In setting up the crony capitalist system following the fall of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin looted state coffers, says vanden Heuvel. When challenged by host Joe Scaraborough, who says Putin has done much the same to Russia, she is dismissive ("No, no. No, no"). When it is suggested that the Kremlin was involved in the assassination of journalists, including Putin critic Anna Politskaya, she shakes her head and tell Scarborough that the "rot started in Chechnya." One reporter for Novoya Gazeta, a paper vanden Heuvel recently visited while in Moscow and holds up as an example of Russia's free press, told Reuters that "prosecutors had tried to solve the case and were ordered to back off when the trail led to someone 'quite high up in the ruling hierarchy.'" But when the deaths of journalist Anastasia Baburova and lawyer Stanislav Markelov are discussed, vanden Heuvel quickly assigns blame to "neo-Nazis," though no arrests have been made in the case and many at Novoya Gazeta, where Baburova worked, suspect government involvement.
Clearly Putin reminds her of her first girlhood crush--the Soviet Union.
