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Monday, 27.08.2007
Berezovsky’s coup plans – How Putin will be eliminated
London/Moscow. Boris Berezovsky, the Russian billionaire businessman now in London exile, wants to topple Vladimir Putin. The Sunday Times let him detail how this will happen.
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Boris Berezovsky has once again lashed out at Putin’s administration. Berezovsky, who controlled Russian TV channel ORT in the Yeltsin era and was then regarded as pulling all the strings in the Kremlin, is now in exile in London. The powerful oligarch fell out with Russia’s president and is now his self-declared archenemy.
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In this week’s Sunday Times, Berezovsky calls for a putsch against Putin’s administration. The tycoon regards the political system emerging under Putin as being unsustainable and easy to collapse, because politics and economy are as centralised as in Soviet times.
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Russia at the crossroads
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In Berezovsky’s eyes, Russia is at a crossroads: If it goes Putin’s way, it will collapse. If it draws on its own strengths, it could have a future. In his piece Berezovsky quotes John Locke in stating it is not only right to topple a government that breaks the law, but that there is an obligation to do so.
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This is why, according to Berezovsky, “pressure must be brought to bear with the aim of installing a government that respects spirit and letter of the constitution“ and emphasises human rights and civil liberties.
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A bloodless revolution necessary
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Its rejection of civil liberties has robbed the ‘Putin regime’ of all legitimacy, writes Berezovsky. “Everyone is afraid of revolutionary bloodshed. But the bloodless revolutions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have taught us what we need to do.”
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This is a sensitive area for Berezovsky, who has repeatedly called for violence to be used against the Putin administration, even as recently 13th April in The Guardian. Only very recently has he softened his position.
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Berezovsky suggests specific measures against Putin: The West must openly call the Putin government illegitimate, due to its authoritarian drift and the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
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Freeze the oligarchs’ accounts
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Secondly, pressure must be exerted on the institutions of government. In extreme this includes open uprising. Only the people are entitled to overthrow an illegitimate government. Berezovsky is convinced that Putin loyalists are far fewer in number than the opposition forces ready to putsch.
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The West plays a key role in Berezovsky’s plans: He demands that the West unite against Putin and his associates by freezing their foreign accounts.
(cj/.rufo/Moskau)
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