Unholy war?

Yesterday I spent 3 hours, reading different accounts on death of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. Normally, I am not very much into politics, but this murder has wide coverage in the press and it’s my country involved. Russian and Foreign press of cause have completely different opinions on what have happened – and the main point of differentiation is whether Russian government and Mr. Putin in particular are involved. All Russian account consider Litvinenko as traitor whose words were not dangerous for government since long time, all western press mentions the fact that he worked on the book on Checnia, which probably somebody didn’t want him to finish.
I don’t want to sound pathetic, but I am proud by the fact that I am Russian and love my country very much, however certain events in the recent history and the course that our government selected, make me ashamed and lost. There were quite a few journalists killed recently - Yuri Sheckochikhin , Anna Politkovskaya and Paul Khlebnikov. Owner of once forth largest oil company of the world “Yukos”, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was accused in fraud and tax evasion and put into jail for 9 years, whereas some other Russian oligarchs, who accumulated their fortunes the same way he did, but are loyal to the government continue to head largest resource companies in Russia and are buying UK football teams and Faberge eggs. At the same time, government acquired major stakes in oil and gas companies, which are formally private, nationalizing the best pieces of Russian business.
One of my American friends, who has been living and working in Russia for a long time, once told me that, when Mr. Eltzin was our president, corruption was sporadic, whereas Mr. Putin made it legal, it’s incorporated into our laws and our minds (not that I think that American society enjoys real freedom and democracy though). And sadly, I pretty much agree with this statement. And I don’t think that I am the only one, but…. I am sure that we will elect the person, who would be “recommended” by Mr. Putin as our next president and our politics will be determined by the same people it is determined by now. So much about national consciousness….

Anyway, Mr. Litvinenko was poisoned by Palladium 210 and was dying for several days, experiencing a lot of pain, he left very passionate testament, accusing Mr. Putin in his death, which made him a hero in the yes of the British press and enemy in the eyes of their Russian colleagues. As far as I spent a lot of hours, reading about the question, I would like to share some info sources I found interesting: Wikipedia-the neutral one, the blog, that supports him a lot, the one who discusses many controversial facts, especially long-time connections of Mr. Litvinenko and Mr. Berezovsky, first Russian billionaire, who is actively trying to overthrow Russian government. You can find the full text of Mr. Litvinenko book “BLOWING UP RUSSIA: Terror from Within” as one of the links in this blog, if you read in Russian, the second book, called “Лубянская преступная группировка”, here. The allegations he makes in his book are to my mind too depressing to be the truth – future president gives an order to blow up 2 apartment buildings in Moscow (more than 300 people died) and re-starts the war in Chechnya in order to have effective election campaign… This shows that the reality might be much more brutal than any movie (have you seen Wag the dog - it’s one of my favorite).
My last point to this very long post is that of cause I sympathize to Mr. Litvinenko’s family and appreciate what he has done in terms of protecting the freedom of Russia, but his depiction as a saint by Western media seems to me very extreme. The guy worked for KGB for quite a few years and was promoted quite fast, which means he was good at what he was doing and shared the values of this organization. He then selected to struggle against the things he struggled for before – but we will never know his motivation and Mr Berezovskiy, who supported Litvinenko, can’t be characterized as a brave freedom fighter in any sense…