Russian Roulette

Terrorists and Freedom Fighters

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Russian Roulette, by Sam Vaknin (#6 in our series by Sam Vaknin)
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Title: Russian Roulette
Author: Sam Vaknin
Release Date: December, 2003 [EBook #4779] [This file was first posted on July 3, 2003]
Edition: 12
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, RUSSIAN ROULETTE ***

(c) 2002, 2003 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.

Russian Roulette
Russia's Economy
In Putin's Era
1st EDITION
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
Editing and Design:
Lidija Rangelovska
Lidija Rangelovska
A Narcissus Publications Imprint, Skopje 2003
First published by United Press International - UPI
Not for Sale! Non-commercial edition.
(c) 2002, 2003 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.
All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from:
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Visit my United Press International (UPI) Article Archive
ISBN: 9989-929-31-9
http://samvak.tripod.com/guide.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/briefs.html
http://economics.cjb.net
http://samvak.tripod.com/after.html
Created by: LIDIJA RANGELOVSKA
REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
C O N T E N T S
I. The Security Apparatus
II. The Energy Sector
III. Financial Services
IV. The Russian Devolution - The Regions
V. Agriculture
VI. Russia as a Creditor
VII. Russia's Space Industry
VIII. Russia's Vodka Wars
IX. Let My People Go
X. Fimaco Wouldn't Die
XI. The Chechen Theatre Ticket
XII. Russia's Israeli Oil Bond
XIII. Russia's Idled Spies
XIV. Russia's Middle Class
XV. Russia in 2003
XVI. Russia Straddles the Euro-Atlantic Divide
XVII. Russia's Stealth Diplomacy
XVIII. Russia's Second Empire
XIX. The Author
XX. About "After the Rain"
The Security Apparatus
Shabtai Kalmanovich vanished from London in late 1980's. He resurfaced in Israel to face trial for espionage. He was convicted and spent years in an Israeli jail before being repatriated to Russia. He was described by his captors as a mastermind, in charge of an African KGB station.
In the early 1970's he even served as advisor (on Russian immigration) to Israel's Iron Lady, Golda Meir. He then moved to do flourishing business in Africa, in Botswana and then in Sierra Leone, where his company, LIAT, owned the only bus operator in Freetown. He traded diamonds, globetrotted flamboyantly with an entourage of dozens of African chieftains and their mistresses, and fraternized with the corrupt elite, President Momoh included. In 1986-7 he even collaborated with IPE, a London based outfit, rumored to have been owned by former members of the Mossad and other paragons of the Israeli defense establishment (including virtually all the Israelis implicated in the ill-fated Iran-Contras affair).
Being a KGB officer was always a lucrative and liberating proposition. Access to Western goods, travel to exotic destinations, making new (and influential) friends, mastering foreign languages, and doing some business on the side (often with one's official "enemies" and unsupervised slush funds) - were all standard perks even in the 1970's and 1980's. Thus, when communism was replaced by criminal anarchy, KGB personnel (as well as mobsters) were the best suited to act as entrepreneurs in the new environment.
They were well traveled, well connected, well capitalized, polyglot, possessed of management skills, disciplined, armed to the teeth, and ruthless. Far from being sidetracked, the security services rode the gravy train. But never more so than now.
January 2002. Putin's dour gaze pierces from every wall in every office. His obese ministers often discover a sudden sycophantic propensity for skiing (a favorite pastime of the athletic President). The praise heaped on him by the servile media (Putin made sure that no other kind of media survives) comes uncomfortably close to a Central Asian personality cult. Yet, Putin is not in control of the machinery that brought him to the pinnacle of power, under-qualified as he was. This penumbral apparatus revolves around two pivots: the increasingly fractured and warlord controlled military and, ever more importantly, the KGB's successors, mainly the FSB.
A. The Military
Two weeks ago, Russia announced yet another plan to reform its bloated, inefficient, impoverished, demoralized and corrupt military. Close to 200,000 troops are to go immediately and the same number in the next 3 years. The draft is to be abolished and the army professionalized. At its current