Documentary Description
When world-famous investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, one
of President Putin’s fiercest and most effective critics, was
assassinated last October in Moscow, there was international outrage.
At home, her colleagues at her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, were
determined that an investigation into her murder was not going to run
into the sand, like so many before. So they set up their own private
investigation. Dispatches has been granted exclusive access to that
investigation. And as the body count of journalists, businessmen and
politicians mounts, the programme asks whether the hope of a new,
democratic Russia is falling apart.
The programme meets the former Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya,
now in hiding, who claims he is the last person alive on a Chechen hit
list that included Anna. The programme speaks to one of Russia’s
richest men, Alexander Lebedev, the co-owner of Anna’s newspaper and a
member of parliament in Putin’s own party who describes the secret
services as “totally out of control”.
Under Putin, himself a career FSB officer, members of the security
services have pervaded all levels of political and business life in
Russia. Professor Olga Krystanovskaya of the Russian Academy of
Sciences has discovered that three-quarters of senior politicians have
a background in the security services – and the boards of the 27
largest companies in Russia are headed by security officials from
Putin’s coterie, including the oil and gas giants Gazprom and Rosneft.
As Europe becomes more dependent on Russian energy resources, Russia
analysts fear the consequences for European countries of a melt-down in
Russia.
Political freedoms are also coming under tighter control as next
year’s presidential elections draw closer. Two of the five main
television stations are state-owned. Gazprom owns the other three. Most
of Putin’s powerful critics, like the oligarchs Viktor Khordokvosky and
Boris Berezovsky, are in jail or in exile. In a rare interview,
Berezovsky tells Dispatches of Putin’s campaign to destroy all
opposition. Lebedev, the Novaya Gazeta’s co-owner, says there is now a
dangerous power vacuum at the heart of Russia with Parliament acting as
a puppet government under the President’s control.
Murdering the Truth reveals a society where the rule of law has
broken down and where an elite is increasingly reliant on shadowy
forces to ensure its continued grip on power – forces that even Putin
may struggle to control.
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