Litvinenko's pallbearer takes fight to Putin
By Nick Holdsworth in Moscow, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:35am BST 12/08/2007
Eight months ago, Vladimir Bukovsky followed a sombre path alongside the coffin of the poisoned former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko as a pallbearer at his London funeral.
Today, he is preparing for a different but no less fraught journey - back to his homeland to take on President Vladimir Putin and his increasingly authoritarian regime.
Mr Bukovsky, an academic and former Soviet dissident, will exchange the dreaming spires of his adopted home in Cambridge for the grim streets of Moscow, where he will return next month to announce his candidacy in the presidential elections.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Bukovsky, a 64-year-old retired neurophysiologist, said: "I am not scared, but Russian society is very scared. You need to boost people's morale. If they really want to change things - if they take to the streets in their millions - they can. But that requires determination."
Forty years ago the Russian authorities tried to execute Mr Bukovsky on false charges of planning a Gulag mutiny. Having spent 12 years imprisoned in psychiatric and labour camps for "anti-Soviet activities", he was eventually deported in 1976, in an historic prison exchange with the Chilean communist leader Luis Corvalan Lepe, before seeking asylum in Britain.
Mr Bukovsky is preparing to stand in a contest set up to choose a presidential candidate for Other Russia, the main opposition coalition. The alliance is aiming to win unified backing for one of three independent candidates for the presidential elections next year. Also on the list will be Mikhail Kasyanov, 49, who was prime minister before falling out with Mr Putin, and Victor Gerashenko, 70, once head of the central bank.
A climate of fear has minimised opposition for Mr Putin. Russia's disparate political opposition has been quieted since his rise to power seven years ago, while the media has largely fallen back into Kremlin control.
Furthermore, disagreements within the Other Russia coalition, whose most high-profile member is the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, have threatened to quash hopes of finding a single anti-Kremlin candidate.
While the most ardent of Putin critics would acknowledge that the chosen candidate is unlikely to win the presidential elections, the coalition is an attempt at uniting a fractured opposition. Supporters of Other Russia say that while the contest between the three candidates may further highlight divisions, the fact that they are holding one at all contrasts favourably with their pro-Putin rivals.
After receiving a passport this month from the Russian authorities enabling him to return home, Mr Bukovsky said: "The authorities clearly do not want to put any tangible obstacles in my way; what they will do behind the scenes is another thing."
His return to Russia follows the death of his close friend Mr Litvinenko. He and other expatriate Russians claimed Mr Litvinenko was murdered on the Kremlin's orders. Andrei Lugovoi, another ex-spy, is wanted in Britain to stand trial for Mr Litvinenko's murder.
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As a pallbearer at the London funeral last December, Mr Bukovsky told mourners: "Sasha [Litvinenko] died as a soldier, a warrior, fighting his enemies to the very end, looking straight into their eyes. He fought for his brothers." Mr Litvinenko's death, he added, was a sign that "Russia has been given a licence to kill, an invitation to murder anyone it wishes".
Mr Bukovsky argues the murder could not have taken place without orders from the top. A law passed last year in Russia in effect permitting the "elimination" of "extremists" even on foreign territory makes that explicit, he said.
"As soon as the law passed [the deputy first prime minister] Sergei Ivanov said that lists of potential targets were being composed. I am sure that both [murdered reporter Anna] Politkovskaya and Litvinenko were on this list," he said. "In Soviet times, the more well known you were abroad the less likely they would hurt you. They were concerned about their image. Today it looks like they do not care."
Describing Mr Putin as a "vengeful man, unpredictable and petty-minded", he added: "I've met quite a number of KGB defectors and once they cross over they cut off the past - they cannot go back, they would be killed."
In a haunting reflection of his own experiences, he also referred to reports of a growing number of citizens facing misdiagnosed imprisonment in psychiatric units. Among them is Larisa Arap, 49, a Murmansk human rights activist, detained last month by local mental health authorities. They had been angered by her exposure of appalling standards of hospital child care and treatment.
"Political prisoners and the use of psychiatric imprisonment have re-emerged in Russia - something I spent half my life fighting," he said.
However, with Russian parliament dominated by two pro-Kremlin parties, United Russia and A Just Russia, the odds are stacked against Other Russia.
Boris Kargarlitsky, a Moscow-based political analyst, said Mr Bukovksy could attract up to four per cent of the popular vote, the same figure Mr Kasyanov might expect.
"Mr Bukovsky is well-known by the older generation for his dissident activities," he said.
Putin in power
2000: Vladimir Putin is appointed president
2002: TV-6, Russia's last independent television station, is shut
2004: Putin dismisses his entire government via live television weeks before a landslide election victory. European election observers say polls fail to meet democratic standards
March 2005: Garry Kasparov retires from chess and forms Other Russia, a broad coalition of opposition groups
September 2005: Former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov announces his plans to stand for president in 2008
October 2006: Anna Politkovskaya, journalist, is shot dead on the eve of publication of article alleging torture by Chechen security forces
November 2006: Alexander Litvinenko is poisoned
April 2007: Kasparov is arrested at an anti-Kremlin rally
July 2007: Larisa Arap, human rights activist, is forcibly detained by mental health authorities
Litvinenko's pallbearer takes fight to Putin
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