This has not stopped the western media from reviving these claims in the midst of the Ukraine crisis, including the commencement of a farcical court proceeding in Britain regarding the Litvinenko murder in which a critical piece of forensic evidence (the autopsy report) is still withheld. Hence, this is nothing more than intrigue and innuendo to further poison the western public's mind about both Putin and Russia.
The same dynamic has played out with the murder of Boris Nemtsov whom Putin had no motivation for wanting to eliminate as he was no plausible threat with only a 1% approval rating among the Russian people. Again, the western media has only presented innuendo in its implicit accusations against Putin. And when the innuendo doesn't hold up, they simply stop talking about it. If Putin had thought Nemtsov was a real threat or troublemaker he likely would have followed his usual pattern of finessing the law and having him jailed.
The second level of demonization has been to characterize Putin as personally corrupt, accusing him of holding billions of dollars he systematically ripped off from the Russian people as far back as his days in the St. Petersburg mayor's office in secret bank accounts, owning an opulent Spanish villa and perhaps even stealing lollipops from disabled children.
This has culminated in a recent Frontline program called "Putin's Way" in which a mishmash of unverified claims and discredited conspiracy theories were trotted out in a slick propaganda piece trying to pass itself off as journalism. Only one academic on Russia was interviewed who was allowed to frame the narrative on Putin's "corruption." This academic's tendentious claims were not challenged by other academic and journalistic experts who have done more sober, balanced and in depth research on Russia and Putin. There were plenty of people Frontline could have talked to that would have provided a very different account of Putin's character while working as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, including many residents of the city who have stated that Putin was the only bureaucrat during that period that did not charge bribes for registering their businesses, which contributed to their decision to vote for him in the 2000 presidential election. It is perhaps best summed up by one of Putin's academic political biographers, Allen Lynch:
For much of this time, given (mayor Anatoliy) Sobchak's frequent and protracted absences and his preoccupation with national affairs, Putin assumed the functions of acting mayor. He supervised the drafting and implementation of countless international business deals and policy reforms. These transactions did not always go according to plan, and no doubt many profited handsomely from Putin's admitted inexperience in these matters. During his attempt to establish municipal oversight over a series of casinos, for example, the city was cheated. In another case, the city was fleeced for $120 million for two shipments of cooking oil. Although during this period his mother bought a choice apartment at an exceptionally low price at a city auction, Putin didn't seem to enrich himself personally. In the one specific public charge of corruption that was brought against him, Putin sued in court for slander and won"Putin was not corrupt, at least not in the conventional, venal sense. His modest and frankly unfashionable attire bespoke a seeming indifference to personal luxury. While as deputy mayor, he had acquired the use of the summer dacha of the former East German consulate and even installed a sauna unit there, but when the house burned down in the summer of 1996, his $5,000 life's savings burned with it. To have accumulated only $5,000 in five years as deputy mayor of Russia's second largest city and largest port, when hundreds of less well-placed Russians were enriching themselves on government pickings, implies something other than pecuniary motives behind Putin's activities.
As for the Spanish villa that, according to British tabloids, Putin supposedly plans to retire to so he can grow special grapes he can turn into wildly profitable wines, his political nemesis Alexei Navalny discovered that the villa is actually owned by the daughter of a member of the Russian parliament, not Putin.
Last summer, President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry and numerous commentators saturated the mass media with groundless accusations that Putin was responsible for the shoot down of MH17, along with constant claims that Russia had invaded Ukraine -- again, without substantive evidence.
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