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Whodunnit?
So someone killed Boris Nemtsov while the 56 year old man walked with his 22 year old Ukrainian "model" on a bridge in Moscow. There is some CCTV coverage of the crime scene.
As vice-premier under Boris Yeltsin Nemtsov was at least partially responsible for the mafiazation of the Russian economy. Everyone but some oligarchs and the "western" neoliberals was happy when he and the Yeltsin gang had to leave.
After he was kicked out and until yesterday Nemtsov was a very minor opposition politician polling at some 1%. The communists, the real opposition party in Russia, poll at about 20%. No one in the government had reason to care about or fear Nemtsov.
The former Soviet president Gorbachov points to those who will gain from Nemtsov's death:
Asked if he thought anti-Russian forces abroad might exploit the crime in pursuit of their own ends, he argued this would definitely happen.
"Of course, certain forces will try to take advantage of this crime for their own ends – all of them are thinking how to get rid of Putin, aren't they? But I don't think, after all, that the West will go as far as that, that it will use that crime to attain its own purposes. However, that was unquestionably the goal of the criminals who murdered Boris," he said.
"Crimes of this kind are taken on by executors who are hard to find. All efforts must be made to find the criminals," the ex-president said.
Gorbachov still uses rose colored glasses when locking at the "west". The "west" would never use a crime to attain its purpose? That is laughable naive.
And what about all those legitimate and popular opposition politicians currently getting suicided in Ukraine?
So whodunnit?
Someone with relations to the "model"? Someone hurt in the gangster "privatizations" executed under Nemtsov's rule? Some Ukrainian oligarch interested in creating more schism between the "west" and Russia? Some "western" government plotting the destabilization of Russia?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Couple of things. From a “native”, if you will.
1. Nemtsov was a complicated guy, with a complicated history. He was one of the big boys in Yeltsin’s Kremlin back in the 1990s, and an MP since. What this means is that he had the opportunity to make a lot of money, and make a lot of connections with all sorts of people. [We know the former is true since there are public records of him filing a lawsuit against someone after making them a personal loan of $700k USD back in 2009. I don’t know many Americans who have $700k USD cash sitting on them to lend a friend, never mind Russians.]
The killing was standard “hired gun” operation – car drives up, four rounds in the back, car drives off. There are any number of possibilities as to who’d hired the killers. Anything from current or former “business associates” (legal or not so much), to a current or ex-girlfriend, to, yes, a political hit. The truth is, nobody knows as of yet – people just automatically jump to conclusions. Great for the people.
2. Comparing Nemtsov to figures in U.S. politics – he was kind of like Ron Paul. You could count on a certain 5% of the electorate (or less) supporting him, but no-one took him seriously. At all. [And by the way, Khodorkovsky’s little group now talks about “10%-15% support that we’d like to double over time”, so 5% for Nemtsov – emphatically not a leader of the “liberal” movement since at least mid-last decade – is pretty accurate.]
Also, if you want to “cow the opposition”, you still don’t kill someone like Nemtsov. You kill Navalny, who’s been in the media a lot. You kill Sobchak, who is a…let’s say, she suddenly discovered that she was a liberal a few years ago, when she got a chance to make a career of it – but she’s publicly visible. You kill anyone from “Eho Moskvy”, which, for those who don’t know, is the radio station that broadcasts things which would never get past the censor in U.S. media. [E.g. imagine a U.S. TV channel taking the “side” of the bombers after Boston marathon. Probably wouldn’t last very long. Eho does this all the time, and Gazprom owns like half of it, poetically.]
So to me the political motive from the Kremlin side is pretty thin. Unless you spin a John Le Carre thing about double false flags with triple agents or something.
3. Is it possible this was a false flag to create a martyr? Of course it’s possible, though it would be pretty much a slap in the face of the FSB to have either Ukraine’s SBU or any Western agency do this sort of thing right in the capital.
Possible does not mean probable, however. Right now, anything is possible, and again, I’d start with the man’s current business associations and then work my way back. Lots of people got capped in the 90s for “monetary” reasons, and he was as dirty as any of them (allegedly, never proven, of course).
4. By the by – it’s a hit from a car. Can you find the car? Maybe. Can you trace the car to the two guys in it? Maybe. Can you find the two guys and get them to give you their employer? Maybe. See how many maybes? Imagine a murder like this in any Western city. What’s the probability that it will be solved, or solved quickly? 50%? 30%? So I’d be realistic in that regard. The killers would need to make a bunch of mistakes for that to happen, at the least.
5. One last thing. Yes, he was shot “within steps” (200 meters, 1/8 mile) of the Kremlin. Because that’s where he was walking with his girlfriend. While heading back to his apartment. What this tells me is that the guy had enough money to afford a place in the center of one of the most expensive (real estate-wise) cities of the planet, that’s what it tells me first and foremost. Draw your own conclusions from there. A humble defender of liberal values and human rights, you say?
Anyway. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. The West (and Eho) will (and already are) point fingers at Putin (who must have done this personally!). Pro-Kremlin sites will (and already are) point fingers at Ukraine. I suspect the reality is more prosaic, but who cares?
Posted by: Angry Panda | Mar 6 2015 20:45 utc | 284
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