Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (47 page)

[In the 2002 presidential elections, Lionel Jospin made it through to the second round, before losing to Jacques Chirac and the leader of the Nationalists, Jean-Marie Le Pen.]

THE “WAVES” OF POLITICAL EMIGRATION FROM RUSSIA

After the rigours of Moscow, the orderly life of London quickly turns you back into a normal human being, someone with the ways of a free citizen.

I imagine many of our compatriots who, for the time being and against their will, find themselves in Great Britain must experience similar feelings. Here they at last settle back into an ordinary way of life denied them in Russia. They cease to jump at any sound resembling a gunshot, and even take the London Underground without a bodyguard.

The air of London is revivifying. The proof was not long in coming; I went to the theatre – just for the joy of it, not to be seen in society – to a local musical which has had an unbroken run of many years and where, accordingly, no self-respecting New Russian would be seen dead in Russia. London is different. As I was sitting down next to Akhmed Zakayev, the Special Envoy of President Aslan Maskhadov of Chechnya, who is awaiting the verdict of a British court in respect of the Russian Federation’s entirely political demand for his extradition, somebody turned round from the row in front and said breezily, “Hi, guys.” This was none other than Yuliy Dubov, author of the sensational novel
Oligarch
, and no mean oligarch himself. He too has a warrant out for his arrest from the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office, for embezzlement involving Zhiguli cars but principally because of his friendship with another oligarch in exile, Boris Berezovsky, who also now lives in London. In a London theatre Yuliy Dubov was charming, while in Moscow you couldn’t have broken through his oligarchic security cordon for love or money. He proved to have a delightful wife, and in the interval ran off to the bar without ceremony to get drinks. He even told us how many stops on the Underground it was from here to his house.

My heart warmed to see how amazingly London’s ordinariness heals people spiritually, but I was to make an even more amazing discovery. Boris Berezovsky himself, I found, is also recuperating morally here.

Like anyone else, he attends parents’ meetings at school. You have to admit, that speaks volumes for Britain’s ability to bring a Russian citizen back to normality, and serves to confirm that today Britain is the most attractive country in Europe for those forced to emigrate from Russia. Apart from Berezovsky, Dubov and Zakayev, London is home to Alexander Litvinenko [assassinated in London by the FSB in November 2006], the ex-FSB officer who came into irreconcilable conflict with his Ministry for refusing to kill Berezovsky without written instructions from his superiors, and then fled to Britain with a false passport by way of Ukraine.

All of them are people to be reckoned with and grandees in their own circles, despite all having warrants for their arrest as criminals issued by the Prosecutor-General’s Office. They are, of course, very different people, but have some things in common. They are all friends here, not only with each other but also with Vladimir Bukovsky, who is respected as the patriarch of Russian dissidents and political émigrés in Great Britain, who acknowledge him as the leader of their unplanned assembly of new political exiles.

THE PATRIARCH

When someone no longer refers to the British Prime Minister with a clipped “Bler,” but enunciates a long, drawling, diphthongised “Blai-er” as the British do, he is quite clearly no longer embedded in Russian society. Berezovsky, Zakayev and Litvinenko still come out with a curt “Bler,” but Bukovsky now says “Blai-er.” His alien pronunciation in no wise diminishes the immense attractiveness of this unique man with his palpable inner freedom. Political émigrés of every persuasion are drawn to him.

Bukovsky’s home is a rather dank, rather small, very English house in the university town of Cambridge. Its owner has been through the mill in a way the rest of us can only guess at. Ten years of labor camps and specialist psychiatric hospitals in his former homeland, followed by decades in exile. He lives here incredibly modestly, but very precisely, as becomes a dissident, without evident luxury and with just a single
fireplace to warm the room. This is fuelled by a mountain of wine corks piled to the left of it. These indicate frequent, forgivable departures from its owner’s asceticism. Bored by the adults’ conversation, Tolya, Alexander Litvinenko’s eight-year-old son, who already mixes Russian words with English and writes poetry in English, busies himself with setting fire to the corks.

Bukovsky is not young. When he says “we” he means “the British.” That said, he greets his guests as he always has, wearing his traditional Soviet blue tracksuit with its baggy knees and incongruously offering us Courvoisier cognac dating from 1942, the year he was born. Having warmed ourselves with the brandy, we talk.

Why do you think people who have issues with Russia are again gathering in Britain? Is it coincidence or is there an explanation?

There are two aspects to that. Of course, mostly it is just chance. Akhmed is stranded here for the simple reason that he was invited to England by Vanessa Redgrave and, under our European laws, a person is returned to their country of departure. (In October 2002 it was from Britain that Zakayev travelled to the World Chechen Congress in Copenhagen, where he was arrested after Russia demanded his extradition. He was tried by a Danish court, released on December 3, and returned to Britain.)

It was less random in the case of Boris [Berezovsky]. He is a financier, and it is generally acknowledged that we offer the greatest freedom in the world for financial operations. Also, I told Boris, “You are requesting political asylum, which Britain has already granted to Sasha Litvinenko. Your case is directly linked with his. By legal precedent, the Litvinenko case will be aggregated with yours, and he has already received asylum. That means that no other verdict in your case is possible: if they gave him asylum for refusing to kill you, they are quite certain to give it to you, because it was you the Russian state authorities wanted to kill. That is an established fact.”

In other words, it is both coincidence and for good reason that Russians are gathering here. In today’s Europe, out of the members
of the European Union (and I emphasise that, because Norway and Switzerland are not members, and they are even more free) Britain is the best country for getting things done. It keeps its distance from the European Union, and there is obviously still a great deal of freedom here.

Do you think that the concentration here of political refugees might seriously impair relations between Britain and Russia, or Europe and Russia?

As far as Britain is concerned, definitely not. Blair will continue to love Putin in spite of Zakayev, purely as a matter of political expediency. No matter how many émigrés accumulate here, Britain never alters its relations with anyone. Such is the tradition. For us in Britain, granting asylum is not a political but a legal decision, no matter what the Soviet – excuse me, Russian – Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Kremlin lot think. Political asylum decisions are taken not by the Government but by the courts. The Government can make only an initial decision and any person has the right to an appeal, which is heard in court. Accordingly, the Government always bears in mind that its decision may be reviewed in court, and tries to second-guess how the courts are likely to rule. That gives a judicial guarantee of protection.

I couldn’t help smiling at the protest by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Ivanov, over the fact that an English policeman released Zakayev from Heathrow Airport on Friday night. […] It demonstrates how professionally incompetent they are – they just don’t understand how things work here. The English policeman did not ask the Prime Minister what to do about Zakayev. He simply thought it would cause less trouble if, since he had confiscated Zakayev’s passport, he released this person into England. Zakayev couldn’t leave the country anyway, and if the policeman’s superiors wanted to change that decision they could do so tomorrow themselves. In other words, as a policeman on night shift, he was doing nothing that might harm Britain, and that was his main concern. It was his decision, not the British Government’s. By delivering a completely unnecessary broadside at the British Government, Minister Ivanov merely caused offence and made it even less likely that Zakayev would be returned to Russia.
Nevertheless, the general European climate is clearly worsening because of the Zakayev affair. The European Parliament’s delegation was not allowed into Chechnya, and this was expressly linked to Zakayev
.

Yes, but that has no bearing at all on Britain’s position. On the general European position, yes, in the sense that this is beginning to irritate people in Europe, but what is irritating them is not that the Chechen problem is fundamentally insoluble, but the way Russia is dealing with it. Listen, the European Parliament is an extremely neutral organization. If it is not Orwellian, it is certainly in the mould foreseen by Huxley. Yet it took the initiative of passing a special resolution approving Denmark’s action in releasing Zakayev, whom they describe as “an outstanding Chechen politician,” and they are giving him a so-called “Passport of Freedom” for Europe. That is very significant.

They passed the resolution, but they have been made to pay for it
.

I have many friends in the European Parliament and they are simply laughing. The European Parliament has no great need to travel to Russia. It is Russia which needs that.

But this Commission visit was eagerly anticipated in Chechnya by people who have no other hope. They may well be laughing in Brussels but Europe now has no eyes and ears in Chechnya
.

That is a different matter. By refusing to allow them a presence in Chechnya, Russia did not hurt the European Parliament in the slightest. Their presence is important for Chechnya and for Russia, but not for the European Parliament. The Russian authorities don’t seem to understand that.

You are well known as a contemporary political Nostradamus. What do you think, will the Kremlin decide to assassinate Maskhadov?

Of course. They are searching for him right now and want to kill him. Europe would not react even to that. As far as the future resolution of the Chechen crisis is concerned, assassinating Maskhadov will make it practically impossible to achieve any ceasefire agreement, and all the Chechens’ efforts to establish their own state will have come to nothing.
For Russia this will mean a perpetually festering wound in the South which nobody will be able to treat. An intelligent person does not allow such situations to develop. He tries to impose a measure of control in order to bring a conflict into at least minimally civilised bounds. Russia is giving no thought to that and is acting in a completely absurd manner. It is an insane policy calculated to obtain short-term advantage but which completely fails to take account of the interests of the vast majority of Russia’s population. It is a criminal policy. You really should negotiate with people who are willing to negotiate, rather than kill them.

Why do you think Europe, which does not seek merely short-term advantage, is so unconcerned about trying to preserve the lives of witnesses of war crimes in Chechnya? If there is to be any prospect of an international tribunal like the one Miloŝevic has been subjected to, their testimony is essential
.

Miloŝevic’s presence in the Hague is illegal. He may deserve the gallows, but the charges against him are ludicrous. This was all got up by the New Left in Europe, who were flexing their muscles just at that moment. The NATO operation against Serbia was a crime and an act of aggression as defined by the United Nations. It was entirely without foundation, and was a vile political act of self-affirmation by the new elite in Europe. Nobody was fighting to get Miloŝevic put in prison or to expose war crimes. They simply made up the crimes. They told us a minimum of 500,000 people would die if we did not intervene and Miloŝevic remained in power. In fact, when the dust settled and the graves were opened, they contained 6,000 bodies, and they were from both sides, including victims of the NATO bombing. It was no more than a policing operation. They raised a tremendous hue and cry, comparing what was going on to the Holocaust – a criminal abuse of that historical example. News management. The world has gone mad, like a hammer head flying off its handle. We have idiots here and idiots over there. Do not imagine that the situation now is black and white. It was black and white in my youth: back when there were communists and democrats and it was clear who was the world’s enemy.

What is the situation today then – universally grey?

Everything is shit-colored. Today we are dealing with varying hues of shit.

How do you envisage the end of the Second Chechen War?

If it ever has an end. One of the most likely outcomes is that there will be no end, everything will just drag on for decades. New groups of desperate young people will continue carrying out senseless acts of terrorism, sacrificing their lives for some cause but achieving nothing. A better outcome would be to stop military operations right now. Just stop them, and never mind if we can’t resolve the political questions at present. Stop it, and at least start looking for local solutions to the very smallest, local social problems.

So why is Europe so inactive in Chechnya? The number of humanitarian organizations working in the zone is nothing like what there was, for example, in the Balkans
.

The world context is that Europe sees Muslims as terrorists. There are friendly nations and enemy nations. All that matters is the global “war on terror,” an idiotic concept, but in that context no practical politician can do anything at the moment: only cover his ears and wait.

It is strange to hear you say that. After all, in a past, far worse time you did not by any means sit around covering your ears, waiting for something to happen
.