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Article 1

EURASIA INSIGHT

TBILISI CLAIMS RUSSIAN TROOP MOVEMENTS IN RESPONSE TO SPY DISPUTE

Diana Petriashvili 9/29/06

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The espionage dispute between Georgia and Russia intensified September 29, with a statement from the Georgian Interior Ministry that Russian military "movements" had begun in territory bordering Georgia, and accusations from Moscow that the arrest of four Russian officers is part of a scheme to advance Georgia’s ambitions to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Preliminary hearings for the four Russian officers in Georgian custody have been held, while an evacuation of the families of Russian diplomats from Tbilisi has begun.

The Georgian Interior Ministry claimed that the government had detected signs of movement among Russian forces near the Georgian border, and preparations for "large-scale navy maneuvers in the Black Sea."

"Russia’s 58th Army, which is deployed in North Ossetia, is being mobilized and there is information that [the Army] is moving in [the] direction of Georgia," Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili told a news conference late September 28, according to a bulletin posted on the online news site Civil Georgia. "In addition, certain movements are being noticed on the Russian military base in Akhalkalaki [in southern Georgia]. I cannot understand why Russia needs [these] moves."

Moscow did not initially respond to the claim.

A Tbilisi city court September 29 ordered two Russian officers arrested in the Georgian capital, Dmitri Kazantsyev and Alexander Savva, and seven Georgian citizens to be held in pre-trial detention. The Russian consul in Georgia, Valeri Vasiliyev, told Rustavi-2 television that a lawyer for the officers had not been allowed into the courtroom. The Georgian Interior Ministry did not immediately comment on the allegation.

The court also passed the same ruling for Konstantin Pichugin, who has been accused of espionage, but who is believed to be inside Russia’s regional military headquarters, which remained surrounded by police for a second day. Moscow has refused to surrender Pichugin.

The two other officers in custody, Alexander Zavgorodny and Alexander Baranov, were arrested in the Black Sea port town of Batumi, and will have a separate hearing.

Russian Ambassador Vyacheslav Kovalenko, who has been recalled to Moscow for consultations, told local media that he would not return to Georgia until the four officers are released. "Georgia should release the Russian officers immediately and should apologize for their arrest," Kovalenko told reporters at Tbilisi airport.

A Russian plane left Tbilisi at 4:35pm carrying 51 Russian citizens, including 25 children. A second evacuation is planned for September 30, Andrei Popov, commander of Russian forces in the Caucasus, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Television footage of the departure showed mostly women and children, dogged by photographers and television cameras, preparing to board an Ilyushin plane, while personnel loaded luggage and what appeared to be cases of Borjomi spring water, a key Georgian export that has been banned by Russia for alleged impurities. In response to questions from Georgian reporters, most departing Russians asserted that they plan to return.

Commenting on the evacuation, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili termed the event "an excessive move" and "a propagandistic gesture."

"Everyone knows that the Russians will never face any threat in Georgia," Saakashvili told reporters. "The Georgian people are very hospitable, and this is widely known. In Georgia, they are probably more secure than in their own state."

Meanwhile, attempts at dialogue continued to falter. A previously scheduled meeting between Georgian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Giorgi Manjgaladze and Russian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Grigory Karasin was canceled.

Russia on September 28 asked the United Nations Security Council to condemn Georgia for taking "dangerous and unacceptable" steps that could destabilize the region, but the initiative was not carried. Members have requested greater information about the situation.

While the international community considers its response, Moscow has criticized Georgia’s NATO ambitions for contributing to the crisis. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov implied that the arrest of the officers was part of Georgia’s plan to secure membership in the Western defense alliance, adding that Saakashvili had chosen the "military way" to resolve conflicts with the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. "First, they want to get out the Russian peacekeepers by any means possible . . . then use force to resolve the conflicts . . . and then, submit their application to NATO," he told a news briefing in Slovenia broadcast by Russian State Television.

At a meeting between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Russian Council in Slovenia, Ivanov charged that unnamed NATO members have been supplying Georgia with military equipment. "Some members of NATO - shall we call them the younger generation? - are supplying Georgia with arms and ammunition of Soviet production," news agencies quoted Ivanov as saying in an apparent reference to Eastern European countries who joined the alliance in 2004.

Western members of NATO are reacting with caution. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called for "moderation and de-escalation" by both Georgia and Russia. De Hoop Scheffer went on to stress that "this is not an issue in where NATO will play any direct role."

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that he had discussed the topic with Ivanov, and stated that the situation is "a subject of great interest" to Washington, the American Forces Press Service reported.

Reactions among Georgians to the spy spat differed.

"I am glad these spies were arrested. I hope that Georgia will not step aside from the chosen strategy in the future," Nuka Basharuli, a refugee from Abkhazia who now lives in Moscow. "But the recent developments are likely to have a negative impact on me and my family," he added referring to a possible worsening of attitudes among Russians towards the thousands of Georgians living and working in Russia.

The daily Georgian newspaper Rezonansi (Resonance) played on this worry with a front-page story September 29 that warned readers that massive deportations and arrests of Georgians in Russia will begin soon.

Others saw a political angle. "This spy arrest suits both countries in their struggle for votes," Giorgi Lezhava, a 26-year-old Tbilisi resident, said, "Russia pretends that it has no spies, while Georgia pretends that there is something extraordinary about Russian spies in Georgia. It’s all about politics."

Some Georgian opposition members have evaluated the recent developments as part of the government’s campaign strategy for nationwide local elections scheduled for October 5, while others maintain that Georgians should stand together in the face of Russian "aggression."

"The arrest of the Russian officers is definitely connected to the election campaign," David Berdzenishvili, a leader of the Republican Party, commented to EurasiaNet. "The authorities want to show that they are strong and able to destroy any enemy of Georgia."

David Zourabichvili, a parliamentarian from the Democratic Front uniting the Conservative and Republican Parties, took a different tact. The Russian officers’ activities constitute "an [act of] aggression and [a] threat towards the entire state and the Georgian people," Zourabichvili told a September 29 news briefing, Civil Georgia reported. "Against this background, we call on everyone [to unite] in order to avoid giving Russia a reason for speculation about alleged . . . fighting inside Georgia."

Editor’s Note: Diana Petriashvili is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi.

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Posted September 29, 2006 © Eurasianet



- Article 2

| |Russia jails double agent for selling secrets to Britain |

| |(China Daily) |

| |Updated: 2006-08-11 06:38 |

| |A Moscow court sentenced a double agent to 13 years behind bars yesterday, after he sold details of Russia's spy network to |

| |Britain for a decade. |

| |In a case that echoed Cold War spy scandals, a military court found 55-year-old Sergei Skripal guilty of high treason and spying|

| |and stripped him of his rank of colonel, Russia's Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky told reporters. |

| |Skripal was "turned" by Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, in the mid-1990s and until his arrest in 2004 he |

| |helped blow the cover of dozens of Russian spies working abroad, an intelligence source said. |

| |"Through his actions, the spy inflicted significant damage on the defence capability and security of the state," said a |

| |spokesman for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the KGB's main successor agency. |

| |Prosecutors said Skripal was paid as much as US$200,000 which was deposited in a Spanish bank account. Officials said he pleaded|

| |guilty at his trial held behind closed doors. |

| |The FSB's counter-intelligence department arrested Skripal after a probe. Details of the case have not previously been made |

| |public. |

| |Russian television showed footage of a shocked Skripal being arrested by five men and then shoved into a van with his arms held |

| |behind his back. He will serve his sentence in a high security prison. |

| |It also showed grainy images of Skripal, carrying a luxury Louis Vuitton bag, going through security checks at an airport. |

| |Rossiya television station said he was flying to meet his handlers in Britain. |

| |It was unclear which Russian intelligence service employed him. The FSB said he was a colonel in the Russian military. The |

| |military has its own intelligence arm called the GRU. |

| |"He was turned by British special services in the mid-1990s and until 2004, when he was detained, he gave them top secret |

| |information for money," Yevgeny Komissarov, a spokesman for the military court, told reporters. |

| |The FSB said Skripal continued to sell information to MI6 even after he left his post in the special services in 1999. |

| |Spy scandals, recurring thorns in British-Russian relations during the Cold War, are less frequent now although both sides |

| |accuse each other of running spying operations. |

| |In January, Russian television broadcast footage which it said showed British spies transmitting information via a receiver |

| |concealed inside a rock on a Moscow street. It said the spies were working as diplomats at the British Embassy. |

| |The FSB backed up the television report but none of the diplomats was ordered to leave the country. |

| |Under Russia's criminal code, treason can be punished with a sentence of 12 to 20 years. Skripal has 10 days to appeal against |

| |the conviction. |

| |A spokesman for the British Embassy in Moscow declined to comment. "It is our policy never to comment on intelligence matters," |

| |the spokesman said. |

| |(China Daily 08/11/2006 page7) |

| |  |

| |[pic] |

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| |Bottom of Form |

| |  |

- Article 3

Aid groups shelter spies, Russia says

Foreign organizations fear new harassment

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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

- Article 4

#2

No spy tunnel under Russian embassy in US - source

 

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

Washington in recent months.

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.

- Article 5

#3

Los Angeles Times

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 , 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." 

- Article 6

#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.

- Article 7

#3

Russian Researcher Spy Trial Opens

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

- Article 8

#13

Transitions Online

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

will definitely appeal to be acquitted,” Babkin said in a 20 February

article from the daily Kommersant.

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 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

are parts of this campaign. Spy mania does not only takes Russia back to

times of totalitarianism, but, in this case, contributes to brain drain,”

Sergei Mitrokhin, a State Duma lawmaker and the Yabloko party deputy head,

said on 20 February, the Regions.ru information web site reported.

“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.

- Article 9

#7

Russia says main threat weak economy, not abroad

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.

- Article 10

#12

BBC Monitoring

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

requested to leave both Moscow and Washington are already at home.

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

BBC Monitoring

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.

- Article 11

| case investigated in Primorsky Krai |

|Author: Leonid Vinogradov |

|VLADIVOSTOK, May 8 (Itar-Tass) - Investigators are working behind closed doors on a case of two |

|Russian citizens charged with in the Primorsky Krai |

|Maritime Territory). |

|A source in the in the territorial office of the Federal Security Service said on Thursday that a |

|public investigation might result in the divulgence of classified information, which could do harm to |

|'s national interests. |

|The territorial office of the FSB has declared that the recent press comments on the charges. |

|By Igor Trifonov |

|MOSCOW, November 30 (Itar-Tass) - A woman staff member of the U.S. embassy, Cheri Leberknight, has |

|been arrested in Moscow on charges of . Cheri Leberknight, an officer of the Central |

|Intelligence Agency, was second secretary of the political department of the U.S. embassy, a spokesman|

|for the public relations centre of the Federal Security Service told Tass. |

|According to his information, Leberknight was arrested on Monday night during an act of . A|

|list of objects, confiscated from her during the arrest, was made right there. All those objects make |

|it clear that the activities of Cheri Leberknight, 33, were incompatible with her official status in |

|. The investigation, carried out by FSS officers, exposed her as a spy. |

|After the arrest Cheri Leberknight was taken to the FSS waiting-rook. A representative of the Russian |

|Foreign Ministry and the U.S. consul in were summoned there. made a strong protest |

|to the United States over the incident. FSS continues to investigate all the circumstances, connected |

|with her activities. |

|A spokesman for the U.S. embassy refused to answer the question of Tass about whether Cheri |

|Leberknight will be sent home, or the embassy will wait for the Russian side to declare her to be |

|"persona non grata." |

|All the circumstances of the case are being carefully examined, the sources said, but gave no comment.|

|"A special statement of the embassy is now being drafted," the sources added. |

|Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said that the Russian side was also drafting a statement in |

|connection with the arrest of the U.S. woman diplomat in Moscow on charges of , which will |

|give . |

|Author: |

|MOSCOW, April 23 (Itar-Tass) - Russian citizen Valery Oyamaye has been pleaded guilty of high treason |

|in the form of and sentenced to seven years in prison by the Moscow District city court. |

|The FSB public relations department told Itar-Tass on Monday that Oyamaye had collaborated with |

|British and Estonian secret services. He was arrested last March on charges of high treason |

|(). Court hearings into the spy case against Oyamaye ended on April 20. |

|Valery Oyamaye - ex-officer of the Russian secret services, was recruited in Tallinn by British |

|intelligence agent Pablo Miller who had been first secretary of the British Embassy in Estonia. |

|Oyamaye's bosses were particularly interested in information about the staff of the Russian foreign |

|intelligence service, its activities abroad, information about FSB, FAPSI federal agency of |

|governmental information and communication, Russian intelligence agents in British secret services, |

|'s leading politicians and ways of establishing contact with them. |

|Oyamaye has been incriminated in collecting and selling classified information, which was unclear. |

|By Andrei Kirillov |

|MOSCOW, December 3 (Itar-Tass) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry "has no sufficient information" on the |

|case of Grigory Pasko, an officer of the Russian Pacific fleet suspected of . "The case has|

|got no international echo so far," a representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry told Itar-Tass on |

|Wednesday. |

|Contributor to the Boyevaya Vakhta (Combat Vigil) newspaper Pasko was detained on November 23 at |

|Vladivostok airport on his arrival from a private trip to Japan. He was charged with high treason. |

|The Russian FM representative said that Pasko was a Russian citizen, and therefore it was Russian |

|law-enforcement bodies that should be concerned with him. "If they reveal something, and furnish valid|

|proof, talks with a particular country may be launched," the diplomat said. As of now, things have not|

|taken the turn, he emphasized. |

|Law-enforcement bodies in by an agent of Lithuanian secret services have been |

|obtained." |

|Spokesman for Lithuania's State Security Department /VSD/ Vitautas Malakauskas said the VSD "will not |

|comment on the detention in Kaliningrad of responsible FSIN officer, Lt-Col of internal service Vasily|

|Khitryuk, for his alleged cooperation with Lithuanian secret services." |

|Head of the committee on international affairs under the Seim /parliament/ Justinas Karosas told Tass |

|"Lithuania does not engage in against , first of all, the secret |

|services in the Baltic states" in 2007. |

|"Foreign intelligence services are keenly interested in the information about the political and |

|socio-economic situation in , the measures the Russian leadership is taking to strengthen the |

|statehood, territorial integrity and economy, the protection of national interests on the |

|international scene, particularly 's reaction to the development of events in the CIS states,"|

|Nikolai Patrushev said. "They showed great interest in the election campaigns for the elections in the|

|State Duma and the upcoming presidential elections," the FSB director said. |

|"Some positive results were achieved in the struggle with foreign intelligence services," Patrushev |

|said. "In 2007 22 foreign security officers and 71 spies were unmasked. Eleven foreign security |

|officers and spies, who were caught red handed during their unlawful activity, four foreigners |

|involved in the activity of foreign secret services were extradited from ," Patrushev said. |

|"Three Russian citizens were convicted for high treason. Shabaturov, who leaked the information about |

|the Russian military intelligence service to a foreign secret service, was sentenced to 12 years in |

|prison. Arsentyev, who passed the military sensitive information to a foreign intelligence service, |

|was sentenced to nine years in prison. Yurenya, who also passed the military sensitive information to |

|a foreign intelligence service, was sentenced to seven years in prison," Patrushev said. |

|Patrushev noted that the Kaliningrad regional court is hearing the case against an officer of the |

|Federal Penitentiary Service department in the Kaliningrad region, Lieutenant-Colonel Khitryuk, who is|

|accused of high treason through for a Baltic secret service. |

|The criminal case was instituted under the same article against two Russian citizens, who collected |

|and passed the classified information to the military intelligence service in a country in the |

|Asia-Pacific region. The criminal case was instituted under the article for after the |

|British Secret Intelligence Service recruited Russian citizen Zharko to collect different information |

|for its further use to the detriment of 's foreign security. |

|To combat the illegal migration Russian prosecutor's offices, the law enforcement agencies and the |

|secret services of Uzbekistan, Finland, Israel, Italy, Moldova and Ukraine "busted an international |

|criminal group, which was involved in the trade in people and the illegal trafficking of CIS citizens |

|via activities, was caught |

|red-handed in Omsk. |

|Itar-Tass learnt at the public relations centre of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) that |

|Sakov was a paid agent of the Nativ secret service which operated in 's Federal Security Service told a popular weekly that the |

|FSB had identified over 300 foreign spies over the past four years. |

|"More than 270 actively operating agents and 70 foreign intelligence recruits, including 35 Russians, |

|have been exposed since 2003," Argumenty i Fakty quoted Nikolai Patrushev as saying. He said that 14 |

|agents and 33 recruits have been caught this year alone. |

|Patrushev said six Russians were caught in an attempt to transfer state secrets to foreign countries, |

|and have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms. |

|Retired Colonel Valentin Shabaturov was given a 12-year sentence this year for treason and |

|. The court proved he had actively cooperated with foreign intelligence for seven years, |

|from 1999 to 2006, and revealed state secrets to them. |

|Igor Arsentyev, a lieutenant colonel in the reserves, was sentenced to nine years in prison on the |

|same charges in September. |

|Patrushev said another person is facing court proceedings, and that an investigation is underway into |

|three other cases. |

|He said the United States and Britain actively used the secret services of Poland, Georgia and Baltic |

|states against . |

|"This concerns a wide spectrum - from staff composition and budget allocations to strategic guidance |

|and organization of joint operations," Patrushev said. |

|He also said some Georgian secret agents use their connections with the criminal underworld for their |

|operations, and to stage various acts of provocation. |

|According to Patrushev, British intelligence is particularly active against ................
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