Putin aide: 'Miliband's hatred for Russia runs in family'

dailymail.co.uk ^ | 4th August 2007 | JASON LEWIS

[Tailgunner Joe]

A key adviser to President Vladimir Putin accused Foreign Secretary David Miliband of 'anti-Russian racism' over his handling of the Alexander Litvinenko affair.

It was claimed Mr Miliband let his personal views cloud his judgment in the recent tit-for-tat diplomat expulsion row over the murder of ex-KGB operative Litvinenko.

Last month the Foreign Secretary expelled Russian diplomats from Britain after the Kremlin refused to sanction the extradition of the prime suspect in the murder case.

President Putin responded by throwing out several British Embassy officials and banning visas for other UK diplomats.

Now Russian political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky, who is close to the Russian President, has claimed Mr Miliband inherited anti-Russian sentiments from his family.

The comments were last night being viewed as a sign of Moscow's bitterness towards Britain over the Litvinenko affair and the UK Government's refusal to extradite tycoon Boris Berezovsky to Moscow.

The attack came in Russian nationalist newspaper Tvoi Den. Mr Pavlovsky said: "David Miliband's hatred for Russia was inherited from his grandfather."

The newspaper said that in the Twenties the Foreign Secretary's grandfather, Samuel, then Shimon, Miliband, a native of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, had fought under the command of Trotsky 'eliminating' white Russians opposed to Communism.

He later came to England with his son Ralph, who became a Marxist academic, and whose sons David and Ed now serve in the Cabinet.

"David absorbed anti-Sovietism, as the saying goes, with his mother's milk," said Mr Pavlovsky.

On May 22, 2007, British officials charged Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB official, with Litvinenko's murder, announcing they would seek his extradition from Russia.

But a Russian official stated it was against the Russian constitution to perform extraditions of its citizens. Lugovoi denies any involvement.

[vader69]

I don’t think it’s safe to drink.

[JohnA]

You're just taking a personal hissy fit because Putin's grabbing some well-deserved attention lately. It's not my sense that Putin-bashing has very broad appeal here, as much as you'd like to think you can change all that.

Fill yer boots.

[JohnA]

The Scots I came from were British North American servicemen, During the American Revolutionary War, the family split. Some came north to what became Canada and the rest stayed in what became the US.

The US has largely stayed out of the Russia-UK spy spat and other assorted grievances including the Chechnya terrorist protection racket the poms are running.

The Russians recently told the Great Game Loser-nation to shed the colonialist mentality and get on with business.I'd love to visit Scotland. I don't know enough about the family before the arrival.

[AdmSmith]

JohnA, thanks for the link to Anatoly Sobchak, maybe you can enlighten me about his “timely” death together with two of his aides that had heart attacks simultaneously?

http://www.ds.ru/arch/a2000/041200n.htm

[JohnA]

There was no suggestion of foul play in the death of the reformer from St Petersburg, a city that has become known as the "mafia capital" of Russia. It was a second heart attack, to silence those who accused Sobchak of feigning heart disease to escape corruption charges.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20000221/ai_n14291432

From The Independent: a newspaper you can believe. Will that be all or will you be introducing more such topics?

[AdmSmith]

Yes, they are mostly correct, however the obituary was posted the day after his death and later, on April 12th it was obviously suggestions of foul play. Read the link in my previous post.

[JohnA]

Putin is a sober man. It was duly noted on Sobchak's death that his funeral was the only place anybody has ever seen Putin shed a tear.

Are you one of those Bush hard liners Wm Pfaff is talking about?

[JohnA]

And if you are one of the Bush hard liners on Russia Wm Pfaff is talking about - people who simply refuse to deal with the Russia that is rather than the Russia they want to make over - please tell me how it is that US investment in Russia continues to go up. Seems to me that if you are a hard-liner-winner, you'd be stopping/rolling back this sort of activity. Instead, it's on the increase. So is Russian investment in the US economy.

[JohnA]

Or are you doomed to a future of Russian-rock-turning-over until you find something you can really get your teeth into. And then if you found something you could really get your teeth into, what would you do with it when you found it.

Listen, chum. Sobchak died those many years ago. Why not let the poor man alone in his grave? If something was to have been made of it, you'd find more than a 200 wd Cyrillic clip in a US chatboard and results would have been obtained by now.

Hard liners: They are like dogs with bones. The dogs bark, the caravan pases by.

[AdmSmith]

It was duly noted on Sobchak’s death that his funeral was the only place anybody has ever seen Putin shed a tear.

Are you really saying that Gazputin can’t show empathy, except once? I do not think that he is a psychopath, but he is an authoritarian soon-to-become dictator.

[JohnA]

That’s not the way he or Russia tell it. That’s not the way Solzhenitsyn sees it going. Stop meddling and barking at the sidelines and deal with the Russia that is rather than the Russia you want it to be,seeing Putin-as-Lightening-Rod for all your messianic lightening strikes. Be realistic, like Henry Kissinger.

[JohnA]

No. What I am really saying is that Putin's history with the municipal government of St Petersburg was this:

The city was starving. Sobchak and Putin worked day and night to trade off precious metals etc...anything they could get their hands on to trade for food for the populous. They got the job done. Investigations went deep into Putin's work when he became President for St Pete's profiteering and corruption and found nothing, nada, zilch. The investigations were, according to those who launched them - exhaustive. Hence, Sobchak is Putin's hero. And that is why he openly wept.