Word: kgb
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Since the beginning of that war, a new élite--the siloviki from the FSB (the renamed KGB) and the subservient new economic oligarchs--has come to dominate policymaking under Putin's control. This new élite embraces a strident nationalism as a substitute for communist ideology while engaging in thinly veiled acts of violence against political dissenters. Putin almost sneeringly dismissed the murder of a leading Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed crimes against the Chechens. Similarly, troubling British evidence of Russian involvement in the London murder of an outspoken FSB defector produced little more than official Russian ridicule...
...machinery - now heads to markets in the West. Tourism is booming, too: last year, ferries, cruise ships and low-cost airlines disgorged 1.5 million visitors in Riga, up from 1.1 million the previous year. Visvaldis Lacis, an 83-year-old author and parliamentarian, recalls that under Soviet rule the kgb stopped every ship entering and leaving the harbor to check for spies and stowaways. Lacis now watches as a black and red Cypriot-flagged container ship slides by on its way to the sea. "This," he marvels, "is freedom...
WHEN POISONED ex--KGB spy turned Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, inset above, lay dying in a London hospital last year, he famously pointed the finger at Vladimir Putin, calling the Russian President "barbaric and ruthless." Now British prosecutors have challenged Russia by requesting the extradition of ex--KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi in the murder--a request Russia promptly refused. Lugovoi, who denies any guilt, met with Litvinenko at a London hotel the day his tea was poisoned with the radioactive substance polonium...
Alexander Litvinenko's death - like the substance that killed him - retains a toxic power. Britain's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), its top public prosecution office, announced this morning that it would seek the extradition of businessman and former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi from Moscow to face charges in London for the Nov. 1 murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Lugovoi is accused of poisoning Litvinenko, a former KGB operative who became a prominent dissident opposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the radioactive metalloid polonium 210. The CPS's move, although welcomed by Litvinenko's widow, Marina, and officially backed...
...Putin, a former KGB officer, talks about the priority for Russia to move beyond being a supplicant in world affairs. Equally forceful in his own country, he has done dreadful things. Chechnya's soil is sodden with blood and is ruled by a thug who has Putin's approval. The Russian media have been intimidated into submission. The rule of law is widely ignored. Businessmen kowtow to the government or else lose their businesses. Almost a fifth of Russians live in poverty, according to U.S. figures...