Here's Andrey Terekhov, a Moscow-based staff writer for Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper, criticizing Anders Aslund's condemnation of the Putin Administration, with LR's running commentary exposing his outrageous propaganda (from National Interest).

You can have your own views, but you cannot have your own facts. In his October 23 essay in The Weekly Standard, “Putin Gets Away with Murder. It's time to confront the Russian leader”, the distinguished Russia expert Anders Aslund has yielded to the temptation of playing hard and fast with evidence. I’m not going to argue that Aslund’s perspective on today’s Russia is completely mistaken, nor do I want to justify President Putin’s vision for Russia. My goal is rectify the half-truths in the essay.

LR: Then the reader should expect a punctilious attitude towards the facts from you, Mr. Terekhov, I'm sure you will agree. And as shown below, you don't even come close to meeting your own standard.

To say nothing of the fact that, basically, what this moron is saying is that even though he knows Aslund is right, he's going to attack him anyway because he just can't stand to be criticized by a foreigner. He'd rather destroy his country than admit a foreigner is right. Basically, he's the quintessential Russian.

“On Vladimir Putin's 54th birthday, one of his fiercest domestic critics, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was shot to death in her apartment building in central Moscow. She worked for the weekly Novaya Gazeta, Russia's last independent newspaper", Dr. Aslund writes. This complimentary assessment would be certainly welcomed by Novaya Gazeta, but things are hardly so bad in Russia. While in Moscow during the last leg of her Asian tour, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (a Russia specialist herself) said that the future of a free Russian press and electronic media “is a major concern”, but she drew a clear line between print press and television. “There is still an independent print press”, she stated. “Unfortunately, there is not much left of independent television in Russia.”

LR: Notice how he doesn't name one single newspaper that is free of Kremlin control other than Novaya Gazeta, obviously the one paper Rice was referring to, even as he himself parrots the Kremlin line? Notice how he doesn't mention that Rice went out of her way to visit the offices of Novaya Gazeta and given an exclusive interview to its editors? That's not just fast and loose with facts, that's propaganda.

Nobody is able to say for sure if Politkovskaya “had been tailed by the FSB for years”, as Aslund claims. But it seems doubtful, since she managed to protect the sources that provided her with sensitive information. Indeed, given Aslund’s claim about the FSB and his obscure comment that that the journalist’s murderer seems to have been “captured on film”, one would naturally surmise the macabre production was filmed by FSB agents. But the police discovered that at least three persons were involved in the killing through the surveillance cameras of a nearby store. The police is said to have a picture of the killer, but has not leaked it to the media so as not to scare the suspected criminal away.

LR: Is this maniac actually saying that the FSB didn't tail Anna Politikovskaya? Can he be THAT crazed? For God's sake, man, they still tail ordinary foreigners who come to live in Russia for perfectly benign reasons. President Putin publicly said that Politkovskaya was a threat to Russian security, yet the FSB didn't watch her? Please. So much for his factual standards. But then again, he's a Russian journalist.

Putin’s first comment with regard to the killing of Politkovskaya came two days after it took place but much earlier than Aslund’s piece was published. Still, Aslund said, “The Kremlin has made no comment” on the matter. Putin aired his opinion on October 10 while in Germany: “It’s a loathsome, brutal crime. Those who committed it must be punished . . . The killing of this person—a woman and a mother—targets not only our country but the authorities, too.” He added that the death of Politkovskaya had caused greater damage to Russian and Chechen authorities than did her reporting. Putin later addressed the issue a number of times, for example during the informal EU summit in Finland and in Moscow while directly addressing the nation.

LR: Since when are Vladimir Putin and "the Kremlin" synonymous? Aslund is perfectly correct that no official statement was released by the Kremlin regarding the killing, and in fact none has been to this day. And is this guy completely insane? Do you notice how he just glosses over the fact that Putin called Anna a threat to Russian national security? If that's not a reason to confront Russia, none could be found.

Aslund’s most serious distortion is his claim about Russian arms sold to Iran: “In the last year, President Putin has exported ground-to-air missiles to Iran that can shoot down American F-16s.” While Tehran and Moscow signed a deal worth $700 million (according to U.S. estimations) to supply the Islamic republic with Tor-M1systems, the CEO of the company tapped to supply the weaponry suggested earlier this month that there had been no deliveries to Iran so far. Last April, Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Ivanov said that the deal with Iran would be have been honored but for force majeure. He didn’t elaborate. Indeed, Aslund’s article suggests the imminence of a military solution in dealing with Iran, but few analysts here believe that American F-16s will soon bomb the Iranian territory. Even fewer Russian experts and politicians would support such air strikes, since a new military operation in the region could have a negative effect on Russian security.

LR: So let LR see if she understands: Although Mr. Terekhov admits that a formal contract has been signed between Iran and Russia for the delivery of these missiles, he feels that this means nothing until the weapons are actually delivered, since Russia may decide to welch on the contract it signed at any time? And what does the author mean by "American F-16s"? Is he saying Israel woudn't use its American F-16s to attack Iran if a bomb were discovered? For God's SAKE, Israel has ALREADY done that once. This man is clearly bonkers. The Kremlin has publicly stated it will deliver the missiles unless international sanctions make it illegal. It will receive over $700 million in the deal.

Last week, it turned out that Russia surpassed the United States as the leader in weapons deals with the developing world in 2005, according to an annual study by the Congressional Research Service. Russia’s arms agreements with the developing world totaled $7 billion, while the U.S. was third (after France), at $6.2 billion. These figures show the nature of the highly competitive international arms bazaar. 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. Importantly, earlier this year, Georgia’s minister of defense promised that his troops would celebrate New Year’s in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia—the only way the Georgian minister could make good on his word would be to deploy Georgian tanks and troops to the region.

LR: What planet is this man on? Isn't Russia's becoming the number one arms dealer an obvious reason to attribute, as Aslund properly does, radically aggressive motives that must be opposed? This analysis is so pathetic, it might as well have been written by a member of the Politburo. What weapons is the U.S. selling to Georgia? Notice how he doesn't mention a single one? Is he saying that Russia wouldn't be selling weapons to Iran if the U.S. weren't selling weapons to Georgia? Does he cite a SHRED of evidence for such a claim? So much for facts. What a hyporcite! Unbelievable, even by Russian standards!

Aslund also maintained: “With no justification whatsoever, Putin personally has accused Georgia of state terrorism. He likened the arrest of four senior Russian military spies in Georgia to the acts of Stalin's henchman Lavrenty Beria.” Clearly, 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 court hearing, in which they were denied the defense of a Russian lawyer.

LR: Who said anything about the innocence of the accused spies. The question is, even if they are innocent, is the President of Georgia engaged in state terrorism as Putin accused him of being? Notice how the author totally ignores Aslund's point, attacking him for something he didn't say, classic Soviet propaganda.

Another of Aslund’s presumptions is even more disputable. “It is a logical next step [for Putin] to illegally prolong [his] rule by starting a war against Georgia”, he maintains. But Putin enjoys 52 percent job approval rating. And his most active supporters favor the holding of a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would allow him reelection for a third term—a prospect the president himself has ruled out.

LR: 52%? Putin's job approval rating is well above 70%. This idiot can't even get facts right that FAVOR his case. Isn't it possible that Putin believes a constitutional amendment woudln't work due to international pressure and/or domestic opposition, so a coup action is the better course? Aslund isn't claiming to state facts, he's just giving his opinion of what could happen. The author's statements are competely crazed. He can disagree, but he can't accuse Aslund of misstating facts.

Then there is Aslund’s own version of history. “Yeltsin was a democrat, as Leon Aron shows in his excellent biography”, he claims. Of course the biography he refers to, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life, came out in 2000, when the real impact of the privatization carried out under Yeltsin was not entirely clear to many. As Marshall Goldman, director of Harvard University's Russian studies program, rightly put it in Foreign Affairs back in 2004, the basic reforms and privatization of the 1990s were flawed and unfair. Virtually all the wealth of the Russian oligarchs came from the seizure of Russia's raw material assets, which until 1992 had been owned and managed by the state. An oligarch's success almost always depended on his connections to the government officials in charge of privatizing the country's rich energy and mineral deposits, as well as on his ability to outmaneuver or intimidate rivals, Goldman said.

LR: What does the misallocation of national resources have to do with democracy? Aslund never said Yeltsin was an economics genius or that he presided over wealth transfer without making mistakes. He said he was a DEMOCRAT, trying to avoid authoritarian rule. The author simply chooses to ignore the basic fact that Yeltsin warned the world that Russia could backslide into authoritarianism and therefore a rapid transfer of assets away from the center was essential to inhibit the recreation of the Soviet state. The only point Aslund is making is that Putin is a AUTOCRAT, centralizing power and destroying civil liberties. Yeltsin had NTV, Putin doesn't.

This is not to justify the rather clumsy Russian approach to “re-nationalization” under Putin. But by now, experts could be on the level with the American public in accurately describing the messy period of 1990s in Russia. In the end, Mr. Yeltsin was a “democrat” who sent Russian tanks and conscripts to war in Chechnya.

LR: Rather clumsy? That's a rather odd way to characterize sending Mikhail Khodorkovsky to Siberia and Svetlana Bakhminia hundreds of miles from her children for six years. Sounds like something Stalin might have said. Who said Yeltsin wasn't wrong to send troops to Chechnya? Aslund never said that. This guy doesn't have a shred of ethics, he's doing to Aslund EXACTLY what he accused Alsund of doing. Classic Russian gibberish.

Aslund suggests that “It's time to confront the Russian leader.” I doubt that would be a good idea. Putin has presidential charisma and broad support inside Russia. His more assertive international stance is based on his country’s soaring oil revenues, which has helped Moscow wean itself from financial dependence on the West. Moreover, Washington needs Moscow’s assistance to resolve the hottest international issues of today: the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea. Confrontation with Russia will put it on the defensive and render it less willing to cooperate. So, please, don’t make Russia an enemy.

LR: Hitler had broad support too. That didn't mean he couldn't, or shouldn't, be knocked off his perch. Russia is obstructing the U.S. on both Iran and North Korea, and despite President Bush "looking into Pooty-Poot's eyes" and giving Russia free ride for years. Notice how the author doesn't provide one single specific idea of how Russia might cooperate or how its cooperation could be induced? Instead, as if he were speaking to the Kremlin, he issues threats.