Why does Russia need Milosevic?

Russia asked the international tribunal in The Hague to lend it defendant Slobodan Milosevic for treatment. The Russian Embassy in the Netherlands transferred the corresponding guarantees to the secretariat of the international tribunal.

This is undoubtedly a humane and timely proposal. Russian medicine is well known for the quality of its services, especially when it comes to prison medicine. For example, an independent commission was never allowed to see Platon Lebedev. Now it’s clear why: if the Americans asked the same Platon Lebedev to come for treatment, prosecutor Ustinov could proudly say that Lebedev would not be treated anywhere better than in Russia: even Milosevic himself asks for a bed in a neighboring isolation ward.

In fact, in the four thousand year history of international diplomacy, I do not remember a precedent for a prisoner accused of genocide being released for treatment in a neighboring country; especially the one where his relatives and the accused settled; one that amazes the world with the level of corruption; the one that never really recognized the defendant as a criminal, and the Hague court as the body authorized to judge him. With the same success, the defendants at the Nuremberg trials could have asked Generalissimo Franco for treatment.

Russia, I believe, will be refused. And they will give another “fail”, like a poor student who was once again caught smoking marijuana in the toilet. The question is: why did we smoke this time? After all, no one forced it. There was no apparent diplomatic need to be publicly flogged.

The reason is probably that Russian foreign policy has recently been subject to a number of simple patterns.

Take, for example, the Russian-Iranian contract for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Bushehr. He so inspired Iran that it tore the seals off its nuclear facilities. Now the entire West is discussing what to do with Iran, and in the depths of its soul it hopes that Israel will remove this heavy burden from the West - to decide, by attacking Iranian nuclear facilities from the air.

At first glance, it is not clear why Russia, which has its own problems with the Mujahideen, is arming Shiite fanatics, who, by the way, do not even hide their contempt for Russian infidels. Moreover, even the traditional reservation that we are supplying Iran with peaceful atoms is unconvincing in this case. A nuclear power plant located on the shores of the Persian Gulf, in a country with Asian ideas about the value of human life, is itself a weapon. The Bushehr nuclear power plant is the world's largest suicide belt.

However, up close, the bewilderment disappears. The Bushehr nuclear power plant is being built by the Atomstroyexport company, which two years ago belonged to the famous industrialist Kakha Bendukidze. While it belonged to Mr. Bendukidze, we did not build the Bushehr nuclear power plant. But after Mr. Bendukidze became the Minister of Economy of Georgia, Atomstroyexport was given a small tax yukos, and Mr. Bendukidze, as an intelligent person, sold the company, which has a billion-dollar order book, to Gazprombank for a modest sum of $25 million.

After which they began to build Bushehr.

A very clear solution. What does geopolitics have to do with it if specific people not far from President Putin benefit from construction?

Or let’s take another Russian foreign policy decision: before Putin’s trip to Israel, the Kremlin announced that it would supply Streltsy to Syria and 50 armored personnel carriers to the Palestinian Authority. This seems a strange step before the visit of the president of one civilized country to another civilized country.

But here it must be recalled that President Putin was traveling not just to Israel, but to the country where Yukos shareholder Leonid Nevzlin lives, and that after they stopped intimidating President Putin with the story about Mikhail Khodorkovsky who wanted to overthrow him, they began to intimidate him with the story about who wanted him kill Leonid Nezvlin.

Just imagine that, say, Tamerlane captures Baghdad, and his enemy Ahmad ibn Oweis flees to Egypt. After this, Tamerlane sent an urgent demand to the Mamluk emir Barquk to extradite Ibn Oweys, threatening otherwise the ruin of Syria and Egypt. (Well, of course, Barkuk refused Tamerlane in a gentle diplomatic manner - namely, he cut off the heads of the ambassadors and married the niece of the overthrown ruler of Baghdad.)

What I mean is that if a democratic ruler goes to negotiations, he does not start them with threats. But if an authoritarian leader goes to a foreign country to bring back the head of a conspirator who, as loyal people report to him, is preparing assassination attempts on him every day, if a person believes that diplomacy is a special operation, and the world is a field for operational play, then, of course, this is the most correct position: hand over the fugitive from whom we took away his property and imprisoned his partner, otherwise we will supply weapons to the terrorists who are killing your citizens.

Or take the Russian reaction to the UN investigation into the causes of the death of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. As soon as the commission placed responsibility for this on the Syrian intelligence services and personally on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russia began to defend Syria with its breasts.

Also very clear. If these UN commissions make it a habit to investigate assassination attempts on heads of state, who knows where they will stick their nose? What if they decide to investigate not only the death of Rafik Hariri, but also, say, the failed poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko? And they will not agree with the version of our state media that a) there was no poisoning, b) Yushchenko was poisoned by Berezovsky, c) and in general Yushchenko is a scoundrel.

In this sense, the proposal to lease Milosevic fits perfectly into the standards of our foreign policy. Firstly, it may well be commercially profitable for some intermediary who announced one amount to Milosevic’s relatives, and another to the necessary diplomatic workers. Second, it touchingly demonstrates Russia's solidarity with any regime that is dirty enough to incur the displeasure of the West.

And thirdly, he is unlikely to succeed.