent way.

Political memories in Russia are still haunted by the crime-ridden turmoil that came in the wake of the Soviet breakup, when a cycle of socio-economic crises, a changeover of the elites, and an economic free-for-all obliterated moral restraints in conducting public and business affairs. Resorting to violent measures often seemed to be the most effective course of action in the absence of a functioning legal system and a lack of a consensus in the top echelons of Russia’s business and political circles.

The surge of crime in the first post-Soviet years took the lives not only of countless entrepreneurs during the struggles over newly privatized property and assets, but also ensnared a number of prominent public figures, from politicians to journalists. “The 1990s were a time of criminal anarchy and struggle for power,” said Yevgeny Ikhlov, head of the Information and Analytical Department of the Moscow-based group For Human Rights. “Now the menace stems from the law-enforcement organs themselves, or at least their former members. While the endemic criminality in years past was indicative of the breakdown of the legal system, now these people find themselves constrained by the law and feel entitled to rise above it if necessary.”

The high-profile murders this fall stood out not only for their political implications but also for the sheer range of people who fell victim to the crimes. In the span of one month, assassins gunned down a top government banker, a leading independent journalist, a mayoral candidate in the Far East and a media executive. Opinions were split on whether the alarming groundswell amounted to a return to the earlier tactics of settling scores with competitors or perceived enemies.

“The timing of the murders was not a coincidence, as killings have become more numerous and more frequent,” said Dmitry Oreshkin, director of Mercator Group, a Moscow-based think tank. “The numbers dipped at the end of the Yeltsin years and early in Putin’s tenure but resumed their climb soon afterward. It’s ultimately connected to the second wave of the redistribution of wealth, of which the Yukos case was the most notable example. People broadly affiliated with the siloviki faction felt left out of the lucrative privatization deals. Now they are trying to make up for lost time by the only means available to them.”

The murder rate has gone up across the country in the last five years, according to data from the Interior Ministry and the State Statistics Service. The annual average over the past several years has been more than 10 percent higher than in the period between 1992 and 1999. Last year alone, the Russian courts heard around 27,000 cases for premeditated murder, an increase of 500 from 2004. Corruption among law enforcement officials is frequently cited as a major contributing factor to the worsening situation, and opinion surveys consistently register an overwhelming lack of public trust in the police. A Levada Center poll in March found that 76 percent of the respondents believe the police deserve little or no confidence, with overwhelming majorities holding similar opinions of the courts and prosecutors.

While statistics have shown a steady upward trend for years, the assassinations of prominent figures inevitably capture the public imagination, with the consequences often reverberating far outside Russia. The murderous spree this fall started with the slaying of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov, and his driver, just outside a sports arena in Moscow late in the evening of Sept. 13. Kozlov was a key figure in the campaign to wield more effective control and improve the monitoring of Russia’s banking sector. His crusade against money laundering earned him plaudits among analysts and investors, but also won him countless enemies inside Russia. This year alone the Central Bank revoked the licenses of 40 banks, and Kozlov advocated life-long suspension from the industry for bankers involved with economic crimes and financial manipulation.

Kozlov was one of the highest-placed Russian officials ever to be assassinated, and by mid-October, the investigators had detained three suspects, all Ukrainian citizens, hired by an intermediary to execute the murder. The prosecutor general’s office is reportedly investigating their links to organized crime or rogue banks singled out by Kozlov’s administration. But the suspects have claimed no knowledge of the people who had ordered the hit, and there have been no further breakthroughs.

For all the uproar provoked by Kozlov’s assassination, particularly in the financial community, a string of other murders followed soon afterward. Enver Ziganshin, a chief engineer with Russia-Petroleum, a subsidiary of the TNK-BP oil major licensed to develop the vast Kovykta natural gas field, was shot in Irkutsk on Sept. 30. Back in Moscow, Alexander Plokhin, head of the Novy Arbat branch of Vneshtorgbank 24, was gunned down in a contract-style killing on Oct. 10, and five days later the business director of Itar-Tass news agency, Anatoly Voronin, was murdered in his apartment.

Meanwhile, an assassination attempt in Moscow late on Oct. 16 targeted Igor Lisyutin, general director of Eleks-Polyus, one of the biggest nationwide dealers of AvtoVAZ automobiles. Lisyutin managed to survive after receiving a neck wound. His attackers are still at large, but early reports indicated the attempt at Lisyutin’s life was probably motivated by the conflict over the distribution of AvtoVAZ cars on the Moscow market.

Earlier today, the general director of an oil consultancy was killed in Moscow in what was described as another contract-style slaying. Zelimkhan Magomedov, head of the Moscow-based National Oil Institute, was murdered in the south-eastern part of the capital with two gunshots in the head. The Dagestani-born director managed a non-profit foundation that was involved in the development of small and medium-sized oil and gas companies and analyzed the trends in Russia’s energy sector.

According to Ikhlov, this clustered sequence of murders was likely coincidental and without an obvious political subtext. “Even Kozlov’s assassination was almost certainly prompted by criminal calculations,” he said. “He was a victim of his own professional work.”

Yet the aftershocks and recriminations that followed this carnage were eclipsed by the fury that erupted with the news of the contract-style killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a controversial reporter for Novaya Gazeta. She became the 13th journalist killed during Putin’s tenure, but her renown and notoriety catapulted the story to the front pages of international media on the eve of the president’s visit to Germany. A relentless critic of the Kremlin’s policies in Chechnya, she exposed widespread abuses in the North Caucasus and reported on corruption in the upper echelons of Russian officialdom. Assassinated in the elevator of her apartment building in central Moscow, a security camera captured the hitmen who carried out the killing.

Although Politkovskaya was on the receiving end of threats and intimidation for years, her death marked a watershed in the perception of media freedom and the political climate in Russia. “She was absolutely the last independent journalist in this country with nationwide prominence,” Ikhlov said.

The assassination on Oct. 7 oddly coincided with Putin’s birthday and immediately followed Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov’s 30th birthday celebrations. Politkovskaya had hurled bitter criticisms at Kadyrov’s tactics in Chechnya, earning a reputation for fearlessness and unflinching integrity. Those in government circles were peremptorily judged to be complicit in the crime. The Kremlin’s tardy and lethargic response only increased the speculation. In his public comments in Dresden, days after the murder, Putin condemned the crime but tactlessly proclaimed Politkovskaya’s influence to have been “negligible.”

October closed with the murder of Dmitry Fotyanov, a United Russia mayoral candidate in the city of Dalnegorsk, in the Primorye region in Russia’s Far East. With the runoff ballot scheduled for the following week, Fotyanov was shot with an automatic rifle near his campaign headquarters on Oct. 19. Tensions in the town escalated to the point that the Primorye Electoral Committee moved the date of the elections to March 2007. Authorities apprehended three suspects on Nov. 7, all reportedly connected to Alexander Terebilov, Fotyanov’s remaining opponent in the second round of the vote.

“Politkovskaya’s case is clearly the one that had the weakest economic motives,” Oreshkin said. “Yet what is more important is that people are starting to follow the stylistic approach seemingly adopted and sanctioned elsewhere no person, no problem. There is a sense of unaccountability in society at large, a conviction that murder is a trivial misdeed. So, while the motives may differ, the means are the same. Those who order these crimes are certain they will be exonerated even if they are caught.”

While recent years have not been without their share of high-profile hits, from the murder of Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Russian Forbes magazine, to an attempt on the life of UES head Anatoly Chubais, the sheer deluge of recent deaths has caused renewed introspection in Russia. The State Duma is now considering the option of creating a special committee charged with investigating political murders. But despite initial public protests of Politkovskaya’s death, the international outcry far outweighed the domestic reaction. A Levada Center survey in late October produced ambiguous results, with just over a half of respondents admitting to anger or fear over her murder.

For all the sense of insecurity generated by the recent murders, today discussions center on their broader meaning and significance. Whatever effect those who ordered the crimes intended, the fundamental causes may revert back to the conflicts that unsettled Russia in the 1990s. “Although some of the murders may have political consequences, the deeper reason is connected to the conflict over property,” Oreshkin said. “The so-called vertical of power has turned out to be brittle and ineffective. As a result of this loss of control, people are prompted to take the situation in their own hands.”