Last weekend, the Wall Street Journal featured a story on 1A about Lt. Nadya Savchenko, she of the Ukranian military. At least she was a working officer in the Ukranian military until she was captured by the Russians. Now she's being put through a Soviet-style Show Trial. The more Russia changes (its name), the more it stays the same.
More than a year ago, in the summer of 2014, Lt. Savchenko was helping tend her wounded colleagues in eastern Ukraine when she was spotted by a enemy patrol of pro-Russian rebels. She was captured at gunpoint, blindfolded and taken to Russia. She's become something of a folk hero in Ukraine, much to Mother Russia's chagrin.
Lt. Savchenko is accused of . . . something or another. Maybe guiding a mortar attack that might have happened hours after her capture. But what does it matter? In Russia, first verdict, then the evidence.
There's something so familiar here . . . .
What's to become of Lt. Savchenko? Even her lawyers say it doesn't look good. They tell the papers they expect a guilty verdict. After all, the judicial system in Russia takes its marching orders from The Top. And The Top doesn't like Lt. Savchenko.
When she was first kidnapp . . . er, brought to Russia, she was given a room in a motel. With armed guards, of course. When she demanded of an investigator to be allowed to call home to report her kidnapping, said investigator told her she hadn't been kidnapped. She was a guest. But no, she couldn't make phone calls. After all, she was just a witness in a case the Russians were looking into. Until she wasn't.
A few weeks after her kidnapping, her status changed. No longer a witness, she was being charged with a crime. Accessory to murder. That mortar attack thing. And, oh-by-the-way, Moscow denies that Lt. Savchenko was seized in the Ukraine. She sneaked across the Russian border, don't you know, where she was captured. So she was also charged with illegal border crossing.
Investigators say the lieutenant had a handwritten note and doodles that show she was directing a mortar attack.
(Two handwriting analyses, paid for by the Russian government, say Lt. Savchenko didn't write the note.)
The government says Lt. Savchenko carried a pair of binoculars and a radio. Proof she was an artillery spotter!
(The equipment--that is, the evidence--has been lost.)
In July, Lt. Savchenko's trial was set.
(In a small border town of mostly pro-Russian separatists where she's sure to be convicted.)
There's something so familiar here. What is it?
Oh yes. A book.
By a man named Bill Browder.
The book's title is Red Notice, and if your local library doesn't have it, any number of bookstores will. And a better told story of murder, spying, high finance and Russian politics you'll be hard-pressed to find. But don't look for it in the fiction section. Red Notice by Bill Browder is most certainly non-fiction.
Bill Browder, a businessman from Chicago who moved to London as a young man, made a fortune in Russia after the fall of the wall in the 1990s. And he made a fortune for investors in his company, too. Then, for some reason, he got crossways with the Vladimir Putin administration. He barely made it out of Russia with his head, and most of his company's money.
When the Russian government finally decided it couldn't get to Bill Browder, it went after his employees and friends. Even his Russian lawyers who had dared represent him in Russian courts. The government put on Show Trials. A reporter with brass asked a Russian government agency why one of Mr. Browder's accountants--Sergei Magnitsky--had been arrested. She was told the Mr. Magnitsky in the Russian prison hadn't been arrested. She asked, again, why Mr. Magnitsky was arrested after testifying against an Interior Ministry officer named Artem Kuznetsov. The response: Who's Artem Kuznetsov? Nobody here by that name.
This goes on an on, throughout the last third of the book. Black is white. Up is down. Or up is which way the Vladimir Putin administration tells you it is. And if a sinister official in the Interior Ministry who's been in all the papers doesn't exist, and if an accountant in a Russian prison isn't really there (and later dies in the custody that he's not really in), then you'd better take the Russians at their word. And if your lawyers start making noise in the courts, their day may be coming, too.
If you haven't read Red Notice, but the case sounds familiar, that's because the Western press has been following this opera for years. You might have read Bill Browder's name in the papers. And many hard-working Western journalists assigned to this story have exposed the Russian government for what it is: mostly a mob-style outfit with its own rules. (In response to Sergei Magnitsky's death, the United States Congress passed the Magnitsky Act punishing certain Russian officials financially. The Russians retaliated by blocking foreign adoptions of Russian children to these shores.)
But the Russian government reaction to the reports, congressional action and this book? Silence. Shrugged shoulders. Smirks. What are ya gonna do about it?
Which is why Lt. Savchenko's lawyers are so pessimistic. Although they'd better not be too loud about it. Lest they find themselves behind bars, too.
Suggested reading: Red Notice by Bill Browder. Think of that book, and Lt. Savchenko's plight, whenever our own government starts taking the Russians at their word when it comes to Iran, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Crimea . . . .
Editorial on 10/11/2015