Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [85]
Sasha met him with a resigned grin. “I did not expect for a minute that they would let me go.”
He was right. The next morning the prosecutors protested his release and demanded a hearing. Judge Karnaukh was replaced. The lawyer spent half an hour with the president of the court and then told Marina, “The new judge is Evgeny Kravchenko. I know him, he is a good man. But we should not press him on the restraining measure. There are two decent judges in this court; we’ve already burned one of them. I do not want to burn the other for the sake of a few weeks of detention. If he rules for release, they will replace him, too. I’d rather have him try the case. So let Sasha stay where he is, it is just one more month.”
Sasha’s trial approached just as a new war with Chechnya threatened to erupt. For more than a year Boris had been silent on Chechnya. Between the Kremlin intrigues, the president’s illnesses, and his fights with Primus and Skuratov, he simply had had no time. But he had closely watched the developments and maintained contact with key Chechens.
Back in the spring, he had had several telephone conversations with former Chechen foreign minister Movladi Udugov, the one-time leader of the Islamist wing whom Maskhadov had kicked out of his government. In early June Udugov came to Moscow to see Boris. From that conversation Boris realized that the Chechens still viewed him—mistakenly—as a prime mover of Chechnya policy. Udugov talked about his plan to replace Maskhadov with an Islamist regime, which he argued would only be to Russia’s benefit.
Udugov’s rationale was geopolitical. Maskhadov’s long-term goal, he said, was to steer Chechnya to full independence and integrate it with the West, eventually joining NATO and the European Union. He viewed pro-American Georgia and Turkey as his key potential partners in the region. In the end, Maskhadov would provide access to the North Caucasus for the Americans, who had been dreaming of a pipeline to the Caspian oil fields. This, naturally, would be bad for Russia.
It would be also bad for Islam, Udugov argued, because America is the Great Satan and the ultimate enemy of all Muslims. From that perspective, the true believers in Allah and the Russian state had a common interest: not to let the West into the Caucasus. An Islamist government in Grozny would automatically be anti-American, that is, by default, pro-Russian.
Udugov’s plan was for Basayev’s Wahhabi gang to stir up trouble in Dagestan, thus provoking Russia into a limited military action, leading to the fall of Maskhadov. A Basayev-Udugov government would be installed in Grozny. They would compromise on independence, in exchange for religious autonomy. He magnanimously offered to give back to Russia the territories north of the Terek River in Chechnya, populated mostly by ethnic Russians. Udugov was not interested in converting them to Islam.
Boris did not like the idea. There was no proof that Udugov could deliver on any of his promises. Moreover, an Islamic state in Russia’s backyard might have unpredictable consequences. On the other hand, from the Kremlin’s standpoint, it did not matter whether Chechnya was Muslim or secular as long as it was not pro-American. So Boris told Udugov that he was the wrong man to approach. He no longer had influence on Chechnya policy. He said that he would pass his proposals on to the powers that be. He went to see Stepashin, who was still the prime minister. Stepashin thanked him for the information and said he would take it from there.
Boris repeated all of this to Putin in early September. Basayev’s gangs were fighting in Dagestan. The Russian army was mobilizing. Could it be that Putin actually wanted to play out Udugov’s gambit?
“Volodya,” Boris said, “what’s going on? Please be careful. Don’t jump into a war with a harebrained scheme. Wars have a tendency not to work out as planned.”
“Boris,” said Putin, “let’s agree on a division of labor: you deal with the elections and I deal with Chechnya. Trust me, I know what I am doing.”
“Okay, but let me tell you at