“Putin may not be perfect but he wants the best for Russia.”

Russians have a history of having tyrants for leaders. They begged Ivan the Terrible to come back and he responded by inventing the forerunner of the KGB which killed and terrorized people until Ivan turned on them too and had them all executed. Their symbol was a dog and a broomstick and they wore black and arrived on horseback to murder without mercy. Putin did much the same in Chechnya ,minus the horses, where wholesale slaughter was the order of the day. He also had Alexander Litvinenko murdered and a Russian journalist who was writing a book on Putin’s activities in Chechnya was also murdered in front of her apartment - on Putin’s birthday. And what about all those apartment buildings he and the FSB blew up in 1999 so he could take power and blame it all on Chechnya?

The Duma gaffe

On September 13, mere hours after the second explosion in Moscow the speaker of the Russian Duma, Gennadiy Seleznyov of the Communist party made an announcement: ‘I have just received a report’, he said. ‘According to information from Rostok-on-Don. An apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night’.  And here it is again. That Jane Standley/building number 7 moment: only this is no mere BBC journalist, this is the speaker of the Russian Parliament announcing the bombing of a building which would not occur until three days later on September 16th. Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer himself, recognized this Monty Pythonesque moment for what it was. ‘Moscow two was on the 13th and Volgodonsk on the 16th but they got it to the speaker the wrong way round’, he said.  He should have been more careful: that kind of outspokenness can get a man killed. The independent investigator appointed to investigate the Moscow bombings, Mikhail Trepashkin, confirmed that it was, in fact, an FSB officer who handed the note to Seleznyov.

But not only was Mikhail Trepashkin not allowed to carry out his investigation, he was arrested and imprisoned for four years for revealing ‘state secrets’. One of those state secrets, presumably, was that Trepashkin found that one of the basements in a bombed apartment building was rented by an FSB officer named Vladmimir Romanovich. Later Romanovich was killed in a mysterious hit and run accident in Cyprus. And just to make absolutely certain that not one skerrick of the truth will come out and have legal repercussions for anyone in their lifetime,  all materials related to the Ryazin incident (where more FSB officers were caught red handed -no pun intended- putting 57kg bombs in the basement of an apartment building) have been sealed for 75 years by the Duma.

Putin came to power on the back of acts of terror and lacks all moral authority not to mention integrity. If he’s the answer, ask yourself, what the hell can the question possibly be? Even allowing for Russia’s unique history, Putin is at best a necessary evil and will, unfortunately, probably live to be a hundred.

To the first three who commented:

Just hold on and try to think as Russian. Putin is not your prime minister. As a leader he is good for Russia. Without him the country would be in chaos or another Afganistan. Big, and even not so big countries survive only with uncompromising and decisive leaders.Humans need clear rules and a satisfactory living standard. Too much freedom can encourage the self-centered and greedy to enslave the less fortunate. Putin may not be perfect but he wants the best for Russia.

Maybe Russia can respond with an environmental protection award for Hu Jintao

Giving a peace prize to a criminal, war mongering thug does nothing for China’s credibility - which is already in tatters because of the way China treats its own people. They should have given it to the Dalai Lama. He actually has a commitment to peace while Putin’s only commitment is to the army, Fascism and the intelligence service he once led.