Word: moscow
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...kind of atonement for atrocities Russia (and perhaps Litvinenko himself) had committed in Chechnya, although another doubted any conversion had taken place. Litvinenko's widow Marina had requested a nondenominational service at the graveside, but an imam interrupted the proceedings to perform Islamic rites. Litvinenko, a former Moscow anticorruption detective turned furious critic of the Russian government, had a talent for controversy...
...that, as yet, remains unproved. Meanwhile, a slew of whodunit theories are jostling for prominence. Following an autopsy that spurred the police to treat Litvinenko's death as a murder, Scotland Yard antiterrorism officers have been combing sites all over London, while colleagues traveled to Moscow. "This continues to be an extremely complex investigation, and detectives are pursuing many lines of inquiry," said a police spokeswoman. Litvinenko's excruciating and sinister death and the swirl of international politics around it make this a case worthy of John le Carré, but as the police insist, the classic questions of any murder...
...Litvinenko on corruption charges in 1999, and he was jailed for eight months. At trial, he was acquitted, then rearrested and jailed for an additional seven months on the same charges (which were quashed), then arrested again. He was eventually released on the condition that he did not leave Moscow...
...Still, there isn't much the West can or will do about it. Relations between Moscow and the West have rarely hinged on single, or even systematic, human rights abuses. It was not expedient for the democracies to admit the existence of Stalin's Gulag when the priority was working together to defeat Hitler. It may be no more expedient to focus on human rights issues in Putin's Russia as long as Moscow must be kept as an ally in the war on terror, and persuaded to back sanctions against Iran...
...September 1983, killing 269 people, was not allowed to significantly interfere with business as usual. And "realpolitik" eventually paid off - at least for the West - as the Soviet Union disappeared a few years later without a shot being fired. Today, "realpolitik" has given way to "realeconomics" - who cares if Moscow bumps off its citizens in Chechnya or elsewhere as long as the oil and natural gas are flowing from Russia? The West reacts most loudly when its investments in Russia are endangered...