Me in Italy without internet info, had a hard time with RAI news.:::
Even with a friend/neighbour like Gary Hayword (New Zealand Beatles interviewer on sandwiches and beer in 1964 all night together having fun), who bought for $ 1 from his dot.mill neighbour the dot.com in 1993, bought telephone lines throughout USA and dot.com exploded, when from 4 workers he got to 4000, and $ 72/second income, he sold. I thought him bricklaying here, he jalous of me, because goldsmith (all girls want a goldsmith as friend, oh well).
I have PROVE how Berlusconi instructed Putin to buy all TV stations like he did in Italy, and Putin did so (offer 1 rubel, take it or choke and die) , how he constructed his 1984 info Empire. in the end I will glue in my jewellery since you did not have time to look at it: http://www.arkimede.biz/mobile/m_arkimede_home.htm (scroll down) .
Now I see: the alarm bells about Putin went off 25 years ago.
Derk Sauer
January 3, 2025
A quarter of a century ago this week, Vladimir Putin became president of Russia. In the months before that, before Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on New Year's Eve, he was briefly prime minister.
I used the holidays to reread some old columns from Het Parool, curious about how I viewed Putin at the time. I won't make a habit of recycling old columns, but this is what I wrote 25 years ago:
'That Vladimir Putin initially seemed like something for me. Young, ambitious and energetic. Black belt in karate, in short, not as weak as his predecessor Yeltsin. Okay, Putin was the boss of the FSB until recently and that raised some eyebrows. Under Putin's leadership, for example, the FSB made life difficult for environmental activist Nikitin, who compiled a dossier on nuclear pollution by the Russian navy. And there are also accusations (so far unproven) that the FSB was behind the bombings in Moscow, which provided the regime here with the alibi to start the invasion of Chechnya.’
‘That Putin is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, some analysts concluded. I myself also saw another side of Putin. After his FSB career, Putin was the right-hand man of Anatoly Sobchak, the liberal mayor of St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg in particular was the centre of young reformers, the city was an engine of renewal in Russia. Many of those reformers have now ended up in Moscow and they speak highly of Putin. ‘A nice, modern guy,’ says a former colleague, ‘absolutely not a Stalin type.’
‘That was reassuring. When Putin was installed as interim president, my Russian friends were also quite euphoric. ‘Finally someone from our generation in power. Someone with the same background and the same intellectual baggage’, my colleague Lena Myasnikova summed it up well. And the first speech only confirmed that euphoria. Putin spoke about the need for a strong state, but mainly emphasized respecting the rights of the individual citizen and guaranteeing freedom of the press.’
‘‘You see,’ we said to each other, ‘this is going in the right direction.’’
‘Of course we were worried about the Chechen campaign that started under Yeltsin but is being continued with full force by Putin. But, we reasoned, what else could he do? It’s a shame to eat cherries with the Chechens. I can also accept that Putin adopted a nationalistic tone. Russia has been suffering from a serious identity crisis for years. It is logical that the president is trying to restore national pride. Moreover, it is very irritating to be constantly lectured by America.’
‘Yet slowly but surely the alarm bells are starting to ring. The war in Chechnya is certainly not going well, but the TV continues to report one victory after another. Only a handful of media (including The Moscow Times) report the real death toll, and we are being called liars and traitors.’
‘In a cynical example of power politics, Putin made a deal with the communists in the Duma. His liberal allies watched in amazement and have since boycotted parliamentary sessions.’
‘And this week it was reported that the FSB top met in a special session to consider how the press can be better restricted. There are said to be ‘concrete indications’ that ‘foreign organisations’ based in Russia are trying to actively interfere in the upcoming presidential elections.’
‘Who this refers to is not clear, but it is scary. And the news that the police tried to arrest the well-known investigative journalist Alexander Chinstein and then send him to a psychiatric clinic is really spooky.’
‘A few weeks ago I predicted the comeback of the KGB/FSB. I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. And as for Putin: I’m worried.’
I wrote this in January 2000. In that quarter century everything has changed and actually nothing.
Derk Sauer is the publisher of The Moscow Times and a columnist for Het Parool. He is also the founder of the Russian newspaper Vedomosti and former publisher of RBK Gazeta.