Attachment #3: Russia on the Fringe of Moral Behaviour
Russia has been operating on the fringe of moral behaviour in a variety of areas for quite some period of time. A pattern of promoting Russian dominance and power has emerged over the past several decades. I note three areas. The first is in their seemingly open contempt for killing (or trying to kill) people who they deem affecting their objectives as a nation. There are many examples but just a couple will suffice. Regarding the 2006 assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, Russia, and Putin, were found responsible in British court (see next point). The 2019 poisoning of a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agency, and his daughter, in Salisbury, England. (They survived.) This can go both ways. There have been many verified stories about the US, and Israel, and…fill in the blank. It’s just that Russia has been so blatant.
The second area of moral contempt is in the state’s disregard for fair play and level playing field in sport, using doping techniques that have been proven to enhance athletic performance. The Olympics being the focus, but it’s been in other sports. Through the movie “Icarus”, an American cyclist Bryan Fogel secretly teamed up with Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, a charismatic and kooky character who ran a Russian anti-doping lab. Rodchenkov had been orchestrating a widespread doping operation for Russian Olympic athletes. He specifically coordinated these efforts at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Rodchenkov claims that culpability for both the anti-doping program and the killings goes all the way up to Russian President Putin. Rodchenkov is now in a witness protection program in the US.
The third area is in the business world. Post-Soviet Russia had seen some of the most spectacular investment opportunities in the history of financial markets. Corruption of the oligarchs, the twenty-some-odd men who were reported to have stolen 39% of the country after the fall of communism and who became billionaires almost overnight, was rampant. The oligarchs owned the majority of the companies trading on the Russian stock market and they were often robbing those companies blind. Bill Browder, founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005. Since 2009, when his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered in prison after uncovering a $230 million fraud committed by Russian government officials, Browder has been leading a campaign to expose Russia’s endemic corruption and human rights abuses.
This is all a terrible pattern. As Heidi Blake in her book “From Russia With Blood” said “Covert killing is a deeply Soviet form of statecraft, a prized lever of power that had rested for more than half a century in the hands of the feared USSR security service from which the new president had emerged. The KGB had led the world in the art and science of untraceable murder, with its poison factories, weapons labs…While the West welcomed him to the fold, the Russian president was busy reviving the KGB’s targeted killing program…Anyone who betrayed the motherland, anyone who threatened the absolute power of the Russian state, anyone who knew too much – all put themselves squarely in the Kremlin’s crosshair’s. And every dead body sent a signal. If you cross Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, there is no safe place for you on earth.”
Attachment #4: Ukraine: Violent History and Path to Democracy
Ukraine’s history has been one of violence and tyranny, but they’ve recently chosen democracy instead. Ukranian culture and language date back to the Middle Ages, to Kyivan Rus’ so Putin’s rhetoric that it never existed is false. They endured two centuries of tsarist autocracy (which finally collapsed amidst the cataclysm of the first world war). A brief attempt at independence was quickly crushed by the Red Army that re-established Russian rule. Ukrainians then lived through the terrible man-made famine of the Holodomor, Stalinist terror, Nazi occupation and decades of soul-crushing Communist dictatorship.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, history seemed to guarantee that Ukrainians would again go down the path of brutal tyranny. But they chose differently. Despite history, despite grinding poverty and despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Ukrainians established a democracy. When faced with the threat of autocracy in 2004 and 2013, Ukrainians twice rose in revolt to defend their freedom. “Russia’s leaders have never come to terms with the idea of Ukraine as a separate nation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they saw its drift towards the West as a betrayal of Russian-Ukrainian familial ties.”