The progressives cultivated a network of agents in the black market, and funneled out antiques and then raw materials through them. They turned to organized crime networks, which sent out representatives in the wave of emigration permitted in the late seventies and early eighties who opened trading businesses in Austria and Switzerland, and then deeper into the West. Security men like [Yevgeny] Primakov at Moscow's Institute for World Economy, and Mikhail Milshtein at the Institute for USA and Canada, had led in pushing for reforms. When the Soviet Union collapsed... the KGB progressives were to some degree prepared. Their agents were already embedded, the cash networks they'd created - at least in part - still under their control.
In the course of pages and pages that go into various aspects of this alleged operation and the financial schemes connected with it, there is very little mention of Putin, much less any meaningful ties made between him and the nefarious activities described. At one point, Belton even admits: "It's not clear whether he [Putin] played any role in them" (p. 34).
Richard Sakwa, a British academic expert on the Soviet Union and Russia who has authored a 4-volume political biography of Putin, said in an email exchange with this writer: "This is a classic of the genre whereby Putin is presented as all-knowing, all-seeing and ubiquitous. All sorts of things were going on at the time, but I think that the mainstream story of Putin's activities in Dresden is probably right - he was a relatively low-level operative who enjoyed life there. As an intelligent person, he understood the defects of the GDR, but also its positives. Belton's version greatly exaggerates Putin's role; and even the various nefarious plans are not proven."
In chapter 3, Belton claims that Putin and many people he worked closely with in St. Petersburg during his stint as Mayor Anatoly Sobchak's deputy in the early 1990s colluded with mobsters - namely of the Tambov gang - to control the city's port. It is alleged that Putin's partners in crime included many KGB veterans who would follow him into the Kremlin and that dirty financial schemes were implemented with the proceeds contributing to the development of a slush fund for Putin. Much of this is based on unnamed sources and on similar claims made by Karen Dawisha, which have been called into question.
Sakwa also points out that the mobster who would have been involved in any collusion to control the St. Petersburg port, Vladimir Kumarin of the Tambov gang, was targeted by the Putin government in 2007, which Belton never mentions: "I have done some work on the Tambov gang, and Putin's later move against Kumarin. If there was earlier evidence of collusion, then Kumarin (now serving a long jail sentence) would have said so."
In Chapter 5, Belton trots out the theory that the Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999 were a false-flag operation. She suggests that Putin's KGB buddies - led by then-FSB head Nikolai Patrushev - executed an operation in which two apartment buildings in Moscow were bombed, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries, in order to catapult Putin into a heroic role to ensure his win in the presidential election of 2000. According to this theory, the bombings provided an excuse to attack Chechnya, which would make a bland prime minister look strong and presidential. The Yeltsin corruption issues that were predominant in the news at the time were pushed aside as Putin was now thrust into the spotlight amidst public fear prompted by the bombings. Without this, Belton asserts that Putin would not have attained the gravitas to prevail over fellow security-service veteran Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov in the upcoming election (pp. 156-157).
Allen C. Lynch, Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and author of the acclaimed 2011 political biography Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft, characterized these allegations as "tendentious" in his book. He also made the point that Russian military operations, overseen by Putin while he was prime minister, were already underway in response to the Chechen incursion into Dagestan when the bombings took place, thereby nullifying the purported motivation for Putin and the FSB to manufacture a terrorist attack.
Furthermore, Gordon Bennett, formerly with the Conflict Studies Research Centre, made an important point discrediting this theory in 2002 when he underscored the fact that it was primarily propagated by the late exiled oligarch and Putin enemy Boris Berezovsky and those connected with him. Berezovsky never was able to present any substantive evidence of the accusation when pressed to do so. Interestingly, Berezovsky only made these accusations after Putin had moved against his media empire.
So what is Belton's incendiary claim - that this operation was carried out by Patrushev with a motive to advance Putin - based upon? The answer is: one unnamed source (p. 160). Belton does quote people who don't believe the claim and mentions Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov's public denial, but it's clear from the overall book that Belton is trying to convince the reader that there is something to all of these nasty assertions about the Putin government.
In chapter 8, Belton provides an incredible characterization of the 2002 terrorist hostage-taking event at Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. By this time, a reasonably astute reader of the book can pick up on Belton's pattern. When she starts her telling of this event, she implies that it was not what it seemed at the time and proceeds to recount what everyone knows about it using standard media accounts as references. By the time she gets to the bombshell revelation - that it was really another contrived event with FSB head Patrushev reviving his role as the evil orchestrator so Putin can look like a hero - it is again reliant upon a single unnamed source (pp. 242-245). This is the kind of writing stunt that would get an amateur novelist laughed out of his writing group because it is so patently manipulative and insulting to the intelligence of the reader. After telling this tall tale, Belton acknowledges that it may never be possible to verify it - just as she admitted with her other incredible tale in Chapter 1 with Operation Luch. One has to ask: what is the point of leading the reader down these bunny trails if the author is going to essentially shrug her shoulders afterwards and say "oh, well, who knows?"
Sakwa called this false-flag claim "Fundamentally absurd, and even grotesque. Yes, there are still some unanswered questions - but ungrounded conspiracy theorizing gets us no further towards the truth."
In another section of the book, to make the case that Putin has gobs of secret money squirreled away, Belton continues her fun with unnamed sources. This time, an unnamed source claims that during Putin's first term as president, the KGB cabal - led by Igor Sechin and Gennady Timchenko - had "quietly" created a "parallel system of government" in Russia by finagling ways to obtain more money and control of energy assets. According to another unnamed source, the head of Lukoil, Vagit Alekperov, agreed to front a stake in the company for Putin (pp. 218-219). Later in the book, Sergei Pugachev (whose credibility we will discuss in more detail later) claimed that a Swiss banker told him that Timchenko was a holder of funds - largely through the Gunvor oil-trading company - that really belonged to Putin, while an unnamed "Russian tycoon close to Putin" also says Putin has billions of dollars being held indirectly for him by Timchenko (pp. 321-324).
There are some guidelines that journalists should be following with respect to the use of unnamed sources in order to ensure they maintain credibility with readers. These include providing a clear explanation for why a source must remain unnamed and verification through other means of the claims made by the unnamed source. Belton doesn't provide any real explanation as to why her sources - most of whom are described as "former associates of" or "former" agents of some kind - must remain unnamed. Would their lives, liberty or careers really be in danger at this point in time? It's not very clear. There also seems to be little credible verification of some of the more explosive claims that are underpinned by these unnamed sources.
The Named
There are several named sources that Belton relies on heavily throughout the book. However there are some problems with these individuals and their credibility.
First is Sergei Pugachev, who comes across as a self-serving blow-hard throughout. Pugachev claims to be a victim of the Putin government's desire to steal the shipyards and coal deposit he had controlled since the Yeltsin era by forcing his Mezhprombank into bankruptcy. Pugachev fled Russia in 2011 for Britain to evade bank-fraud and embezzlement charges. But Pugachev's story of an innocuous transfer of his own money out of Mezhprombank in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis was challenged by the Russian government in British court.
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