Article 1 eurasia insight tbilisi claims russian troop movements in response to spy dispute diana Petriashvili 9/29/06
Aid groups shelter spies, Russia says
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Aid groups shelter spies, Russia saysForeign organizations fear new harassment
Reuters
Published: December 19, 2006
 
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MOSCOW: The state security chief stepped up pressure on international nongovernmental organizations and charities Tuesday, saying they were increasingly being used as cover for foreign spying operations. President Vladimir Putin has already accused foreign powers of using the groups for political ends, and this year signed a law on nongovernmental organizations that activists say could be used to harass charities. Nikolai Patrushev, head of the FSB state security service, said 27 foreign spies and 89 agents working for foreign secret services had been caught in 2006. The Itar-Tass news agency quoted Patrushev as saying there had been a sharp increase in foreign espionage from "legal positions" in society. He said the spies were sheltering behind "many international funds and organizations that deal with questions of widening cooperation and humanitarian help, as well as media organizations." Today in Europe
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His Cold War-style rhetoric reflected the new mood in Moscow. Foreign spy scares are back in vogue following the poisoning of a former Russian agent in London and a spy scandal in January, when Russia accused British diplomats of using a fake rock placed by a roadside to transmit secret messages. Patrushev singled out the Danish Refugee Council, a private humanitarian organization that works with people displaced by fighting or economic ruin in Chechnya. "Employees of this nongovernment organization, contrary to official announcements of their aims, are systematically trying to collect biased information about the political, economic and military situation in the North Caucasus," Patrushev said. Arne Vaagen, head of the Danish Refugee Council's international department, rejected the accusation. "I am very surprised because we have never been subject to such allegations before and I hope that he has been quoted correctly," he said by telephone from Denmark. "We are in the area due to humanitarian needs and we have been there for 6 years with the support of the Russian authorities." 3 positive tests for radiation Tests on three more London hotel workers have shown that they were exposed to low levels of polonium 210, the radioactive isotope that killed the former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, health officials told Reuters Tuesday in London. The tests bring to 10 the number of people in Britain found to have been contaminated by polonium 210 since Litvinenko died on Nov. 23. He accused the Kremlin of assassinating him. Moscow has strongly denied the charge. The Health Protection Agency said that the 10 people exposed, 9 hotel workers and Litvinenko's wife, faced no immediate danger and that any long-term health risk was likely to be very small
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MOSCOW, March 8 (Reuters) - A Russian counter-intelligence source dismissed reports of a U.S. eavesdropping tunnel under the Russian embassy, saying on Thursday they were Washington's invention and aimed at discrediting spy suspect Robert Hanssen. The New York Times reported the existence of the tunnel last weekend, quoting unnamed officials as saying they believed the operation had been betrayed to the Russians by FBI agent Hanssen, who is charged with selling secrets to Moscow. RIA news agency quoted a high-ranking source in Russian counter-intelligence as saying the Cold War-era tunnel never existed, and the report was intentionally circulated by U.S. secret services to "burden Hanssen with a serious guilt." It quoted the unnamed source as saying, "Americans had little" concrete evidence against Hanssen, especially him "being an agent...and dug (the tunnel) under him." The source said rather than digging a special tunnel under the Soviet and then Russian embassy, U.S. secret services used underground telephone cable lines, sewage pipes and the central pillars of the building to spy on the personnel. RIA said the monitoring system had been discovered and terminated by Moscow some 10 years ago. Russia has asked Washington for formal clarification of the tunnel reports and said, if proved true, they would amount to a "blatant violation of recognised norms of international law." A U.S. federal judge on Monday ordered Hanssen, a veteran FBI agent who was arrested on February 18 and faces life in prison or death if convicted, to stay in jail on the grounds that the government's evidence was "exceptionally strong." Hanssen allegedly sold secrets to Russia and the Soviet Union since 1985, including names of double agents and U.S. electronic surveillance methods. His lawyers have said he is planning to plead not guilty. Moscow has so far declined any official comment on the affair. Hanssen's case is one of several espionage cases inflaming relations with
U.S. businessman Edmond Pope was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison on charges of seeking information on a underwater torpedo. President Vladimir Putin pardoned him in December. Russian researcher Igor Sutyagin, who works for the prestigious USA and Canada institute, is on trial in a town near Moscow on charges of passing secrets to Western handlers. He denies the charges.
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August 11, 1999 [for personal use only] Putin Could Be Spymaster or Reformer Russia: There are indications that the new prime minister could rise above his KGB past to be a man of principle. By YOSEF ABRAMOWITZ, GIDEON ARONOFF Yosef Abramowitz Is President of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and Publisher of Fsumonitor.com, the Union's Web Site. Gideon Aronoff Is Deputy Director of the Ucsj By firing Prime Minster Sergei V. Stepashin and his government, President Boris Yeltsin has, for the fourth time in 17 months, thrown Russia and Russia observers into chaos. This move comes at a time when reform has stalled and ethnic conflict is brewing in the Russian north Caucasus. With his decision to designate Vladimir V. Putin as his choice for prime minister, as well as his successor for the July 2000 presidential election, Yeltsin has given Russians a new figure on whom to pin their hopes and fears. At first glance, Putin's elevation is a choice that is not likely to sit well with advocates of democratic reform. He is the current chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB), and a 15-year veteran of the FSB's predecessor organization, the KGB. Under Putin's watch, the FSB has persecuted former navy Capt. Alexander Nikitin, an environmental researcher whose writing, based on openly available sources, documented nuclear contamination by the Russian northern fleet. Nikitin was charged with treason in 1996 for his actions, and his trial in 1998 ended without a verdict. Last month, a new trial was ordered, which he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Also last month, the FSB opened a new investigation of Prof. Vladimir Soyfer for his work studying the extent and effects of radiation leakage from the accidental sinking of a nuclear submarine off Russia's Pacific coast. These attacks on environmental researchers and scientists directly threaten the health of Russia and its neighbors, and violate Russian constitutional provisions guaranteeing the public's right to information on environmental dangers. Also, reminiscent of Soviet campaigns to control expression and information technology, the FSB has recently taken steps to coerce Russian Internet service providers into submitting all Internet traffic to FSB censorship. Here again, Putin's agency is a leading threat to freedom and democracy in Russia. As in previous changes in Russia's government, however, Russians, Western governments and advocates for human rights, democracy and pluralism search this new leader's biography for any reasons for optimism. In Putin's case, his service in the early to mid-1990s with St. Petersburg's reform-minded mayor, Anatoly A. Sobchak, provides a glimmer of hope. With Putin's assistance, Sobchak ensured that St. Petersburg--Russia's second city--would stay committed to reform and out of the control of the Communists. Also positive, in the eyes of anyone concerned about anti-Semitism, fascism and extremism, were Putin's remarks in a December 1998 Izvestia interview, in which he declared, "If society does not react sharply and unambiguously to manifestations of extremism, the danger of a repeat of the situation in Germany in 1933-45 will arise." At a time when anti-Semitic terrorist incidents are becoming all too common in downtown Moscow, a prime minister who understands the dangers that extremism holds for Russia's minorities, and even the nation's democracy, is a positive sign. While the world will have to wait and see what kind of prime minister Putin turns out to be, the preeminence of principle over personality has never been more important. Governments, international financial institutions and nongovernmental organizations should, instead of focusing exclusively on Putin's biography, present a set of principled actions as a litmus test for his commitment to lead Russia toward a democratic future. These actions should include the following: * The Russian government must commit itself to an aggressive battle against anti-Semitic terrorists and other extremist forces throughout the country, making it clear that hate will not be part of a new Russian politics. * The discriminatory Russian law on religion must be reformed, consistent with the Russian Constitution and international human rights agreements. * The false espionage cases against Nikitin and Soyfer, signs of dangerous repressive tendencies in Russia, must be ended. * The criminal justice system--including pretrial detention and prison conditions--remains essentially as it was during the Soviet period and is in need of significant reform to promote respect for the rule of law and protect public health. The world is faced with two very different visions of the man chosen to lead Russia into the 21st century--a spymaster out to squelch free expression or a valiant combatant for democracy and reform. When faced with the principled challenge outlined above, the key question is, "Will the real Vladimir V. Putin please stand up."
#1 - JRL 9216 - JRL Home Moscow Times August 4, 2005 ABC Case Looks Like a Populist Warning By Nabi Abdullaev Staff Writer The Foreign Ministry's decision not to extend the accreditation of ABC television journalists appears to be meant as a reminder to all foreign journalists not to cross a line when writing about Chechnya and especially rebel leaders. But it is unlikely to change foreign media coverage about Russia or even have much effect on ABC. Journalists, including Russian nationals, employed by foreign media organizations cannot work legally in Russia without accreditation. The Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that this was the violation committed by Andrei Babitsky, the journalist with Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who interviewed warlord Shamil Basayev in Chechnya in June. A ministry official said Babitsky was required by law to obtain two forms of accreditation: one from the Foreign Ministry and the other from the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for areas that are designated as zones of counterterrorism operations, Interfax reported. Babitsky, who said he obtained the interview on his own time, offered it to ABC, which broadcast it despite Russian objections last Thursday. A Foreign Ministry official said by telephone Wednesday that the ministry believed ABC itself violated a 1976 United Nations pact in airing the interview. The official, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue, said Articles 19 and 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights set limits on freedom of speech when it comes to protecting state security and public order and also bans propaganda for war. The last time the ministry denied accreditation to a foreign journalist was in early 2000, when Frank Hoefling, a German reporter with N24 television, "falsified news reports from Chechnya," ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov said Wednesday. Authorities accused Hoefling of stealing graphic photographs and a film depicting dead bodies in Chechnya that had been taken by Russian journalists and presenting them on N24 as evidence of the brutality of federal troops against Chechen civilians. The ministry official said several foreign journalists had been denied accreditation or not had their accreditation extended in recent years, but refused to elaborate. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, a media freedom watchdog, said that the latest case was on July 6, 2003, when the ministry denied accreditation to Ali Astamirov, a journalist working for Agence France Presse. Astamirov, who had applied for accreditation the previous December, was abducted in Ingushetia on the same day that his accreditation was denied, and he has not been seen since. CPJ representative Alex Lupis called the case "an example where denial of accreditation was used to ensure that a journalist remained legally vulnerable to harassment by government officials." Several foreign reporters interviewed for this report acknowledged that they had traveled to Chechnya without obtaining Interior Ministry accreditation, which would have immediately restricted their movements to officially approved routes and limited the independence of their reporting. By doing this, reporters put themselves at risk of losing their Foreign Ministry accreditation and permission to continue working in Russia. While most earlier denials were done quietly, the ABC decision is a warning to foreign and Russian journalists to curb their professional zeal when writing about Chechnya and terrorism, said Boris Makarenko, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies. "It is clearly a demonstrative action," he said. Recalling that authorities have issued several warnings to the Kommersant newspaper for publishing interviews with Chechen rebel leaders over the past several years, Makarenko said they were forced to some extent to react harshly to ABC to prevent Russian media from being able to accuse them of double standards. The big problem with the ABC report was that it gave a voice to Basayev, who has a $10 million bounty on his head but continues to elude federal forces, said Mark Franchetti, a journalist for Britain's The Sunday Times who has reported extensively from Chechnya and was the only journalist allowed into Moscow's Dubrovka theater during the 2002 crisis to interview the attackers' leader. Basayev has claimed responsibility for the attack, which ended with 129 hostages dead. "They viewed this broadcast as a provocation, as giving a tribune to terrorists," Franchetti said. Basayev's appearance on U.S. television enraged Russian officials, especially the military and security officials in the Kremlin siloviki, because he is a living reminder of their failure to deliver on their promises to "waste terrorists in the outhouse," said Boris Timoshenko, a media analyst with the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a Moscow-based media freedom watchdog. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Sunday demanded that ABC be punished, saying he had barred military personnel from speaking with the network. Dmitry Orlov, an analyst with the Agency for Political and Economic Communications, said authorities were overreacting in an attempt to show the Russian public how strong Russia is in its dealings with the Americans. "In fact, it is clear to everyone that this whole brouhaha will most likely pass unnoticed by most Americans," he said. Makarenko said it was only a matter of time before the Foreign Ministry allowed new ABC reporters to work in Russia, noting that the ministry had left open the door to the possibility that it will issue accreditation to any ABC journalists who replace the current staff. "It is not a question of giving or not giving accreditation to ABC; it is a question of doing it a year or two from now," he said. The accreditation of ABC's Moscow chief bureau, Tomasz Rolski, expires in November, and the accreditation of the office's 10 staffers expires in the coming months. Journalists have long faced problems in Russia and the Soviet Union. In 1982, ABC bureau chief Anne Garrels was expelled when a pedestrian died after being struck by a car she drove in Moscow. Prior to the accident, Garrels had received a warning from the Foreign Ministry for visiting a family of dissidents and had been criticized in a Soviet magazine. Garrels reports for National Public Radio from Baghdad, where she has been stationed since the start of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. In 1986, Nicholas Daniloff of U.S. News and World Report was arrested and charged with espionage before being expelled. The Russian government in 1995 revoked the visa of Steve LeVine, a correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post, citing a technicality involving the revoking of his visa in Uzbekistan. Petra Prochazkova, a Czech journalist who reported extensively from both sides during the first conflict in Chechnya, was denied visa in 2001. Vibeke Sperling, a correspondent for the Danish newspaper Politiken, said last year that she had been denied a visa because of her reporting about Chechnya and other sensitive issues.
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December 26, 2000 By ANNA DOLGOV KALUGA, Russia (AP) - A Russian court on Tuesday opened the espionage trial of a Russian researcher whose family maintains his only crime was reading between the lines of military publications. After Tuesday's hearing, the judges agreed to adjourn proceedings until Jan. 9 so defendant Igor Sutyagin, an analyst from the respected Russian think tank, the Institute for USA and Canada studies, could carefully review the charges. The trial is the latest in a spate of espionage trials that human rights activists say signals a witch hunt for independent thinkers and a revival of the vast powers of Russia's secret services. The Federal Security Service, which initiated the case, says it is cracking down on spies who it says infiltrated Russia amid the lawlessness that followed the Soviet collapse. The closed-door trial took place in a run-down courthouse in Kaluga, the regional center of Sutyagin's home province southwest of Moscow. It came three weeks after American businessman Edmond Pope was sentenced to 20 years in prison for espionage. Pope was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 14 and has returned to the United States. The security service, the main successor to the KGB, claims that Sutyagin gave classified information on Russia's military to other countries. The indictment says he was enlisted to spy for the United States when he attended a scientific conference in Britain in early 1998, his lawyer Vladimir Vasiltsov said. The USA and Canada Institute has no access to government secrets, and Sutyagin maintains he only worked with open sources - analyzing and piecing together separate bits of information. ``He would spread newspaper clippings around on the floor, on the couch, on his desk, everywhere - and crawl between them,'' said Sutyagin's wife, Irina Manannikova. ``This would go on for days - and something would be born that way.'' The powers of Russia's special services had been trimmed under ex-President Boris Yeltsin. But many analysts say the agencies have started to reclaim their ground since Putin, a 16-year veteran of the KGB, came to power. In addition to the Pope case, two Russian environmental researchers have recently been tried for treason and espionage for reporting on environmental pollution by the Russian Navy. ``All these cases seemed to have been produced from the same template,'' said Sutyagin's father, Vyacheslav. ``The election of Putin may have served as a signal to start instilling fear.'' Files in Sutyagin's study at his home hold scores of newspaper clippings, mostly from the official military daily Krasnaya Zvezda, with some passages underlined in red. Sutyagin subscribed to several periodicals - a fact that seemed suspicious to investigators who searched his apartment at the time of his arrest in October 1999. ``They actually asked: By what right do you subscribe to 15 periodicals at a time?'' said the researcher's father. Sutyagin, 35, spent 14 months in jail awaiting trial. But he received the first details of the charges against him only in an indictment filed on Dec. 15, according to his lawyer. The U.S. State Department would not comment on the case Tuesday
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