Putin Sends Greeting to War Crimes Convict

[Rose Siding]

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin issued New Year's greetings Saturday to a former pro-Soviet partisan convicted in Latvia of killing civilians during World War II.

Vassily Kononov, 80, was convicted last year of war crimes for ordering the killing of nine civilians, including a pregnant woman, in 1944 when Latvia was occupied by Nazi troops. He was a leader of a small band of partisans fighting the Nazis.

Kononov was sentenced to 20 months' imprisonment, but was freed because he had served that much time in pretrial detention.
...
"You have defended not only your honest name, but historical justice and the honor of your fighting comrades," Putin said in the greetings statement released by the Kremlin. "From my soul I greet you and your loved ones on the coming New Year."

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-russia-latvia,0,3118678.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[reorg]

1. So?

From what I read Kononov was prosecuted for "taking part in partisan action in 1944, when 9 residents of the village Maliye Bati were killed, 6 of them had been members of the auxiliary police of (Nazi) occupation authorities."

The Russians seem to have voiced their concerns with regard to this matter from the beginning (in the late nineties), so it is not really a surprise that Putin would make such a statement.

[Igel]

2. "From my soul"? Gimme a break.

Translations in newspapers suck.

Maybe "from the bottom of my heart".

I'd probably render "Ot dushi zhelaiu Vam (etc.)" as "Warmest greetings to you and yours in the coming New Year."

[Tinoire]

4. Yes but when did proper translations ever interest the propagandists?

PNAC's on an anti-Russia kick now. So much oil, so many pipelines to be built and Putin the Inscrutable is refusing to roll over and play dead as Georgie tries to get the Caspian Sea part of his little empire in order. We need to start getting the American people to think that Putin's soul is dark and evil. Only a man with a dark and evil soul would write a letter to a, gasp, war crimes convict.


Soul searching at the summit: Bush and Putin take a close look at each other

"I LOOKED the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul." These were the words of President George Bush after his recent meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Bush was immediately attacked by some members of Congress for this glib statement; former KGB officers like Putin are not meant to have souls, and most certainly not souls easily detected through just a cursory glance. Yet, in two respects, Bush was right. Getting a sense of Putin's soul is not equivalent to saying that one liked what one saw.
http://www.janes.com/regional_news/americas/news_briefs/fr010628_04.shtml
===


Letter of 100 on Democracy in Russia, September 28, 2004

An Open Letter to the Heads of State and Government
Of the European Union and NATO
September 28, 2004

(snip)
… we are deeply concerned that these tragic events are being used to further undermine democracy in Russia. Russia's democratic institutions have always been weak and fragile. Since becoming President in January 2000, Vladimir Putin has made them even weaker. He has systematically undercut the freedom and independence of the press, destroyed the checks and balances in the Russian federal system, arbitrarily imprisoned both real and imagined political rivals, removed legitimate candidates from electoral ballots, harassed and arrested NGO leaders, and weakened Russia's political parties. In the wake of the horrific crime in Beslan, President Putin has announced plans to further centralize power and to push through measures that will take Russia a step closer to authoritarian regime.
We are also worried about the deteriorating conduct of Russia in its foreign relations. President Putin's foreign policy is increasingly marked by a threatening attitude towards Russia's neighbors and Europe's energy security, the return of rhetoric of militarism and empire, and by a refusal to comply with Russia's international treaty obligations. In all aspects of Russian political life, the instruments of state power appear to be being rebuilt and the dominance of the security services to grow. We believe that this conduct cannot be accepted as the foundation of a true partnership between Russia and the democracies of NATO and the European Union.
These moves are only the latest evidence that the present Russian leadership is breaking away from the core democratic values of the Euro-Atlantic community. All too often in the past, the West has remained silent and restrained its criticism in the belief that President Putin's steps in the wrong direction were temporary and the hope that Russia would soon return to a democratic and pro-Western path. Western leaders continue to embrace President Putin in the face of growing evidence that the country is moving in the wrong direction and that his strategy for fighting terrorism is producing less and less freedom. We firmly believe dictatorship will not and cannot be the answer to Russia's problems and the very real threats it faces.
The leaders of the West must recognize that our current strategy towards Russia is failing. Our policies have failed to contribute to the democratic Russia we wished for and the people of this great country deserve after all the suffering they have endured. It is time for us to rethink how and to what extent we engage with Putin's Russia and to put ourselves unambiguously on the side of democratic forces in Russia. At this critical time in history when the West is pushing for democratic change around the world, including in the broader Middle East, it is imperative that we do not look the other way in assessing Moscow's behaviour or create a double standard for democracy in the countries which lie to Europe's East. We must speak the truth about what is happening in Russia. We owe it to the victims of Beslan and the tens of thousands of Russian democrats who are still fighting to preserve democracy and human freedom in their country.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/russia-20040928.htm

[reorg]

5. very touching, this overwhelming PNAC concern for democracy

And well orchestrated, it seems. From a comment by John Laughland, "The Chechen's American Friends" in The Guardian:

... the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".

They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Center for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on NATO; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.

The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasizing the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilize the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.

...

Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighboring Georgia - a country which aspires to join NATO, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant military presence - only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday. Proof of any such western involvement would be difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming military force against the US's so-called terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate to hers?

...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0908-01.htm

[Tinoire]

7. Excellent article

Yes very touching - PNAC's solicitude brings tears to my eyes- the poor lambs are so misunderstood...


The same PNAC characters on the Committee for Peace in Chechnya were/are on the committees for Peace in Georgia, Ukraine, Iraq, Azerbaijdzhan... urgh... with their same touching concern for democracy and liberating mostly nationalized resources.

Putin did strongly hint at the West's involvement in Chechnya. Frankly, this chess game at all is out of control.

[bahrbearian]

3. Didn't he also send greetings to the war criminal know as, chimpy.

[daleo]

6. That was my first thought about this headline, too. n/t