Even in the modern era in Ukraine and Russia, the two agencies seem to be able to do what they want, say what they want and answer to no one.
That’s why we have a hard time believing the Feb. 27 announcement that the agencies in both nations broke up a plot to kill Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The assassination attempt was supposed to happen after the March 4 election that is being staged to return Putin to the presidency.
If the three suspects were really intent on killing Putin, their attempts were so lacking in credibility and competence as to undermine the seriousness of the threat.
Police say they got on the trail of the plotters after a bomb exploded in a central Odessa apartment on Jan. 4, killing one of the three suspects, identified as Ruslan Madayev.
If these schemers are so foolish as to play with explosives so far from the Kremlin, or too incompetent to handle the explosives properly, they probably lacked any ability to kill Putin or bring harm to anybody else, except themselves.
The surviving suspects, Chechen native Adam Osmayev and Kazakh citizen Ilya Pyanzin, were paraded on state television. Their battered appearance invited speculation of police abuse to extract confessions.
Even in the modern era in Ukraine and Russia, the law enforcement agencies seem to be able to do what they want, say what they want and answer to no one.
Murad Musayev, a lawyer for Osmayev, was quoted as calling the alleged plot a fabrication by Russian intelligence services.
Other Russian journalists noted that one of the suspects, Osmayev, comes from a prominent family known for its close ties to Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s strongman leader and Putin’s close ally.
The more likely explanation is that the people around Putin, who is facing rising protests for corruption and authoritarianism, were looking to stoke public fears ahead of Sunday’s vote.
They could also use the alleged assassination plot by terrorists to justify a strong show of force after the vote.
Remember, this is the same Putin – a former FSB chief – who benefited from a series of residential apartment bombings in Russia in 1999. Those blasts killed 293 people and catapulted strongman Putin to the presidency.
Officials blamed Chechen terrorists. Others think the attacks were the work of Russian special services, specifically the FSB that Putin headed.
Those who investigated this angle ended up dead, including Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko.
Those charges are vehemently denied. But if these suspicions are true, then progress has indeed taken place – from Soviet KGB mass murders to bombings of their own citizens to the present day, when special services may merely be guilty of trying to scare people.
