David Satter's talk on the Litvinenko murder

Today I saw David Satter give a talk on the Litvinenko murder. I agree with some of his points (that the FSB likely killed him, that the Kremlin's accusations that Berezovskiy and/or Nevzlin did it are opporunistic), but I also found that he jumped to conclusions regarding the Kremlin's motives for hampering the British investigation. His theory implied that the Kremlin has something to hide, but I think that their motive may be national pride. If nothing else, his assumption reminded me of the mistakes Americans made regarding WMD in Iraq. Because Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in and he was hostile towards us, we figured he must have something to hide. Turns out that part of what officials wanted to hide (in those intercepts that Powell played for his UN speech) was irregularities in how they had disposed of weapons. Likewise, Satter's guessing at the Kremlin's motivations seemed likely to lead to neat but mistaken conclustions.

He also was too negative in his appraisal of the Kremlin. Of course the Kremlin does many things that I condemn, but I don't think the leadership is there solely to abuse the population. I find it hard to respect anyone who can't say anything positive about the Kremlin as a real scholar of Russian politics. How can one be balanced and have nothing at all that's positive to say about what Putin has done in the past 7 years? What about benefits reform? What about the fact that the country is more stable and he has a approval rating in the vicinity of 80%? Yes, there is corruption, Putin has installed Petersburg and FSB buddies, and there has been a rollback of democracy, but I don't think it's right to be 100% negative. 100% negativity makes one suspect that the speaker is biased and not diligent in his consideration of other viewpoints. Satter's demeanor was such that I got the impression he is a Cold Warrior who never got over the high one gets from condemning the Evil Empire. And this guy used to write for the Financial Times? I thought journalists were more diligent in tracking down multiple angles.