Gangs Russia

Russian organized crime groups are spreading in the United States and Europe and "may already have the capability to steal nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons components or weapons-grade nuclear materials," FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said Wednesday. But Freeh emphasized in his remarks to the permanent investigations panel of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that so far there have been "no serious diversions of weapons-grade nuclear materials."

Political cooperation is only one of the things that the West needs from Russia. We also need a measure of order within Russia itself. Without a drive against Russia's internal lawlessness, Russia could align itself with the West completely and still be a base area for Islamic terrorism. This is because Russia has huge amounts of poorly guarded weapons of mass destruction and powerful organized crime groups that have the ability to obtain and sell them.

They knocked the drunk down and beat in his face with paving stones, kicking him and punching him with all the viciousness coiled in their wiry boys' bodies, until his rattling grunts stopped. They watched him die. Then the three Yakovlev brothers, all younger than 15 at the time, cleaned out his pockets--although they did not kill him to rob him, said the youngest.

The wind lifts the nets drying on the beach. A caviar poacher's rowboat has been pulled up on the hot sand. Muscles gleam on a fisherman's bare shoulders, and his pale, watchful eyes reflect the dance of the tides. Magomed the smuggler limps down the beach in southern Russia where he has come, most days this year, to buy supplies for his underworld trade: basins of gleaming black fish eggs, straight from the slashed belly of the sturgeon.

The wind lifts the nets drying on the beach. A caviar poacher's rowboat has been pulled up on the hot sand. Muscles gleam on a fisherman's bare shoulders, and his pale, watchful eyes reflect the dance of the tides. Magomed the smuggler limps down the beach in southern Russia where he has come, most days this year, to buy supplies for his underworld trade: basins of gleaming black fish eggs, straight from the slashed belly of the sturgeon.

Gang warfare violated a Moscow cemetery Sunday when a bomb exploded near the grave of a slain Afghan War veterans leader on the second anniversary of his death, killing his widow, his mother and 11 others at a memorial service. The blast wounded at least 14 other mourners and stunned a city that had seemed hardened by hundreds of brazen contract killings in the struggle for post-Soviet wealth and power. Moscow police could recall no previous mob-style hit targeting so many innocents.

Political cooperation is only one of the things that the West needs from Russia. We also need a measure of order within Russia itself. Without a drive against Russia's internal lawlessness, Russia could align itself with the West completely and still be a base area for Islamic terrorism. This is because Russia has huge amounts of poorly guarded weapons of mass destruction and powerful organized crime groups that have the ability to obtain and sell them.

The biggest threat to international security coming from Russia these days, in the view of many concerned specialists, isn't military but criminal. Since the Soviet Union's collapse 30 months ago organized crime has become Russia's major growth industry. The head of the organized crime control section of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow says nearly 5,700 criminal groups with about 100,000 members have been identified so far.

Re "The Global Economy Is Teetering," Commentary, Nov. 6: Did it ever occur to Robert Scheer that President Bush and the Republican House leadership oppose the federalization of airport security for good reasons and not merely due to the influence of lobbyists? Everyone looks to Israel as having set the standard for airport security. The Israelis use private security, under federal supervision, just as Bush has recommended. Scheer seems to think that the use of federal employees is the answer to our airport security problems.

Yuri Felshtinsky well remembers when he spent the better part of five hours pleading for the life of his friend Alexander Litvinenko. It was May 22, 2000. Litvinenko, a colonel in the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, had just spent four months in prison, having gone public with allegations that senior secret police officers were involved in killings and kidnappings for financial gain. Now he was free, but for how long? Felshtinsky called up Litvinenko's former boss, Maj. Gen.

Gang warfare violated a Moscow cemetery Sunday when a bomb exploded near the grave of a slain Afghan War veterans leader on the second anniversary of his death, killing his widow, his mother and 11 others at a memorial service. The blast wounded at least 14 other mourners and stunned a city that had seemed hardened by hundreds of brazen contract killings in the struggle for post-Soviet wealth and power. Moscow police could recall no previous mob-style hit targeting so many innocents.

They knocked the drunk down and beat in his face with paving stones, kicking him and punching him with all the viciousness coiled in their wiry boys' bodies, until his rattling grunts stopped. They watched him die. Then the three Yakovlev brothers, all younger than 15 at the time, cleaned out his pockets--although they did not kill him to rob him, said the youngest.

Russian organized crime groups are spreading in the United States and Europe and "may already have the capability to steal nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons components or weapons-grade nuclear materials," FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said Wednesday. But Freeh emphasized in his remarks to the permanent investigations panel of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that so far there have been "no serious diversions of weapons-grade nuclear materials."

As awkwardly as a newborn foal struggling on spindly legs, Lena Meshcheryakova is learning how to curl her lips up at the corners to make a smile. Drifting just beneath the surface of her 5-year-old world are the memories of a darker place: the cellar in Chechnya where she was held prisoner by kidnappers for nine months. When she was freed at age 3, she had forgotten how to smile. She could barely even speak. But she knew how to pray like the devout Muslim Chechen men who had imprisoned her.