February 26, 2016

February 28 2015

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Last year, on February 28, following the news that Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was murdered in Moscow, analysts pointed to the event as evidence that the Russian Federation is run by the security services that are given free rein by President Vladimir Putin.

Pavel K. Baev wrote in the Eurasia Daily Monitor about how the Russian Security Service (FSB) took a week to produce a pair of plausible suspects, with FSB Director Aleksandr Bortnikov reporting to Mr. Putin that two men – Anzor Gubashev and Zaur Dadayev – implicated in the crime were under arrest, while the following day, another man had killed himself with a hand grenade in Grozny.

Mr. Putin’s appointed ruler in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, accused Western special services of organizing the murder to provoke internal conflict in Russia.  Any connection to the Chechen opposition would seem to be more plausible after treatment by the Russian state-sponsored propaganda.

Mr. Baev argued that there were too many loose ends with the official explanation. Mr. Nemtsov was too closely followed by the FSB and the location of the murder was covered with surveillance cameras – factors that make it unlikely the assassination was carried out by Chechen freelancers.

Opposition activist Alexei Navalny also pointed to the FSB as being involved in the murder of Mr. Nemtsov and said that the violent act would not scare the opposition in Russia.

Corruption, Mr. Baev noted, is so deep inside the security services super-structure that it has mutated into a loose constellation of predatory factions pursuing their own and often violent agendas. Illustratively, the Federal Anti-Narcotics Service was the target of several recent hostile takeover attempts. An appeal by Viktor Ivanov, the chief of the narcotics service, to Mr. Putin is the only way that Mr. Ivanov has avoided such challenges. Increasingly, there are ongoing cases of “treason” and “NATO spies” being built up against maverick “siloviki” (security service personnel), Mr. Baev explained, citing Newsru.com.

The war in Ukraine sees these same security services waging their own “mini-hybrid war,” enthusiastically and without attention to political guidelines. The attacks in the east by “volunteers” have been ineffective, except when the Russian Ministry of Defense deployed whole battalions of regulars in the battle for Debaltseve – in violation of the Minsk II agreement.

These same security service personnel are reacting to the economic strangulation felt by Russia by feuding over lucrative businesses in the occupied areas of the Donbas of Ukraine. The main focus for many of the agents of Moscow in Ukraine, Mr. Baev noted, is monitoring the European Union’s sanctions policy based on their actions.

Mr. Baev explained: “Mr. Putin is no more able to assert effective control over rogue elements within the special services than his subordinates are able to turn Rosneft or Russian Railways into modern, efficiently managed corporations. The best he can hope for is to keep up the appearance of firm leadership; and pinning the blame for the elimination of a brave dissident on Western-sponsored Chechen rebels is a convenient means toward this end. Such a policy, however, cannot alter the reality of the ungovernabililty of the siloviki-dominated Russian state, which oversees a degenerating crony capitalist economy.”

Source: “Free rein of special services makes Russia ungovernable,” by Pavel K. Baev (Eurasia Daily Monitor), The Ukrainian Weekly, March 15, 2015.

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