According to British newspaper The Guardian, American diplomats have confirmed the information from the Kavkaz Center that Russia is a bandit and terrorist country.

"Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centered on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organized crime are bound together to create a virtual mafia state", wrote British newspaper, citing U.S. diplomatic sources in their secret cables to the State Department in Washington.

U.S. diplomatic sources describe the situation in Russia.

"Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus", the diplomats tell about the leadership of Russia at all its levels and point out that "in this thoroughly rotten, corrupt political system (Russian, patriotic - KC) bribery alone totals an estimated $ 300bn a year".

"In Russia, it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of the government and organized crime", U.S. diplomats suggest.

Among the most striking allegations against Russians contained in the U.S. diplomatic cables are:

 - Russian spies use senior mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations such as arms trafficking.

  - Law enforcement agencies such as the police, spy agencies and the prosecutor's office operate a de facto protection racket for criminal networks.

  - Rampant bribery acts like a parallel tax system for the personal enrichment of police, officials and the KGB's successor, the federal security service (FSB).

  - Investigators looking into Russian mafia links to Spain have compiled a list of Russian prosecutors, military officers and politicians who have dealings with organized crime networks.

  - Putin is accused of amassing "illicit proceeds" from his time in office, which various sources allege are hidden overseas".

  The British newspaper continues:

"The allegations come hours before Putin was due to fly to Zurich (world banking center - KC), but Putin cancelled his trip (to the stolen money - KC), complaining of a "smear campaign".

  In an angry interview with CNN's Larry King Live, recorded before the latest disclosures, Putin also denounced the cables and warned the US not to stick its nose in internet affairs (of Putin - KC).

  "To be honest with you, we (with Medvedev - KC) did not suspect that this criticism could be made with such arrogance (which means that U.S. has evidences against Putin - KC), with such rudeness, and you know, so unethically (it is said by the bloody butcher and murderer of hundreds of thousands of people - KC)", Putin remarked in the interview.

  The principal allegations stem from a Spanish prosecutor, Jose Grinda Gonzalez, who has spent more than a decade trying to unravel the activities of Russian organized crime in Spain.

  Spanish authorities have arrested more than 60 suspects, including the top four mafia bosses outside Russia.

  In a startling briefing for US officials in January, Grinda said Russia was a "virtual mafia state" in which "one cannot differentiate between the activities of the government and OC [organized crime] groups".

  Grinda said he had evidence - thousands of wiretaps have been used in the last 10 years - that certain political parties in Russia worked hand in hand with mafia groups.

  At the summit of what is known in Russia as the power "vertical" lies the Kremlin, a prime beneficiary of the entrenched system of kickbacks, bribes, protection money and suspect contracts.

  He alleged that intelligence officials orchestrated gun shipments to Kurdish groups to destabilize Turkey and were pulling the strings behind the 2009 case of the Arctic Sea cargo ship suspected of carrying missiles destined for Iran.

  In a detailed and apparently plausible analysis of how corruption in the capital works, the US ambassador John Beyrle cited one source as saying:

  "Everything depends on the Kremlin ... [former Moscow mayor Yuri] Luzhkov, as well as many mayors and governors, pay off key insiders in the Kremlin".

  Beneath the Kremlin is a broad layer of top officials - mayors and governors - collecting money based on bribes almost like their own personal taxation system. At the next level down the FSB, interior ministry and police collect protection money from businesses, licit and illicit.

  "Criminal elements enjoy a krysha [a term from the criminal/mafia world literally meaning roof or protection] that runs through the police, the federal security service (FSB), ministry of internal affairs (MVD) and the prosecutor's office, as well as throughout the Moscow city government bureaucracy," Beyrle noted.

  "The Moscow city government's direct links to criminality have led some to call it 'dysfunctional' and to assert that the government operates more as a kleptocracy than a government".

  Grinda said the FSB had two ways to eliminate "OC leaders who do not do what the security services want them to do". The first was to kill them. The second was to put them in jail to "eliminate them as a competitor for influence".

  Sometimes the FSB put crime lords in prison for their own protection. Luckier crime leaders might end up in Russian parliament.

  "The government of Russia takes the relationship with organized crime leaders still further by granting them privileges of politics, in order to grant them immunity from racketeering charges", Beyrle noted.

  The US is not alone in its assessments. In one cable, the Foreign Office's Russia director, Michael Davenport, is quoted as calling Russia a "corrupt autocracy" (actually, it is a totalitarian, rather than an autocratic country - KC).

  The cables also reveal that Putin was likely to have known about the operation to murder Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

The previous U.S. Ambassador to Moscow William Burns wrote:

  "The tendency here to almost automatically assume that someone in or close to Putin's inner-circle is the author of these deaths speaks volumes about expectations of Kremlin behavior", British newspaper The Guardian concludes its article.

The France Presse adds:
 

"The memo, sent in February of this year from the US embassy in Madrid, cited the senior prosecutor of Spain:

  "He argued that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was created by the KGB and its successor, the SVR, and is home to many serious criminals".