Spy Poisoning Case Raises Questions About Russian Democracy

SIMON MARKS: Vladimir Ryzhkov is one of the last remaining democratic reformers in the Russian parliament, the Duma. He has been outspoken about a series of unsolved murders and assassinations of prominent Kremlin critics that he says are spreading fear through political circles in Moscow.

VLADIMIR RYZHKOV: Any critic of regime in Russia is now in the risk. Political murders in Russia today is normal instrument of political life and political struggle. And this is the main dangerous thing.

And I think that, if you take a list of victims, all of them are liberals, liberal critics of regime, so that means that violence mostly oriented against liberal flank of Russian politics.

SIMON MARKS: The most recent death to hit the headlines is that of former KGB man Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in London by the radioactive substance polonium-210. On his deathbed, he accused President Vladimir Putin of personally ordering his assassination.

He previously claimed the Russian leadership was behind the October murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent journalist who wrote critically about Russia's military campaign in the breakaway region of Chechnya. She was gunned down in an elevator in her Moscow apartment building.

Also murdered this year, Alexander Kozlov, the deputy chairman of the Russia's central bank, shot to death in the midst of waging a campaign against money laundering.

The Kremlin denies any involvement in any of the murders, but President Putin himself has warned the British not to create what he called a "political scandal" over the death of Mr. Litvinenko.

Arkady Dvorkovich heads the Department of Presidential Experts, a council of advisers that reports directly to the Russian leader.

ARKADY DVORKOVICH, Department of Presidential Experts: I think the only way to consider these cases, especially the case related to Andrei Kozlov, who was one of my friends, actually, it's just criminal thing. It's not related to politics at all.

SIMON MARKS: Do you preclude the possibility that, at some level, power structures here were involved in this?

ARKADY DVORKOVICH: Yes, I believe there is no chance, no grounds. It would not be possible that Russian authorities were involved in all of this. It's just impossible, and is not true, I will say. And I would say that any reasonable person would agree that there is no sense for Russian authorities to do things like this.

LILIA SHEVTSOVA, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Moscow is full of rumors, speculations, and creeping fear, very nasty fear.

SIMON MARKS: She says that, in spite of the Russian president's desire to project an in-charge image -- recently, he was even shown on Russian television participating in target practice -- the killings may be a reflection of his relative weakness. The Kremlin, she argues, is consumed by infighting, ahead of the transition to a new leader that's due to occur in 2008.

LILIA SHEVTSOVA: Putin and the authorities, of course they understand that these murders, these assassinations are a kind of blow, very heavy blow, not only to their reputation, but to their position and to their power.

And I would assume situation that, if these assassinations, especially abroad, really are being made by Russian perpetrators, Putin is losing control over the situation. And in this situation, fears, anxiety, concerns, complexes will be only multiplying, and people will be scared to talk, to move freely, to suspect the authorities, to criticize the authorities. And in this situation of creeping fear, anything might happen.

SIMON MARKS: The sense that almost anything can happen in Russian politics these days has been boosted by a series of changes the Putin administration is making to the rules of the political game.

The laws governing Russia's elections have been revised. There will no longer be any minimum turnout required for an election to be declared valid. And "negative campaigning" about any candidate's record is now banned, though the phrase is very vaguely defined.

ARKADY DVORKOVICH: We are just moving in same direction as other countries did during their history. So if we are talking about negative campaigning, on paper the rule is good, I would say. The most important thing about it is that it should not be used abusively towards parties.

SIMON MARKS: So you acknowledge there's a chance that it could be?

ARKADY DVORKOVICH: Certainly, there's a risk, and there's always a risk, when any restrictions are being set, any, in any sphere, in economic political sphere, that restrictions can be used with abuse of law. So we need by the work of civil society to prevent possible risks.

ALISON MCGILL, Human Rights Watch: If, God forbid, there is a serious human rights crisis that starts tomorrow and our office would want to engage with that problem, of course, since we didn't predict it, it wasn't in our annual plan. Since we didn't know about it a month in advance, we couldn't inform the authorities of the change, so it really does take away the possibility to sort of do emergency response.

SIMON MARKS: Lawmaker Vladimir Ryzhkov argues that, taken together, the Kremlin's moves are aimed at further sidelining democratic reformers. They suffered enormous losses in elections two years ago and are in no position now to launch any viable bid to succeed Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

VLADIMIR RYZHKOV: There are no any conditions for honest and free elections in Russia today. That means that next parliamentary elections and the next presidential elections will be totally manipulated. And it will be very simple: Putin will nominate his successor as a candidate, and this successor will have huge, enormous resources for to be re-elected.

SIMON MARKS: Resources that include a virtual Kremlin stranglehold on Russia's broadcast media. All the country's national television networks are now owned by state-run entities, and the Russian government is even funding an English-language network that broadcasts news from Russia to the rest of the world.