2
Who
are these fugitives from the law, wanted by Interpol, who are meeting
at the highest levels of the US government? And why didn't we learn of
them?
Therein lies the story. These two men, it turns out, are
just the tips of a colossal iceberg. And this iceberg doesn’t just
have 90 percent of its mass hidden under water; this iceberg is almost
entirely submerged.
They are Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov,
Israeli-Russian partners in the giant Russian oil company Yukos. They,
along with a number of their cronies, are wanted by Interpol for
allegedly bilking Russian citizens out of billions of dollars. To elude
Russian prosecution, these men have taken up residence in Israel. 3
As
the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz explains: "In recent years Russian
authorities began investigating [Yukos], its managers and major
stockholders, many of whom are of Jewish origin. The probes caused
several of the managers to flee to Israel, and resulted in
Khodorkovski’s [Yukos CEO] arrest and a Kremlin attack on Yukos."
The
fact is that Israel is an important factor in the ongoing,
nation-shaking power struggle now going on in Russia. Yet AP virtually
never reports this connection.
For example, a few months ago in a
typical AP story on this power struggle, "Report: Russia again charges
Berezovsky," 4 Moscow AP Bureau Chief Judith Ingram makes no mention
anywhere that Berezovsky is an Israeli citizen, or of his many
connections to Israel.
Such omissions by AP and large swaths of
the American media leave Americans seriously disadvantaged in
deciphering what is going on in Russia, and its profound significance
for the world.
In order to make sense of this Russian power
struggle, and to understand its importance to the rest of us, it is
necessary to understand the usually omitted Israeli subtext. When this
is understood, the friendship of such pro-Israel Congressional leaders
as Rep. Lantos to fugitive Russian oil tycoons begins to make sense.
To
explore this background it is often useful to turn to the Israeli
press. In July a major Israeli publication, the Jerusalem Post, carried
an article headlined: "Boris Berezovsky: Putin's Russia dangerous for
Israel." Before describing what this contained, let us first go into a
little of the background.
THE OLIGARCHS
Boris Berezovsky
is one of seven "oligarchs," as they are known both inside and outside
Russia: massively rich, powerful manipulators who through violence,
theft and corruption acquired a mammoth percentage (reports range from
70 to 85 percent) of Russia's resources, from its oil to the auto
industry to mass media outlets.
At the same time, the group
steadily gained control over much of the country’s political
apparatus. Using extraordinary financial resources and insider dealing,
the oligarchs handpicked prime ministers and governmental leaders and
barely even bothered to do this behind the scenes.
In 1997 Yukos
founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of the group and Russia's sometimes
richest man (several of the oligarchs trade the top spot back and forth)
told an interviewer before he was arrested and imprisoned by Putin last
year:
"If we rank all the fields of man's activity by
profitability, politics will be the most lucrative business. When we see
a critical situation in the government, we draw lots in order to pick
out a person from our milieu for work in power." 5
Almost all of
these oligarchs, it turns out, have significant ties to Israel. In fact,
Berezovsky himself has Israeli citizenship a fact that caused a scandal
of Watergate proportions in Russia in 1996 when it was exposed by a
Russian newspaper. 6
Do Berezovsky’s dual loyalties really
matter? Yes. In the realm of global dominance, Israel's interests and
Russia's are considerably divergent. It is in Israel's interests to
bring to power a regime in Russia friendly to Israel, rather than the
current one under Putin, which Israeli leaders feel is supportive of its
enemies. Not long ago, for example, Putin met with Syrian leaders an
action highly disturbing to Israel.
Having an Israeli citizen at
the highest levels of the Russian government is ideal, from Israel's
point of view. In Berezovsky they had such a man. The Jerusalem Post
article mentioned above is revealing. It describes Berezovsky as "the
Godfather of the Oligarchs and Kingmaker of Russia's Politics" and
reports Berezovsky's statement that "Putin's Russia is dangerous for
Israel." Berezovsky goes on to assert that Putin "supports terror" in
the Middle East through Russia's previous relations with Iraq and
current relations with Iran. 7
While Israelis may have been
delighted at Berezovsky's position in Russia, It is not surprising that
Russian citizens were somewhat less so. Finding that a powerful leader
and member of the Russian Security Council was an Israeli citizen was
disconcerting, at best.
As a result of the media uproar over
Berezovsky's Israeli citizenship and other events, the Oligarchs’
connections to Israel are widely known in Russia and elsewhere. In
Israel they are covered frequently, often with adulation, including a
recent hit Israeli TV series called "The Oligarchs."
"Some of its
episodes," according to Israeli writer Uri Avnery, "are simply
unbelievable or would have been, if they had not come straight from the
horses' mouths: the heroes of the story, who gleefully boast about their
despicable exploits. The series was produced by Israeli immigrants from
Russia."
Avnery writes that the oligarchs used "cheating,
bribery and murder," as they "exploited the disintegration of the Soviet
system to loot the treasures of the state and to amass plunder
amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. In order to safeguard the
perpetuation of their business, they took control of the state. Six out
of the seven are Jews"†8
According to a Washington Post story
by David Hoffman, the group bought and controlled Russian governmental
officials at the highest levels. After financing Yeltsin's election in
1996, Hoffman writes: "The tycoons met and decided to insert one of
their own into government. They debated who and chose [Vladimir]
Potanin, who became deputy prime minister. One reason they chose Potanin
was that he is not Jewish, and most of the rest of them are, and feared
a backlash against the Jewish bankers." 9
In Russia, the
oligarchs are deeply loathed, considered villains who worked to bleed
the country dry; during their reign many Russian citizens saw their life
savings disappear overnight. A new term was coined for their dominance,
"semibankirshchina" (the rule of the seven bankers), and they were
widely known to have wielded small, murderous armies. There are rumors
that Berezovsky, subject of the respectful AP article, was even
responsible for the gunning down of an American journalist, Forbes
Moscow editor Paul Klebnikov.
While no one has been charged with
the murder of Klebnikov, who had written a book on Berezovsky, many
suspect a Berezovsky connection. As a friend of Klebnikov wrote:
"Experienced expatriates in Russia shared an essential rule: Don't cross
these brutal billionaires, ever, or yo'’re likely to go home in a
box." 10
THE CHECHNYA CONNECTION
There is evidence that Berezovsky's responsibility for death and tragedy may be vastly greater.
"Berezovsky
boasts that he caused the war in Chechnya," Avnery reports, "in which
tens of thousands have been killed and a whole country devastated. He
was interested in the mineral resources and a prospective pipeline
there. In order to achieve this he put an end to the peace agreement
that gave the country some kind of independence. The oligarchs dismissed
and destroyed Alexander Lebed, the popular general who engineered the
agreement, and the war has been going on since then.
"In the
end," Avnery writes, "there was a reaction: Vladimir Putin, the taciturn
and tough ex-KGB operative, assumed power, took control of the media,
put one of the oligarchs (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) in prison, caused the
others to flee (Berezovsky is in England, Vladimir Gusinsky is in
Israel, another, Mikhail Chernoy, is assumed to be hiding here.)"
Yet,
apart from the Washington Post, American media report on almost none of
this. Instead, US coverage largely portrays Berezovsky and his crowd as
American-style entrepreneurs who are being hounded by a Russian
government whose actions are, to repeat the media’s commonly used
phrase, "politically motivated."
US news stories, even when they
occasionally do hint at questionable practices, tend to use such phrases
as "brash young capitalists" to describe the oligarchs. 11
For
example, a long series co-produced by FRONTLINE and the New York Times
referred to these men as "shrewd businessmen," and asked "what it's like
to be young, Russian and newly affluent?" 12
Massive violence, dual loyalties, and control of resources are rarely, if ever, part of the picture.
When
AP Moscow bureau chief Ingram was asked for this article about
Berezovsky's Israeli citizenship, she claimed to know nothing about it, a
curious contention for someone who has been an AP news editor in Moscow
since 1999. When Ingram was queried further, she hung up the phone.
An
examination of Ingram's reporting on the Berezovsky story cited above
raises serious questions. Though she is located in Moscow, Ingram
interviewed only two people for her news story: Berezovsky, who is in
London, and Berezovsky associate Alex Goldfarb, in New York. One wonders
why she interviewed none of the Russians residing around her.
Similarly, one wonders why not a single AP story has identified Berezovsky’s considerable connection to Israel.
Further,
nowhere does Ingram's article convey the ruthlessness of the
oligarchs’ actions, or the significance of their holdings, including
control of its media. Unnoted in Ingram's report is the fact that her
subject and fellow oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky have been two of Russia's
most powerful media tycoons.
Before Putin's crackdown, according
to the Washington Post, oligarchs had succeeded in seizing "the reins of
Russia's print and broadcast media, vital to the evolution of the
country's fledgling democracy and growth of its nascent civil society."
Berezovsky crony Gusinsky, who is close friends with Rupert Murdoch and
was about the launch a satellite network, fled to Israel when it
appeared he would be arrested." 13
Somehow, AP's bureau chief seems to have missed all this.
DOES THIS MATTER TO AMERICANS?
AP
is the major news source for the thousands of news outlets around the
country who cannot afford to have their own foreign correspondents. When
AP chooses not to cover something, its omission is felt throughout the
nation. When national news networks and others leave out the same facts,
the cover-up is almost total.
Russia, despite its current
turmoil, contains enormous power. Its natural resources are gargantuan:
it possesses the world's largest natural gas reserves, the second
largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. It is the
world's largest exporter of natural gas, the second largest oil
exporter, and the third largest energy consumer.14
Russia's significance on the world stage now, as in the past, is immense.
Similarly,
the United States is currently the most powerful nation on earth. It is
therefore essential that its citizens be accurately informed on issues
of significance. Israeli citizens, Russian citizens, and citizens of
nations throughout the world know the information detailed above. It is
critical that American citizens be no less well informed.
For
years, the neocons' push for war against Iraq was largely uncovered by
the US media. For even longer, the neocons' close connections to Israel
have gone largely unmentioned in mainstream American news reports.
As
a result, very few Americans know to what degree many of those
responsible for the tragic US invasion and occupation of Iraq have been
motivated by Israeli concerns.
The omission in coverage of Iraq
has been profoundly disastrous, both for the Middle East and for
Americans. In fact, it is quite likely that only history will show the
true extent of this disaster. It is deeply troubling to see the same
kind of omission occurring on Russia.
End Notes
1.
Interestingly, an AP report sent out only on its Worldstream wire (i.e.
to Europe; Britain; Scandinavia; Middle East; Africa; India; Asia;
England, but not to US papers) contained information on this at the end
of the report.
2. Washington Post: “Prayer Breakfast Includes
Russian Fugitives†(overall, the Post has been an exception to the
general blackout on this subject); the Seattle Times, which ran the Post
story, and the New York Times, in a short story on page 12 on Sunday,
three days after the event. Interestingly, the NY Times story was filed
from Moscow (not Washington) and quotes a “spokesman†for the two
men, Charles Krause, who has worked as a correspondent in Israel for the
News Hour with Jim Lehrer. In the Times story Russian attempts to
prosecute these men are described as “politically motivated.â€
3.
This is a wise move, since Israel is known for never extraditing Jewish
citizens, no matter what their crime. Even requests for such
cooperation by the US, which gives Israel over $10 million per day, go
unheeded by the Israeli government. Private citizens wanted for
committing murder in the US, for example, are not returned for trial.
4. Associated Press, Sept. 22, 2004
5. “Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia,†By David Hoffman, Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, August 28, 1998; Page A01
6.
“Media and Politics in Transition: Three Models,†Post-Soviet Media
Law & Policy Newsletter, Issue 35, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of
Law, Feb. 27, 1997
7. “Boris Berezovsky: Putin’s Russia dangerous for Israel.’, Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2005
8. “The Oligarchsâ€, Uri Avnery, CounterPunch, Aug. 3, 2004
9. “Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia,†By David Hoffman, Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, August 28, 1998; Page A01,
10. “Same Old Ruthless Russia,†by Michael R. Caputo, Washingtonpost.com, Washington Post, Aug 28, 1998
11. October 2003, Sabrina Tavernise,
12. “Powerful Few Rule Russian Mass Media,†David Hoffman, Washington Post, March 31, 1997; Page A01
13. Russia Country Analysis Brief
***
Alison Weir is the Executive Director of If Americans Knew. She speaks
all around the country on media coverage of Israel and Palestine.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
http://ifamericansknew.org/media/russia.html
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(February 17, 2005) Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
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