Grigory Pasko: Putin the Destroyer

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Prime Minister of the RF Vladimir Putin in an interview with Bloomberg said: “I never had it as a goal to destroy billionaires. My goal has been for all to live according to the rules, which are called laws. These rules are being made legally, by means of parliament, in a normal country. And all citizens of the country have to follow those rules, which are called laws.”

By sheer coincidence, on that same day, the defense of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev applied to the leadership of the Investigative Committee of the RF with a joint petition. The lawyers declared about the violation of the constitutional rights of their clients in the “main” YUKOS case and demanded dismissal of a new criminal case in connection with the absence of elements of a crime. The lawyers declared likewise about the most flagrant violations of the fundamental constitutional rights and lawful interests, allowed in relation to Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.

If you read the White Paper of Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Robert Amsterdam, if you read all the interviews of theRussian lawyers with respect to the Khodorkovsky case; if you analyzeeven the known facts of the persecution of rich people in Russia overthe past few years (one oligarch a year either gets put in jail, orruns away beyond the border: the latest – ran away a week ago, acertain Chichvarkin, former owner of «Evroset»), then it turns out thatPutin was rather cynically lying to the correspondent of the Bloombergagency.

For all to live according to laws? We’d like to, but it was underPutin, after all, and no doubt not without his participation, that suchconditions have been created that independent courts in Russia areabsent. Many laws don’t work. The law-enforcement organs themselveshave descended into lawlessness – the examples of this are myriad.Hundreds of thousands of cases under consideration in the Strasbourgcourt – this is an example of lawlessness in the country, not of therule of law.

Putin reported that he considers his main fault to be that he is tootrusting. And this is said by a person who served half his life in theKGB? I don’t believe him! Come on, can’t you see he’s fibbing, thatprime minister?

What else did we learn from the tele-interview? That Putin has likedice cream very much since childhood and in large quantities; what is afilm that he has seen – “Oliver Twist”; that his bedside-table book -as before, Karamzin’s “History of Russia”; that sometimes he finds ithard to fall asleep because of the emotional load and tension; thatmost of all he would like to possess musical talent; that when heretires, then he might engage in research in the realm of public law,told the premier…

In a word, all soft and cuddly. Nice. Brave, Fair, In short, the fatherof the nation, its leader. Its sole tower of strength.

By the way, about retirement. Several years ago, answering that samequestion, he said that he would like to become… an ecologist. So whereis Putin telling the truth? And does he tell it at all?

…Personally, it seems to me that he will never retire. Only if he isasked very vigorously. By the same kind of soft and cuddly people, wholove the law and justice, as himself.