Life in Putin's Russia

Fascinating article from Sunday's Washington Post. Please take the time to read- you will be wiser for it!

Life in Putin's Russia

By Julia Latynina
Sunday, June 22, 2008

MOSCOW On Nov. 9, 2007, during a special operation in the village of Chemulga, in the republic of Ingushetia, Russian special forces shot and killed an individual by the name of Rakhim Amriyev. Eyewitnesses said that they shot him in the head and placed an automatic rifle beside his body. Then, as dozens of villagers who had run out of their homes looked on, the troops used an armored personnel carrier to demolish a wall of the one-room house where Amriyev lived and announced that he had died in a shootout.

You may ask how I can be sure that things happened this way -- that Amriyev didn't fire back, that he wasn't a terrorist and that the automatic rifle was planted. I'm absolutely certain -- because Rakhim Amriyev was 6 years old.

The most striking thing about everyday life in the Russia of Vladimir Putin (and make no mistake, it is Putin's Russia, despite the election of a new president, hand-picked by the great man) is the incredible corruption of the courts, the police, the special forces -- all the institutions that are supposed to uphold law and order in a democracy and that in Russia today have been transformed into a cancer that's devouring the state. Consider these further examples:

On May 20, 2005, in Moscow, a car driven by the son of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov struck and killed 68-year-old Svetlana Beridze as she crossed the street. Beridze, who was in the crosswalk, was hit with such force that she was thrown high into the air and the keys in her handbag were crushed. No criminal charges were brought against the minister's son, who, his father publicly stated, had "experienced physical and emotional suffering" as a result of the accident. Instead, in what appeared to be an effort to intimidate the dead woman's family, authorities opened a criminal investigation against her son-in-law, for allegedly assaulting the minister's son.

Last Sept. 10, Muscovite Natalia Trufanova was driving to her dacha with her family in her old Zhiguli when a motorcade carrying Supreme Court President Vyacheslav Lebedev came speeding down the road toward them, driving in her lane. One of the vehicles in the motorcade tore through Trufanova's car. Eyewitnesses reported that the head of the Supreme Court kept going, leaving it to his underlings to comb through the bodies and the heap of twisted metal. Without batting an eye, the police declared that Trufanova had "driven into the oncoming lane," which meant that, if she survived, she could be brought to trial. When angry witnesses started posting video on the Web clearly showing that it was the motorcade that was driving in the wrong lane, the lead investigator looking into the accident said that he didn't have access to the Internet.

On a rainy September evening a week after Natalia Trufanova fell under the wheel of justice, I witnessed an accident on Moscow's government thoroughfare -- the famous Kutuzovsky Prospect. A silver Lexus, traveling at what looked to be about 90 miles an hour, flew out of the far left lane and crossed four lanes of oncoming traffic, crashing into several cars. As I drove past the scene of the accident, the wind blew bits of crushed metal, pieces of cloth and broken glass along the asphalt; bodies still sat in some of the cars. Within the hour, I learned that the driver of the Lexus was a 27-year-old woman with no known occupation; with her in the car was a deputy minister of economic development.

I learned this from a mutual friend (of mine and the deputy minister's) named Pavel, who had rushed to the scene. The minister was already dead; the young woman was in a daze, due to either pain or drugs. A police sergeant, cheerfully surveying the pile of bodies the girl had left in her wake, asked Pavel in the most businesslike fashion: "So, how are we going to solve this problem?" Apparently they "solved the problem" -- they didn't even bring charges against the woman.

Strange but true: It's not only ministers, their wives and their children -- as well as their lovers -- who are going unpunished, but also high-priced prostitutes, high on cocaine, with important addresses in their little black books.

Crime in Russia is hardly being investigated. In May of last year, the body of 4-year-old Nastia Mokryakova, her throat slit, was found in the woods outside Moscow. What do you think the police told the news media? "The child got lost and died of exposure." A month later, in the Moscow suburb of Tomilino, some maniac strangled 10-year-old Nastia Butenkova, and the first thing the police did was to say that the girl, who'd been found on a staircase with her pants pulled down around her ankles, may have caused her own suffocation. (A public outcry ultimately led to an investigation of both murders.)

It's not as though this unwillingness to investigate is limited to crimes whose victims are poor. On Dec. 6, 2007, Oleg Zhukovsky, a prominent banker who worked with major clients of the state-run bank VTB, was apparently killed in his suburban dacha. The killers reportedly tied the victim's hands behind his back, put a plastic bag over his head and threw him into the pool. Before killing him, they apparently forced him to write a suicide note. "Suicide!" the police promptly declared. It's hard to believe, but their unwillingness to investigate the death of a high-ranking banker had nothing to do with politics or the state. The police simply can't be bothered.

Of course, there are some crimes that the police do investigate. They accused an acquaintance of mine of giving $20 million to the leader of the Chechen terrorists. Another person I know was accused of trying to privatize the air space above the Arctic Ocean. Of a third, a prosecutor wrote that his bank was trying to foment a revolution and overthrow Putin. These three suspects all had something in common: They are on the Russian Forbes 100 list.

A fourth acquaintance of mine isn't on that list. He was simply building a high-rise in the southern city of Makhachkala. The local prosecutor telephoned and asked him what discount he'd give him on an apartment in the building. "Twenty percent," my acquaintance replied. The prosecutor thereupon ordered an investigation that turned the man's company upside down, then called again and demanded a 50 percent discount.

Is this the legacy of the Soviet past? Not at all. In the Soviet Union, criminals were thrown into prison along with the dissidents. Is it the legacy of former president Boris Yeltsin? There was nothing like this under Yeltsin.

This is the distinctive nature of the Putin regime.

Under Putin, the Russian businessman has been transformed into game being hunted by people in epaulets. Who was the first victim of this hunt? Oil company executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for tax evasion in 2005, and his company, Yukos, which the government dismantled and sold off after his arrest. Who was the hunter? Then-president Putin.

The right to commit crime has become part of official privilege. If the victim doesn't raise a fuss, no one is punished. If the victim appeals to the public, he or she is harshly punished. The very fact of appealing to the public is perceived as a challenge to the regime. But who laid down these rules of the game? Who never punishes his friends? Putin.

In the republic of Ingushetia, death squads are executing people. They're being shot in front of witnesses, in crowded places, in market squares, at bus stops, and then weapons are being planted on them and they're being photographed as dead "terrorists." In some instances, the crowd has shielded the intended victims. In others, the local Ingush police have nearly beaten the Russian executioners to death. Who's being killed? Those on the so-called Wahhabi lists. These lists were compiled at the order of the FSB (the successor to the KGB) soon after the Moscow theater massacre of 2002, in which Chechen terrorists took an audience hostage and 130 people died when Russian special forces stormed the theater.

But who ordered these lists to be drawn up? Who would think, to stop the problem of terrorism in the northern Caucasus from spreading, of executing fundamentalist Muslims wholesale, simply for their convictions, not for any crimes that they may have committed? Such an order couldn't have been given without Putin's knowledge. In the 1970s, then-Israeli prime minister Golda Meir had those who had taken part in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics annihilated. But since the Moscow theater incident, Putin has gone her one better -- he has even wiped out people who had nothing to do with it.

Each such execution, however, has created more terrorists than it has eliminated, and for all intents and purposes, Russia has lost control of Ingushetia -- the only republic where authorities have fully followed the execution order. Who will dare to inform the great Putin, the former KGB man, the courageous hero, who happily sits for photographs in the cockpit of a fighter plane and poses bare-chested on a fishing trip?

In the West, people read that Putin has restored Russia's power and strengthened the ruling hierarchy. This is the image that the PR agencies he has hired are trying to project. There may not be democracy in Putin's Russia, they say, but there is order.

Don't buy it. The Russian authorities aren't in control of the country -- unless we consider their ability to throw any businessman in prison and seize his company to be control. And yet these guys really think they're strong -- and that the measure of a ruler's strength is the amount of cash in his bank accounts.

latynina@novayagazeta.ru

Julia Latynina is a Russian journalist, novelist and radio host.

Homecoming

On a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being the highest, yesterday was an 10!!

When Love Takes You Home

Katya is coming home on Saturday

Fred, Katie and I had a three hour visit with Katya on Sunday. We took her out to dinner and for ice cream. It was wonderful to see her and she seemed genuinely glad to see us! She was thrilled and relieved when we told her she was coming home, and then talked of nothing else for the rest of our visit. She understands things will be different and accepted that fact without argument. Her behavior analyst is coming to the house this week to give us guidelines, advice and encouragement!

Dr. Federici will give us the results of her tests later this week and we are anxious to get the full report. The more information we have, the better equipped we are to help Katya.

I'll post when we get the test results.

Encouraging news!

Today was appointment day! The doctor gave Katya a series of psychological tests and also conducted an in depth interview to learn more about her life prior to being in our family. Dr. Federici speaks fluent Russian so Katya was a little more relaxed and able to speak freely during the interview. Thankfully, with much hard work and intensive counseling, Dr. Federici sees a positive outcome for Katya. This is great news. During our last appointment he was preparing us for the worst. He told us today that he had a post-institutionalized child in his office last week and all he wanted to do was call an exorcist! We will see the full results of the tests early next week but he was pleased with what he learned so far. A few positives are:
*Katya has a normal to above normal IQ. (This makes therapy SO much easier)
*She does NOT want to go back to Russia
*She is on grade level academically (in Russian) which means she will catch up faster
*She does not like where she is now and does not want to go back (which will be helpful in her behavior modifications)
Dr. Federici referred us to a behavior analyst that he has trained to work with Eastern Bloc children. She will design an intervention plan for Katya's return. Her website is:www.alternativebehaviors.com and her name is Nadya Molina. I took it as a positive sign that he decided not to be Katya's primary mental health provider. Nadya will come to our home and help us map out a plan for Katya, however we will still be following Dr. Federici's basic outline of attachment therapy which is broken down into three levels. We will enter into Level One when she comes home and it will last anywhere from four to six weeks. Katya's five major rules are:
1. You must remain within three feet of a parent at all times.
2. You will have no contact with anyone besides your parents, Katie and Steven.
3. Your parents decide what you are required to do each day.
4. There will be no TV, radio or any other distractions.
5. You must be successful at level one before you begin level two.
I asked Dr. Federici about medication, and he said she may benefit from Wellbutin but that will be determined later. (I should have asked him about medication for ME to get through Level One!)
Katya will be coming home on June 21st. We had to delay her homecoming because Fred has a business trip all next week and the doctor said he should be home the first few weeks after her return.
We were told to remove everything from her room except her bed and a lamp. It hastens "people" attachment NOT to have material things in which to attach. This will be an exhaustive and intense four to six weeks but it's what we have to do.
We hope to visit Katya before she comes home and are awaiting a call from the facility's director about a possible visit this weekend.


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Attachment therapy is the term most commonly used by practitioners and critics for a controversial category of alternative child mental health interventions intended to treat what practitioners describe as attachment disorders. The term generally includes accompanying parenting techniques which proponents consider as important as the therapy itself. Attachment therapy is a treatment used primarily with fostered or adopted children who are believed to have certain behavioral difficulties, including disobedience and lack of gratitude or affection for their caregivers. The children's problems are ascribed to an inability to attach to their new parents because of suppressed rage due to past maltreatment and abandonment.

We should have answers soon

I'm sorry I haven't posted lately but there hasn't been much news. Fred and I did get to talk to Katya on Sunday evening and she sounded good. We take her for her testing tomorrow so we will see her for the first time since May 29th. We won't get to spend much time together because we are only transporting her to and from the appointment but at least we'll get to give her a hug! Hopefully Dr. Federici will provide some answers soon after the testing so we can begin the healing process.

When I get really down I watch Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" on the computer to make me feel better. I need some positive influences now versus the doctor's many doom and gloom scenarios. Isn't it weird that I turn to a dying man to cheer me up...
One of my favorite parts of the lecture is when Randy says, "When we are facing death it's not the things we do in life that we regret, but the things we don't do." I want to do everything in our reach to help Katya and try to undo what horrors were done to her as a child. I am realistic and know that we cannot wipe out all the bad memories but at least we can give her the emotional strength and unconditional love to heal. Fred and I both know it will be a long and painful journey but we are determined.

What great friends we have

Fred and I are so blessed with wonderful and supportive friends. We could not have made it this far without the kind and encouraging words and actions of our dear friends. We truly appreciate the phone calls, flowers, emails and cards that have flooded our mailboxes. Your kindness is keeping us afloat! How lucky we are to have such a fantastic circle of support!! From the depths of our hearts...THANK YOU.

Update

Fred and I picked Katya up at the center and took her to Dr. Federici's office on Thursday. Katya was very talkative and peppy on the drive over, but her mood quickly changed once she met with the doctor. She told him some pretty disturbing things, most of which I don't want to get into now. By the time we left she was pretty agitated and the drive back to the center was silent. Dr. Federici told us we probably have two years of intense therapy ahead of us, along with radical changes at home, such as living by a highly structured, unbending schedule including not being more than three feet away from Fred or me for the forseeable future. We are putting our faith in this doctor because frankly, we have no other choice. We must heal Katya.