Two murders last week, one in Switzerland and one in Qatar, have an alarming link — Russia. In Switzerland an air traffic controller whose error two years ago led to the death of some 60 Russian school children in a midair collision was stabbed to death at his Zurich home. In Qatar a Chechen rebel leader was killed by a car bomb.
In Qatar yesterday two Russian intelligence officers were arrested and charged with the murder of Zemilkham Yanderbiyev. Swiss police have also arrested a foreigner suspected of murdering the air traffic controller. The concern must be that the murder of Yanderbiyev was ordered in Moscow. Russian Foreign Ministry officials have as good as claimed that Qatar was sheltering the wanted Chechen leader. Swiss police suspect that their murder may have been a private act of revenge ordered by a grieving Russian relative. Yet these crimes do seem to be linked by an assumption that it is perfectly legitimate to send killers abroad to settle political or personal scores.
In the Cold War the Kremlin’s murder squads dealt with all sorts of opponents overseas, from the brutal killing of one-time Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky in Mexico to the poisoning of a dissident Bulgarian broadcaster in London.
It was assumed that the new Russia would abandon this official terrorism. That it has not should be a cause of the deepest concern to the international community. The murder in Qatar is particularly troubling since if, as seems probable, it was ordered in Moscow, it violates the sovereignty of a friendly state in a region where Russia has been working hard to rebuild ties.
Some may wonder if this new aggressive policy indicates the tone of President Vladimir Putin’s almost assured second term of office. The murder of Yanderbiyev will play well with Russian voters back home. They like the toughness of their quietly spoken leader. They have yet to appreciate that the conflict that he rekindled in breakaway Chechnya, within weeks of first taking office, is likely to prove every bit as destructive as Russia’s ill-fated occupation of Afghanistan.
Unfortunately such state-sponsored brigandage fits in with the picture of rising mafias in Russia. Many of the ruthless foot soldiers available to Russia’s gangland leaders have special forces or KGB backgrounds. For a few thousand dollars a distraught parent could have hired a killer to go to Switzerland. There is no substantive difference between that crime and the sending of serving intelligence officers to murder Yanderbiyev in Qatar. If both these assassinations do prove to have been ordered in Russia then what they say about institutional reform and political liberalization in the country is not encouraging.
