Killer in the Kremlin: New book explores Vladimir Putin’s bloody reign
Atlantic Council by John Sweeney 7/15/2022
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/killer-in-the-kremlin-new-book-explores-vladimir-putins-bloody-reign/Twenty-two years ago, I walked into a hospital and saw an eight-year-old Chechen girl with a horribly burnt face, the only survivor of seven people in a car blown up in a Russian army attack on a refugee column. Just over two decades later in Ukraine, I saw countless cars with the word “Children” scrawled on them similarly shot up by Russian troops. War crimes on repeat.
I wrote my new book “Killer In The Kremlin” in an attempt to somehow make sense of the man behind the snuffing out of so many innocent lives. There is no doubt in my mind that the Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999 were a black flag operation by the Russian security services to make Vladimir Putin, an insipid spy, look strong. Three hundred people died in Moscow and cities in southern Russia. Putin blamed Chechen terrorists and launched the Second Chechen War in which around 80,000 died.
Putin subsequently invaded Georgia and hundreds more lives were lost. He helped Assad in Syria kill around half a million. In 2014, he invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine leading to 15,000 deaths. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine this February has added to the butcher’s bill: maybe 40,000 Russian soldiers, 15,000 Ukrainian troops and many thousands of Ukrainian civilians have died so far. Leaving aside Syria, the master of the Kremlin is directly responsible for the deaths of some 150,000 people.
Widely suspected of having blown up the Moscow apartments in 1999, Putin is also closely linked to at least two more suspected black flag operations, the Moscow Theatre Siege of 2002 where around 170 people were killed, and the Beslan siege of 2004, which claimed 333 lives, many of them children. Common to all three mass killings inside Russia was a total lack of transparency about the investigations into what took place. Numerous journalists and politicians who asked difficult questions were poisoned or shot.
Yuri Shchekochikhin was a Russian MP and journalist investigating these mass killings. He had courage, tremendous energy, a nose for a story and, I’ve been told, a fondness for Armenian brandy. In January 2003, he told a friend, “For the first time in my life I feel frightened.”
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