Experienced biographer Philip Short began his book A Taste for Intrigue: The Multiple Lives of François Mitterrand (2014) a bizarre communicative that he meticulously proved was almost surely true. In his fresh biography, Vladimir Putin Short begins with an equally bizarre story, which he proves is almost surely false.
Mitterrand's communicative is that he faked an attempted murder, hiring armed men to shoot him, posing as right-wing Algerian terrorists. The accomplice gave up the ruse erstwhile he was detained by the police.
Putin's communicative is far more significant. It is claimed that terrorist bombings on residential buildings in Moscow and another cities in the fall of 1999, in which more than 300 Russian citizens were killed in a dream, were in fact an operation of the FSB's false flag to justify military intervention in Chechnya and increase Vladimir Putin's political luck before the 2000 presidential election.
The false flag explanation has always strained common sense. The alleged reward – the emergence in popularity, the justification of an already completely justified war – was not in the least proportional to the horror of the crime. There was nothing improbable in the authoritative explanation that they were terrorists from Chechnya or Dagestan for whom murdering innocents had long been weapons.
Short analyses the website side with evidence on the kind of explosive utilized and the timing of events. Nevertheless, it concludes that the communicative of the false flag is “almost surely false”. He talks to the then head of the Moscow CIA residency and the erstwhile head of MI6 who came to the same conclusion. MI6 had quite a few information sources in Russia during this period, says erstwhile head of MI6. It is impossible for an operation of this magnitude to be carried out without Western intelligence.
So why can we even read present about Putin being an accessory to bombings on flat blocks, repeated in renowned publications specified as "Atlantic"? The answer reveals the underestimated aspect of our current confrontation.
Lies about Putin multiply in the Western press. Short's book denies at least half a twelve conspiracy theories, all of which (as his analysis shows) are circulating not only on the margins, but among mainstream journalists: that Putin was an illegitimate kid from Ural who was secretly adopted; that he ordered the murders of Anna Politkowska, Boris Niemcow and others.
The killings are a peculiarly crucial part of Putin's personality, which was created in the Western press. They are most likely the basis for president Joe Biden's naming Putin as a "killer" (March 2021), a blunder that profoundly offended the Russians without tangible benefits to the US. The street in front of the Russian embassy in Washington is present called ‘Boris Nemtsov Plaza’, thanks to the D.C. legislature and City Council Act, suggesting that Putin's government was liable for the death of German.
The problem is that, according to Short, no of these murders can be crediblely linked to Putin. Politkowska was murdered by Chechens who did not request encouragement. Putin “had no reason to want to kill German”. His period of glory was over and he was no longer a threat. The only execution Short blames Putin is the execution of Alexander Litvinenko, erstwhile FSB officer, who was inactive active in the dark planet of espionage from London and so his killing may have been considered justified by Putin.
In fact, 1 of the things Litvinenko did in London was actively and loudly advance the false flag explanation of bombings on residential buildings in Moscow, in press interviews and in a book entitled Blowing Up Russia. He didn't do it on his own. He was inspired by the oligarch. Boris Bieriezowski – and he was not the only one. During his exile in London, Bieriezowski subsidized many writers and any of the best British public relations experts to disfigure Putin's image abroad. It wasn't just a individual grudge. If Putin had always been forced to resign from office and Bieriezowski could return to a trough in Russia, his PR investment would have paid off.
That's where many of the chaotic rumors came from. The more crucial question is why these myths are inactive alive.
You can't blame American readers for taking Putin's communicative for a good coin. The average American doesn't know much about Russia, and for what he knows, things like killings and bombings are average there. (In fact, I erstwhile asked the Frenchman about the fake effort to kill Mitterrand, and he replied: “Yes, it is true, but you must realize that French politics are different).
The people liable are our experts from Russia. Their occupation is to separate facts from fiction. In the case of Putin, they waived that obligation. There are many books about Putin in America, and it is worth noting that any of the most hysterical – claiming to be a notorious murderer or part of a decades-long KGB conspiracy – they are written by authors with the best references.
Short's book is the best presently available biography of Putin. His view is impartial, and even in general unfavourable to his subject matter. At any point, it states that pigeons specified as Jack Matlock and Stephen Cohen "They frequently exaggerated by trying to explain Putin's actions and yet discredited themselves". There's a charge against Putin that he finds incriminating.
Dissemination of false stories about Putin harms America, giving society a mistaken image of an crucial geopolitical player. But it's not his only pity. The dialog between the 2 parties is that each organization assumes that the another organization is at any level rational, capable of logical reasoning and assessing facts and interests. erstwhile bizarre stories are tolerated in influential circles despite the deficiency of evidence, the site that is being attacked has reason to uncertainty that this criterion of dialog has been met.
Helen Andrews
Philip Short, (Henry Holt & Co.: July 2022), 864 pages.
Helen Andrews is simply a elder editor in The American Conservative and author of the book The Men and Women Who Promoted Freedom and Delivered Disaster (Sentinel, January 2021). He holds a Bachelor of religion degree from Yale University. Her work appeared in “The New York Times", "The Wall Street Journal, “First Things”, “The Claremont Review of Books”, “Hedgehog Review” and many others.
Photo: kremlin.ru
For: ‘The American Conservative’
