#28 - JRL 2006-247 - JRL Home
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006
From: "SergeyVorobiev" <SergeyVorobiev2004@yandex.ru>
Subject: Re Andrey Terekhov/ JRL245
First a disclaimer. In my view, Anders Aslund’s piece in The Weekly Standard was too confrontational to the point of being counter-effective (unless, of course, the whole point was to engage in a war of words). I fully agree with Andrey Terekhov that the US should not “make Russia an enemy” it is totally counter-productive.
Having said that, I would also like to correct half-truths and distortions, this time of Terekhov’s making. Terekhov claims that “Moscow could hardly be expect to accept that it cannot cooperate with Iran while the U.S. sells its weapons to Tbilisi and trains Georgian soldiers”. To put a small and weak, both military and economically, state like Georgia on the same footing with a nuclear threshold oil-rich state like Iran really requires a stretch of imagination. Georgia, even being armed by the US by very unsophisticated weapons, does not represent a military threat to Russia while Iran’s military build-up is dangerous for both the US and Russia.
According to Terekhov, “the presumption of innocence for the so-called spies is inconceivable for Aslund. The individuals were not proven guilty in Georgia and were in fact set free after a makeshift courthearing, in which they were denied the defense of a Russian lawyer.” The Russians were indeed set free. However, the evidence against them produced by the Georgian side appeared quite convincing not only to me but also to some former Soviet spies. They publicly lamented a disgraceful state of the current Russian intelligence agencies which in this case were guilty of sloppy work and indifference to the fate of their Georgian informers. Terekhov perhaps implies that since the Russian military officers are freed, there will be no legal way of proving that they were not alleged but real GRU agents. He forgets that for their informers a due legal process is not over yet. They face very harsh sentences. If they are found guilty, it will resolve a legal dispute regarding “innocence! for the so-called spies”.
I could go on and on pinpointing “inaccuracies” in Andrey Terekhov’s article. It is basically a standard staple which is given to the Russians these days through such media organizations as TV Russia or strana.ru or Izvestia under editorship of Mamontov (just imagine a former editor of a Russian version of Enquirer being hired to run a Russian version of The New York Times). With such independent dailies as Nezavisimaya (and it is not the worst case, far from that), staffed by the Terekhovs of the world, who needs censorship?
However, Terekhov’s reply to Anders Aslund appeared in the National Interest on-line produced by the Nixon Center closely associated with the Republican party and run by former Soviet emigree Dimitri Simes. And this is quite a shock which really prompted me to reflect on the inscrutable ways of God.