Criticism of Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin, 2nd President of Russia and current Prime Minister of Russia has drawn significant domestic and international criticism since his ascension to the Presidency of Russia in 1999.
Domestic policy
Domestic terrorism accusations
Vladimir Putin was accused of ordering Russian apartment bombings, a series of five bombings that took place in September 1999, and led the country into the Second Chechen War. According to a reconstruction of the events by two historians, Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, the bombings may have been conducted by Federal Security Service (FSB) and GRU special forces. According to authors:
Similar accusations were also made by Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian state security officer who was later assassinated in London. He wrote two books on the subject, Blowing up Russia: Terror from within, and Lubyanka Criminal Group. David Satter did not blame Putin personally, but insisted that the bombings were organized by the Russian FSB to bring him to power.
Researchers and experts such as Gordon Bennett, Robert Bruce Ware, Paul J. Murphy, Henry Plater-Zyberk, Peter Reddaway and Richard Sakwa have criticized these claims, describing them as the conspiracy theories and pointing out, among other things, that the theories' proponents have provided little evidence to support them.
Civil liberties and internal dissent
In 2006 and 2007 "Dissenters' Marches" were organized by the opposition group Other Russia, strategized by former chess champion Garry Kasparov and national-Bolshevist leader Eduard Limonov. Following prior warnings, illegal demonstrations in several Russian cities were met by police action, which included interfering with the travel of the protesters and the arrests of as many as 150 people who attempted to break through police lines. The Dissenters' Marches have received little support among the Russian general public, according to popular polls. The Dissenters' March in Samara held in May 2007 during the Russia-EU summit attracted more journalists providing coverage of the event than actual participants. When asked in what way the Dissenters' Marches bother him, Putin answered that such marches "shall not prevent other citizens from living a normal life". During the Dissenters' March in Saint Petersburg on March 3, 2007, the protesters blocked automobile traffic on Nevsky Prospect, the central street of the city, much to the disturbance of local drivers. The Governor of Saint Petersburg, Valentina Matvienko, commented on the event that "it is important to give everyone the opportunity to criticize the authorities, but this should be done in a civilized fashion". Putin has said that some domestic critics are being funded and supported by foreign enemies who would prefer to see a weak Russia. In his speech at the United Russia meeting in Luzhniki, he said: "Those who oppose us don't want us to realize our plan.... They need a weak, sick state! They need a disorganized and disoriented society, a divided society, so that they can do their deeds behind its back and eat cake on our tab.".
Allegations of political assassinations and muzzling of reporters
Putin was widely criticized in the West and also by Russian liberals for what many observers considered a wide-scale crackdown on media freedoms. Since the early 1990s, a number of Russian reporters who have covered the situation in Chechnya, contentious stories on organized crime, state and administrative officials, and large businesses have been killed.
On October 7, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who ran a campaign exposing corruption in the Russian army and its conduct in Chechnya, and a strong critic of Putin and the FSB, whom she had accused of trying to set up a Soviet-style dictatorship, was killed. She was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow. The death of this Russian journalist triggered an outcry of criticism of Russia in the Western media, with accusations that, at best, Putin has failed to protect the country's new independent media.
When asked about Politkovskaya murder in his interview with the German TV channel ARD, Putin said that her murder brings much more harm to the Russian authorities than her publications.
In his interview with Izvestia in April 2008, Dmitry Dovgiy from Russia's Prosecutor General's Office said he is convinced that Politkovskaya murder was masterminded by Boris Berezovsky, citing the organizers' intent to "demonstrate that famous people can be murdered in the daylight" without being punished. Dovgiy was convicted in June 2009 for bribe-taking and sent to prison for 9 years. In January 2008, Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, maintained that a system of "judicial terrorism" had started against journalists under Putin and that more than 300 criminal cases had been opened against them over the past six years.
At the same time, according to 2005 research by VCIOM, the share of Russians approving censorship on TV grew in a year from 63% to 82%; sociologists believed that Russians were not voting in favor of press freedom suppression, but rather for expulsion of ethically doubtful material (such as scenes of violence and sex).
===Relations with "oligarchs"===
One of the most controversial aspects of Putin's second term was the continuation of the criminal prosecution of Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, President of Yukos oil company, for fraud and tax evasion. While much of the international press saw this as a reaction against Khodorkovsky's funding for political opponents of the Kremlin, both liberal and communist, the Russian government has argued that Khodorkovsky was engaged in corrupting a large segment of the Duma to prevent changes in the tax code aimed at taxing windfall profits and closing offshore tax evasion vehicles. Khodorkovsky's arrest was met positively by the Russian public, who see the oligarchs as thieves who were unjustly enriched and robbed the country of its natural wealth. Many of the initial privatizations, including that of Yukos, are widely believed to have been fraudulent (Yukos, valued at some $30bn in 2004, had been privatized for $110 million), and like other oligarchic groups, the Yukos-Menatep name has been frequently tarred with accusations of links to criminal organizations. Tim Osborne of GML (the majority owner of Yukos) said in February 2008: "Despite claims by President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin had no interest in bankrupting Yukos, the company's assets were auctioned at below-market value. In addition, new debts suddenly emerged out of nowhere, preventing the company from surviving. The main beneficiary of these tactics was Rosneft. It is clearer now than ever that the expropriation of Yukos was a ploy to put key elements of the energy sector in the hands of Putin's retinue. Moreover, the Yukos affair marked a turning point in Russia's commitment to domestic property rights and the rule of law." The fate of Yukos was seen by western media as a sign of a broader shift toward a system normally described as state capitalism, where "the entirety of state-owned and controlled enterprises are run by and for the benefit of the cabal around Putin — a collection of former KGB colleagues, Saint Petersburg lawyers, and other political cronies." Against the backdrop of the Yukos saga, questions were raised about the actual destination of $13.1 billion remitted in October 2005 by the state-run Gazprom as payment for 75,7% stake in Sibneft to Millhouse-controlled offshore accounts, after a series of generous dividend payouts and another $3 billion received from Yukos in a failed merger in 2003. In 1996 Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky had acquired the controlling interest in Sibneft for $100 million within the controversial loans-for-shares program. Some prominent Yeltsin-era billionaires, such as Sergey Pugachyov, are reported to continue to enjoy close relationship with Putin's Kremlin.
Environmental concerns
In 2003, Putin switched the responsibilities for the State Committee for Environmental Protection to the Natural Resources Ministry. The organizations Greenpeace says that the Natural Resources Ministry, NRM, has a history of backing illegal and environmentally hazardous projects. "Russia is now absolutely defenseless against the armada of industrialists and businessmen who impudently rob the country of its natural resources" says the director of Greenpeace in Russia, Sergei Tsyplenkov. "The population of the country is deprived of its basic right, secured by the constitution, the right to a healthy environment." However, in 2004 President Putin signed the Kyoto Protocol treaty designed to reduce green house gasses. Russia's emissions are well below its 1990 levels and it stands to gain by selling carbon credits to countries whose economies have continued to grow.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu