Col. Putin either has too much sense of humour or none at all. In between those two extremes his behaviour would be inexplicable.
His latest joke, witting or unwitting, came the other day, when he awarded the medal ‘For Services to Motherland’ to Alexei Lugovoi and Ramzan Kadyrov.
The accolade is richly merited in both cases, for both men have indeed provided the eponymous services. Moreover, said services were strikingly similar.
Lugovoi served his country by slipping some polonium into Alexander Litvinenko’s tea, and one can only wonder why this act of heroism has had to wait until now to be officially recognised.
Kadyrov’s services to Russia are too numerous to mention, but the timing of the award, just a few days after the murder of Boris Nemtsov, suggests that Kadyrov was decorated for distinguishing himself in the same manner as Lugovoi.
Mr Kadyrov is Putin’s gauleiter in Chechnya, and his methods of government do evoke the Nazi gauleiters of yesteryear, with an added gangsterism twist.
Those disagreeing with his methods are abducted and killed, while their houses and, for good measure, those of their families are razed.
Kadyrov’s reward for doing Putin’s work in Chechnya is a free hand to do his own work in Moscow, where the Chechen mob dominates the crime scene.
As an occasional quid pro quo, Kadyrov lends Putin his murderers, of whom he seems to have an inexhaustible supply.
These may be offered wholesale or retail. An example of the former is Kadyrov’s last year’s announcement that “74,000 Chechens are awaiting the go-ahead to restore order in the Ukraine.”
In other words, Chechens are perfectly suited to the role of spontaneously rebelling ‘Ukrainian separatists’. This implication was too much even for Putin: the Chechen cat is staying in the bag for the time being.
Kadyrov’s retail offers are more attractive, and it was one of his men who in 2006 murdered Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who was Putin’s sworn enemy.
Zaur Dadayev, the chief suspect in the murder of Nemtsov, is also Kadyrov’s partner in crime. In fact last Sunday the Chechen warlord praised Dadayev as a “genuine Russian patriot”, confusing me no end.
I thought Chechen hitmen were pious Muslims, waving the green banner of Islam in the face of an infidel, Christian Russia. Now it turns out that, while remaining Islamic fundamentalists, they are also devoted to the country that deported the whole Chechen nation at the end of the Second World War and has since fought two murderous wars against Chechnya.
The seeming paradox is just that, seeming. Since Putin’s spokesman has explained that “without Putin there is no Russia”, Putin is fully synonymous with Russia.
Hence ‘a genuine Russian patriot’ is a chap ready to do anything at Putin’s behest, Islam or no Islam. One such service would be, to use the colonel’s language, “whacking’em in the shithouse” or, as the case may be, on a bridge.
Acknowledging the services provided by Messrs Lugovoi and Kadyrov at this moment does suggest that Putin is endowed with a highly developed, if slightly macabre, sense of humour.
This commendable quality, however, escapes the KGB colonel when the joke is on him.
For example, back in December, 2010, the Moscow banker Matvei Urin was going to work. It has to be remembered that Moscow bankers correctly believe that any normal commute, by tube, taxi or even limousine, could be detrimental to their health, what with Kadyrov’s ‘patriots’ on the prowl.
Hence Mr Urin was travelling in an armoured Mercedes accompanied by a VW van full of bodyguards. Moscow traffic being what it is, a speeding BMW overtook the convoy and had the temerity to cut up the Merc.
So it’s only fair that in response the van ran the BMW off the road, and the bodyguards demanded that the culprit come out. When he refused, they smashed the car’s windows with baseball bats, dragged the hapless driver out and beat him up – as one does.
(As an aside, Russian sports shops sold 500,000 baseball bats that year, but only three baseballs and one baseball glove.)
So far so normal. Alas, that just retribution was in that case misplaced. For the driver turned out to be a foreigner, the Dutchman Jorrit Jost Vaasen, working for a Moscow construction concern.
Foreigners do enjoy a special status in Moscow, and they are only ever beaten up, tortured or killed when absolutely necessary, or when they are really asking for it.
However, Mr Vaasen wasn’t any old foreigner. He happened to be the fiancé of Putin’s daughter Maria.
Now Col. Putin isn’t known as a stickler for the principle of equality before the law and he took the affront personally.
The very next day all involved, including Urin, were arrested. Then the licences of Mr Urin’s nine banks were revoked, which effectively put them out of business.
Three months later the banker was sentenced to three years in prison, and everybody else – unfairly including Urin’s driver who was an innocent party – to terms varying from two to four years.
Justice was done. However, a few months later it was redone: Urin’s sentence was bumped up to 4.5 years.
In March, 2013, Urin was already seeing light at the end of his term, but he was rejoicing too soon. While in prison he was sentenced to another 7.5 years, and there is every indication that he’ll only get out of jail when Putin gets out of the Kremlin, which won’t be soon.
Meanwhile Maria Putin married the Dutch victim of Urin’s tragic mistake and, rumour has it, has blessed her daddy with a grandson, thereby assuring dynastic succession.
Just to think that, had he been a good boy, Mr Urin could have been invited to the wedding.