Article 1 eurasia insight tbilisi claims russian troop movements in response to spy dispute diana Petriashvili 9/29/06
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Article 8 #13
www.tol.cz February 24, 2003 Russia Sentences 73-Year-Old Academic for Spying By Vladimir Kovalev ST. PETERSBURG, Russia--A 73-year-old professor from Moscow State Technical University has been convicted of treason and sentenced to an eight-year suspended prison term and five years probation. The sentence against Anatoly Babkin is the latest in what liberal politicians see as a concerted campaign by the Federal Security Services (FSB) to target environmentalists and scientists with charges of espionage. FSB officials have charged that in 1999 and 2000, Babkin handed over secret documents containing technical data on the high-speed underwater Shkval missile to Edmund Pope, an American businessman convicted of espionage in December 2000. Pope was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin the same month. Babkin has steadfastly denied the charged. “I am not guilty of treason. This is an absolutely political case, and I
The General Prosecutor’s Office expressed disappointment over the sentence, which representative Ilya Yerokhin called “too soft for treason,” Kommersant reported. According to the Russian Criminal Code, a conviction on charges of treason carries with it a sentence of 12 to 20 years in prison. “The soft sentence was probably given in light of Babkin’s merits: He has a Ph.D. in technical sciences and is old,” Yerokhin added. Babkin has insisted that he did not hand over any materials to Pope, saying that he was sending reports to the University of Pennsylvania according to a $28,000 agreement on scientific exchanges signed between the American university and Moscow State Technical University in 1996. FSB sources charged that Babkin, as head of the project, was supposed to hand over four reports but gave five instead. They further charged that Pope and Babkin were detained at a hotel in April 2000 with the fifth report in their custody, Kommersant reported. Pavel Astakhov, Babkin’s lawyer, insisted that the scientist could not have handed over the documents about the Shkval missile because he had not worked on topics linked to projects involving high-speed underwater missiles since 1969. The Shkval missile is described as an “exceptionally high-speed unguided underwater missile which has no equivalent in the West” and “travels at a velocity that would give a targeted vessel very little chance to perform evasive action,” by the Fas.org Military Analyst Network web site. “The name [”Shkval”] appeared in the investigation materials only because investigators insisted on including it and [Babkin] was bound to agree because he could not resist such a pressure while he was in a pre-stroke condition,” Astakhov was quoted as saying by the independent Rosbusinessconsulting (RBC) news agency on 14 February. The RBC report said Babkin’s wife testified that Babkin’s statements had been made under pressure from FSB investigators. “The Technical University’s security service and an FSB representative knew about work we were doing according to the agreement, and Americans had been visiting the university with their permission,” Babkin said in a 21 February interview with Kommersant. “Besides, there were two FSB representatives who came to my department in 1998. I told them the details of the work. When I asked them if I should quit it, they told me to continue. I informed the university’s security services about this conversation,” he charged. Liberal Russian politicians called the case another example of spy mania. “Such cases as that of Grigory Pasko, Alexander Nikitin, and Igor Sutyagin
“The threat of finding themselves as victims of a witch hunt could be the last straw for scientists who have already been left in a tenuous position by the state,” Mitrokhin added.
#7
By Adam Tanner MOSCOW, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Russia, which for generations has blamed foreign armies and spies for many of its woes, said on Thursday a faltering economy was the greatest threat to national security. The conclusion came in a new national security doctrine approved by President Boris Yeltsin, a document Security Council Secretary Ivan Rybkin said was more than six years in the making. A statement by the Security Council, an advisory body to Yeltsin, said the danger of an external military threat could not be excluded. ``But the likelihood of global armed conflict is not great,'' it said. ``At the present time the main security threat to Russia has a non-military character...The crisis condition of the economy is named as the most important complex of threats to Russia's security.'' The full text of the doctrine was not released. But a four-page summary said Russia needed a smaller professional army with nuclear weapons its main deterrent against aggression. ``There is no talk about some kind of dismantling of the army or a complete disarmament,'' the document said. ``But to adequately respond to threats of a military character we need a smaller, compact, mobile professional army.'' ``Without a doubt nuclear forces will remain the main mechanism of deterrence to sober up' any potential aggressor,'' it said. In a fundamental change from Soviet-era thinking, the new document says defending the interests of the individual is the country's paramount task. In a separate interview on Thursday, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, a descendent of the Soviet KGB, said Western spies continued to make Russia their primary target. ``Antagonism between intelligence services never came to an end, and with the end of the Cold War, despite some expectations, it even grew stronger,'' Interfax news agency quoted Vyacheslav Trubnikov as saying. He said Western spy services ``were showing a great interest in different sides of the internal political and economic situation in Russia, and are trying to influence processes occurring in our country.'' Earlier this month Russia pressed espionage charges against an American telephone technician, who protested his innocence. He is free on bail but confined to the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Russia earlier this year said it reserved the right to use nuclear weapons first in the event of war, ending a Soviet-era pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. The summary released on Thursday did not give details on what the Russian government would do to better secure the country's economic stability, although achieving economic growth has been Moscow's primary task for years. Russia has experienced economic depression since the fall of communism in 1991, although government officials say 1998 should finally bring some economic growth.
#12
Russia: Expelled US diplomats leave Moscow Source: NTV, Moscow, in Russian 0400 gmt 01 Jul 01 [Presenter] The deadline set for 50 American diplomats declared as personae non gratae in March 2000 to leave Russia expired at midnight [2000 gmt 30 June]. This step was a response to the expulsion of 50 Russian representatives from Washington. Andrey Oskochinskiy gives the details. [Correspondent] The mass exchange of personae non gratae between Moscow and Washingtom did not become the beginning of a new cold war. Spying is as habitial in international relations as diplomacy itself. Even closest friends and neighbours, like the USA and Canada, are trying to disclose each other's military and industrial secrets. [Omitted: known facts about Russian-US spying scandal in March 2001] Today the case was finalized de facto. As we know, all those who were
More serious matters, like settlement of [international] crises, NATO enlargement and NMD, stay on the agenda. They cannot be resolved by a single telephone conversation [between Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and US Secretary of State Colin Powell] [broadcast at 04'00'47": video shows street scenes in Moscow and Washington, US papers' still pages and archive footage of US Secretary of State Colin Powell] #13
Russian TV channel comments on present state of the spy war Source: NTV, Moscow, in Russian 0800 gmt 1 Jul 01 Here is our observer Anton Khrekov on how the Western intelligence services operate today, what principles their employees adhere to and what the public attitude is to their work. [Khrekov] To an American they are the exploits of a spy, but for a Russian they are the base actions of a traitor. And vice versa. It was so for many years, and, after a short gap, that situation is being revived. It turns out that ideology had nothing to do with it. That does not mean that the intelligence services of the Western countries infinitely trust each other and don't spy on the territory of allies. If the notorious Richard Tomlinson, who has declared war on Britain's MI6, is to be believed, they do carry out such spying, and spend a lot of money on it. It is another matter that the special services try not to wash their dirty linen in public. And if the slips of intelligence work suddenly turn into blunders and exposures, this means someone wants it that way. [Man captioned as "former intelligence agent Gevorg Vartanyan"] You know that our diplomats were recently expelled [from the USA]. We gave an appropriate response. Then they quietened down. There were reports in the press that up to 50 people would be expelled. If they expelled that number, we would expel that number, wouldn't we? You can always find compromising evidence against any embassy staff. [Khrekov] In America under Clinton, the CIA and FBI, the world's most powerful special services, were already complaining they were poorly paid and undervalued... In Russia, there are the same complaints, but even fewer resources. And everything falls into place. In the USA they bring into play the scenario of Robert Hanssen and George Trofimoff, who face the death penalty, no less. In Russia they reach again for the busted card called John Tobin, and additionally catch US teachers allegedly involved in economic espionage. Spies are everywhere, there are a lot of them and one needs to defend oneself... [Man captioned as "Sergey Kondrashov, former deputy chief of the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR", with two other, seated, men, apparently at news conference] The contradiction of national interests remains. This contradiction of our national interests remains. And so does the need to obtain information. [Khrekov] It is another matter that as the ideology has receded, so has everything that had seemed unshakeably, including principles. Hanssen haggles as at a market stall with US justice and extracts a federal pension for his wife. Trofimoff swears that he pretended to be a KGB agent in order to get money from the Russians and then from his own people. And Oleg Kalugin mixed incompatible genres - public politician and dissident who chose freedom and the silent double agent who supplied secret service information to the West. Spying and spy mania existed in the past and exist today, and there's nothing to be done about it. But earlier it was exciting, patriotic and partly profitable. Now it is just very profitable. And we will have to get used to that.
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