Several well-placed people told me earlier this year that the gubernatorial election was bound to get ugly. Maybe even bloody. To their credit, and to the region?€™s discredit, they were right.
The bomb that went off at 3:15 a.m. Wednesday in the center of Kaliningrad is estimated by experts to have been the equivalent of 400 grams of dynamite. Placed in a flowerbed just several feet from the front door of a five-story residential building, the device unleashed an explosion that shattered a dozen apartment windows. No one was injured, and damage was minimal so far as bombs go.
The odd part about the explosion was its location: Just 10 meters away from the point of detonation is the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet. Although he wasn?€™t in the building at the time of the blast, Vladimir Yegorov, the fleet?€™s commander, is participating in the elections and is considered by many to be the favored candidate. In a statement to the press, Admiral Yegorov said that it couldn?€™t be ruled out that the act was meant to destabilize the situation in the region on the eve of elections.
Last Saturday, a married couple was campaigning door-to-door for Yegorov during the twilight hours. The wife was working the apartments in one building entrance, the husband in another. After knocking on all the doors at her end, the woman exited the building and waited for her spouse on the sidewalk.
At that point, she noticed that she was being observed by two men sitting in a parked car. The moment she turned around, she was suddenly shot at by some type of air gun with rubber bullets. Two shots hit her in the legs and one in the lower back, leaving her with a couple of scratches. Although quite distraught, the woman has since resumed her campaigning.
On his way home from work Monday, the chief campaign manager for Yegorov in one of Kaliningrad?€™s five districts was approached by a stranger and offered $1,000 to give up his position. The campaign manager refused. But since then the proposal has turned into pressure: Someone called the campaign manager?€™s wife to urge her to convince her husband to accept the offer. To date, the manager has held his ground.
Is this the beginning of a frightening pre-election war, or are all of these merely isolated, unrelated instances? Let every person judge for himself. All I know is that much that happens in this world, and all our knowledge of it, depends upon perception.
It is not necessarily what happens that is so important, but how it is perceived. When all is said and done, it is the perception of events that is often influential.
Some say the bomb was laid to frighten Yegorov and his campaign staff, but who in his right mind could hope to scare a man as powerful as Admiral Yegorov?
Others say the bomb was the result of gangland violence, but several sources have said that there are neither bandits nor businessmen living in the building. One fringe group claims that Yegorov?€™s own people might have laid the bomb to make the admiral look as though he were the target of violence. But this kind of warped, conspiratorial logic can never be proven wrong.
Officials at the local Federal Security Services and prosecutor?€™s office, commenting on the incident in the first day before all the evidence could be weighed, were quoted as saying that the explosion was an act of hooliganism. I?€™m beginning to get the feeling that "hooliganism" is a knee-jerk reaction in the law enforcement agencies here, since it essentially allows them not to put too much work into investigating the crime. (A crime committed under the hooliganism statute is given a lower priority than other crimes and, if not solved, is usually closed after two months.)
When Igor Rostov, a local media magnate, was severely beaten last winter, police described the crime as hooliganism, despite the fact that Rostov had been warned earlier that day by a deputy governor that an attack upon him might be imminent.
One thing is certain: Getting shot at from a distance while on the job is not an act of hooliganism by any stretch of the imagination. And it?€™s all the evidence one needs to understand what is going on now in the enclave, bombs or no bombs. Law enforcement officials should remember that before making hasty conclusions.
Gary Peach is an independent journalist living and working in Kaliningrad.
The bomb that went off at 3:15 a.m. Wednesday in the center of Kaliningrad is estimated by experts to have been the equivalent of 400 grams of dynamite. Placed in a flowerbed just several feet from the front door of a five-story residential building, the device unleashed an explosion that shattered a dozen apartment windows. No one was injured, and damage was minimal so far as bombs go.
The odd part about the explosion was its location: Just 10 meters away from the point of detonation is the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet. Although he wasn?€™t in the building at the time of the blast, Vladimir Yegorov, the fleet?€™s commander, is participating in the elections and is considered by many to be the favored candidate. In a statement to the press, Admiral Yegorov said that it couldn?€™t be ruled out that the act was meant to destabilize the situation in the region on the eve of elections.
Last Saturday, a married couple was campaigning door-to-door for Yegorov during the twilight hours. The wife was working the apartments in one building entrance, the husband in another. After knocking on all the doors at her end, the woman exited the building and waited for her spouse on the sidewalk.
At that point, she noticed that she was being observed by two men sitting in a parked car. The moment she turned around, she was suddenly shot at by some type of air gun with rubber bullets. Two shots hit her in the legs and one in the lower back, leaving her with a couple of scratches. Although quite distraught, the woman has since resumed her campaigning.
On his way home from work Monday, the chief campaign manager for Yegorov in one of Kaliningrad?€™s five districts was approached by a stranger and offered $1,000 to give up his position. The campaign manager refused. But since then the proposal has turned into pressure: Someone called the campaign manager?€™s wife to urge her to convince her husband to accept the offer. To date, the manager has held his ground.
Is this the beginning of a frightening pre-election war, or are all of these merely isolated, unrelated instances? Let every person judge for himself. All I know is that much that happens in this world, and all our knowledge of it, depends upon perception.
It is not necessarily what happens that is so important, but how it is perceived. When all is said and done, it is the perception of events that is often influential.
Some say the bomb was laid to frighten Yegorov and his campaign staff, but who in his right mind could hope to scare a man as powerful as Admiral Yegorov?
Others say the bomb was the result of gangland violence, but several sources have said that there are neither bandits nor businessmen living in the building. One fringe group claims that Yegorov?€™s own people might have laid the bomb to make the admiral look as though he were the target of violence. But this kind of warped, conspiratorial logic can never be proven wrong.
Officials at the local Federal Security Services and prosecutor?€™s office, commenting on the incident in the first day before all the evidence could be weighed, were quoted as saying that the explosion was an act of hooliganism. I?€™m beginning to get the feeling that "hooliganism" is a knee-jerk reaction in the law enforcement agencies here, since it essentially allows them not to put too much work into investigating the crime. (A crime committed under the hooliganism statute is given a lower priority than other crimes and, if not solved, is usually closed after two months.)
When Igor Rostov, a local media magnate, was severely beaten last winter, police described the crime as hooliganism, despite the fact that Rostov had been warned earlier that day by a deputy governor that an attack upon him might be imminent.
One thing is certain: Getting shot at from a distance while on the job is not an act of hooliganism by any stretch of the imagination. And it?€™s all the evidence one needs to understand what is going on now in the enclave, bombs or no bombs. Law enforcement officials should remember that before making hasty conclusions.
Gary Peach is an independent journalist living and working in Kaliningrad.
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