Hijack a test for Putin

Vladimir Putin has interrupted his holiday to deal with the hijacking

By CNN's Douglas Herbert

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin's reaction to Thursday's hijacking shows how eager he is to avert another Kursk-style debacle.

Last summer, Putin came under blistering attack at home and abroad when he failed to cut short a Black Sea holiday after the Kursk submarine tragedy, in which 118 sailors died.

The tragedy was one of a series of summer disasters that included a bombing at Moscow's Pushkin Square in which 12 people died and a fire at the city's TV tower, Ostankino.

Taken together, the domino-like succession of calamities put Putin on the defensive and caught the Kremlin flat-footed.

VIDEO Hijackers release some passengers from the Russian plane in Saudi Arabia Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     AUDIO CNN's Steve Harrigan: Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov reacts 270K/25 sec. AIFF or WAV sound Steve Harrigan in Moscow: Relatives are in stunned disbelief 310K/28 sec. AIFF or WAV sound Khaled Al-Maeena, journalist: "There's nothing religious about it" 486K/45 sec. AIFF or WAV sound     RESOURCES Anatomy of a Tupolev Tu-154     MESSAGE BOARD Airplane hijacking     ALSO Past Turkish hijack dramas Hijack relatives' anxious wait

The ex-KGB's spy's slow response to the Kursk disaster, especially, was seen by many Russians as a throwback to darker days, when Soviet leaders showed disregard for the need to connect with people in times of crisis.

"The cause of the crisis," former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said at the time, "was that the authorities showed a lack of undertsanding of the need for informing the people - of glasnost."

When Putin finally acted, four days after the tragedy, he was faulted for appearing stiff and distant at a hastily arranged meeting with the sailors' grieving relatives.

Within minutes of Thursday's hijacking, by contrast, Putin instantaneously decided to interrupt a vacation in Siberia to deal with the situation.

The decision -- coming amid statements by a presidential spokesman that Putin believed the hijacking was the work of Chechen "terrorists" -- underscored the significance Putin attaches to being seen as a law-and-order leader.

Putin was virtually unknown to most Russians before his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, plucked him from political obscurity and anointed him his heir.

He became an overnight political sensation with the Russian electorate, however, campaigning on a no-nonsense platform that mixed ample ambiguity with hard-nosed pledges to crack down on the country's rampant crime and corruption and restore its dignity.

In recent months, Putin has burnished his image among his compatriots by presenting a tough face to the United States on defence and other issues, while boosting Russian pride with symbolic acts such as the restoration of a Soviet-era national anthem and grandiose visits to old Cold War allies such as Vietnam.

The hijacking of a Russian passenger plane offers Putin a golden opportunity to showcase leadership skills that eluded him in the Kursk crisis.

Meanwhile, it will also give the KGB's successor and Putin's onetime employer, the Federal Security Service, or FSB -- which was preparing a team Thursday to "liberate the plane" -- a prominent test case of its post-Soviet viability after a spate of recent spy scandals.

If Putin handles this crisis with aplomb, the Kursk fiasco may quickly become a distant memory in many Russians' minds.

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February 13, 2001

In-Depth: Death of the Kursk

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