The Khodorkovsky Connection

In the latest news coming out of Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been transferred within Siberia from a gulag to a pre-trial detention center in Chita for what may be the application of further bogus charges against him. And on Friday, police officials took his father, recently released from hospital, for interrogation.

Although you may not have remarked upon it, even before this news, the name of my client had taken on new significance. For his is one of a handful of names to appear recently in two otherwise seemingly unrelated stories out of Russia: the mysterious poisoning of the former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, and the decision by Royal Dutch Shell to give in to Kremlin pressure and offer up a large stake in the Sakhalin-2 natural gas project.

While both events received publicity, few noted the Khodorkovsky connection, and many in the press and policy communities have yet to understand the precedent-setting significance of his story.

More than 3,000 miles away from Moscow serving a nine-year sentence on tax evasion, the former oil billionaire links the Litvinenko poisoning and the increasingly confrontational and aggressive energy politics of the Kremlin. Mr. Khodorkovsky connects these events not because of a shady conspiracy theory and not because of accusations against the president of Russia in the London poisoning. My client's story explains the relationship of the dissident's death to the Sakhalin heist for another reason altogether: His political persecution and imprisonment and the theft of his assets set the gold standard for Russian impunity.

Knight Ridder Washington Bureau April 29, 2002, Monday
Copyright 2002 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Knight Ridder Washington Bureau
April 29, 2002, Monday
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
KR-ACC-NO: K1487
LENGTH: 1167 words
HEADLINE: Former Russian general killed in helicopter crash
BYLINE: By Mark McDonald
BODY:
MOSCOW _ Alexander Lebed, the no-nonsense former general who helped foil the 1991 coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev and later ran for president against Boris Yeltsin, died Sunday in a helicopter crash in Siberia. Lebed, 52, the governor of the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, was taken to a local hospital, where he died from his injuries. Seven other passengers also died, and all 11 others on board were critically injured. It appeared that the helicopter, which was ferrying government officials and reporters to the opening of a new ski resort, hit a high-voltage line in the fog. Foul play was not immediately apparent, but an investigative team was ordered to the scene.
In President Vladimir Putin's cable of condolence to Lebed's wife and three children, he called the tough talking general "a bright, strong and courageous person, a true soldier whose entire life was devoted to the service of his fatherland."
Two years into his presidency, Putin has adopted a number of the themes _ including a fierce Russian nationalism and a strong military _ that Lebed used to great effect in his 1996 presidential campaign.
Lebed became a national hero in August 1991 when he refused to support a coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev by KGB and military hard-liners. Lebed's elite Tula paratroop division was stationed outside the White House, the seat of the Russian parliament in Moscow, where Gorbachev had taken refuge.
Lebed's superiors ordered him to besiege the White House, but he refused. That refusal helped derail the coup, and Lebed burnished his reputation by brokering a 1994 peace agreement between Russian separatists and the new government of Moldova, a former Soviet republic where he then was in command of Russian troops.
Lebed was forced to retire from the military in 1995 after he began criticizing Yeltsin's government for corruption, rot within the military and tarnishing Russian nationalism in an unpopular war against separatists in the republic of Chechnya.
In the first round of the 1996 presidential election, Lebed won nearly 15 percent of the vote and finished third behind an ailing Yeltsin and Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. When Lebed then threw his support to Yeltsin, it helped clinch Yeltsin's victory in the runoff.
Lebed was made Yeltsin's national security adviser, and he quickly negotiated a cease-fire that temporarily ended the 21-month war in Chechnya.
But when he continued to criticize the Yeltsin government, publicly suggesting that Yeltsin no longer was physically up to being president, Yeltsin fired him.
In May 1998, the crusty, gravel-voiced general defeated the Kremlin's candidate for governor of the huge, resource-rich Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk. He decided not to run in the 2000 presidential election.
Alexander Ivanovich Lebed was born into a working-class family in Novocherkassk in southern Russia. His father did time in one of Josef Stalin's prison camps for a minor infraction and later served in a prison battalion during World War II.
Lebed joined the army as a paratrooper in 1969, rose quickly through the ranks, and was a highly decorated battalion commander in the Afghan war. He was given command of the Tula paratroop division in 1988 and became a major general in 1990.
(c) 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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