Putin Tightens Kremlin's Grip

Responding to a spate of deadly terror attacks, President Vladimir Putin announced a series of anti-terror initiatives Monday that would strengthen the Kremlin's grip on every layer of Russian political life.

Putin told Cabinet members and security officials convened in special session that the future of Russia was at stake, and called for the creation of a central, powerful anti-terror agency.

"The organizers and perpetrators of the terror attack are aiming at the disintegration of the state, the breakup of Russia," he said. "We need a single organization capable of not only dealing with terror attacks but also working to avert them, destroy criminals in their hideouts and, if necessary, abroad."

Despite the plans for the new anti-terrorism agency, the proposals were short on security measures, focusing instead on electoral changes, including the elimination of popularly elected governors and an overhaul of the way Russians elect their parliament — a measure likely to increase the control of the dominant, pro-Kremlin faction.

Critics called the measures a blow to democracy, and warned that Putin's reliance on top-down control could weaken the nation by driving those in power further from the citizens they rule.

Some critics also suggested that Putin's decision to focus on electoral changes was a sign he lacks practical ideas about protecting the nation after a series of stunning terror attacks blamed on Chechen rebels, climaxing in the school siege that killed more than 330 people.

Putin said he would propose legislation abolishing the election of local governors by popular vote. Instead they would be nominated by the president and confirmed by local legislatures — removing the last vestiges of local autonomy.

Putin explained his actions as necessary to streamline and strengthen the executive branch to make it more capable of combating terror.

But his critics immediately assailed the proposal as a self-destructive effort that could fuel dissent in the provinces.

"Today, all the power agencies that are supposed to fight terrorism are subordinated directly to the president … It's incomprehensible why on top of that he has to name governors," Sergei Mitrokhin, a leading member of the liberal Yabloko faction, told Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio. "It shows that the president doesn't know what to do, he's at a loss."

Since taking office in 1999, Putin has constantly worked to rein in independent-minded governors. He has already tossed them out of Russia's upper house of parliament and made them subservient to the seven regional envoys he appointed.

Sergei Markov, a political analyst with close ties to the Kremlin, said the president's move against the governors could help curb corruption that has flourished in some regions.

"At the same time, it means … a lowering of (their) general political authority and a serious lowering of political pluralism," Markov told Ekho Moskvy radio.

In another move aimed at strengthening the federal authorities, Putin recommended eliminating the individual races that now fill half of the seats in the national parliament and have the entire lower house filled by parties on a proportional basis.

Putin said that the move would help foster dialogue by expanding the clout of political parties, but his opponents warned that it would further increase the clout of the Kremlin-controlled parliament factions that already have an overwhelming majority in the State Duma.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the few opposition deputies in the State Duma, scorned the president's political proposals and said if they were approved, "the next Duma will be simply virtual, it will consist of just marionette party lists and won't enjoy any authority."

Although Putin has been criticized for strengthening his own powers in the past, three weeks of terrorist violence and the deaths of 430 people have led to increased support among the Russian people for measures to combat terrorism.

Putin said official corruption that had helped terrorists, such as the issuing of documents "leading to grave consequences," should be punished with particular severity. He also signaled that a government crackdown on Islamic groups could be planned, proposing that extremist organizations serving as a cover for terrorists should be outlawed.

In another burgeoning debate over the extent of Kremlin control, Russian media experts on Monday renewed their criticism of the way state-controlled television covered the deadly school hostage crisis, while a prominent TV newsman defended his colleagues.

In a bid to minimize the scale of the hostage crisis in the southern town of Beslan early this month, Russian officials initially had reported that gunmen had seized only between 300 and 400 hostages, far fewer than the actual number of around 1,200. State-controlled media uncritically reported the smaller estimates.

Officials and state-controlled news outlets also kept silent about the terrorists' demands to pull federal troops out of Chechnya, where they have been fighting insurgents for the last five years. Critics said voicing the terrorists' demands would have put pressure on the authorities to conduct negotiations — something Putin has staunchly rejected.

"One cannot defeat terror with lies ... but the official accounts were filled with lies," Alexei Venediktov, editor in chief of Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio station, told visiting U.S. scholars from the Brookings Institution in Washington, including former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.

When terrorists heard the misstated figures of the number of hostages, they reportedly threatened to leave only between 300 and 400 people alive, the Russian media said. The failure to report the terrorists' demands enraged the terrorists and made them even more brutal, witnesses said.

Yevgeny Revenko, deputy news editor at the state-owned Rossiya Channel, sought to fend off criticism by saying journalists were merely reporting the authorities' statements.

"I believe that the lies that were told by the representatives (of the crisis headquarters) about the number of hostages, about the demands of the terrorists ... must rest on the conscience of those officials who were giving us this information," Revenko said.