{"id":170756,"date":"2011-02-17T09:53:53","date_gmt":"2011-02-17T09:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.moldova.org\/2011\/02\/17\/mr-putin-on-trial-literally-217202-eng\/"},"modified":"2011-02-17T09:53:53","modified_gmt":"2011-02-17T09:53:53","slug":"mr-putin-on-trial-literally-217202-eng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/mr-putin-on-trial-literally-217202-eng\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Putin on trial (Literally)"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

\nVladimir Putin on trial in Moscow — an almost unimaginable idea in the context of today’s Russia. Yet the precedent, albeit in a somewhat farcical way, was set earlier this week as a Russian court — for the first time in Mr. Putin’s eleven-year rule — admitted and heard a case with the Russian leader acting as a defendant.<\/p>\n

On December 16, 2010, during a live televised question-and-answer session, Mr. Putin accused opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov, and Vladimir Milov of stealing money from the state. “What do Nemtsov, Ryzhkov, Milov, and others really want?”, the prime minister read from a viewer’s question, before asserting: “Money and power, what else do they want?! In their day they wrought havoc, in the ’90s, they stole quite a few billion along with the Berezovskys and others who are now in prison.”<\/p>\n

As often happens with Mr. Putin, the statement was deceitful on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to begin. Mr. Nemtsov has never been accused even by his fiercest opponents (let alone indicted or convicted) of any financial wrongdoings during his years in public office — first as regional governor, then as deputy prime minister. In a system that invents bogus charges to keep its adversaries in jail (as in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was convicted for “stealing” his own oil), any real evidence, had it existed, would have long ago been used against someone like Mr. Nemtsov, the Kremlin’s leading political opponent. As for Mr. Ryzhkov and Mr. Milov, they were not even theoretically in positions to “steal billions” in the 1990s: the former was a deputy speaker of parliament, the latter an analyst at the Energy Commission.<\/p>\n

Mr. Putin’s attempt to tie his opponents to Boris Berezovsky, a once-powerful oligarch now living in exile in London, was beyond ridiculous. As deputy prime minister, Mr. Nemtsov famously feuded with Mr. Berezovsky, disrupting his plans to secure chairmanship of the state energy giant Gazprom. Vladimir Putin, on the contrary, was a political associate of Mr. Berezovsky’s and relied on his support to rise to the top echelons of power in the late 1990s. As President Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatiana Yumasheva, recently reminded those who needed reminding, it was Boris Berezovsky who in 1999 founded United Russia, the party now led by Vladimir Putin. It was also Mr. Berezovsky who, according to a recent interview, gave Mr. Putin $25 million for his first presidential election campaign.<\/p>\n

After Mr. Putin’s televised diatribe, the three opposition leaders brought a civil defamation suit against the prime minister in Moscow’s Savelovsky District Court, demanding that he publicly retract his statement and pay 1 million rubles ($34,000) in compensation (the money was to be used for publishing a new report detailing government corruption). On February 14, the court held its only substantive hearing on the lawsuit. Needless to say, Mr. Putin’s side produced no evidence of the “stolen billions.” The prime minister’s lawyer, Elena Zabralova, suggested that Mr. Putin was merely stating his personal opinion about the opposition leaders, and affirmed that his right to do so (hear, hear) is protected by Russian and international norms concerning freedom of speech and by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. References to such notions are usually of not much use in Russian courtrooms, but in this case Judge Tatiana Adamova must have found them convincing. The opposition’s lawsuit against the premier was dismissed in its entirety.<\/p>\n

Predictable as its outcome was, this case may have important ramifications. Apart from preparing an appeal to the European Court in Strasbourg, Mr. Nemtsov’s legal team is considering launching separate proceedings against the Russian prime minister in the United Kingdom, where his December 16 show was also carried by Russian television through its international satellite broadcasts. If recent Russia-related judicial decisions in London are anything to go by, English courts are not prone to bowing before the Kremlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>Vladimir Putin on trial in Moscow \u2014 an almost unimaginable idea in the context of today\u2019s Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":170755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"content_social_share":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

\nVladimir Putin on trial in Moscow — an almost unimaginable idea in the context of today’s Russia. Yet the precedent, albeit in a somewhat farcical way, was set earlier this week as a Russian court — for the first time in Mr. Putin’s eleven-year rule — admitted and heard a case with the Russian leader acting as a defendant.<\/p>\n

On December 16, 2010, during a live televised question-and-answer session, Mr. Putin accused opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov, and Vladimir Milov of stealing money from the state. “What do Nemtsov, Ryzhkov, Milov, and others really want?”, the prime minister read from a viewer’s question, before asserting: “Money and power, what else do they want?! In their day they wrought havoc, in the ’90s, they stole quite a few billion along with the Berezovskys and others who are now in prison.”<\/p>\n

As often happens with Mr. Putin, the statement was deceitful on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to begin. Mr. Nemtsov has never been accused even by his fiercest opponents (let alone indicted or convicted) of any financial wrongdoings during his years in public office — first as regional governor, then as deputy prime minister. In a system that invents bogus charges to keep its adversaries in jail (as in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was convicted for “stealing” his own oil), any real evidence, had it existed, would have long ago been used against someone like Mr. Nemtsov, the Kremlin’s leading political opponent. As for Mr. Ryzhkov and Mr. Milov, they were not even theoretically in positions to “steal billions” in the 1990s: the former was a deputy speaker of parliament, the latter an analyst at the Energy Commission.<\/p>\n

Mr. Putin’s attempt to tie his opponents to Boris Berezovsky, a once-powerful oligarch now living in exile in London, was beyond ridiculous. As deputy prime minister, Mr. Nemtsov famously feuded with Mr. Berezovsky, disrupting his plans to secure chairmanship of the state energy giant Gazprom. Vladimir Putin, on the contrary, was a political associate of Mr. Berezovsky’s and relied on his support to rise to the top echelons of power in the late 1990s. As President Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatiana Yumasheva, recently reminded those who needed reminding, it was Boris Berezovsky who in 1999 founded United Russia, the party now led by Vladimir Putin. It was also Mr. Berezovsky who, according to a recent interview, gave Mr. Putin $25 million for his first presidential election campaign.<\/p>\n

After Mr. Putin’s televised diatribe, the three opposition leaders brought a civil defamation suit against the prime minister in Moscow’s Savelovsky District Court, demanding that he publicly retract his statement and pay 1 million rubles ($34,000) in compensation (the money was to be used for publishing a new report detailing government corruption). On February 14, the court held its only substantive hearing on the lawsuit. Needless to say, Mr. Putin’s side produced no evidence of the “stolen billions.” The prime minister’s lawyer, Elena Zabralova, suggested that Mr. Putin was merely stating his personal opinion about the opposition leaders, and affirmed that his right to do so (hear, hear) is protected by Russian and international norms concerning freedom of speech and by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. References to such notions are usually of not much use in Russian courtrooms, but in this case Judge Tatiana Adamova must have found them convincing. The opposition’s lawsuit against the premier was dismissed in its entirety.<\/p>\n

Predictable as its outcome was, this case may have important ramifications. Apart from preparing an appeal to the European Court in Strasbourg, Mr. Nemtsov’s legal team is considering launching separate proceedings against the Russian prime minister in the United Kingdom, where his December 16 show was also carried by Russian television through its international satellite broadcasts. If recent Russia-related judicial decisions in London are anything to go by, English courts are not prone to bowing before the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

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