Wednesday, Nov 06, 2002
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By Vladimir Radyuhin
While political pundits would not say it in public, privately they advise Mr. Putin to look for the masterminds of the hostage crisis in Moscow, rather than in Chechnya. According to the theory making rounds in Moscow's political backrooms, the bloody seizure by Chechen rebels of a packed theatre in the Russian capital was a reflection of an increasingly fierce, if behind-the-scenes, battle for power between the old Kremlin guard headed by the former President, Boris Yeltsin, and Mr. Putin's team. The raid, ostensibly staged to demand an end to the war in Chechnya, was designed to humiliate Mr. Putin and undermine his hold on power. In fact, the attack disrupted fledgling contacts between the Kremlin and the moderate rebel leaders. Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord who took responsibility for the hostage raid in Moscow, is suspected of having long-standing links with Russian secret services. Ten years ago, hundreds of Chechen fighters under his command helped the Yeltsin government to tear away Abkhazia from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. In 1999, Basayev led a Chechen incursion into the neighbouring Russian province of Dagestan, which predictably failed to achieve its declared purpose of triggering a popular revolt against "Russian occupation''. But it provided a useful pretext for Moscow to launch a second military campaign against separatists in Chechnya, which helped catapult the obscure former KGB colonel, Mr. Putin, to Russian presidency. However, instead of delivering on his commitments to guarantee the Yeltsin clan eternal bliss, Mr. Putin went on to attack their economic and political interests. He warned the oligarchs to repatriate billions of petrodollars tucked away in foreign banks or face a fiscal and judicial crackdown. He is also mooting plans to reimpose government control on Russia's rich oil and other mineral resources privatised by the Yeltsin government. The simmering feud between the old and the new guard broke into the open in the summer, when Mr. Yeltsin challenged his hand-picked heir, publicly taking the side of the Belarus leader, Alexander Lukashenko, in his feud with Mr. Putin over the proposed reunification of Russia and Belarus. In last month's hostage crisis, Mr. Putin faced a suicidal choice between caving in to the gunmen's demand to suspend his military campaign in Chechnya and taking responsibility for the death of most or all of the 800 captives. In either case, he would have seen his authority critically weakened and become dependent on the Russian money bags and their godfather, Mr. Yeltsin, for support in the coming parliamentary elections next year and presidential elections in 2004. Mr. Putin luckily escaped the trap. Moreover, the successful storming of the seized theatre has strengthened his hand to confront the two main threats to his rule: the continuing war in Chechnya and the increasingly aggressive scheming of the powerful clans to bring him under their control.
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