Putin Continues His Purge and Murderous Tactics.

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, Лаврентий Павлович Берия was a Soviet politician and chief of the Soviet security and police apparatus. He was the executor of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s. Beria was Stalin’s paid gun. In June 1937 he said in a speech: "Let our enemies know that anyone who attempts to raise a hand against the will of our people, against the will of the party of Lenin and Stalin, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed". Beria also commanded the Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers and intelligentsia. After Stalin's death he was removed from office and executed by Nikita Kruschev.

There is not one person in a thousand that knows the name or anything about this man or what he represents in Russian history. Vladimir Putin does, and it it my contention and a subject of several previous post that Putin is using the methods of this vicious thug to reinstall a veil of fear and repression over Russia. His doing so and with the use of vast reserves of oil and gas will allow repression and intimidation to be spread to bordering Eastern European countries. Vladimir Putin has been getting a free pass from the present US Administration. I do not understand why that is so.

Another of Putin's victims is close to death. Some in Britain and Eastern Europe are beginning to notice. From the Telegraph:

Is Russia poisoning its relations with the West?

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 21/11/2006

Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who defected to the United Kingdom and is now a British citizen, lies in an intensive care bed in a London hospital, his chances of survival described as "50-50".

He is the victim of an attack with a deadly poison that apparently took place in the course of a meeting in a public place. This fact has taken nearly three weeks to establish beyond doubt by toxicology tests. A number of disturbing questions that arise from this crime remain in dispute.

There is, in the minds of his friends and most knowing observers, a link between the catastrophic fate that has left Mr Litvinenko so near to death and his ties to known enemies of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Not only is he an associate of Russian "oligarch" exiles in Britain, and of Chechen activists, but he has recently been involved in investigating the murder of Russian dissident journalist Anna Politkovskaya.


All of this points to an obvious conclusion: that agents of the Russian presidency were responsible for the attack which was intended either to silence a dangerous critic permanently, or to cause him enough suffering to serve as a warning to others.

The Russian secret service, in its previous incarnation as the KGB, was known to favour poisoning as a means of eliminating dangerous antagonists but it would be peculiarly worrying if Mr Putin were going to such lengths to put a minor player out of commission.

The Kremlin, predictably, denies these charges vehemently, dismissing them as "pure nonsense". However dubious such protestations of innocence may be, the absence of any clear proof combined with categorical denials from Mr Putin's officials put the British government in an awkward diplomatic position.

Speculation that enemies of the Putin regime might have perpetrated the crime in an attempt to discredit the Russian presidency seem far-fetched but for official purposes cannot be totally dismissed.

But the British government cannot be seen to accept a situation in which a citizen of the United Kingdom is subjected to a murderous attack under conditions that raise grave, and reasonable, suspicions of the involvement of foreign agents.

The Foreign and Home Offices must be seen to pursue this case with the greatest rigour and to the highest possible level, and to demand whatever explanations they feel are required from the Russian authorities. Otherwise, there will be a clear suggestion that Britain dare not offend a Russian regime that may hold much of Europe to ransom over energy resources within a decade.

Whatever the future holds for British energy supplies, this country must not be a safe haven for international thuggery.

Telegraph