Minding Russia

Press Conference in Bonn by Three Released Political Prisoners - Translation

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

Here's some English-language excerpts from the press conference yesterday in Germany by three of the 16 prisoners released in the trade between Russia, the US, and Germany.

Here's the full YouTube recording from DW Russian Service in Russian.

And here's the Russian original of remarks by Ilya Yashin.

I've made a quick chatGPT translation and fixed it up a bit, I will swing back later to do some more work and the others.

But I want to emphasize that if you are going to dunk on these people just released from some of Russia's worst hellholes, at least read the full transcript.

And for me, the operative moment here is that while saying that he wishes to go back to Russia and never wanted to leave (Kara-Murza and Oleg Orlov say the same thing), he recognizes -- as it was told him (presumably by Western government officials involved in the trade) that if he wanted to see more such trades take place, he needed to remain abroad. I wonder who the brain was at State who thought up that excellent point to drum into the heads of these martyrs. As you may know, I have long had the highly unpopular opinion that you should not sacrifice yourself for the movement and return to Russia to certain arrest, or refuse to leave Russia, or act in Russia in such a way as to assure arrest. The idea that there is some constituency of ordinary Russians who appreciate this sacrifice as "authentic" and accept nothing less strikes me as patronizing to ordinary Russians -- and ignorant of their actual "kitchen table" concerns.

* * *

Ilya Yashin, released from a labor colony as part of a major prisoner exchange between Russia and Western countries, spoke at a press conference in Bonn. He stated that he considers his exchange to be an illegal expulsion from Russia and revealed that Deputy Aleksey Gorinov and Alexey Navalny's ally Daniil Kholodny were on the exchange list, but they were removed at the last minute. Yashin said he wants to return to Russia, but he was made to understand that if he does, there will be no further prisoner exchanges.

I understand the very complex ethical dilemma faced by Chancellor Scholz and the entire German government. I told him that I fully understand the difficult situation he found himself in when making the decision to release a murderer—a person who openly gunned down and killed another person in the center of a European capital and received a life sentence. I understand what a difficult dilemma this is. In exchange for the release of one murderer, a dozen and a half innocent people who committed no crimes were freed. This is a complicated dilemma, also because, of course, it motivates Putin to take new hostages. Of course, it motivates Putin to increase the number of political prisoners. I understand this perfectly. I think that Chancellor Scholz understands this too, and the critics who are tearing him apart in the media today also understand this perfectly. But I am convinced that regardless of the reaction, regardless of the line of conduct by Western authorities, Putin would still continue to take hostages. Because dictators always do this—dictators always take hostages and publicly torture them, exploiting the sense of guilt and humanitarian feelings of their opponents, the leaders of other countries who behave in a civilized manner. Tyrants and dictators always torture people, and Putin also demonstratively tortures people; he will do this regardless of whether Western governments save these people or ignore them. Nevertheless, it is hard to realize that you were released because a murderer was released—it's difficult. It’s a great emotional burden.

I admit that I have a heavy burden on my soul because my comrades and many political prisoners remain behind bars. According to Memorial Society, there are more than a thousand political prisoners in Russia today. Including people who should have been sitting at this table instead of me. This is Aleksey Gorinov, my colleague from the Krasnoselsky District Council. A deputy of respectable age, who is missing part of a lung, who is being tortured in the Vladimir colony where Navalny was held, shuttling between a punishment cell and the infirmary. I know the state he is in; he is a very brave person, he never complains, he never asks for any mercy, any leniency. But I know perfectly well what physical and emotional state he is in.

Igor Baryshnikov should have been sitting here—a person who received a monstrous sentence for an anti-war speech. A person who suffers from cancer. A person who is literally dying in prison and who, of course, needs to be rescued and saved.

Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist who is being bullied behind bars, should have been sitting here. Mikhail Kriger should have been sitting here. Navalny's lawyer, Daniil Kholodny, who is held as a hostage, should have been sitting here. They all should have been sitting at this table. These are the people whose release both I and my comrades requested, we begged, we called for their release. These are the people who need to be freed from prison.

At the same time, from the first day behind bars, I said that I was not ready for any exchanges. I publicly asked not to include me in any exchange lists. This was my public, absolutely clear, absolutely sincere, and conscious position. I refused to leave Russia under threat of arrest, seeing myself as a Russian politician, a Russian patriot, and a citizen of Russia, whose place is in Russia. Even if it is in prison, but in Russia. I understood my imprisonment not only as an anti-war struggle, not only as a fight against the aggressive war unleashed by Putin, but as a struggle for my right to live in my country, as a fight for the right to engage in independent politics in my country, as a fight for the right to say what I deem necessary, what I think in my own country. This was my struggle, and I turned every trial into a political platform, defending my right to live and work in my own country. I fought to the last—and this is true—I fought to the last day for my right to stay in Russia.

A few days before the exchange, the head of the colony in Safonovo, near Smolensk, came to me and offered me to write a petition for pardon. I said that I would not write a petition for pardon because I do not consider it possible for me to appeal to President Putin, whom I consider a war criminal, whom I consider a tyrant, whom I consider a murderer. I will not ask for any mercy from this person, who, in fact, put me in prison.

The next day, the leadership of the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Smolensk region also came to me and continued to try to persuade me that I should write a petition for pardon, that I should appeal to Putin. This, of course, seemed strange, but it already hinted that some diplomatic game was taking place. And I, of course, began to guess what was happening and categorically refused to sign any petitions for pardon—with or without an admission of guilt. I stated absolutely clearly and unequivocally that I would never ask for any mercy from a person whom I consider a murderer and a tyrant, whom I consider an enemy of my country. When I was taken to Lefortovo, it was also a special operation. I was sitting in my cell, an officer came in from behind and asked me to go to the head of the colony's office. And right on the way, they loaded me into a police van and literally, in just a prison uniform without any belongings, they took me by special convoy to Moscow.

And when I realized that I was in Lefortovo, literally a day before the exchange, when the Lefortovo staff began to say what was happening, when it became clear that an exchange was taking place, I addressed a written statement to the head of the Lefortovo Pre-trial Detention Center. Here it is; I will read it: "To the Head of the Federal Penitentiary Service Investigation Isolation Prison No. 2 in Russia from convict Ilya Valeryevich Yashin. Statement. The Constitution of Russia prohibits the expulsion of citizens of the Russian Federation from Russia without their consent. Being a citizen of the Russian Federation, I hereby declare that I do not consent to being expelled from Russia. I insist on my legal right to remain on the territory of the country in which I was born." This is the document that made my expulsion from Russia completely illegal. What happened to me on the first day, I do not consider an exchange. I regard this event as an illegal expulsion from Russia against my will.

I will be honest. I'll say it as it is: what I want most now is to return home. The first desire, when I was in Ankara, when I was in Germany, was to immediately go to the airport, buy a ticket, and return to Russia. This is sincere, and the FSB officers understood it perfectly. The convoy representing the FSB special forces who accompanied me said literally the following on farewell: "Of course, you can return to Russia, like Navalny. You will be arrested like Navalny. And you will end your days the same way as Navalny."

But that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is that it was made absolutely clear to me that my return would preclude any exchanges of political prisoners in the foreseeable future. It was made absolutely clear to me that my return to Russia would radically strengthen the positions of those opponents of the exchange who are now saying that Chancellor Scholz made a mistake. Who say that murderers should not be released. And of course, they have arguments. If I return to Russia, tomorrow they will say that we released a murderer, and Yashin, barely out of Putin's prison, returned behind bars again, nullifying the negotiators' efforts. And, of course, this sharply reduces the chances of negotiations, the exchange of prisoners in the near future. I understand this perfectly.

I understand perfectly that Aleksey Gorinov, who until the last moment was on the exchange list, I know that he was on the exchange list, and Daniil Kholodny, who was until the last moment—and at the last moment they were crossed off the list. They remain as hostages. They are tortured because they are hostages. I understand perfectly well that I am largely responsible for the fate of my comrades. And this is unbearable. From an emotional point of view, it is simply unbearable. And this intrigue, this manipulation arranged by the Kremlin is truly an absolutely Jesuitical mockery.

When a person who says: "I will not leave my country" is taken and thrown out of the country in violation of all laws, in violation of all norms, in violation of all rules. And those people who really need to be pulled out, and who really should be sitting at this table, who have serious health problems, who can die in prison—they are left and continue to be tortured. This is unbearable. I understand that my decisions should not be impulsive. I understand that now my efforts should be directed at the release of Gorinov, Baryshnikov, Ponomarenko, Kriger, and many other political prisoners. As well as for political amnesty to be carried out in Russia, for all political prisoners to be released.

And yet I want to say that I will never reconcile with the role of an emigrant. My goal is to return to Russia. I am a citizen of Russia, I am a Russian politician, I am a Russian patriot. My goal is a free and happy Russia.

***

 

Radio Liberty provides a transcript of the press conference. The time is indicated in Central European Time.

18:45 - Andrei Pivovarov begins. He thanks Germany and all parties involved in preparing the prisoner exchange. He mentions that the exchange saved many prisoners from the prospect of dying in prison.

• Do not associate people in Russia with the policies it conducts. Many Russian citizens, who may not be visible, do not agree with it. I think it is extremely important that the propaganda worldview that pours over Russians—"we are in a besieged fortress, surrounded by enemies"—begins to crumble. I would like to appeal to Western countries to turn to the people in Russia, not to the authorities, and extend a hand to them. They should ease the pressure on Russians, for example, by allowing educational visas for young people, so that Russians can see that there are no enemies here, as they are shown daily on TV, but people just like them. These steps would help everyone.

From friends in Russia, I have heard that we must wait for something to change. It seems to me that our task is not to wait but to act, to bring hope to those under pressure. I, and all those who are now free, will not wait but will do everything possible so that everyone who is still behind bars will be released.

18:55 - Vladimir Kara-Murza also begins by thanking Germany and all parties involved in the exchange. He reminded everyone that thanks to Germany's efforts, three Russian prisoners of conscience were freed: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

• In our country, there are at least hundreds of people, by the most conservative estimates, who are imprisoned solely because of their political views, because they disagree with Putin's policies, and because they are against the war in Ukraine. Do not believe Kremlin propaganda that claims all Russians support Putin: there are many opposition Russians. Do not confuse Putin's regime with Russia.

19:00 - For a pardon decision, a petition must be submitted. Ilya Yashin and I categorically refused to write any petitions to Vladimir Putin, and yet we are here.

Article 61 of the Constitution explicitly prohibits the expulsion of Russian citizens from its territory without their consent. No one asked for our consent. We were taken out of prison, put on a plane, and sent to Ankara.

Finally, according to the rules, a foreign passport is necessary to cross the border - we were promised until the very last moment that they would issue them to us, but we don’t have them. We entered Germany with ordinary internal Russian passports (Kara-Murza shows the passport), which don’t even have a word in Latin script. At Cologne Bonn Airport, a special translator explained to the border guards what was written in them. "They cannot imprison you legally, nor can they free you legally. It’s an amusing state; you won’t get bored," (Kara-Murza quotes the memoirs of Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky).

19:05 - When we were flying to Ankara, each of us had our own assigned FSB officer. When our plane took off, “mine” said, “Look, this is the last time you’ll see your homeland.” I replied: I know for sure that all of us will definitely return to Russia, and the day will come when it becomes a free, civilized European country. Let's do everything we can to bring that day closer.

19:10 - Ilya Yashin says that Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany faced a complex ethical dilemma in preparing the exchange when they were required to release a murderer [Vadim Krasikov] in exchange for a dozen innocent people, and that this may motivate Vladimir Putin to imprison more people on political grounds.

• To realize that you have been freed because a murderer was freed is emotionally very difficult.

Yashin mentions other political prisoners who remain in Russian jails: Alexei Gorinov, Igor Baryshnikov, Maria Ponomarenko, and Alexei Navalny's lawyers. He states that Gorinov and Baryshnikov are seriously ill, and he considers their detention in Russian zones without medical assistance to be intentional infliction of suffering.

19:15 - From the first day behind bars, I said that I would not agree to any exchange and refused to be included in any exchange lists. I am a Russian politician and have always believed that my place is in Russia, even in prison—but in Russia. I viewed my imprisonment as a struggle for my right to live and work in my country. A few days before the exchange, the prison warden suggested I write a petition for clemency; I refused. The next day, the leadership of the FSIN in the Smolensk region tried to persuade me. I said that I would never ask for mercy from the person [Russian President Vladimir Putin - RS], whom I consider a murderer, a tyrant, and an enemy of my country. While in Lefortovo, I wrote a statement to the head stating that I do not consent to being expelled from Russia. My expulsion is completely illegal. What happened to me on August 1, I consider not an exchange but an unlawful deportation.

To be honest, as soon as I found myself here, my first thought was to buy a plane ticket back to Russia! But I was made to understand that if I return to Russia, it will rule out any further exchanges of political prisoners.

I know that Alexei Gorinov and Daniil Kholodny were on the exchange lists, but they were crossed out at the last moment, and they remain hostages.

Yashin declares that he will never reconcile with the role of an emigrant and will devote his life to returning to a free, peaceful, and prosperous Russia.

19:25 Questions Begin from Press Representatives

A journalist from the German public television station ZDF asks Vladimir Kara-Murza:

• Did you receive a pardon from President Putin? Does this mean you can return to Russia?

Kara-Murza: The legal procedure does indeed stipulate that a convict can write a pardon request to the president. Last Tuesday, I was taken out of my cell, brought into an office, and given a blank sheet of paper along with a sample pardon request, which mentioned an admission of guilt and remorse. I replied that I would not write it because, firstly, I do not consider Putin the legitimate president of my country, and secondly, I do not admit guilt and do not consider myself guilty.

And on the night from Saturday to Sunday, I was woken up at three in the morning, given 20 minutes to pack my things, and taken in handcuffs to the airport, then put on a plane to Moscow. Nothing was explained to me or the other prisoners, and some even thought that we were all gathered together to be executed. So, I did not request a pardon.

As I said, the FSB officer accompanying me told me that I would never return to Russia, but I replied that, as a historian by education, I do not just believe but know that I will return, and it will be a free country.

Journalist: Do you know how the selection process for prisoners in exchange took place?

Kara-Murza: We, probably all three of us, don't know anything. I was completely sure that I would die in prison and never see my wife or children again. I only started to understand what was happening yesterday morning when I was taken out of Lefortovo, put on a bus, and there I saw Andrey [points to Pivovarov] accompanied by an FSB officer, and then Ilya [Yashin] with his FSB officer. Then there was Oleg Orlov from Memorial, the Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva... We didn’t even know that an exchange was being prepared, let alone how candidates were selected.

19:40 A question is posed by a correspondent of the Russian Service of the BBC:

• You mentioned that you were taken to Germany without foreign passports. What status will you have in Germany and the EU? Will you be issued something akin to Nansen passports? Will you be granted political asylum? How will this be legally arranged, considering bureaucracy is a significant part of our lives?

Yashin (laughing): That's your life, not ours! When there is political will, it prevails over any bureaucratic obstacles. I have no valid documents at all—“my whiskers and tail are my documents.” [Line from Russian cartoon.] We did ask this question to the representatives of the German Foreign Ministry, and they acknowledged that the situation is extraordinary and promised to come up with something. We don't know exactly what yet. At least, they promised not to arrest us or deport us as illegal immigrants.

Pivovarov: It’s funny that each convict, after being released, should have a release certificate. They showed it to us but didn’t give it to anyone.

Kara-Murza: A day before the release, we were photographed for this certificate. Then the head of the Lefortovo prison's special department came and showed it to me. It stated that I, Full Name, convicted under certain articles for 25 years, was being released based on the presidential decree number... - no number, just a blank! - about the pardon from... - no date, just a blank! - 2024. Released to go to my place of residence: Moscow, Ovchinnikovskaya Embankment - my home address. As you can see, I am not in Moscow and not on Ovchinnikovskaya Embankment. We asked when we would be given these certificates, and they said, "Don’t worry, they will give them to you on the plane." They didn’t give them. This, again, raises questions about the legality of everything that happened to us.

I hope that the governments of Germany and other countries where people like us find themselves against their will, without valid documents, will find ways to grant us legal residency status.

20:04 A journalist asks about their physical and mental well-being.

Yashin: Right after arriving in Germany, we were taken to a hospital to check our health. This morning, a whole team of doctors visited each of us and solemnly informed us that we all have a vitamin D deficiency! (laughs) It’s not surprising, considering we all haven’t seen the sun for a long time; we were all on a closed regimen. But overall, we are fine.

Your physical condition behind bars largely depends on your inner emotional state, on how well you hold together psychologically. None of us had problems with this. When you know you are on the side of truth, it gives you a lot of strength. A huge source of strength was the letters from those who supported us - they gave me energy and health.

Pivovarov: I agree. When you know you are right, it gives you strength. You know you are right, and you know you will be free. You do sports even in the colony, and even the guards and administration treat you differently when they see that you hold on, that you don’t despair, and don’t smoke cigarette after cigarette.

Kara-Murza: I’m not in the habit of complaining. But I think it's important to say that many of our colleagues and compatriots remain in Putin's prisons and colonies solely because of their beliefs. They are subjected to physical and psychological torture. Prolonged solitary confinement, for example, is officially considered by the UN as torture. "Prolonged" according to the UN is considered to be more than 15 days. I spent 10 months in solitary. The same thing was done to Ilya and Andrey. Alexei Navalny was in solitary confinement for months—in a 2-by-3-meter closet, with no communication and no chance to go outside.

Another traditional torture, from the Soviet, Stalinist times, is to put pressure not only on the arrested person but also on their family. In two and a half years, I was able to speak with my family only once. They intentionally hurt not only us but also our families. They prohibit going to church. It's a monstrous hypocrisy: Putin’s regime talks about protecting family and traditional values, but it forbids calling children and going to church. And this applies to hundreds more of our compatriots who are now imprisoned. But I agree with Ilya: knowing that you are right, and they are not, is very encouraging.

Letters are very supportive. I want to appeal to everyone in Russia and abroad: write letters to political prisoners. Paper letters, electronic letters, there are all the possibilities for this now. You cannot imagine how much light and warmth is given by this piece of paper handed to you by the guard through the food slot in the cell door.

20:25 A question is asked by a Radio Liberty journalist:

The first question is for Ilya Yashin: In the first photos after your release, you were in prison clothes, while others were in civilian clothes. What was the reason for this? Secondly, to everyone: Could Alexei Navalny be sitting at this table under certain conditions?

Yashin: As for the prison clothes, the reason is simple: I just didn’t have any other clothes. I wasn't given the opportunity to take my clothes, which were stored in the colony's warehouse. They took me out of the colony in this garb under escort, then transferred me to Lefortovo, and later put me on a plane. The conditions were different; some people were given the opportunity to pack their things and change, but I was not. It’s not significant.

Regarding Alexei Navalny, he should not be here; he should be in Russia. He should be participating in the presidential elections, leading the country, building a beautiful future Russia, being part of his people, living a long and fruitful life, bringing joy to his parents, wife, and children. That’s where Navalny should be, and where all of us should be. The fact that Navalny is not with us is a crime of Vladimir Putin, who bears direct responsibility for his murder.

Kara-Murza: To the first part of the question - when I saw Ilya in prison clothes on the bus at the airport, I envied him: I was released in sweatpants and a tank top, practically in my underwear. In Lefortovo, they confiscated my prison uniform, leaving me only with these semi-sweatpants, a tank top, and plastic slippers I wore to the shower. The officer confiscating the uniform asked if I had any civilian clothes. I replied, "Look, I’m serving a 25-year sentence; why do I need civilian clothes—to go to the theater?" And so, I arrived through Ankara in Bonn in underwear, a tank top, and plastic slippers. Thanks to colleagues here who provided me with decent pants and a shirt. Everyone was indeed dressed differently; we're only now beginning to look somewhat presentable.

And now, something serious about Alexei. What happened to Navalny, I think, clearly and frighteningly shows that what the media calls "prisoner exchange" is not an exchange, but a rescue of human lives. It’s hard for me not to think that if certain processes were faster if this understanding were clearer, including here in Germany, if the German government had to overcome less resistance in the case of Putin’s hitman Krasikov, perhaps Alexei would be alive and free.

It’s very important for this to be said: Vladimir Putin bears personal responsibility for the murder of Alexei Navalny, just as he bears personal responsibility for the murder of Boris Nemtsov. It is no longer possible to say that Putin cannot be accused of this. I believe that this is the most important issue that the governments of the EU countries must now take upon themselves, to complete all that is necessary to save the lives of those who can still be saved. Because, as you see, this regime, until its very end, will act very cruelly and meanly.

20:40 Journalists were curious about the next steps and plans for the released opposition members.

Yashin: After being released, it's crucial to regroup and think about the future. For now, we are focusing on settling our current situation and taking the necessary steps to understand what happened to us legally and what possibilities lie ahead. We are here, in freedom, which in itself is a great victory. We'll be assessing the landscape and strategizing for the future, especially on how we can support our colleagues still imprisoned and what impact we can have from outside Russia.

Pivovarov: We want to find ways to continue our activism and support democracy in Russia. Though we've been forced out of the country, we remain committed to our mission. We plan to work with international human rights organizations, speak out, and keep drawing attention to the injustices happening under Putin's regime. We hope to engage more people worldwide in our cause, helping them understand the dire situation in Russia.

Kara-Murza: We know we are in a unique position now, outside the clutches of a repressive government. Our primary goal is to use our freedom to support those who are not free. We must continue to be a voice for the voiceless, to hold Putin accountable for the crimes committed against his people, and to stand up for democratic values. We have to continue our work with even more determination. We are not abandoning our cause; we are only changing the battlefield. We will fight from here, and we will return to a free Russia. 

Steve Rosenberg of the BBC from Moscow

Steve Rosenberg of the BBB from Moscow, on Navalny's death:

 

The death of Alexei Navalny. Our report from Moscow for @BBCNews. Thanks to @AntonChicherov @BenTavener #Navalny pic.twitter.com/HZ0lC96Uys

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) February 16, 2024

A reader writes: How will Tucker Carlson's Interview Impact Americans?

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

His Master's Voice

A reader writes...

"What do you think, what effect on Americans will Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin?"

The way I am able to preserve scarce real estate in my brain for thinking -- and doing -- various things in my life related to care for family members, my jobs, my health, etc. -- and taking on topics that are worth bothering about (like translating something that will help someone in the war in Ukraine; writing a letter to the editor about Russia; calling my Congress person about Ukraine, etc.) is by simply ignoring entire topics that go by in popular culture -- oh, things like "Harry Potter" (I'm likely the only person in America who hasn't read the book) "Taylor Swift" (what is she on about? I don't know, I don't watch), "the border crisis" (I don't think razor fences are humane and I'm voting for Biden) and -- yes -- "Tucker Carlson in Moscow". I won't watch. I can't watch. It's immoral to interview genocidaires and endlessly discuss them. I will do very little on this because -- see above. Search on Twitter, you'll find bunches.

Example of a good commentator on Russian propaganda TV: Julia Davis.

Everything is fine...

You can follow the people I follow on Twitter and search with the terms there to follow the antics of the RCA Victrola Dogs.

 

The other Vlad and Don

If you ask MidJourney to do Tucker and Vlad enough times, they start looking like other people, imagine that. MJ net-nannies more but not as much as Bing or the new Google image generator which simply refuse to do images with known public figures like this despite the higher standard for libel law in the US regarding public figures.

Interestingly, in this image, it's not just that Vlad looks like Trump. It's that Tucker now looks like Vladimir Nikonon, Molotov's grandson, and Americanologist who was likely brought into the Kremlin to advise on this caper.

The Fourth Wave of Russian Emigres

This is from an old thread on the now-defunct G+ which illustrates the mindset of the 4th Wave of Russian emigres perfectly. I wrote it back on February 4, 1914, 10 years ago--CAF

Brian Fitzpatrick

Shared publicly  -  Yesterday 2:07 PM

 #DOJ

 

This.

Google originally shared:

 

Today, for the first time, our report on government requests for user information encompasses all of the requests we receive, subject only to delays imposed by the DoJ (http://goo.gl/kjTltW) regarding how quickly we can include certain requests in our statistics: http://goo.gl/7J7uyN

Shedding some light on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests

http://goo.gl/7J7uyN

13 comments

Travis Koger

Yesterday 2:16 PM

+

3
4
3

 

Loving your work +Brian Fitzpatrick and team.

Vlad Didenko

Yesterday 3:05 PM

 

 

Thank you!

Steve Hawley

Yesterday 4:06 PM

 

 

I'm curious if there's a way around the non-specificity a la Jessamyn West's library sign the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessamyn_West_(librarian).

Patrick Dugan

Yesterday 4:50 PM

 

 

Thank you for always fighting for Google's users +Brian Fitzpatrick 

Catherine Fitzpatrick

8:18 AM

 

 

How many user accounts does Google have? 10,000 FISA requests seems like a tiny number given the billions of accounts there must be. Also, can you give us a list of the cases when you don't comply with government requests, and why?

Brian Fitzpatrick

8:26 AM

 

 

+Catherine Fitzpatrick
1. Many millions
2. The size of a number is relative.
3. No.  We're currently publishing everything that we're legally allowed to.

Catherine Fitzpatrick

8:30 AM

 

 

+Brian Fitzpatrick Yes, the size of a number relative to another number is dramatic here - 10,000 versus "many millions". It dramatically illustrates that Snowden's claims of "massive surveillance" just aren't the case. There's a relatively few number of cases of legitimate surveillance, i.e. terrorists.

Re: 3 -- I asked a different question. What is the number on the list of cases where Google doesn't comply because it doesn't believe the request is legitimate. In past Transparency Reports, you have indicated that some government requests (around the world) are not just so you don't comply.

Vlad Didenko

10:17 AM

 

 

+Catherine Fitzpatrick You are kidding, right? What is your definition of massive surveillance? (if you are not kidding)

Catherine Fitzpatrick

10:20 AM

 

 

+Vlad Didenko No I'm definitely not kidding. Massive surveillance is what they have in Russia, you know? SORM, capturing of every communication by law3 -- and using it regularly and often to suppress dissent and criticism. The Snowdenistas have never come up with a single actual case to illustrate any COINPROTEL type of activity. No, not LOVEINT, as that isn't a policy but a work place infraction. No, the case of the Muslims doesn't appear to be a violation either but we don't know their names and can't assess whether they really are legitimate suspects. Massive surveillance means actual surveillance, the compling of active dossiers where government agents actually follow you, you know, like in Russia. Not merely a machine scanning metadata and matching it to cases of legitimate targeting, i.e. contacts with known terrorists, e.g. Muhtorov case in Denver.

Vlad Didenko

11:13 AM

 

 

+Catherine Fitzpatrick Interesting. Have to note that for 26 years, formative ones,I lived in Russia, 19 of those in Soviet Union. I have also to mention that most of that time (sans 2 years draft) I lived in a very dissent-minded peripheral scientific community being very aware of the amount of authorities attention. It is safe to affirmatively answer your question if I do know. I do. But I do not think that you do judging by how you talk about it.

What I would like to know, is if you see a distinction between massive surveillance, mass surveillance, or an established police state? What is that distinction in your mind, if any?

Catherine Fitzpatrick

11:18 AM

 

 

I'm more than twice your age (if you are 26) and have spent many years living or traveling in the former Soviet Union and studying Russia. BTW, I've translated Lenin, Stalin, many Russian journalists, and 5 Politburo members, including Yeltsin and Yakovlev and also Putin.  The scientific community is partly dissent-oriented, like Sakharov, but more Kremlin-oriented and nationalist-militarist or oligarchic these days (see what happened to Skolkovo). Of course I know what I'm talking about; I've seen SORM in action. Have you? Are you even aware of Russian law regarding the FSB's access to all ISP and telecom providers, laws that are only worsening? Russia is definitely an established police state with massive surveillance powers it can and does use. The US is not a police state but a liberal democracy under the most liberal government in its history, which yes, anarchists and leftists are taking advantage of to try to destroy (with Kremlin backing -- see RT.com any day of the week). I've already explained that passive collection of meta-data that has no human using it to put under surveillance people for whom there is no probable cause to follow, i.e. suspects in criminal or terrorism cases.

If you're of the mind that the US is worse than Russia in terms of surveillance, you're proving my point about the fourth-wave emigres no longer critical of the Kremlin who wrongfully think their host country is the problem in the "unipolar world".

Vlad Didenko

11:39 AM

 

 

+Catherine Fitzpatrick It gets more and more <sarcasm>curious</sarcasm>.

I have no idea about your point about fourth-wave emigres. I am well aware of SORM - but more so of FSB buildup scare which led to as it was starting in the days of FidoNet (hello 2:5000/15.1 :) ) and Sprint networks "echo" & email systems, as well as early (pre-1996) Internet in Russia. All other knowledge you list I have received as a part of university "humanities" studies - and as a fascinated observer and mindful participant of the country's amazing attempt to transform. Hope I answered your questioning.

Nowhere I claimed that either Russia or US are police states. You did, didn't you? Nowhere I compared the two countries - but you try to put words in my mouth.

What I can share, is the experience of living in a community on the receiving end of the surveillance. An inside experience, in addition to the theoretical knowledge and outside observation.

I thought it might have been interesting to hear your opinion on a couple definitions - but it is not interesting to hear all the chest-banging in response. Sorry, you are not interesting to talk to.

Catherine Fitzpatrick

11:43 AM

 

 

Amazing attempt to reform?! Really, Vlad? Under Putin?!  It's not chest-banging to point out the obvious. If you accuse the US of "mass surveillance," then you are saying the US is a police state. It also sounds like you're trying to foist the problem of the Russian state's surveillance off on US/Western technology. Is that what you're doing?

What you mean when you say I am "not interesting to talk to" is that you have met your match. You can't debate. You can't defend your positions. I wouldn't expect you to do that in Brian's thread, anyway, as he polices topics/speakers he doesn't like aggressively. If you have a blog or some writings, send a link and I'll read them.

No, Snowden Was Never "Forced" to Go to Russia and WikiLeaks and He Chose to Go to Moscow

From 2014

I often find that people arguing on Twitter on behalf of Snowden use as one of their key arguments  is the notion that he was "driven" into the arms of the Russians by the US revoking his passport.

Over and over again, as an argument against finding anything suspicious in his sojourn in Russia and possible cooperation with Russian intelligence, supporters invoke the idea that "he had no choice" because the US government ostensibly "blocked all his exits".

In researching this story as it unfolds, I have to say that this is the weakest argument on Snowden's behalf on two legs, but most people never really bore down into the details to see why it ever got legs in the first place.

First, let's look at the complete timeline of events -- the accurate and actual timeline, and not the one that most people cherry-pick selectively or remember selectively:

May 1    Snowden and his girlfriend leave their rented house in Hawaii because the lease is up. The landlord confirms this to media.

May 1-19    Snowden goes...somewhere. We have no idea. He is missing. He has told his new employee of only about two months, Booz, Allen Hamilton that he needs to take unscheduled leave to treat his epilepsy. But he doesn't go to any hospital and his location during these long three weeks is simply unknown.

May 20    Snowden flies to Hong Kong, by his account. He checks into the Mira Hotel. He is in touch with Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum about his stolen files.

May 30  A close friend of Appelbaum's sends a tweet about a Rubik Cube's party. She is one of the people attending the Spring Break of Code in Hawaii at the time both Appelbaum and Snowden were also known to be there. Were they in touch earlier than they said?

May 31   Greenwald and Poitras (and Appelbaum?) travel to Hong Kong on this date (according to Greenwald's interview with Haaretz) or June 1 according to Guardian later. Which is it? They make contact with Snowden using an agreed sign of recognition-- he is to be carrying a Rubik's Cube. Poitras films Greenwald, and also makes a written interview with him, both of which she later publishes with Appelbaum sharing the by-line.

June 5  Greenwald's first story about Verizon and meta-data appears in The Guardian.

June 8 Greenwald publishes his second story about "Boundless Informant".

June 9   Snowden decides to go public.

June 10 Snowden checks out of his Hong Kong hotel.

June 11 Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, offers Snowden to apply for asylum. Russia doesn't have many refugees and an invitation at the presidential level is as good as a granting of asylum because it's a political decision in this sort of case.

June 12 South China Morning Post publishes their firstinterview with Snowden, where he explains that he deliberately got employment at Booz, Allen in order to hack more documents better.

June 13 US opens up a criminal case on charges of espionage against Snowden and warn countries not to accept him.

June 14 The Home Office instructs airlines not to allow Snowden to board any flights to the UK.

June 15 -- British authorities bar his overflight and Iceland says it can only consider his application if he comes to their country.

June 16 -- Hong Kong authorities say they would review US extradition request re: Snowden.

June 20 -- US sends extradition request to Hong Kong.

June 20 Snowden arrives at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong with a ticket to Cuba via Moscow already in hand. He stays overnight.

June 21  Snowden celebrates his 30th birthday in the Russian consulate in Hong Kong.

June 21 or 22 US revokes passport (we don't know the exact date).

June 23 Snowden departs Hong Kong for Moscow.

June 23 US State Department tells journalist it has revoked passport (we don't know exactly when) but not citizenship; then public statement is made about the revocation of citizenship.

June 24 Journalists get on a flight to Cuba based on reports that Snowden is on it; he isn't.

Snowden then goes on to ostensibly stay six weeks at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, although according to Russian media, he was met on the tarmac by the Ecuadoran and Venezuelan diplomats who whisked him away to one of their residences. Ultimately he is granted asylum just as Putin indicated he would be on June 11.

So once you see the time-table laid out, you have a number of questions you have to ask (if you didn't ask them before back in 2009 when Snowden was in Geneva, had his first clash with his bosses and his first adverse performance notice while working at the CIA.)

Number one: why didn't Snowden immediately flee to Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador or even Venezuela, where Greenwald is based, immediately, starting May 1st, when he decided to leave his job under a pretext and make the final break from his life as an NSA contractor?

At any time he could have simply fled to Latin America to any of those countries. He had just as much ease of doing this as he had in flying to Hong Kong three weeks later. He could have immediately fled to Cuba BEFORE revealing his identity even after meeting Greenwald and Poitras.

Any time during May or June he could have made this flight to any of these Latin American countries, particularly BEFORE he revealed his identity.

So why didn't he?

Claims that he "wasn't safe" in Latin America from supposed CIA abduction or extradition from governments supposedly too weak to withstand pressure just doesn't wash --after he revealed his identity, ostensibly to prevent just such a clandestine or overt development. The CIA isn't going to kidnap such a very public figure at that point and then look even more guilty of the crimes supposedly US intelligence is committing. Ecuador, which accepted Assange into their Embassy in London, is not going to just give up Snowden. Just not going to happen. Nor in the even morehighly anti-American countries Cuba and Venezuela. Even Brazil, given the Rouseff claims and Greenwald's considerable clout, would be safe enough.

But there are more questions, obviously.

What did Snowden do during those three weeks in May? Was he busy shoveling 200,000 documents into cyber vaults with Appelbaum's help? Or what, exactly? Was he talking to the Chinese or the Russians? Was WikiLeaks, and then "helping" him without explaining they were talking to the Chinese and the Russians?

And once he got to Hong Kong and gave away the store, and was told that his hopes were dashed, that "China, which isn't our enemy" wasn't going to risk taking him for their own pragmatic reasons -- why didn't he immediately, on June 6 or even June 10th flee before the US had an extradition request out?

Because it didn' have the extradition sent until June 20.

That's nearly two weeks when he could have fled somewhere, but didn't.

Where did Snowden go on June 10? Did his Hong Kong lawyers put him up? Did he in fact go to the Russian consulate then -- which accounts for why Putin issued this generous invitation to apply for asylum on June 11? Otherwise, why did Putin -- at his level! -- get involved so quickly? Putin claimed later he didn't "need" to "sheer this hairless pig".  So why even bother? Why does no one ever ask that question?

When the facts came out in the Russian media that Snowden had been in the Russian Consulate on June 20-21, Putin himself confirmed this, admitting that it hadn't been mentioned before. This caused a funny thing to happen -- Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden's lawyer who helped him with his asylum claim and who has close ties to the FSB, had at first lied and said that Snowden wasn't in the consulate to the media. Imagine how he must have felt when Putin himself contradicted him.

Does this show disarray in the Russian government or a war within Russian intelligence about what to do with Snowden? Or just the usual Russkaya khalatnost'? (incompetence and negligence).

Then there's this question to ask: when did Snowden buy his ticket, exactly.

He arrived with the ticket already in hand in the Russian consulate on June 20, before the US revoked his passport, on the day that the US issued the extradition request (but had not yet revoked his passport).

Obviously, he couldn't have bought the ticket after this, with no valid passport; he had to buy it before -- on June 19th or earlier.

Why? Because you cannot buy a ticket to Cuba via Moscow without showing your passport. Russians and indeed most countries -- and hence most airlines! -- will insist on a show of a passport to purchase a ticket -- and in the case of Russia, and Cuba, for Americans, you have to show a valid visa. These are not countries where Americans can just pick up visas at the airport by paying a fee. They have to get those visas way in advance.

Usually two weeks or more is what it takes; express visas still take 5 days often. So did Snowden in fact visit the consulate BEFORE the 20th to get a visa? Or the Cuban consulate to get a visa? How was this done? When?

It's here that your typical Anonymous Twitter arguer claims that the US "bullied" Cuba into not accepting Snowden.  The State Department asked Cuba not to accept him -- but since when does Cuba do what the State Department tells them?!

And here we have Fidel Castro himself in an oped piece in the Guadian telling us that it's not true, Cuba most certainly did not buckle to this request.

So...why didn't Snowden go to Cuba on June 24th? Is Castro lying? Was Snowden going to stay in Russia the whole time anyway, and this was a distraction?

There's another date to pin down here, and that's the date the US actually revoked the passport. The announcement was made on June 23rd, but it was likely done on June 22nd; indeed Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica report it as revoked on the 22nd. It might have been made earlier, but not THAT much earlier because Snowden bought his ticket. Note:

“Such a revocation does not affect citizenship status,” Jen Psaki, a State Department spokesperson told Ars.

As explained, you cannot, as an American, buy a ticket to Havana or Moscow without showing a passport and a visa.

While it's possible "the system" didn't get the news flash that the passport was pulled right away, for something like this, you might think that all the red buttons would have been punched.  So that means it's most likely that Snowden bought the ticket with the passport still valid, before it was pulled, on the 20th or possibly even earlier, after the extradition notice was issued and his lawyers informed him that it was not likely it would be disobeyed.

He would have been able to buy the ticket a still-valid passport -- not pulled, and therefore not forcing him into any particular travel arrangement -- on the 20th.

You know, instead of sitting and partying with the Russians for two days, Snowden could have used the two days before his passport was revoked to go somewhere else -- anywhere else -- particularly Latin America.

See, it's this detail about how Russia and its old pupil Cuba work when it comes to controlling foreigners travelling to their countries that so stands out for us Russia-watchers.

That's why we can't believe that Snowden "decided on the fly" to go to Russia or stay in Russia after he got there.

He had to have gotten a visa; more to the point, so would Sarah Harrison, his WikiLeaks compansion and minder -- and perhaps she already had a multiple-entry visa to Russia due to her work on Mediastan for Wikileaks, or easily arranged an invitation, which is required by Russian law for foreigners to have longer stays.

The visit to the consulate on the 20th with the ticket already in hand might have been used to pick up a visa, but usually the way things work, that would have had to have been done before the purchase.

My bet is that with WikiLeaks help, Snowden dealt with the consulate much earlier -- but maybe hadn't gone in person, maybe Sarah Harrison did all the menial work of filling out applications, attaching photos and taking them over to the Russians. When did she arrive in Hong Kong? She isn't in the film or mentioned in the stories, but she is there, in the background performing these kinds of tasks obviously.

I think it's quite possible that even as early as May, again, there could have been chats with the Russians via Assange and Harrison or others  about Snowden coming to Russia.

Don't forget, WikiLeaks has quite a base of operations in Russia, as I establish here and here. When they released the film Mediastan recently, which they had working on for years, we realize that not only do they have Israel Shamir, the notorious pro-Kremlin provocateur and antisemite who has definitely performed work for WikiLeaks and represented its interests despite WikiLeaks denials  -- and whose idea it was to organize the airport meeting with Snowden -- but also his son Johannes Walstrohm, also a disgraced journalist and antisemite working for WikiLeaks directly -- about whom WL doesn't make any denials but instead credits him as the producer of their video Mediastan.

In addition, they have Russian Reporter and other film-makers, journalists, and assorted helpers in Russia, quite a crew to help out something like the care and feeding-- and the recruitment and tasking, too? -- of Edward Snowden.

So this is a story not only with just too many coincidences -- as John Schindler points out on his blog -- but too many holes and too many questions.

Snowden could have fled anywhere in the world before his identity was publicized; it was his call. He had weeks to make this decision, even if something spooked him into fleeing earlier than planned, i.e. a fear that someone at his job had already caught him. He could have gone to Latin American at any time during the weeks he hung out in Hong Kong, with a valid passport, and long before the US issued their extradition request -- which wasn't until June 20th -- a month after he arrived in Hong Kong!

So the idea that he was "forced"to go to Russia because "he had no choices" is as big a lie as any told in this entire caper, and it should help to unravel the entire false narrative.

 

The More Subtle - But Just as Deadly -- Delivery of the Kremlin Propaganda Line

From 2015

 

Recently I noticed that on the Facebook group Boycott RT, this article appeared -- seemingly in conformity with the group's goals of outing the propaganda of the Kremlin's lead propaganda outlet RT.com:

Kremlin-Run Propaganda Has an Image Problem

(The original article was published in Moscow Times, but for some reason, I can't get it to pull up, so the link here is to its sister publication St. Petersburg Times -- same article.)

What could be more re-tweetable? Yes, indeed, the Kremlin has an image problem! And RT.com, understood at least by some inquiring minds to be Kremlin propaganda, has become more and more disgusting!

But when I saw this article was from Natalia Antonova -- I knew to take a second look.

I'll have more in a minute -- but read this article first, and watch what happens in this article -- liked and reposted and celebrated by people hoping to expose Russian propaganda.

You may come away from one reading thinking, oh, great, RT.com has been denounced as a Kremlin propaganda tool. It is!

But...First, you have to realize that Natalia Antonova, former deputy editor of Moscow News (which was closed) is herself now the social media director for Russia Behind the Headlines, itself a Russia state propaganda outlet owned by the official state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. It, too, is a Kremlin-run propaganda outlet -- it's merely a "thinking man's" RT.com, if you will, designed to be less obnoxious and more subtle than RT.com, and hence lure in intellectuals who scorn RT.com - but then get on the RBTH hook.

Shaun Walker of the Guardian put in a plug for RBTH:

 

Fair play to whoever is running the Twitter feed of Kremlin-paid supplement @russiabeyond. Its content nuanced & a far cry from Russia Today

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) September 18, 2014

So...get ready for "more nuanced"!

It's not clear whether Natalia runs her own personal account on Twitter only, or in addition to running the @russiabeyond account -- likely, it *is* her if she is the social media director -- which she says on her own Twitter profile -- and if somehow she doesn't run this account, she would likely supervise that person.

So now you've seen the sterling endorsement of a prominent Guardian journalist covering the war in Ukraine, himself not without controversies (for example, in opposing the dismantling of Lenin statues in Ukraine). So, take a closer look at Natalia's "expose" again:

Antonova rings the chimes of the "thinking man's" more "subtle approach" -- but it's the same bad-
faithed propaganda we see in more virulent forms elsewhere:

o Moral Equivalency

"I don't believe that any news organization — whether privately owned or funded by the government — can escape having a particular slant, especially as far as pet issues are concerned."

Really, Natalia? But there is a difference between, you know, CNN or BCC or RT.com or even, hey, RBTH in terms of their quotient of truth-telling.

o Introduction of the Notion of "Global Russophobia"

Is there such a thing? Um, no, I don't think so. There's simply quite proper criticism of Russia, you know, like there's criticism of the US that many say is legitimate even when they only obsess about America -- oh, and legitimate criticism of Israel, too, which "isn't anti-semitism" as we all know, right?

So Antonova notes "the argument that, for example, Russian state television is simply acting as a counterbalance to global Russophobia when it airs a report in which a clearly unstable source insists that the Ukrainian army crucified a child in liberated Slavyansk."

You're supposed to be so impressed here that Natalia has called out the horridly fake "crucifixion"
story by a "clearly unstable source" (a refugee woman) that evidently even RT.com didn't stoop to run -- (that was up to Rossiya 24 or some other more tabloidy channels) -- that you won't notice that Antonova has thus introduced another pair of deadly theses that a) there's such a thing as "global Russophobia" and b) one might need to thus "counter-balance" it.

Oh, and sure, we realize this isn't the argument she makes -- it's just a putative argument she's listing. So, oh, no, there isn't any insinuation that such "counter-balancing" might be understood as crude but necessary, right? You're sure?

And yet...there is still affirmed here the thesis that there's "global Russophobia". But there isn't such a thing. This is a Kremlin propaganda trope. One of the many in the repertoire of "injured and innocent" posturing the Kremlin does. One of many that makes this powerful nuclear state waging war on a neighboring country and routinely buzzing neighbors to the West some kind of "victim," some kind of down-trodden underdog that the world must "protect."

So with this twirl, Natalia lets you know that she's not like those other bad Russian propagandists who can't check stories because she can call out horridly offensive fakes like the child crucifixation story -- even though she's just got done a) claiming there is moral equivalency among state TVs of the world or that "any" media is biased so therefore, gosh, it's understandable if RT.com is; b) claiming there's a conspiracy to hate the Russian people (global Russophobia).

See how that worked?

We're never to question the global hatred of America because that's deserved, right? That's different! And we're to remain sympathetic to poor put-upon RT.com that has to cope with this sea of hatred, you see.

So here's Natalya's typical poison pill, hidden in among the "we're all smart hipsters and critical
journalists here, people" rhetoric:

"Smug Russian officials will say that their winning formula, combining sensationalism with a decidedly pro-government slant, is not unique — and they will be correct in this. "

Meaning -- and this is the biggest Kremlin propaganda staple there is these days -- all media is
slanted, all media plays to their governments, so the Kremlin agitpropsters are really no worse, and they're just one more in this weary world.

This is the essence of all the nihilist, cynical trash coming from the Kremlin -- "we're bad, we know we're bad, but we'll drag you down with us by making it seem you're just as bad, too."

Except, they truly are uniquely bad, and not like Western media, and not even like Al Jazeera, because not only do they purvey the outrages of "child crucifixation" stories, they have a tidal wave of other lies about Ukraine -- which Natalia herself has also partaken in -- with her claim, for example, that Ukraine "must show compassion for the East" -- as if it had none -- and that it did no charitable work unil it was induced by the Russian "humanitarian convoy" -- which was patently untrue. I guess Natasha never heard of Akhmetov's Pomozhem, to cite one of a number of charities operating in Ukraine and helping Donbass refugees and victims.

o The Evil Market

But there's more. Natalia then concedes: "In Western countries, the government is not in the habit of hounding or, for that matter, liquidating media outlets that instead aim to adhere to decent standards"

But then she slips in the neo-communism of the Kremlin propaganda school "At worst, the capriciousness of the market, combined with general public ignorance and complacency, is Western journalism's biggest enemy."

Oh, that capricious market, that invisible hand!

So -- the market is evil, people are ignorant and complacent because capitalism breeds insensitive, stupid people. See how this works?

o Russia, the Tragically Misunderstood Artist

Natalia does not always have to be subtle to do her job. There's this gem:

"Is the outside world unfair to Russia? Over the years I've argued that yes, it frequently is — and I
stand by those words."

Really, Natalia? The world is unfair when it calls out Russia's appalling support of the mass murderer Assad? When it exposes Russia's lies about MH17, which you've never countered yourself? It's unfair when it says Putin was elected under fraudulent elections; that the
Kremlin is cracking down on business, NGOs, minorities, gays - anybody who is outside the narrow
establishment, some of which even you concede? That it poisoned Litvinenko? That the Sochi Olympics were horribly corrupt? Just to mention a small handful of obvious issues. Unfair, Natalia? You're sure?

Her whole 90%-true article about the nature of RT is articulated for the purpose of slipping in these 10% untruths -- the world is unfair, "global Russophobia" makes Russia suffer unjustly; Russian media may be bad and slanted and sensationalist - but hey, so is American media, right?  And Russian state media has to do what it's gotta do to tilt the scales back in its favor, given this "hostile encirclement".

Remember "hostile encirclement"? This was a staple of Soviet propaganda -- remember those 16 Western armies that nearly strangled Bolshevism in its cradle?!

Natalia ends by slamming the Russian media landscape as a "wasteland" and that its trademark should be " a homophobic bear in a tank, swigging vodka and strumming a balalaika. "

That's supposed to make you think she's NOT part of that wasteland and is more sophisticated --- and she isn't in fact, because she's calling out crude propaganda and mocking dancing bears ... except ... I'm sorry, look, again at what she just made you swallow:

o that there is a global conspiracy of Russophobia
o that the West and Russia are morally equivalent
o that all media outlets are slanted and loyal to their government;

o that Russian propaganda outlets arereally no different than CNN or BBC
o that the Russian propaganda formula of combining sensationalism with pro-government news is "not unique" -- the West does this too, you see.
o that the market is "capricious" and that people in capitalist countries suffer from "ignorance and
complacency" -- oh, unlike those hordes of Russians who aggressively endorse their government's land grab of Crimea, you know.
o that the outside world is frequently unfair to Russia

See how that works? Same set of propaganda pills, just put in a more sophisticated coating to make
them easier to swallow.

Are all you people wishing to expose RT.com and even boycott it still happy that you found a great article that achieves your goals?

I began to notice this phenomenon with a number of Russian propagandists and the American bloggers and journalists echoing them some years ago, and it's annoying to see them get even a further traction these days.

But there is nothing people like to bond on over more than the feeling that they've got a higher shared understanding than the average person, and that in their superior knowledge of a country or issue, they can outflank others.

Antonova never really stood out as one of these types until I noticed her vehemence about Timothy Snyder.

I was puzzled by it because I took Antonova at first for more or less a "normal" Moscow intellectual -- tending toward that combination of insecurity and superiority that fuels the hatred of the West -- but still someone critical of the Soviet/Russian reality.

Snyder is widely recognized as a thoughtful scholar and is admired by many because he defeats the facile view held by some Westerners that Ukrainians are inherently fascist and all collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. This is the Kremlin propaganda staple today that tries to deny the legitimate Ukrainian movements of anti-communism and Soviet mass crimes against humanity, including the Holodomor terror-hunger in Ukraine. Today, the Kremlin still harps on the controversial revolutionary or World War II heroes like Stepan Bandera who in facto don't have some sort of massive appeal and are acknowledged as themselves having committed atrocities against Jews, Poles and others.

But today, Kiev's movement to break free of Russia's orbit and move toward Europe -- natural and normal and necessary -- is drowned out in a hateful barrage of propaganda of "fascism" that is "propped up by the US".

Natalia's having none of this -- although she never addresses the "fascism" issue head-on. Instead, there's these angry, hipster tweets:

 

 

Snyder's Ukraine article - the one everyone's passing around - is a bunch of heartfelt crap. Crap that provides fodder for Kiselyov's show.

— Natalia Antonova (@NataliaAntonova) February 21, 2014

Timothy Snyder is, like, the Hanson of Ukraine analysis. He's a poser, man. He's never been inside a protest tent & his tattoos ain't real.

— Natalia Antonova (@NataliaAntonova) March 17, 2014

FFS!!! MT @MarkAdomanis "language [in Ukraine] simply not an issue" http://t.co/MAw1FZul39 for smart person Snyder says lots of weird things

— Natalia Antonova (@NataliaAntonova) May 23, 2014

All of these follow the pattern of seeming have a greater liberal good in mind -- the need to counter Dmitry Kiselyev, and therefore, the need for ostensibly higher-quality scholarship than Snyder can supposedly deliver.

But this is ridiculous. Snyder doesn't provide fodder for Kiselyev that he doesn't already have, and Snyder's explanation of how the Ukrainians aren't the fascists caricatured is something Natalia can't admit or engage with directly. Instead she jeers.

Then there's her odd claim that Snyder is like a fake, commercialized made-for-TV rock band. Huh? That his tattoos aren't real. What?! I don't know if Snyder has been on Maidan -- it seems he has - but he wouldn't have to be to still write thoughtfully about this issue.

But then the claim that there's really some kind of language issue in Ukraine?! REALLY, Natalia? You're going to peddle this completely fake and stale Kremlin line?  There is zero discrimination of the Russian language. The language law so much ballyhooed doesn't discriminate against the Russian language, whatever its abstract scarifying power. Regional governments simply made Russian a regional language.

And it would have zero effect had it gone into force -- and actually it didn't because it was vetoed. Natalia knows that. And yet she engages in this tawdry nonsense. The Russian language is not the problem in the Donbass because it is not supressed. Soviet culture and Putinism are the problems because the Russian-language TV has kept people from questioning the Moscow line.

The anger and viciousness that Antonova brought to the phenomenon of Snyder let me know how important that he and others like him are breaking the propaganda barriers -- she has no answer but fury.

Then I began to see with other tweets, what the game was, like with this:

 

"Hey, descendants! How are you? Made it to Mars yet?... WHO ARE YOU FIGHTING?" Gagarin meme criticizes undeclared war pic.twitter.com/FbbvkarTFY

— RBTH (@russiabeyond) August 31, 2014

This meme is from the cosmonaut Yury Gagarin, the first man in space. And the idea is that he is somewhat reproaching his descendants that they haven't flown to Mars, when he himself accomplished so much in his lifetime.

So based on that meme, there's the current meme of "Who are you fighting?" as if to say "What are you fighting your brothers in Uraine for?"

Subtle, yeah. So subtle, you might not even understand this is an anti-war meme -- but that's just what I call out. The insincere fakery of pretending that you can put up "subtle" anti-war memes -- and get credit for them -- when they aren't even clear.

Sure enough, as per usual, the "thinking man's propaganda" snagged a victim -- somebody who thought, hmm, even though they are state media, they are putting out some mild anti-war sentiments!

@russiabeyond RBTH is tweeting this? what is happening in this world? There is hope for Russia yet.— Robert Chadwick (@OpusVII) August 31, 2014

 

That is the purpose of all of this -- to make thinking people critical of the Kremlin to come away saying, "there is hope for Russia yet" - instead of realizing this is just yet another cunning and cynical ploy.

Oh, I think there's hope for Russia -- it just doesn't come from state propagandists in any form.

So, I decided to cut through this bullshit, since it's fairly clear Natalia is not only the one behind the @russiabehind account, but even if she isn't, RTing it and herself being coy -- and to point out that it's merely a more subtle version of the same thing:

 

@OpusVII No, the rule for disinformation is that sometimes it has to be true @russiabeyond— CatherineFitzpatrick (@catfitz) August 31, 2014

So this tweet continues to take the @russiabeyond account in good faith as possible really expressing some dissent:

@catfitz @russiabeyond still, Putin claims no involvement and kremlin site says otherwise. Probably dragging away one who tweeted it.— Robert Chadwick (@OpusVII) August 31, 2014

The RBTH account then decides to make a joke of the query, as if it would be dragged away instantly in this oppressive Moscow climate:

.@OpusVII @catfitz http://t.co/MMkXrY7ekn

— RBTH (@russiabeyond) August 31, 2014

 

Chadwick then realizes they are just playing with us:

So I had this simple question then:

@russiabeyond @OpusVII @NataliaAntonova So do you oppose Russia's war against Ukraine, Natalia?

— CatherineFitzpatrick (@catfitz) August 31, 2014

@catfitz @russiabeyond @OpusVII What do you think, dumbass? Sorry, I am in no mood to be polite tonight.

— Natalia Antonova (@NataliaAntonova) August 31, 2014

@NataliaAntonova Could you say yes or no, Natalia, instead of being a coy angry hipster about it? Yes or no. @russiabeyond @OpusVII

— CatherineFitzpatrick (@catfitz) August 31, 2014

.@catfitz @russiabeyond @OpusVII I oppose Russia's war against Ukraine. I also oppose slimy trolls like you. Go crawl under a bridge. xx

— Natalia Antonova (@NataliaAntonova) August 31, 2014

@NataliaAntonova It's hardly "trolling" to try to get a straight answer out of manipulative propagandists like you @russiabeyond @OpusVII

— CatherineFitzpatrick (@catfitz) August 31, 2014

@russiabeyond @catfitz Yep. You were right @catfitz

— Robert Chadwick (@OpusVII) August 31, 2014

 

What happens after this? A deluge of hate.

Holding Your Breath On Odessa

From 2015

 

LinkedIn Member

11 days ago

Odessa Holds Its Breath for an Invasion

Odessa Holds Its Breath for an Invasion

newsweek.com•Residents fear a pro-Russian uprising would spur Russian troops in nearby Transnistria to invade.

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Charles Leven, Davor Devcic, Gilberto Villahermosa, +7 like this

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  Anton Andrianov

  Hello Chad,
  Have a project in Odessa, had about 10 conversations with different ppl,: from local government to private business owners to illegals from Transdniestria, and haven't noticed this sentiment. Are the Russians testing the reaction?

  11 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  Newsweek is notorious for publishing mainly pro-Kremlin materials, often very sloppily researched or cut-and-pasted from dubious sources and with screeching headlines. Such as a story that claimed Ukrainian military were going to "shoot deserters on the spot" which incorrectly reported a law on the stages through which this option might be used, although rarely and with constraints -- and it has never been used. Or a story the other day from Max Tucker which claims "millions" of Ukrainian children are going to face a polio epidemic and that there is an "anti-vax" movement -- without basis, as I checked with various international health organizations working in the region and they said their main problem in fact is the DNR not letting through relief with vaccinations, not Kiev authorities. And this story, too, makes its screeching headline on the basis of one picket by three old men with CP symbols that got broken up and a string of terrorist attacks throughout the region which are real and deadly but which do not constitute "an invasion" or even masses "fearing" an invasion.
  
  I wouldn't even publish or share this story because it spreads alarm and panic and with one goal -- helping the Kremlin sow panic and create the illusion that they are "needed" to come in and "save" Russians or Russian speakers. They are not needed.
  
  At this point, not a single Newsweek story passes muster to be shared with anything but a call to analyze what's wrong with it. It's owned by the same company as IBTimes which also has many pro-Kremlin or sensational strange stories.

  11 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  @Chad Nagle if your purpose in sharing this dreck is somehow to convince the unconvinced that they should "do something" about the Russian menace in Ukraine, it's actually counterproductive and you need to be smarter about how you "share" things like this from Newsweek. If you haven't figured out their agenda yet, read their last 10 articles on Ukraine and you'll get it soon enough if you are sincere.

  11 days ago

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• @Catherine Fitzpatrick: Methinks thou dost protest too much, I would assume because you've taken a personal dislike to me.
  
  Newsweek is worth criticizing for a lot of reasons. "Publishing mainly pro-Kremlin materials" is not one of them. There has been an attempt at even-handedness on their editorial board which one could describe as questionable at times - e.g. identifying atrocities committed by both sides in the war in eastern Ukraine - but the fact of one side being ultimately "in the right" in that war (i.e. Ukraine) has never been lost, unlike, for example, in Forbes.
  
  The (until not long ago) Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek and now a contributing editor, Owen Matthews, cannot be reasonably described as "Kremlin-friendly." I know him and have followed his writing for a long time. His writing on the Nemtsov murder betrays no sense of apology for Putin and neither does his coverage of Ukraine. This article from February, for example, does not appear to exhibit admiration for the Kremlin (or am I missing something?):
  
  http://www.newsweek.com/2015/02/27/kremlins-campaign-make-friends-307158.html
  
  I am not aware of anything that could be described as unambiguously "pro-Kremlin" about Newsweek's recent reporting on Ukraine. Again, I may be missing something "between the lines," but I doubt it. Presumably this article is included among the "last 10 on Ukraine," of which you speak:
  
  http://www.newsweek.com/putins-ukraine-war-about-founding-new-russian-empire-319832
  
  As for Odessa, I was there in October of last year. I spoke to people on the street to figure out their sentiments, and my impressions were that they both hated the central government in Kyiv (their antipathy being a symptom of traditional mistrust for the most part), and were also afraid of little green men crossing the border from Transnistria. Maybe they are unreasonably fearful. I don't think so, and I also believe the May 2nd massacre was instigated by the Russians. I would be pleased to be proven wrong, but it is not alarmist to suggest there is a real danger in Odessa, and that the border with Transnistria, which is largely in the Odessa region, should be fortified.

  10 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  Um, protests too much? No, this is a very good example of how you exaggerate events in Ukraine and even put a spin on them, so I thought it was good to call out and debate. Already someone else I don't know has questioned your claims, although I don't know him and he may have an agenda himself.
  
  Your remarks in defense of Newsweek are shocking. Pro-Kremlin materials about from Damien Sharkov, everyone has noticed this, and your failure to is shocking. Max Tucker has also turned in some highly tendentious pieces which have been challenged.
  
  It doesn't matter if you have a personal relations and know an editor or if he individually has done a good piece. The other pieces more than cancel this out and are actually alarming. The entire body of work needs to be looked at.
  
  You sure did miss a lot.
  
  http://www.newsweek.com/authors/damien-sharkov
  
  Some of the articles on Russia seem "normal" and "critical" in the vein of Western press, but that's how good disinformation works.
  
  Take this one:
  Rebels in Ukraine ‘Not Russia’s Puppets’, Says Putin Aide
  http://www.newsweek.com/rebels-ukraine-not-russias-puppets-says-putin-aide-316051
  
  Only at the very end is there a faint counter-report, although Nemtsov, God bless him, was far from the only one who gathered this information -- RBC, TV Rain, Novaya Gazeta have all published lots of materials exposing the Russian presence in Ukraine.
  
  Or this one, which he corrected and changed several times:
  
  Ukraine Passes Law Allowing Military to Shoot Deserters
  http://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-passes-law-shoot-deserters-304911
  
  See also Max Tucker's claims of an impending polio epidemic in Ukraine, wildly exaggerated, and his bashing of Poroshenko on the eve of the IMF vote claiming he was personally corrupt because -- wait for it -- a manager in one of his firms had paid only 60% of a British architect's invoice. Outrageous.
  
  I've been meaning to do an analysis about some of this biased reporting on my own blog and I will when I'm less busy.

  10 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  There's a big difference between describing people in Odessa -- which you, like everyone else, does anecdotally -- and saying they are "holding their breath for invasion."
  
  Indeed, lots of people hate the central government in Kiev which hasn't delivered for them, and really, like all Soviet countries, Ukraine is too highly centralized with its provinces too dependent on the center. They have far less autonomy than American states or Canadian provinces on basic things like economy, health, business, education.
  
  Ukraine is surrounded on three sides with Russian troops and invasion is always a possibility, and we can't forget that initial plans in February 2014 even discussed Kharkiv first, not Donetsk and Lugansk.
  
  But to imply there is an invasion coming any minute *here* is stretching it. It means crying wolf and wearing out the vigilance of the public for when it really happens, or distracting from other places where it might be more likely like Mariupol.
  
  There is no evidence that the Russians as in Russian Federation instigated the May 2 massacre. I have studied this extensively and read various reports from Ukraine; one important thing to note is that there are no Russian citizens among those killed. If you mean ethnic Russians or Russian speakers, there is plenty of evidence of wrong-doing on their side, because they started that day's round of fighting by shooting and killing the soccer marchers. But then Ukrainian nationalists did their share of violent actions throwing Molotov cocktails which set some of the fires. Pro-Russians fired from the roof, killing or wounding some more people, and they also through Molotov cocktails that also set fires. It's inaccurate, as Russia says, to claim that Ukrainian nationalist stampeded innocent people into a building and cooked them to death. They themselves had planned to hold the building even before May 2 and brought in supplies. They barricaded the front door, sealing their doom. They had time to exit -- hundreds did. But some chose to go to higher floors and sealed their fate. Ukrainians in fact helped save them, using their Anti-Maidan scaffolding, of all things. But Ukrainians also beat some of them. It's a mixed story, and Kiev and Odessa have not helped their cause by not providing international investigators access and finishing this investigation. The suicide of the prosecutor of the case, one of a string of suspicious suicides and murders is also not a good sign.

  10 days ago

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  Anton Andrianov

  Catherine,
  
  Just a few quick comments.
  
  I have just voiced my own impressions re. the Newsweek piece re. Odesa. I have also mentioned why I think they did this piece: someone might be exploring the potential public reaction... And that in itself might be an important piece of information to take note of.
  
  I was a bit puzzled by the way you reacted though - bashing Newsweek (though the examples of sloppy reporting and unchecked information you have mentioned are spot on - Newsweek is full of them. However, pls. consider the Newsweek concept, within which creating a buzz where there should be none and sensations, where there could hardly be any, is purely within it. Bad journalism? Yes. Bad commercial concept? Hardly any different from a lot of media, like USA Today, the Guardian, or Le Monde).
  
  I love your stories on the Interpreter, BTW. And your blogs are also great. Loved the one, in which you discussed the Daily Beast interview re. Nemtsov (smth. that Chad wanted to allude to). And, I do agree, with Chad, some of the stories in Newsweek are worthy reads.

  10 days ago

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  Anton Andrianov

  Catherine,
  Just a quick note re.:
  'It means crying wolf and wearing out the vigilance of the public for when it really happens, or distracting from other places where it might be more likely like Mariupol.'
  It might not be Mariupol. The North-Eastern direction looks a lot more promising for the Russkies: first Schastya, and then towards Kharkiv through previously lost town of Kramatorsk and Slaviansk.

  10 days ago

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  Anton Andrianov

  Catherine, and one more quick comment on Odessa May 2 event of last year. Your run-through seems to be mostly correct, but not entirely. One the things that you have correctly mentioned is that it was prepared and executed by the locals. It was also possible only due inaction of the police and the fire dept. IMHO, for the same reason, the most recent 10 bombings of volunteers' offices went largely uninvestigated.
  
  I don't like Halya Coynash's writing, but this piece re. Odesa is definitely worth spending 3 min. on :
  http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1428196611

  10 days ago

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• Having just re-read the Newsweek article I posted, I fail to see how it qualifies for particular scorn from the perspective of undue alarmism except, perhaps, for its title. The piece even concludes with a quotation from an analyst saying the risk of an invasion of Odesa region is "low."
  
  Why does it matter whether any Russian citizens were among the dead in the Odessa fire? Agencies (like the FSB) use "agents" (i.e. citizens of other countries) to carry out their operations, and the Ukrainian security services arrested Russian nationals in Odessa with tangible links to the FSB after the atrocity. Furthermore, many residents of Transnistria hold Ukrainian citizenship but would gladly help a Russian op in Ukraine for a fist full of funny money.
  
  The fire has many hallmarks of an FSB provocation, including that the pro-Russian mob came to the fight armed. The soccer fans were unarmed but STILL sent the tent-a-crowd packing! The rent-a-crowd very likely believed the city police were supposed to intervene on their behalf, and when that didn't happen, they beat a hasty retreat.
  
  And perhaps most telling of all: after the massacre, good old Vlad Putin was quick to go public with his condolences to the families of the victims. Notice how he didn't do that when MH17 went down because that was a real screw-up. By contrast, the deaths of the Odessan provocateurs was useful to him. The city authorities in Odessa (unlike their regional counterparts) are disloyal and would have helped the tsar, which may explain why the city police didn't do their jobs on May 2nd.
  
  Odessa is very much a target of the Kremlin and is well within the territory of the "Novorossia" project. Putin views Odesa as a Russian city, and I believe it is in genuine danger of being targeted for further destabilization.

  10 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  Anton Andrianov just a quick answer -- the Newsweek article is speculative and not grounded in facts. You seem to say it's ok because they need to sell newspapers, essentially. Except, the field is so narrow and the interest narrow that to imagine that any of these stories sell newspapers doesn't seem to hold up as a concept.
  
  Sure, the Schastye route may indeed be another route and that's where some of the main battles have been in the last week. But they didn't say that, did they. They picked out Odessa.
  
  Re: the Odessa fire: sure, the firemen took 45-60 minutes to show up and police let through violent demonstrators on camera even. Clearly they had some order or thought they had some order to "stand down." But you can't remove complicity from the perpetrators by only blaming police. There were in fact Ukrainian nationalists who ran deliberately to the building to tear down the tent city and who threw Molotov cocktails. That's documented and trying to eliminate that from the study isn't going to work. I read Halya Coynash and always read here because she is one of the few people bothering to do human rights work in Ukraine, and there should be hundreds more. She doesn't exonerate the Ukrainian nationalists from involvement.
  
  Chad, you're just grasping at straws and distracting from your previous untenable points. You haven't shown anything to prove there's an impending invasion in Odessa. Meanwhile we have fighting around Shirokino and Schastye and such that show it could be in other directions -- is Newsweek reporting on THAT?
  
  Of course it matters if there were Russian citizens or not because this was the claim of Ukrainian natoinalist, and it was not sustained, there were none. And sure, 17 year old boys or 70-yearold women pensioners could be agents of the FSB as could some of the 30 year olds. Look at the list of victims, and you'll find as a list of people, they don't make up a very persuasive list for provocateurs, males of combat age, or potential FSB agents or informers. In fact, it's my hypothesis that the FSB provocateurs, if they existed, and they may have, had long since got out of the building to save themselves, leaving others to fall victim. And then there's this: reports that WEEKS before the clash, the smarter pro-Russians moved their tent city to another location as they had caught wind of an impending attack. It was the less clued-in that remained to defend their Anti-Maidan set-up.
  
  The fire does not have any hallmarks of any FSB set-up -- if you have them, explain them in detail, in full and with videos. Instead, it looks like a typical situation all through the southeast. Some pro-Russians thought they could act with impunity and take over a building. This time they failed because Ukrainian nationalists fought back. And that's the problem for Poroshenko or a street fighter from Right Sector -- fighting back will mean that you, too, will be charged with crimes and even war crimes. It's a terribly vicious and cunning provocation overall by the Russians. But you have to back up claims.

  10 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  Part 2
  
  There's only one detail that I find somewhat suspicious after spending many hours of research on this: the fact that some unknown force was able to set up three camera angles to make video recordings of this fire, including from high in a building across the street. That takes planning and professionalism, and suggests some non-amateur was at work here. That might mean the FSB set it up, but it also may mean that the FSB only exploited it when they saw what a great thing it would be to exploit it. By itself, it's not proof. In fact, even just any Ukrainian news company with experience could have been on the ball and done this without ill intent. But it's an angle to research.
  
  The soccer fans were not "unarmed" as they had pavement pieces, rocks, sticks and Molotov cocktails. The Russians had firearms and show some of them dead. That was a wild provocation, for which police is partly to blame and which makes the Ukrainian nationalists' subsequent fury completely understandable. But it doesn't exonerate them from setting a building on fire to the extent they did -- and that's on tape. So did the Russians.
  
  It's wrong to describe the pro-Russian forces as rent-a-crowds because it's more complicated. Some of them are true believers, some of them are mobilized and filled with hate from Russian TV but not "rented," and sure, quite possibly maybe there are some "rentees".
  
  But to describe them all as "rent-a-crowds" dangerously implies that if all you do is gang up enough on Putin, these people will roll up and go away. And guess what, that's not going to happen because not only Putin, for all his primary culpability for everything bad in Ukraine now, is to blame for every bit of it. That's part of the cunning of his hybrid war.
  
  I've given up trying to speak sense to people like you who can't understand that you do Ukraine absolutely no favors and do not fight Putin effectively by NOT conceding that some of the Russians/pro-Russians/Russian-speakers/Russian-backed militants etc are in fact authentic, sui generis and not merely on Moscow puppet-strings. It's like this silly campaign all of you wage to try to name and shame journalists into stopping to use the word "separatists' in the belief that we're too stupid to realize it's all managed by Moscow and isn't really about some authentic "separatism."
  
  By claiming the Odessa fire is merely a FSB provocation without any authentic actors, you merely make it possible for the FSB to go on exploiting this tragedy.
  
  But I guess that those who can't concede authenticity among the DNR/LNR types are too stupid to realize the kind of people they really do have for real in their country, like it or not. Yes, it's engineered by Moscow. But yes, Moscow had some cadres to work there who didn't spring out of nowhere but exist because of Soviet culture and because of Soviet-style centralization and corruption.
  
  To NOT concede that there are authentic pro-Russians actually harms Ukraine because it means you underestimate your enemy (the absolute worst problem), you don't realize the great danger you have in this population even after the war, it means you don't have a solution for conceding people's authentic beliefs and motivations and addressing them authentically rather than sarcastically rather than contrived by Moscow. And Moscow only gains when you do that. It's because of my ardent, life-long opposition to the Kremlin and KGB/FSB that I say this, not out of a scintilla of desire to accept any silly Western journo narrative of a "civil war" or pretend Putin's lies about his own agency are somehow acceptable.
  
  However, I've long since learned that Ukrainians in the diaspora and Ukrainian ex-pats in Ukraine are the last people who will ever grasp this about Ukraine. I've never had a single Ukrainian inside Ukraine contest this, but the diaspora/ex-pats fervently believe this. So I leave you to your beliefs, I'm out of time.

  10 days ago

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• You like to use the "people like you" phrase a lot, I've noticed. It does you no favors, since generalizations of people you've never met weakens your credibility overall. I'd ask you for a list of "people like me," but the whole notion of trying to understand your point is tiresome. Condescension is not interesting.
  
  You haven't actually contradicted anything I've said in your long screed, only raised possible counter-theories. No, I don't have "proof" any more than you do, because it's all theory with a little informed hypothesizing thrown in, isn't it? And when did I ever claim there were no "true believers" fighting for Putin in Ukraine? To the contrary, I'm quite aware that there are many fifth columnists in Ukraine acting out of conviction. There certainly are a lot of genuine Putin-sympathizers in Ukraine, and I have met some of them. What can one expect in a country where millions of people only receive Russian TV channels? That is in fact the greatest threat to Ukraine's unity at the moment, not the rent-a-crowds, since money is a finite commodity in Russia now.
  
  Again, my belief is that the Odessa fire was an FSB operation. If that sounds like "conspiracy theory" to you, so be it. Counter-intelligence agencies are conspiratorial in nature. They don't publicize their operations. I think, for example, that people in the trade union building were gassed, and not by any Ukrainian nationalists. Obviously I could be wrong, but at least I'm not using your high-handed style to dismiss you in your beliefs (which is all they are). At this point it's anyone's guess what happened in Odessa on May 2nd, but the atrocity features certain bells and whistles suggesting a hidden hand. Some said it was one of the Yanukovych "Family" stunts, but I think this unlikely. There was an affair involving an oil storage facility last year that was apparently the target of a takeover attempt by a Yanukovych straw-man oligarch. It was foiled by Kolomoisky's armed goons, fortunately. The fire was deadlier, and reminded me in some ways of other operations where the Russian security services were involved - such as the Moscow theater siege and the Beslan hostage crisis. As for the Molotov cocktails thrown here and there, I am not absolving anyone. I am suggesting that the Russian security services were involved.
  
  Hope you're not completely out of time there, Catherine. Scary thought.

  9 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  I use the phrase "people like you" because indeed you fit a predictable pattern. And really, there's just far too many people in the diaspora, not rooted in the country and its issues first-hand, not there, who maintain this fictional warrior metaverse that unfortunately it affects reality sometimes, and often for the worse.
  
  How much research have you actually done on the Odessa fire?! If you side with the Ukrainian government and the Odessa authorities, you would have noticed by now that they've issued a number of forensic reports and investigation reports in which they've indicated that there is no other "gas" in the building except carbon monoxide, which is a normal byproduct of fire and which kills people in fires very often.
  
  Can you grasp that you're out of sync with the side you're supporting? With professors, activists, journalists actually in Odessa who don't say this?
  
  It simply shows lack of the most basic educated understanding of how fires work and what happens in fires to believe the conspiracy sites that claim there was some other kind of poisonous gas. Exactly how would that work, guys? These fearless FSB agents climbed stairs passed flaming doorways and windows, gassed those hapless pro-Russians as a false flag operation, then...escaped? How?
  
  You don't have to be "high-handed" to point out the obvious facts visible on dozens of videos available from this event with dozens of accounts also of eye-witnesses and survivors. While they may be contradictory, the "poison gas" theory just has no grounds. It's like saying one of the people killed was pregnant or gassed when in fact she fell back on her desk and died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
  
  There isn't any suggestion of any "hidden hand" -- watch the videos. Both sides throw Molotov cocktails. You can see where exactly they fall. The pro-Russians barricaded the doors. You can see that. They climbed to higher floors -- you can see that. They shot from the roof -- you can see that. It does not take forensic or mathematical genius here to see that climbing higher in a building that is on fire on the ground floor, with heat and gas rising will kill you by carbon monoxide if it doesn't kill you by flames.
  
  The Moscow Theater Siege and the Beslan Hostage Crisis were real terrorist attacks with real terrorists in them. It's another matter that Russian authorities botched the rescue and deliberately stormed a situation that in fact was being successfully handled by the president of Ingushetia who got out some women and children. Had they allowed such people to handle it and try to answer some of the demands at least initially they might have done better. But of course they believe they should never negotiate with terrorists. That might be a valid position if they were better at saving people after they storm facilities, instead of killing more people even than the terrorists did.
  
  Nobody but the most rabid anti-Russian conspiracy theorist thinks these events are manufactured from start to finish by the FSB, however. There are some who believe this about the apartment building bombings, and with good reason, as there is evidence. But not about Beslan.
  
  That you say it lets me know that you are ignorant, unwilling to study situations, heavily ideological, and just prejudiced in your approach to every story -- which I can already see from your blog. You're rabidly hysterical and prone to conspiracy theories without facts even though you try to project the persona of an educated, experienced consultant. So either you're not very bright, or your a provocateur, or you just like being contrarian, but it doesn't matter, whatever the case, you're just not worth spending time on unless it's for the sake of convincing someone else in the argument.

  9 days ago

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• Your assumptions include repetitive implication of my association with the Ukrainian Diaspora. I'm not sure where that came from, but since you've accused me of making ignorant, ideologically-driven assumptions, I think it fair to cite at least one of yours.
  
  I am aware that Ukrainian investigators have announced they have no evidence any gas was used, and as I said, I have no proof about that. I do believe the FSB uses chemical agents and weapons to a greater degree than its Western counterparts by virtue of the greater availability of such weapons in the ex-USSR. Your bending over backwards to deflect suspicion from the Russian security services for events that bear the hallmarks of their involvement is rather mystifying, frankly, and makes me (for one) wonder why. Your comments on Beslan and the Moscow theater indicate that you have a vision of such agencies as being staffed primarily by a noble vanguard. Things go wrong, and innocent people are killed, but only because of the flawed modus operandi of the FSB operatives. It is no surprise, therefore, that you would view me as "heavily ideological," since I don't believe the successors to the KGB operate by a rule book most Westerners would recognize. If you have a different view, I'm quite sure that you - as far as I'm concerned - aren't worth debating either.
  
  To dismiss any FSB involvement in the Odessa fire atrocity is irresponsible. It also serves no constructive purpose. You cannot pretend to know the absolute truth in this situation, and if one is to err in analyzing it, better to err on the side of assuming the involvement of the security services. As for being "out of sync," I wonder whether you have ever had that sense. I do not trust the local Ukrainian investigators in terms of either their competence or motives, so I it doesn't bother me whether I'm "out of sync." It is not "conspiracy theory" to interpret something like the Odessa fire as bearing the external indicators of FSB involvement. I am not averse to accepting simple explanations, and in fact reject most conspiracy theory. In this case, not least because violent participants on both sides of the initial conflict were not locals, I believe the security services were involved. As for being a "provocateur" or "contrarian," what is your motive, I wonder? Are you Orwell's "last man" (or woman) in journalism in the ex-USSR? If so, good luck, really.

  9 days ago

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  Antonio Barbosa

  It seem you do have points of agreement but started either on the wrong foot or misunderstanding or am I wrong?...
  
  Both accept that Putin is orchestrating something but not necesarily what. The disagreement seems to stem from the way that vigilance ahoukd be made. On one side one believes that we should react on the spot and try and act on it even if it might be a "misfire" and the other says that we should be careful not to drain "resources" over-extend or even fall onto the same type of behaviour as thise we criticise.
  
  As for the reaction on Anton's post it seems to come from a defensive posture as I could have easily have asked the same question and would rather have an explanation (as you did later I believe) than having my head bitten off... :)
  
  I am walking and readin/typing so may have missed a bit but think not?

  8 days ago

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  Anton Andrianov

  Here is another good post by Halya Coynash re. May 2, 2015, event.
  I have made a separate thread, but just in case :
  
  http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1430087187
  
  I do not agree with her on many things, yet Halya, as always, is making many great points.
  
  Catherine, you went off on the news re. Odesa, yet I do not understand why.
  
  Unlike you, we work in Odesa and need to do business and this piece did strike me as unfairly describing the situation.
  
  But I do admit, that there are many ppl who think that the Russians want the city. That's why yields on our property shot up and we had tenants backing out of the deals in the past 9 mths. It was not b/c Newsweek is publishing stories, it is b/c some ppl on the ground are trying to muddy the waters. This is b/c there have been about 20 explosions during this time. This is b/c the police has not delivered as it has not delivered after May 2, 2015.
  
  Also, I believe that Odesa is interesting to more than a dozen of ppl. as you have wrongly mentioned (I am sorry). I have several friends pretty high up the ladder in the DC, whose families are from Odesa. I have Greek friends, the shipping majors, whose families are from Odesa. And I don't have too many friends. Len Blavatnik from Odesa has been just named the richest man in the UK: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/26/uk-britain-richlist-idUKKBN0NH0C320150426
  
  So - Odesa is not exactly a shit hole that no one is interested in. Sorry, for my Italian...
  
  PS: I also understand that few ppl know the country that has the largest permanently residing Ukrainian diaspora? It might be Russia, but it's not. It is not Canada with over 1M ethnic Ukrainians either.

  8 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  I don't understand what you're going on about now, Anton. Have you ever read any of my articles?
  Of course I know that the Russians want Odessa. It's the port where a lot of lucrative arms trade reaches the outside world and of course they want it. Of course they fear losing access to it. Of course they have run all kinds of provocations against it -- again, do you ever read my articles in The Interpreter about the bombs in Odessa, and my own blog about these issues?
  
  I don't know what you mean by "interesting to more than a dozen people." What is this about? Where did you get the idea that I thought Odessa was not interesting? What on earth is your claim here? That somehow *I* don't realize the value of Odessians? There are a lot more people than Len Blavatnik from Odessa -- like Yakov Smirnoff the famous emigre comic. The strains of Odessa vaudeville can be heard in Sheri Lewis' Lamb Chop routines. Odessa is famous the world over, especially here in New York where we have Little Odessa in Brighton Beach.
  
  Again, to bring you back to reality: the issue here is the latest threatened Russian invasion. The claim that it will come via Odessa doesn't seem so supported by facts as much as other news that shows it is more likely to come via the routes it has come before -- Rostov. That's where the army build-up is now and where the incursions are coming from.
  
  I'm going to have to conclude you're as much of a hysteric as Chad here if OUT OF THIN AIR you concoct some "version" of me claiming that events in Odessa aren't interesting to anyone.

  8 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  Chad's continued provocations really aren't worth bothering with but because new readers see them and believe them, I have to defend my reputation. There is no evidence that any other gas than carbon monoxide was involved in the Odessa fire. The *Ukrainian* authorities have said that. I trust them more than I trust random bloggers on the Internet. No credible source has said otherwise. It's bending over backwards to make a conspiracy theory *despite* the findings of Ukrainian forensics experts, in fact.
  
  To claim that my refusal to believe conspiracy theories about the Odessa fire -- that it is "like" the Dubrovka theater terrorist response -- means I think the FSB is filled "with noble staff" is typical of the hugely hysterical, wild, untethered stuff we keep getting from Chad. Um, noble staff in the FSB?! The *FSB* using Western standards?! Of course I don't think any of the kind. But I also don't think every tragedy is a KGB-style plot. Sometimes there are accidents and tragedies. There is human agency in the Odessa fire, and both sides in the conflict are involved, but I do not believe either side intended for 40 people to die in a fire, nor was it a "false flag" scripted from start to finish in Moscow. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE FOR THAT. The preponderance of evidence supplied so far by sincere people trying to get to the bottom of the story show both sides at fault -- and in my view, the pro-Russians who actually shot and killed people to start with are most at fault, and the context is of course the entire Russian invasion and "hybrid war" that is at fault. But I don't believe the Russians killed their own supporters deliberately. And it's my right not to believe in contrived conspiracy theories, and my failure not to believe in contrived conspiracy theories doesn't mean I'm a tool of Moscow.
  
  Here's the thing: If you stand up to his nonsense even once, Chad continues to harass and bully and up the ante with even more wild, crazy claims about you in every round. My long-time record opposing the Kremlin and of course the KGB and all its successors stands, and the rantings of Chad can't undo that. There's plenty of evidence of how badly the Russians handled Dubrovka and Beslan -- reams of it, by people I respect, independent journalists in Russia and the US. But there isn't anything of that nature on the Odessa fire. That's all there is to it. It hasn't been increased by having idle speculation from Chad.
  
  It certainly isn't "irresponsible" to say there isn't any evidence that the FSB stage-managed the Odessa fire. Again, the FSB stage-managed the entire invasion of Ukraine and of course are involved in many incidents of provocations and even terrorism. But this particular story, while it involves likely Russian-backed provocateurs who did the shooting of the soccer fans (how would they get arms otherwise?), likely does NOT involve a deliberate murder by the FSB of 40 of their own pro-Russian supporters in a "false flag" operation. Again, it's a conspiracy theory to claim otherwise.
  
  I do want to point out to readers -- and managers of this group if there are any -- that Chad is making utterly unsupportable and even libelous claims about my positions merely out of spite and spleen because I once stood up to his rude nastiness in another group -- and held my ground through his many rounds of creepy obsessive bile. Chad's material is exaggerated, and I can and will oppose it when I see it. Doing so doesn't mean I'm a tool of the Kremlin, a Kremlin sympathizer, an agent of influence, a wide-eyed naif or anything of the source. I just think you have to have facts to challenge the Kremlin successfully.
  
  When people like Chad persist and persist with hysterical and vile claims about people on the same side of the issue they are supposedly on, I'll tell you the conspiracy theory that sure gets legs: that they are the ones who are Moscow provocateurs. So I'd advise Chad to knock it off.

  8 days ago

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  Anton Andrianov

  Dear Catherine,
  This is the quote from your post above, my apologies I have interpreted the way I did re. a dozen ppl:
  "Anton Andrianov just a quick answer -- the Newsweek article is speculative and not grounded in facts. You seem to say it's ok because they need to sell newspapers, essentially. Except, the field is so narrow and the interest narrow that to imagine that any of these stories sell newspapers doesn't seem to hold up as a concept."

  8 days ago

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  Charles Bennett

  Would it not be better to stop this acrimonious discussion which seems to be futile and leading nowhere, and to accept that people can have differing perspectives and approaches while still having complete integrity and a valid understanding of the situation?
  
  If all in this group have the interests and security of Ukraine at heart what is the purpose of spiteful personal attacks?
  
  It is all getting rather like an argument over 'how many 'little green men' can dance on the turret of an (unmarked) Russian tank' - to adapt an old saying ['How many Angels can dance on the head of a pin' - as academic theological disputes of no real value or importance were described] about ultimately meaningless theoretical discussions!

  8 days ago

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  Anton Andrianov

  'Doing so doesn't mean I'm a tool of the Kremlin, a Kremlin sympathizer, an agent of influence, a wide-eyed naif or anything of the source.'
  I don't believe anyone thinks that, incl. Chad.
  I do read and like your pieces, but still do not understand you go going ballistic each and every time.
  PS: BTW, I will look for a presentation I got from the Kremlin PolSci consultants in early April last year, which may change your mind re. the planning of the May 2, 2015, event. Will revert tomorrow,

  8 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  Anton, is English your native language? You don't seem to grasp what is being said here. There is nothing in my statement that says "there isn't any interest in Odessa" or "I don't think anyone should care about Odessa". It's a statement of fact about something else: the interests of the American general audience reading news magazines. THAT audience indeed cares about domestic stories and entertainment and celebrities way more than they care about the war in Ukraine. It doesn't matter that there is a huge Ukrainian diaspora in the US -- which yes, is likely the largest in the world. Add to that the Poles, Russians and many more. They still don't make up the GENERAL mass audience of the US. The war in Ukraine, sadly, is not front-page news. Sometimes it is; sometimes the number of wire stories visible on Yahoo news page makes it seem like it is; sometimes it seems to *us* that it is because we follow it closely. But the reality is, the entire region, and specifically the war in Ukraine falls way after Yemen, Iran, the Middle East in broad interest level -- and in fact ALL foreign news falls WAY down the list after other domestic news, especially the light variety. The reason so many news media closed foreign bureaus is not only because of the expense but the lack of interest -- which then becomes a vicious circle. This is a very basic truth of the news industry of the last 20 years, and if you don't know about it, you're either not in the US or not in the news business or just not even reading general articles about this problem. Once again, the purpose of Max Tucker or some of the other authors in writing these sensational pieces isn't "to sell magazines" because it doesn't -- there isn't the mass interest in the topic to enable them to do that. On the contrary, they get away with it because Newsweek needs cheap freelancers to fill up its copy spaces and because there's at least some interest in the war in Ukraine and Putin's antics, they keep the pot boiling with stuff like that. It's also a subset of the IBT strategy for news -- they're the owners.
  
  I realize it can feel terribly aggressive when *women* and especially *older women* talk back, Anton, but I'm free to do so. There's nothing "ballistic" here. There is a firm pushback to all the arrant nonsense and rabid idiocy that Chad is peddling here.
  
  And Charles, nobody likes the "can't we all get along" pablum in a debate like this. These are real issues and people have real reasons for disagreeing about them, and free speech is essential to maintain when you are dealing with a closed society where news is suppressed in places in the former Soviet Union. Whining about the form this speech takes is unproductive and demanding levels of civility merely suppresses speech and usually comes with an agenda.
  
  This group's threads are structured in such a way that you never have to go and read one you're not interested in. You can unclick "send me an email for each new comment" and never have it scar your eyeballs again. With that kind of structure it's really unreasonable to intervene and try to silence people.

  8 days ago

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  Anton Andrianov

  Catherine, I apologized and am sorry if it sounded ironic judging by your IMHO unwarranted reaction.

  8 days ago

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  Charles Bennett

  I shall certainly not waste any more time reading intemperate egotistical rantings.

  8 days ago

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  Antonio Barbosa

  Catherine...
  
  "I realize it can feel terribly aggressive when *women* and especially *older women* talk back, Anton, but I'm free to do so. There's nothing "ballistic" here. There is a firm pushback to all the arrant nonsense and rabid idiocy that Chad is peddling here."
  
  I must confess I am puzzled. I have only known Anton for a few months and only online but he has not made any sexist remark nor has he made any personal attack on anyone... actually he has apologized to me twice for showing frustration on a couple of replies that were so polite I couldn't see any bad thing on them (and that was after news of friends returning from the front line and after hearing of casualties). And no, his native language is not English and neither is mine... and that is the case of another 6 billion people. I live in London and have done so for 15 years but I do realize that I may miss minor linguistic details and undertones but Anton lives in Ukraine...
  
  I do understand that this world sometimes is not easy on women professionals but I grew up mostly surrounded by women (mother, sister, grandmother, two aunts and their 4 daughters... and my father) and I see no difference between the two sexes when work is concerned and I will not tolerate any of that here. If you have any issues with sexism in UN I will deal with that there and then and swiftly believe you me... but I have not seen any of that here and I think it is time to accept people's apologies for any misconstrued comments.
  
  I will be in Odessa again on the 6th and for a few days. If anyone wants me to check anything or if you are around for a glass of wine or beer or a cup of coffee I would be glad to know the person behind the screen.

  7 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  Antonio,
  
  Although meta discussions about form and tone of speech are always boring when there is the much more urgent subject of the topic itself, I'm going to belabor this point here because I think you need to go over this again and realize what the story is better.
  
  a) there's nothing "ballistic" in my firm remarks. There is no swear words, no exclamation marks, no ad hominem attacks or any of the other real or imagined forums sins. That's why I'm challenging what Anton says, and pointing out that it can sometimes feel as if something is "ballistic" only because someone pushes back on your arguments and doesn't agree with you. Indeed, perhaps Anton might want to examine his own words to see if they are exaggerated and inflammatory -- when people say things like "you went off" and "shithole" -- maybe they're the ballistic ones? Hello?
  
  If you can't see how claiming someone is "ballistic" when they are merely defending point of view and disagreeing with a *false rendering* of what they've said, I can't help you.
  
  Again, impugning evil to someone -- that they think the troubles of Odessa aren't interesting or that they shouldn't be interesting -- is something that gets a pushback. To return you to the actual subject matter: Anton believed that perhaps Max Tucker was "selling newspapers" i.e. writing something sensational to get views, ad clicks, etc. And I simply explained that Ukraine/Odessa is not such a high-traffic news topic in general in a news magazine such as to craft a belief that someone is writing sensational material around it just for click bait. I said simply it has a narrow interest, which it does. Millions of Ukrainian diaspora in American don't change that.
  
  I said:
  
  the field is so narrow and the interest narrow that to imagine that any of these stories sell newspapers doesn't seem to hold up as a concept."
  
  So it's a statement merely about *relative* news interest. It says nothing about *my* view nor does it say anything bad about Odessa -- it just says that interest is narrow. That's it. It's a proven fact that Americans might focus on Iran or Israel/Palestine but Ukraine is of less interest.
  
  And from that he took umbrage and said in exaggerated and even outraged fashion:
  
  "Catherine, you went off on the news re. Odesa, yet I do not understand why.
  
  Unlike you, we work in Odesa and need to do business and this piece did strike me as unfairly describing the situation.
  
  Also, I believe that Odesa is interesting to more than a dozen of ppl. as you have wrongly mentioned (I am sorry).
  
  So - Odesa is not exactly a shit hole that no one is interested in. Sorry, for my Italian...
  
  PS: I also understand that few ppl know the country that has the largest permanently residing Ukrainian diaspora?"
  
  So do you see what happened there?
  
  * he's attributing to me judgmental, hateful language like "shithole" which isn't remotely like anything I've said in the phrase "narrow interest."
  
  * he's attributing a claim that "only 12 people" are interested when I didn't say that, I merely said "narrow," i.e. a niche.
  
  Can you see this? HE is the problem there in that sort of false and tendentious rendering of what I've said, not my pushing back firmly to set him straight on what I said.
  
  And that's what I mean about women seeming "aggressive". He can get away claiming I called Odessa a "shithole" when I didn't remotely say any such thing; Chad can get away calling me "irresponsible" (!!) because I simply believe the Ukrainian authorities re: the toxic gas issue and yet if I counter these tendentious statements, I'm the aggressive one.
  
  Oh, well. I really don't need to be in groups like this. They always have these pernicious features of moderators over-moderating the wrong people and remaining blind to inflammatory speech of their friends. It doesn't matter.
  
  Odessa is not being invaded, not today or next week. The Ukrainian authorities rounded up 12 provocateurs today, good for them.

  7 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  @Chad Nagle
  
  I've been wondering what's going on here. Your angry and vicious reply to me in RIAC was all out of proportion given my simple, basic factual questioning of the "helicopters/coup" story -- that didn't have merit -- and my puzzlement about a blog post that seemed to be written by two different people (a matter easily cleared up).
  
  A simple pushback on your boosting of this provocative Newsweek piece claiming an imminent invasion of Odessa at a time when everyone from Secretary of State John Kerry to NATO's Philip Breedlove to the Ukrainian army spokesmen are talking about a buildup in Rostov also seemed odd.
  
  Then I get a flamewar in this thread from your friends -- and an enormous volume of invective in private emails from your close colleague Maria Costello.
  
  What's up?
  
  You were active in the British Helsinki Human Rights Group for a number of years, which many of us knew from the 1990s as a pro-Soviet front group which supported Milosevic and never found fault with the elections of tyrants in Eurasia.
  
  You have numerous anti-American pieces and anti-Soros posts that show a real hatred of the very liberals who have supported Ukraine through several revolutions.
  
  @Anton Shekhovtsov has a good article which explains the pro-Russian network on which the BHHRG functioned:
  
  http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.com/2014/02/pro-russian-network-behind-anti.html
  
  He also calls out the Centre for Research on Globalization -- a notorious pro-Moscow site you've written for in the past.
  
  You described Yanukovych as an "effective manager" on Counterpunch, another publication also taking the Moscow line much of the time.
  
  So did you change your views when you began to shed your Antiwar.com image (another site of provocateurs and disinformation) some time ago and switched to the Hetmanate site?
  
  Or are you just being selective about what you present here?

  5 days ago

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  Antonio Barbosa

  Catherine,
  
  I will reply to your message to me with your own post.
  
  "Although meta discussions about form and tone of speech are always boring when there is the much more urgent subject of the topic itself, I'm going to belabor this point here because I think you need to go over this again and realize what the story is better."
  
  Firstly I find strange that a writer should not consider tone of speech important and downright boring. And secondly cannot understand the concept of opinion.
  
  When I replied to you earlier I did say that we all had the same opinion regarding Ukraine and Putin. If you didn't think that this Newsweek was adequate you could have just said so without making it an attack on Chad and then become defensive (even using the sexism card).
  
  
  "a) there's nothing "ballistic" in my firm remarks. There is no swear words, no exclamation marks, no ad hominem attacks or any of the other real or imagined forums sins. "
  
  Again, for some who writes and must understand the importance of both context, culture and linguistics you would also see that Anton didn't use swear words, no exclamation marks no ad hominem attacks real or imaginary and he actually (and this is the part of contextualising and understanding that English is not the most spoken language in the world nor is Anglo Saxon culture of the "American variety" the only acceptable culture and world views) was quite mild in his comment and indeed even apologised in advance for some words he used that were done to highlight a point and hoping you understand so and wouldn't take him literally or negatively.
  
  "That's why I'm challenging what Anton says, and pointing out that it can sometimes feel as if something is "ballistic" only because someone pushes back on your arguments and doesn't agree with you. "
  
  Hence the word "sorry" in his comment even for using a specific word but you made no effort to understand that.
  
  "Indeed, perhaps Anton might want to examine his own words to see if they are exaggerated and inflammatory -- when people say things like "you went off" and "shithole" -- maybe they're the ballistic ones? Hello?"
  
  Taking them out of context won't help definitely.
  
  "If you can't see how claiming someone is "ballistic" when they are merely defending point of view and disagreeing with a *false rendering* of what they've said, I can't help you."
  
  The ballistic part (I am assuming) was the tone used when agreeing with someone that there is a risk of invasion but not on the city mentioned. Again agreeing with someone but using the tone you did on Chad was uncalled for but even the replies you got were quite mild... For someone who was not in a defensive mode. Which I don't believe anyone needs to be in this group as we don't tolerate personal attacks and we do tend to warn people when we see that coming. It is a group of people that have Ukraine at heart and that is a link that makes the difference as we all believe Ukraine has been invaded by Russia.

  4 days ago

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  Antonio Barbosa

  (Cont.)
  "Again, impugning evil to someone -- that they think the troubles of Odessa aren't interesting or that they shouldn't be interesting -- is something that gets a pushback. To return you to the actual subject matter: Anton believed that perhaps Max Tucker was "selling newspapers" i.e. writing something sensational to get views, ad clicks, etc. "
  
  And he is... Most are. That is how writers make their living. The difference between writers is the integrity or professionalism. Some are better than others and there is no such thing as integrity (just nationalism) in Russian media (or most of it at least).
  
  
  "And I simply explained that Ukraine/Odessa is not such a high-traffic news topic in general in a news magazine such as to craft a belief that someone is writing sensational material around it just for click bait."
  
  And he disagreed by saying that Odessa is not any shithole (and apologised for his "Italian" which was an obvious light hearted comment based on the very English "Pardon my French" when using a swear word in a non confrontational situation. I doubt you don't know this...
  
  "I said simply it has a narrow interest, which it does. Millions of Ukrainian diaspora in American don't change that."
  
  A few million in Diaspora, a few million in Ukraine, and a few million interested in this conflict like we are, and a few million curious people... If even a small percentage of that buys or reads the magazine it is already worth it. Being a writer you would know that. How many followers do you have on your blogs.
  
  I can tell you that Anton is (was?) one of them as you missed his comment where he said he reads your articles and likes them...

  4 days ago

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  Antonio Barbosa

  (Cont.)
  "I said:
  
  the field is so narrow and the interest narrow that to imagine that any of these stories sell newspapers doesn't seem to hold up as a concept."
  
  So it's a statement merely about *relative* news interest. It says nothing about *my* view nor does it say anything bad about Odessa -- it just says that interest is narrow. That's it. It's a proven fact that Americans might focus on Iran or Israel/Palestine but Ukraine is of less interest."
  
  And you could have highlighted that as your opinion against Anton's (or even Chad's or Alan's... Or Maria's... Or even my opinion and that of those here). But you got defensive attacking two contributors to the group and (to me at least) used a sexism card.
  
  "And from that he took umbrage and said in exaggerated and even outraged fashion:"
  
  You copied Anton's comments and they are available in the thread... And then said:
  
  
  "* he's attributing to me judgmental, hateful language like "shithole" which isn't remotely like anything I've said in the phrase "narrow interest." "
  
  Let me place here the full sentence and avoid you removing the word out of context:
  "So - Odesa is not exactly a shit hole that no one is interested in. Sorry, for my Italian..." Does this sentence seem aggressive to you? Would an aggressive person use "sorry" and an attempt at humour?
  
  "* he's attributing a claim that "only 12 people" are interested when I didn't say that, I merely said "narrow," i.e. a niche."
  
  Let me again place things into context:
  "Also, I believe that Odesa is interesting to more than a dozen of ppl. as you have wrongly mentioned (I am sorry)."
  Do you speak Russian and is it your native language?
  Do you understand that other people, like myself, due to our language and culture would use "a dozen" to refer to a number that not being large is not "one" or "two" to refer to what you call "a niche" and not 12 people? Which would be silly considering the context of this discussion? And would you see any aggression or ill will when someone uses sorry in advance to tell its interlocutor in advance of its peaceful intentions and lack of desire to cause offence?
  
  "Can you see this? HE is the problem there in that sort of false and tendentious rendering of what I've said, not my pushing back firmly to set him straight on what I said."
  
  Based on this answer and contextualising the comments... Would you still say the same?
  
  "And that's what I mean about women seeming "aggressive". He can get away claiming I called Odessa a "shithole" when I didn't remotely say any such thing; Chad can get away calling me "irresponsible" (!!) because I simply believe the Ukrainian authorities re: the toxic gas issue and yet if I counter these tendentious statements, I'm the aggressive one."
  
  He didn't claim it as he projected and it was understood by others. And he did so to make a point and his use of the word "sorry" to forewarn you it was not meant in any bad or aggressive way whatsoever should have given you a hint...

  4 days ago

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  Antonio Barbosa

  (Cont.)
  
  "Oh, well. I really don't need to be in groups like this. "
  
  Up to you. We look for good people and good comments but also not too happy at uncalled for attacks on others. We can and should disagree when it is time to do so but there is no need to become aggressive.
  
  "They always have these pernicious features of moderators over-moderating the wrong people and remaining blind to inflammatory speech of their friends. It doesn't matter."
  
  I know most people here not more than a few weeks or months. I respect quite a few for their comments, ideas and posture and Anton is one of them. As for over-moderating I wouldn't know what you are referring to. All your comments are here bar one which is in my moderation queue as flagged "inappropriate" by another person who considered your post aggressive and uncalled for. I haven't deleted it or released it as I wanted to be able to speak to you first and reply to your message to me.
  
  
  "Odessa is not being invaded, not today or next week. The Ukrainian authorities rounded up 12 provocateurs today, good for them. "
  
  Good because I have been in war zones and I have had far too much of that and prefer peace and I will be there again in a few days.
  
  PS - I met personally Anton Shekhovstov and Andreas Umland a few weeks ago in London and they are both great in their knowledge and their willingness to share with others and their posture. And most people in this group thinks the same I believe, so thank you for your posterior link to one of his articles.

  4 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  
  Antonio,
  
  Chad has a pattern of exaggerating events in Ukraine and adding in conspiratorial tilts to them; given his past history on antiwar.com and the British Helsinki Human Rights Group (BHHRG) and even globalresearch.ca, all cites that take pro-Kremlin views, it's more than fine to ask why he is pursuing a provocative agenda. You haven't addressed those concerns. Anton Shevkhovtsev in fact knows a lot about the BHHRG and can explain to you the facts here if you don't want to hear them from me.
  
  There has not been any invasion of Odessa.
  
  Meanwhile, the real build-up is in Rostov, with even Russian military convoys going into Lugansk and Donetsk under the guise of the Victory Day parade. So it's important not to be distracted from these events by hypotheticals.
  
  My statement "the field is so narrow and the interest narrow that to imagine that any of these stories sell newspapers doesn't seem to hold up as a concept" is not an incendiary or biased or hateful statement. It's a true statement. It's a statement not directed at anyone's view of Odessa; it's stated so as to refute the notion that Max Tucker or Damien Sharkov write what they do to sell newpspapers (or click ads). They don't. They are ideologically driven and also looking to maintain provocative public personas not for monetary gain or clicks but for ideological influence -- that's different. While Damien appears to be a full-time staff writer, Max Tucker is a freelancer and is paid once for an article and it doens't matter how many clicks there are.
  
  You don't seem to be aware that the term "shithole" *is* a swear word, and vulgar speech. And saying "sorry" in advance of using such exaggerated, venomous speech doesn't exonerate it, that's ridiculous.
  
  And I didn't miss Anton's comment that he liked my articles nor his later apology, after his beat-down, of course. However his continued defense of his over-reaction about what was not an insult to Odessa -- and your continued agitation over this -- are misconstrued, misplaced and misdirected.
  
  You don't seem to grasp that all of the over-the-top reactions to my very factual and non-insulting language describing a fact of life about American news audiences -- even with millions of Ukrainians -- are in fact a gross attack on me, and I fight back with attacks like that. Your continued obsession is also an attack, of course. I don't mind attacks at all. I don't require any action about them. What I do mind is when I fight back against obvious, repeated attacks and then I'm somehow characterized as the aggressor -- that's ridiculous. And I can and will invoke sexism/agism as a possible motivation when that happens in a thread like this, although I myself am not a feminist and don't care about these things as a rule.

  3 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  The Typepad follower system on my blog isn't used very much by anybody, even ardent Typepad followers, but my unique visitors every day can vary from 500 to 7000. It's definitely a little niche blog. My Twitter followers are about 2900.
  
  As for number of followers, who is more important than whom, etc. etc. I cited the following statistics to Maria Costello in a personal email (itself an outrageous set of communications) and she only made even more crazy allegations about their citation so I'll explain in advance:
  
  Differences between one million and twelve million on Alexa mean nothing. Both blogs are niche blogs in those levels. Differences even between 300,000 or 1 million or 12 million don't mean much. It's only in the top 100,000 where it matters. Even so, it's something to look at and think about. The top ranking of LinkedIn isn't a ranking for *this group's* metrics which aren't possible to break out. But what this comparison tells me is simple. How can I best respond to Max Tucker's exaggerated complaints? On Newsweek itself, using Facebook because my own blog or even my workplace column will never get as much attention. That's all there is to it. So that's where I generally concentrate my efforts, not in groups like this, and especially not in meta-discussions about he-said, she-said.
  
  Alexa is a web site rating system that people criticize all the time as inadequate, but you can no longer get open Google traffic statistics and this system at least allows you to compare sites *to each other* even if they aren't so accurate. So here you go:
  
  http://3dblogger.typepad.com/minding_russiahttp://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired state
  
  Ranking for global: 1,374,444 Global
  Ranking for US: 360,679
  
  http://newhetmanate.net/author/newhetmanate/
  Ranking for Global (US not available): 12,760,192
  
  http://interpretermag.com
  Ranking for global: 86,093
  Ranking for US: 81,501 US
  
  http://Newsweek.com
  Ranking 4,652 Global
  Ranking 1,724 US
  
  http://Linkedin.com
  Ranking 13 Global
  Ranking 9 US
  
  

  3 days ago

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  Maria Costello

  Thank you, Antonio. I don't want to take this twilight any farther than it needs to go. But I want to make the following points:
  
  Ukraine Network launched to give honest, intelligent, responsible, MATURE people a way to have a PROFESSIONAL conversation in a POSITIVE, COLLEGIAL environment without being harassed by trolls or peers. We will not have our members' loyalty or integrity questioned by those who fancy themselves the pillars of knowledge and Ukrainian patriotism. While we are very liberal in our approach and welcome a lively, healthy debate, we will not tolerate cyber bullying. We are committed to maintaining the standards that our members expect from us and that we expect from ourselves.
  
  Ukraine Network is a chance to connect and make a positive difference. What Ukraine Network is not is a pill box or a high school backyard. The only "ism" that applies to our group is PROFESSIONALISM. Understandably, the tensions are high. The situation in Donbas is extremely volatile and unpredictable as there are reports of impending large-scale offensives. Putin will NOT stop because he can't, nor does he have to. So far we've seen fighting in places such as Donetsk, Luhansk, Debaltseve, Mariupol, Shchastya, Shyrokyne, Horlivka. More fighting in Donetsk and heavy equipment accumulations in Luhansk. Who's to say Odessa's not next?
  
  We read, analyze, discuss, bringing our unique experiences to make the most accurate prediction. Should we be able to back it up? Ideally, yes. But there are going to be times when we have to rely on limited or conflicting information which is where instincts kick in. There's enough credibility in this group to not have to turn it into places we've tried so hard to avoid. Nobody has the crystal ball and this is not a contest. What's important is that everybody here wants to help Ukraine (and Russia) get wherever they need to get to in order to propel each other or at least be able to function independently and on civilized terms instead of this dysfunction and codependence. Just because somebody thinks the FSB was behind the Odessa fire doesn't make them a Russophobe. Just because somebody is critical of Poroshenko's govt. doesn't make them anti-Ukrainian. I got a tip from a source close to Kabaeva that Putin was indeed in Switzerland witnessing the birth of yet another one of his spawn. Can I prove it? No. Can't reveal the source either. But I trust the information. Putin keeps his private life out of spotlight. Does it make everybody who thought he was dead or that the coup was in the making a conspiracy theorist?
  
  No.

  2 days ago

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  Maria Costello

  We are mindful of the sources, especially considering the amount of lobbying that goes into poisoning our information supply. Personally, I'm not married to any one source and pay more attention to the contributor and of course the content, always thinking about the angle. The Newsweek piece didn't seem any more "alarmist" to me than anything else. I thought it was well-argued. Not that long ago Adomanis, one of Putin's useful idiots who sometimes writes for Forbes (!) used Odessa and Kharkiv (!!) poll to illustrate UKRAINE's opposition to joining NATO. Of course Putin is going to stoke and exploit pro-Russian sentiment and then use his idiots to spin the data.
  
  http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2014/09/23/ukrainians-still-dont-want-to-join-nato/
  
  Newsweek isn't one of my frequently read publications but from what I've seen it's just as susceptible to Kremlin propaganda as, say, Forbes, FPJ, AP, NYT and even Stratfor. They all publish morons like Cohen, Maavak, Bandow, Ganske and Adomanis. And even if Newsweek WERE a Kremlin mouthpiece there is no reason for dismissing it completely unless it's all they run, and still come in handy to see the kind of crap the trolls are being fed. The Guardian is KGB's beloved publication yet it doesn't mean they don't run credible stories. Same with the Nation. They've both published some excellent anti-Bush stories. Now, things like Global Research, Information Clearing House, Counter Punch and Zero Hedge are a different story.
  
  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/07/stephen_cohen_vladimir_putin_s_apologist_the_nation_just_published_the_most.2.html
  
  vs.
  
  http://www.thenation.com/article/180292/george-w-bushs-legacy-alive-and-well-iraq#
  
  Sensational headlines? Sure! From my brief exposure to the publishing industry, I recall daily hallway gatherings of the editorial and marketing staff where we had to stare at a myriad of headlines pinned to the cubicle wall and vote for the catchiest one. Drama sells.
  
  Yes, Newsweek's published some crap:
  
  http://www.newsweek.com/why-would-putin-shoot-down-plane-259838?piano_t=1
  
  But they've also run some excellent stories:
  
  http://europe.newsweek.com/tv/russian-soldiers-reveal-truth-behind-putins-secret-war-269227-19
  
  It was there, I saw it!
  
  http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine-abroad/newsweek-russian-soldiers-reveal-the-truth-behind-putins-secret-war-364204.html
  
  Nope. Page not found...Hmm...Where'd THAT story go?
  
  Maybe this explains it:
  
  http://www.examiner.com/article/newsweek-falls-prey-to-russian-propaganda
  
  Bottom line: we all have an opinion which isn't any more or less valuable than any other. As Catherine's profile states "I am an independent thinker. My views are my own. Are yours?"
  
  Yes, they are. That doesn't mean opinions don't change. But one thing's clear to me: everyone here is more than capable of accounting for the choices they make and the views they hold.
  
  So, let's not try to force our opinions on to others by calling anybody who disagrees with you "provocateur," "dumb," "grade A asshole" or "lying tendentious twit." Let's not degrade other people's ideas, backgrounds and livelihoods or project one's own insecurities on to others, go on self-righteous crusades by selectively taking things out of context and stirring unnecessary drama.
  
  Membership in Ukraine Network is completely voluntary. The criteria has been spelled out. If somebody doesn't feel like this group is worth their time or effort, it's their choice. We aren't here to impress anyone, prove ourselves or compete for a ranking. We're here because we want to be.
  
  Learning is a journey - not a destination.

  2 days ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  Maria:
  
  1. Nothing you say about "professionalism" will ever be persuasive because of the outrageous way in which you communicate to people publicly and the even more appalling nature of your private communications. Please do publish them because they will make that point more eloquently than I could ever do.
  
  1. I notice you completely dodged the question of Chad Nagle's past publishing in a number of dodgy pro-Kremlin sites or even outright Kremlin front groups. That's odd. Indeed he has played the role of a provocateur by writing for globalresearch.ca or antiwar or being in the British Helsinki Group. These are all known quantities that are of tremendous concern. That you'd try to twist legitimate and valid calling out of these sites as itself some sort of "civility" sin lets me know what you're all about, once again. There is nothing self-righteous or crusading about calling out someone who says the election for Yanukovych was "free and fair" and that he was "an excellent manager." These are self-evident facts and your curios deflection of them says something about you, not me.
  
  I do find it tremendously hilarious that my characterization of Chad as a "grade-A asshole" due to his tendentious interventions and attacks on me -- made in private correspondence -- are "outed" here without an equal and opposite outing of *your own* characterization of me as "a number one asshole." TRULY funny, "Maria Costello."
  
  Unlike you, however, I say the same thing privately as I do publically and it's impossible to threaten me or name and shame me by "outing" my emails LOL. Seriously, grow up.
  
  1. Newsweek's pieces can readily be seen as sensational, sloppily researched and tendentious and most Ukraine watchers have understood this. I'm not getting your tenacity on defending them but I guess it's because Chad once knew a guy there or something.
  
  Where I once might not have bothered with this group, now that I see a certain agenda at work I will definitely bother and will push back when I feel it is necessary.
  
  Let me note again that Odessa has not been invaded. The tanks and Strela-10s and all the rest are in Makeyevka, Donetsk and Lugansk,

  2 days ago

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  Maria Costello

  Ещё не вечер LOL.
  
  Catherine,
  
  What exactly is your purpose of being in Ukraine Network? My purpose, as stated above, is to share and grow with likeminded individuals and hope to make a positive impact. Do you know the meaning of any of these words? Because everything you've done since the moment you realized this was no RIAC was try and impose your views, antagonize and pit people against each other with your aggressive tone and unwarranted attacks. Your countless emails to me which had an overarching theme "DO YOU SEE THAT CHAD IS AN ASSHOLE YET?" have backfired big time. After I put things back into context for you - much like Antonio has done - and exposed your hypocrisy I basically told you the only asshole here is you. Did I attack you? No. I defended myself and the people in this group for whom I have respect and who have given me no reason for doubt. So, yes, Catherine, I called you an asshole because for all those times you've used that term (and others) against members of our group, I thought you needed a little reality check. You gave me an Alexa ranking for Chad's vs. your blogs and for Newsweek vs. Interpretermag (which was just about as absurd and out of place as your comment about my profile "You didn't go to Harvard") so I only thought it fitting to give you a Maria Costello ranking for asshole. Now you get to take another word out of context and parade it as evidence of injustice.
  
  Both Anton and I complimented you on your Interpretermag work and even then you managed to accuse me of "disgusting Sovok-style combination of flattery and bullying" and "gross insincerity" even though I did no such thing. You then accused me of being insecure while it's you who can't even take a compliment without getting paranoid about ulterior motives. I told you flat out that as much as I enjoy your work, I find your attitude extremely off putting. My opinion hasn't changed.
  
  I'm more than happy to share our correspondence. Antonio has already seen it. Remember: YOU approached me. YOU initiated this drama. YOU provoked the reaction from myself and others. After I refused to subscribe to your conspiracy theories about Chad, you began attacking me both personally and professionally and disconnected from me because I wouldn't take any of your crap. Every single word in your emails, every accusation you threw at me was a reflection of your own deeper issues. You are "pushing back" against imaginary things. Nobody's done anything to you. And the sex card? Ridiculous. Look at who's running the group and who's contributing. Myself, Tetyana, Marina, Veronica. And the guys - Antonio, Chad, Anton - best ones I've ever had a pleasure of knowing apart from my own husband. Proud to call them colleagues and friends.

  1 day ago

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  Maria Costello

  Nothing stopped you from approaching Chad directly if you had reservations about his background. I never "dodged" your questions. I said I wasn't getting in the middle between two adults. And I didn't need any of your "warnings" about Chad or anybody else since I'm perfectly capable of forming my own opinions. Not that I owe you any explanations but just to get you off my back - I had never heard of the BHHRG until you brought it up. I know Counterpunch and Global Research are Russian mouthpieces but I had never come across any of Chad's op-eds there. He did say on his blog that he is a contributor. He has communicated with me about his past employment, and I was satisfied with the information. I'm sure he can do the same for you. Again, based on his commentary, I have no reason to question Chad's loyalties. As I told you the second you tried dragging me into your RIAC squabble, I want nothing to do with it. But you'd much rather gossip and speculate. And play victim.
  
  You've brought all of this upon yourself, and you've wasted an extraordinary amount of time trying to vindicate whatever it is you *think* we've done to you. Your outrageous claims and condescending tone screams of the need to belittle others in order to give yourself an ego boost. All this talk of hidden agendas isn't doing you any favors - not personally or professionally. And now my name's in quotation marks?
  
  Indeed, Catherine, it's time to take your own advice and grow up. This group is clearly not what you were expecting. If by any chance anything I've said has held you up, I apologize.

  1 day ago

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• Dear All:
  
  While I do not feel I owe the likes of Catherine Fitzpatrick any explanations about myself, I resent that she has made others feel the need to expend energy in my defense. What an unbelievably tiresome predicament for this unpleasant person to have imposed upon nice people. As such, I thank Maria, but will take it from here.
  
  The bee in Ms. Fitzpatrick’s bonnet stems from an exchange that she and I had in RIAC, in which (without using profanity or high-school epithets), I called her out for what I saw as rudeness and unnecessary belligerence when I was trying to ascertain the truth about the authorship of an article both she and I had posted on our respective blogs. Out of courtesy to her, I took the discussion ‘private’ to clarify matters, at which point she reacted with more of her customary bluster and obfuscation, threatened to publish my comments on her personal blog to ‘deter’ me (an insane notion, as if I had said anything that I would not have said publicly). She announced she was ‘blocking’ me as well. Evidently, she ‘unblocked’ me long enough to jump into this particular discussion and start slinging unpleasantness in every direction. Now that everyone else in this discussion thread has had a sample of what I am confident can be termed rudeness (the core of my original accusation), I trust the others here also believe I know whence I speak.
  
  Yes, I once published a piece in globalresearch. I also published a few pieces in CounterPunch back when Alexander Cockburn was still alive. It should be noted, however, that I published op-eds in the Wall Street Journal Europe, American Conservative, Conservative Review, New York Press, Salisbury Review and other periodicals not generally associated with any ‘pro-Kremlin’ slant (except perhaps by a few fruit loops). Yet evidently Ms. Fitzpatrick’s boast about ‘independent thinking’ does not extend to conceding that some articles published in left-wing sources may occasionally have a valid point to make. I direct attention to a recent post by Andreas Umland on his blog, where he re-blogs a fascinating article from a site called ‘Ukraine Solidarity Campaign,’ which describes itself thus: ‘The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign seeks to organise solidarity and provide information in support of Ukrainian socialists and trade unionists, campaigning for working class, and democratic rights, against imperialist intervention and national chauvinism. It seeks to co-ordinate socialist and labour movement organisations who agree on this task, regardless of differences and opinions on other questions.’ Here is the link to the piece:
  
  https://umland.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/kagarlitsky-the-war-and-political-corruption/
  
  Does that seem ‘suspicious’ to Ms. Fitzpatrick? If so, I – for one – don’t give a damn. If she were to become the ‘ideology secretary’ for UN, I would be out of it in a heartbeat.

  1 day ago

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• [cont.]
  
  As for the (now-inoperative) British Helsinki Human Rights Group (BHHRG), I would suggest that – before she starts slinging labels around like ‘Soviet front’ – that she do a little research first. BHHRG is a registered charity in Britain and thus a legal entity. While I was never a trustee, those who are might take issue with your libelous characterization. BHHRG went against the mainstream grain many times during its existence, and was lambasted in big publications such as The Economist and The Guardian. Those facts, per se, are not enough to form valid indictments, since a lot of rubbish is published in global publications (including Newsweek, as Ms. Fitzpatrick herself would presumably agree). BHHRG was set up in 1991 to investigate human rights and democracy in former Communist countries. It was, incidentally, the only well-known organization whose members criticized the record of Eduard Shevardnadze’s Georgia in the areas of human rights, democracy, due process, prisoners’ rights, corruption and the rule of law at a time when the former Soviet foreign minister was receiving all the highest accolades from Western governments, including the Averell Harriman Medal of Freedom in the US. Were BHHRG’s critiques vindicated by Western governments and media when Shevardnadze was overthrown by an angry mob after more than a decade in power? Unsurprisingly, no, but surely some acknowledgement of ‘independent thought’ is in order. Or is Ms. Fitzpatrick really the final arbiter of ‘independent thought,’ just as she assumes the role of ‘arbiter of truth’ here on Ukraine Network?
  
  BHHRG continued to split apart when many of its members (including myself) opposed the NATO war to separate Kosovo from Yugoslavia in 1999 on the grounds that altering European borders set a dangerous precedent and served no constructive purpose in light of the Kosovar ’ unpreparedness to create a sovereign government. Six months after most Western governments recognized Kosovo as an independent nation-state, Russia and Georgia fought a war over South Ossetia, and Russia quickly recognized both that territory and Abkhazia as independent nation-states, turning both into military protectorates with beefed up armed forces. Was this connected with the Kosovo war and recognition? Did it matter that some Western governments were not on board with the recognition of Kosovo (e.g. Spain and Greece)? Perhaps not, but I think suggesting so is not outside the bounds of reason. The Russians have even gone so far as to analogize the annexation of Crimea with Kosovo, and while this is an invalid analogy, it does not change the dangerous reality of the Russian Anschluss.
  
  By the time of the Russo-Georgian war in 2008, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine was already nearly 4 years old, and Viktor Yushchenko was proving unpopular at home, as many who worked on BHHRG missions predicted he would. Indeed, some had even gone so far as to say that within a year of the Orange Revolution, most Ukrainians wouldn’t even care about him. This turned out to be not far from the truth. Any acknowledgment of ‘independent thought’? Didn’t think so.

  1 day ago

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• [cont.]
  
  More to the point, while I am quite prepared to entertain (in a civilized manner) the notion that good outweighed evil in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, invasion of Iraq, and other events that have been of human rights concern, I am not prepared to engage in shrill, vindictive debate with someone like Ms. Fitzpatrick. Since she has seen fit to describe me to others as an ‘asshole,’ I trust she will agree that I have a right to describe her as a blustering, belligerent cow (and I didn’t even have to use profanity). She is also disingenuous. Her comment above is an example: ‘Your angry and vicious reply to me in RIAC was all out of proportion given my simple, basic factual questioning of the "helicopters/coup" story -- that didn't have merit -- and my puzzlement about a blog post that seemed to be written by two different people (a matter easily cleared up).’ That is not how it went. As I repeatedly tried (to no avail) to explain to her, it was I who was trying to understand why she had initially said there was no attribution to one of the two posts of the same article. The ‘update’ she posted on her blog in the section referring to that article only confirmed my understanding that she did not (at first) know the Livejournal contained an attribution, and she had simply not seen it. No problem, of course. Everyone misses things from time to time in information-overload cyberspace. Only she wasted my time trying to deny she had ever made an oversight, so that I repeatedly had to ask whether we were looking at the same thing to try to get to the truth. I was not pleased. If she interprets our contretemps any differently than what I have just (for the last time) described, then I am sorry, but I am not wasting any more time on it.
  
  As Maria has explained, this forum is not designed for mudslinging, and if you – Ms. Fitzpatrick – want to do that, there are other fora more suitable, such as Ukraine Connections and RIAC. I have nothing to apologize to you for, and I see no inconsistency in my support for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression today. As for you, since you did a certificate program in Leningrad during the Brezhnev era, when the head of the Soviet KGB was Yuri Andropov (an excellent manager, by the way), you may have been brainwashed. That is, having been abducted and re-programmed, you were sent back out into the world, not to be an assassin like Sgt. Raymond Shaw in ‘The Manchurian Candidate,’ but simply to be an anti-Soviet propagandist who would make the very anti-Soviet side you were meant to be on look bad. As such, I urge you to continue your rants far and wide about me being a ‘Soviet agent’ and other claptrap. It might even be to my benefit.
  
  You are not the arbiter of my credentials, and you have no business coming in here and trying to ‘lay down the law.’ I still maintain you are rude, and nothing you have posted in this discussion thread weakens that assertion. I will not waste any more of anyone’s time explaining anything to you.

  1 day ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  @Chad Nagle I followed British Helsinki Human Rights Group far more closely than you realize because I was a founding member of the International Helsinki Foundation which rejected the BHHRG for membership in the 1980s because of its pro-Soviet stance. Indeed it functioned as a Soviet front. The lambast in the Guardian in fact was exactly correct. You're skirting the issue of the outrageous positions it took supporting Milosevic and other tyrants and declaring flawed elections such as the one where Yanukovych was brought to power as "free." You completely fail to address those concerns.
  
  I'm puzzled by the insane hatred of Shevardnaze, whose memoirs I translated. Sure, he was a Soviet bureaucrat and indeed guilty of corruption and human rights violations. But in the context of his time when the Soviet Union was starting its last decade leading to collapse, he was a welcome liberal figure. I didn't find him sincere or persuasive but it doesn't matter; relatively speaking, compared to other Soviet figures like Andropov or even Reshetov, he was easier to deal with more liberal, and US officials appreciated that. He was the one who conceived the "human dimension" concept. That may feel very fake and superficial compared to severe problems Georgia had, but again, compared to the Brezhnev era, it was welcome. It's just sectarian and churlish not to appreciate the perestroika era leaders, although of course being mindful of their limitations.
  
  That Shevardnadze was overthrown by an angry mob doesn't mean anything; angry mobs in Ukraine throw politicians literally in the trash all the time. Angry mobs aren't necessarily right.
  
  Calling out the blatant Soviet fellow travelers of the 1980s and 1990s is hardly pretending that I am the "last arbiter of independent thought." This is typical of the vicious hyperbole that we can always expect from Chad.
  
  Taking the pro-Kremlin position on Kosovo hardly makes you a credible activist on Ukraine. Do you believe the Crimea and the Donbass should be annexed as well? I've got news for you: Europe's borders already altered. They altered with the collapse of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany; the altered when the Soviet Union collapsed and the republics became sovereign. There isn't any moral equivalent between Kosovo and Abkhazia. Any one looking at this in good faith can recognize the difference:
  
  o Serbia had decades of severe human rights violations in Kosovo -- I worked on a Yugoslavia human rights committee in the 1980s and we documented how Kosovars did not have radio broadcasting and education in their own language, which set up the years of resistance.
  
  o Kosovo gained its independence over time, with an international process, with the UN and OSCE involved.
  
  o By contrast, Russia began provocatively to hand out passports in Abkhazia and South Ossetia despite OSCE's demand not to do this, and instigated a war, whatever one wants to yammer on about Georgia's "hotheaded" complicity. Russia buzzed the airspace; Russia provoked; Russia had fake peace-keepers. If you don't see how Russia is to blame for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, I have to wonder what your intellectual grounds are for claiming you're a free Ukraine activist. Or maybe you aren't?
  
  o Kosovo is recognized by most Western powers. No Western power has recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
  
  Small wonder the Orange Revolution ran into trouble when Yushchenko was poisoned by the Russians, when Gleb Pavlovsky and other agents of influence and provocateurs endlessly intrigued against Ukraine.
  
  Your entire intervention here distracts from the bad positions you took, on websites notorious for their pro-Kremlin positions. I'll have to conclude your efforts here are some sort of influence or disinformation operation as well.

  22 hours ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  @Maria Costello As usual, your comments are beside the point, meant to distract, and groundless. Of course I wouldn't contact Chad privately about these concerns because they're not private concerns and I don't need any private relationship with Chad. They are public concerns about what a person with this profile is doing in a group like this. If you never came across these groups or Chad's pieces on these sites, you must never have looked at his LinkedIn profile or done a cursory Google search.
  
  BTW, here's a link to the RIAC interaction so readers can decide for themselves:
  http://3dblogger.typepad.com/minding_russia/2015/04/chad-nagle.html
  
  A reminder that the Russians have not invaded Odessa.

  22 hours ago

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  Maria Costello

  Catherine,
  
  I don't know how things are run at the Interpretermag, the types of personalities you're used to dealing with and what constitutes an acceptable way to treat your colleagues. We've tried to reason with you and explain to you how this group works. However, you continuously ignore the basic principles of civilized conversation and seem determined to derail, demoralize, sew chaos, confusion and discord. According to Peter Pomerantsev, these are all tell-tale signs of Russian propaganda which you supposedly so vehemently oppose. An even more basic Wikipedia definition would have you pegged for a troll.
  
  May my canine friends forgive me for this analogy, but like a dog with a bone, you continue to chase shadows to try and discredit Chad. You bring up his past affiliations which have been sufficiently addressed, and twist his arguments to fit your pre-existing narrative of a hidden agenda. Admit it, Catherine: you just can't deal with another strong writer and subject matter expert. You can't deal with a group of intelligent, confident, dedicated individuals who can stand their ground. Which is why you've positioned yourself vs. everybody else from the start. Either you subscribe to Catherine's conspiracy theories or you're a 'mediocrity.' You've pulled every stop from 'asshole' and 'insecure male' to now a 'Russian asset.'
  
  I find your obsessive pursuits petty, vain and counter-productive. But since you've made a number of absurd accusations such as calling Chad an agent of influence and disinformant, I want you to point out specific examples of Chad's comments - made in this group, on RIAC, in his blog or elsewhere - that would lead you to such outrageous conclusions.

  20 hours ago

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  Maria Costello

  Catherine,
  
  You've just pasted a link to your copy of RIAC's thread in order to completely derail this thread and drag EVERYONE here into your squabble with "insecure grade A asshole Russian agent" Chad. A squabble which happened over an attribution. And MY comments are "beside the point, meant to distract and groundless?" My God, woman. Get a grip!

  20 hours ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  "Maria Costello," the web site where I work is irrelevant to this conversation. Your notion that you've been reasonable is completely laughable. Publish the correspondence and anyone can see that. I've raised legitimate questions about Chad's profile on the Internet and asked if he is some kind of deliberate provocateur because all of the articles, web sites and groups he has been affiliated with constitute grounds for concern. I don't need to provide examples because I already did -- just Google all his articles unless he's busy deleting them. People can behave as provocateurs not necessarily because they are "Russian assets" but because they are heavily ideological and manipulative as personalities and believe they are running international movements with themselves and their friends in charge and have to prevail.
  
  Every single thing I've pointed out here is a legitimate issue and anyone outside your little posse knows this. We also know next to nothing about you -- you have no online profile whatsoever, beyond a few posts on LinkedIn. So those two things together -- Chad's odd pro-Kremlin affiliations and your lack of a profile -- tend to invite suspicion.
  
  Of course nobody who false under such suspicion is going to confirm the concerns -- they will either vigorously deny them or seek to distract from them or both.

  19 hours ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  1. I have no need to "prevail" in any group, least of all RIAC.
  
  1. I've articulated legitimate concerns about this group given the profiles of the most active poster and the absence of profile of yourself as convener. These are normal and legitimate concerns and your efforts to pretend otherwise only discredit you.
  
  1. I haven't called anybody an asshole publicly, and have only called Chad an asshole in one email to you. Meanwhile, you've hysterically screamed at me for days on end.
  
  1. Your gross insincerity, especially in light of your subsequent nasty behavior is on parade here.
  
  1. I didn't initiate any "drama". I mistakenly thought you might share my concerns about Chad -- whoops, I was wrong about that. But as I've said any number of times, I require no action. It's a free Internet and Chad like anyone else is free to blog what he likes. I'm also free to call it out.
  
  1. There's something creepy about the whole posse here. I don't see any substantive threads being produced, I just see your four ranting on and on and on about my legitimate challenge to Chad as a long-time contribute to pro-Kremlin sites.
  
  7. My pasting of the RIAC chat is simply so that the actual text can be seen so that you and he will not be go on misrepresenting it.

  18 hours ago

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  Maria Costello

  My "lack of profile?" Catherine, you make me laugh. My professional experience is available for all to see. Does it bother you that you can't dig anything up on me to further feed your paranoia?
  
  I think your workplace is most relevant to this conversation. You march in here scrutinizing everybody else. So, Catherine, do you have a lot of friends in Interpretermag? We'd love to meet some of your colleagues, including the "prominent people" who you said witnessed Chad's deplorable behavior on RIAC. Perhaps they can also shed some light on your pen name, "Prokofy Neva."
  
  "Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, also known under her pen name and virtual worlds pseudonym "Prokofy Neva" is a former human rights acitivist, Russian-English translator, former journalist..." followed by a bunch of other former jobs...- Wikipedia.
  
  A quick search on Prokofy Neva returns some STARTLING results:
  
  "Prokofy Neva, also known as simply Prokofy or Prok, is a term describing a completely insane, aging female Internet troll, who spends all her time battling windmills in Internet games. The term is derived from the user name of perrhaps the most notorious troll in the Internet-based game Second Life. Synonyms and related terms include Crazy Cat Lady and batshit insane." - Urban dictionary.
  
  My oh my! Care to comment on THAT, "Catherine?" Or shall we call you "Prokofy?"

  18 hours ago

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  Alan Malcher MA

  I am very surprised at the stream of very unprofessional statements made by Catherine Fitzpatrick. I certainly wont be reading any of her material.

  12 hours ago

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  James Allen

  Yeah! A Twitter and Facebook style flame-war on LI; that's just what this site needs! Who says that the other sites get all the drama? LI is starting to become moronic. All week I've been seeing stupid memes and religious annoyance on what is supposed to be a work site - oh, and the atrocious grammar from people that haven't mastered their own native language that usually occurs on other sites. The next thing you know, I'll see something like "re-post this this to seven people or your girlfriend will break up with you". I think some people don't get this site. Usually the people who post crap and argue are "self [un]employed" or employed at something like "Head Getter Doner @ Your Mom, Inc". This site is becoming more and more useless every week.

  10 hours ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  @Maria Costello I think you're attempting to distract from your own lack of any kind of online "footprint" or profile. It's interesting that someone without any profile except for a few sectarian posts in a group they made themselves is trying to influence hundreds of people. To what end?
  
  Did you realize that for years, my Second Life avatar's name Prokofy Neva has been linked to my real name everywhere, in mainstream media like , on my blogs, etc. and obviously my Wikipedia entry -- which itself is an act of vandalism? So it's not news or any kind of big discovery. In fact, a clear marker for someone not acting in good faith is if they invoke this obvious connection as an attempt to discredit me rather than being able to defend their own ideological position. If you look at "Encyclopedia Dramatica" and "Rational Wiki" you'll find more of the same. Indeed, this is why I have a section "Advice to Google Witch-hunters" on my blog which your frantic Googling apparently missed LOL. If you want to promote the harassment of me by Anonymous and other hackers, that only shows your level.
  
  Meanwhile, your lack of a profile combined with Chad's past writing for antiwar.com. etc. does make a statement which you continue to distract from. I don't need to "dig up" anything on someone Again, I can see from a scant LinkedIn profile that your only public activity is posts on groups you've created or intervened in on LinkedIn -- and there are others besides RIAC where you've agitated and provoked to get reprimanded or expelled, for reasons that are unclear. You can keep hopping up and down and try to think of more ways to discredit me, but it only draws attention to your own sparse profile.
  
  I haven't "marched anywhere" or "scrutinized" anybody but you and Chad Nagle because of your curious heckling of me and your profile/lack of profile.
  
  Alan Malcher, MA, I think I'll live. Meanwhile, most people seriously watching Russia and Ukraine understand what antiwar, Counterpouch, globalresearch.ca are all about, as well as the notorious British Helsinki Group which the Guardian amply explains.

  10 hours ago

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  Maria Costello

  Thank you, Alan. Indeed, this has been one of the most draining exchanges I've ever had outside troll infested groups. As I explained to "Catherine" or "Prok" she is lucky that anybody here is even willing to acknowledge her work after this barrage of self-indulgent, juvenile attacks. She has failed to provide a single conceivable reason for why she would choose such an interesting although if I might add appropriate pen name for herself. She has failed to substantiate her wild allegations that this group or is somehow connected to the Russian government. Considering she is an investigative journalist, one can't help but wonder how such blunders, including outright slander, reflect on her own credibility and that of her employer. I'm thinking perhaps Prok should lay off Internet games and do some soul searching.

  10 hours ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  
  Regarding the RIAC debate, obviously if I didn't see a credit to a post at the bottom of the post (when normally they are at the top), then I'm not "lying" about not seeing it or "failing to admit" that I didn't see it -- I *just didn't see it* -- period -- and it wasn't clear from several rounds. This simple fact keeps eluding Chad Nagle, just as the obvious fact that instead of simply pointing out a correction, he self-importantly and heatedly began defending his own post's links, which weren't the issue.
  
  I think in my entire career, I've never heard anyone claim that if you studied in the Soviet Union on an exchange program that this would automatically confer "brainwashing by the KGB" on you, especially if your entire career consisted of criticizing the Kremlin. I've also never seen the wild notion that such study meant you were "abducted and pre-programmed" only to make your ostensible side "look bad" in an elaborate "false flag" operation. I don't suppose it would occur to Chad Nagle that making these kind of claims only makes him look bad.
  
  I can only see this as once again a distraction from his own profile that includes conspiracy sites, pro-Kremlin sites and actual writing that makes no sense for a supposed critic of Russia and supporter of Ukraine, for example, calling Yanukovych "an efficient manager" and describing his election as free and fair.
  
  I can fully understand that people who created a group to advance their sectarian beliefs and hidden agenda are going to keep squawking when called out but as many times as you need to keep making ever-wilder claims, as many times as I will defend myself. I can only note that as I'm busy with several jobs, I may not be so quick with this.
  
  I'd have to agree with @James Allen that LinkedIn has become more moronic.
  
  There has not been any invasion of Odessa.

  9 hours ago

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  Maria Costello

  "Catherine" or "Prok" continues to try and discredit another professional citing the Guardian - a publication loved by the KGB. This shows not only poor professional judgment but general thickness:
  
  http://ukmediawatch.org/2011/10/10/kgb-agents-loved-the-guardian/
  
  Let me spell it out for you because you seem to be missing the ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. The only agitator with a capital A here is YOU, "Catherine Fitzpatrick," "Prokofy Neva" or whoever you are. You are paranoid, combative, and plain rude. Every word attached to your pen name, every word myself and others have used to describe your obnoxious behavior is true. Behavior that stems from insecurity which is on display for all to see. Insecurity for which you overcompensate with venomous, unsolicited attacks.
  
  I didn't need to discredit you. You've done an outstanding job of it yourself.

  9 hours ago

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  Alan Malcher MA

  Catherine Fitzpatrick I must once again QUESTION your professionalism as a researcher.

  9 hours ago

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  Catherine Fitzpatrick

  @Alan Malcher, MA once again I need to QUESTION your inability to question articles in antiwar.com, globalresearch.ca, Counterpunch, etc. and to distract from this legitimate issue raised by focusing on me. This is not a discussion about me. To return you to the original post and topic:
  
  o it's about a claim that an invasion of Odessa is imminent
  o it's about rebuttals of that claim -- there has been no such invasion of Odessa
  o it's about pointing out that the original poster has a history of writing on conspiracy sites.
  
  If you have anything relevant to say on these actual topics, please do so.

  8 hours ago

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  Michael Woodson

  A military build-up by a nation state with reverse growth numbers does not trend in military exercises.

  7 hours ago

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  Alan Malcher MA

  Catherine Fitzpatrick, based on your various comments it would appear you have a very high opinion of yourself and your intellectual capacity - everyone is wrong and you are correct. The people you continue to criticize are very competent when it comes to analyzing source material. Unfortunately, I can only come to the conclusion you have preconceived ideas.

  7 hours ago

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  Mark Beames

  https://www.google.com/search?q=helsinki+foundation+catherine+fitzpatrick&biw=1561&bih=800&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=VTlKVef6J9HLsAStioGoCg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAg&dpr=1.1#imgrc=vwRiBQKPAJLeHM%253A%3BM5QX1OgmH1_SOM%3Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fanonluverz.files.wordpress.com%252F2013%252F05%252F58.jpg%3Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fanonluverz.wordpress.com%252F2013%252F05%252F21%252Fcray-cray-catherine-fitzpatrick-strikes-again-catfitz%252F%3B325%3B400

  5 hours ago

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  Maria Costello

  Thank you, Mark, Alan and everyone on this thread who's had the misfortune of witnessing the appalling way in which an employee of Interpretermag "Catherine Fitzpatrick" or "Prok" conducts herself. I, for one, am kicking myself for inviting her here. Unless she changes her attitude, apologizes to everyone she's insulted, gets humble (she may need to look that one up) and starts acting like a civilized professional, Catherine/Prok is going to find out first hand just how much unlike RIAC we really are.
  
  Let this serve as an official first warning to you, Catherine/Prok that we are not going to stand for your arrogance, unsubstantiated accusations or inflammatory content. You seem to have mistakenly assumed that you are running the show and that you are somehow in a position to put yourself above everybody and interrogate us. You are not. Your schemes may have enabled you to circumvent RIAC's dubious protocol - whatever that is. You've been boasting about having been able to retain your membership among trolls, agents of influence and mentally insane. Personally, I don't think that's anything to be proud of. But whatever rocks your boat.
  
  You've said that you don't need to be in Ukraine Network or any group. It's not like we're a Council on International Affairs. Based on what I've seen in RIAC, I'll take that as a compliment.
  
  Ukraine Network is a real group with real rules which we take seriously, which have been made very clear to you and which you've repeatedly violated. Unlike RIAC, which underhandedly puts on moderation anyone deemed a threat to the official Kremlin line, denies it, and then just as underhandedly bans them, here you will know exactly what hit you. I promise you 100% transparency. We have nothing to hide.
  
  Interestingly enough although hardly surprising, I've just released a solitary comment from Ralph Davis who rushed to Catherine/Prok's defense. Needless to say, Ralph has been in my troll database since I first laid my eyes on him. He has no chance of ever getting in here but we will release an occasional comment if it's relevant. One thing I admire about Ralph is that, unlike Catherine/Prok, he never loses his cool and even has a self-deprecating sense of humor. He has no illusions about himself and knows when to back off. For anyone unfamiliar with Ralph's modus operandi, for all his claims of expertise in "Violent Islamicist Movements, Soviet/Russian strategic culture, and military history/theory" he has demonstrated no knowledge of the subject. He teams up with other trolls/useful idiots in order to derail a conversation or present Russia in the best possible light. One of his buddies is a pseudo academic by the name of Dale Herspring or Kansas State University's "distinguished" professor of political science (surprise!). I love it when Tweedledum and Tweedledee divert, revise history and rationalize Putin's belligerence.

Friends Allege Viktor Nekipelov, Member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Was Murdered

Note: I don't have time to translate this now, even through chatGPT, and I simply don't know what to make of it and have no means to verify it but it seems important to keep available to study--CAF.

 

Владимир Крыловский

Как убивали

члена Московской Хельсинской группы

Виктора Некипелова

Виктор Александрович Некипелов, 60 лет, поэт, правозащитник, публицист, член Европейского и Французского ПЕНклубов, почётный член американского ПЕНклуба, член Московской Хельсинкской группы, дважды бывший политзек ¹, автор целого ряда опубликованных в Самиздате и на Западе публицистических очерков и статей о нарушении прав человека в СССР ("Сталин на ветровом стекле", "Стёртые с фасада", "Хлеб и беженцы", "Кладбище побеждённых" и др...); один из основателей, соредакторов и постоянных авторов нелегального антисоветского экспресc-журнала "Опричнина"; автор публицистической книги "Институт дураков" (об Институте судебной психиатрии им. проф. В.П. Сербского), опубликованной на Западе на английском языке; автор сборников стихов "Между Марсом и Венерой" ² и "Анестезия" (опубликован в Самиздате), скончался 1 июля 1989 г. в своей квартире в г. Кретей под Парижем от запущенного рака.

На первый взгляд, смерть В. Некипелова могла бы и не вызвать особого недоумения: может же пожилой человек, в конце концов, заболеть раком... Однако всё было не так просто. Александр Огородников³, например, вместе с которым они скоротали не одну ночь в промозглом ШИЗО 36-й пермской политзоны, сказал в 1992 г. автору: "Витю убили! Хочешь - верь, хочешь - нет, хочешь не пиши ничего об этом - твоё дело, но его убили! Это было целенаправленное, растянутое во времени медицинское убийство!" Впоследствии автору не раз приходилось слышать (и от родных В. Некипелова и от других его друзей-правозащитников), что это была "спланированная и неукоснительно осуществлённая акция КГБ".

Однажды на допросе следователь сказал ему: "Мы Вас выпустим на Запад, но сначала мы Вас превратим в ничто!" Эта угроза была выполнена. Как напишет потом известная правозащитница Мария Подъяпольская, близкий друг Некипеловых: "Виктор вышел из недр ГУЛАГа в состоянии выраженной заторможенности: он потерял память, его эрудиция, способность к общению исчезли. Перед нами был другой, совершенно незнакомый человек".⁴

История уничтожения В. Некипелова точно укладывается в семилетний срок его пребывания второй раз (1979-1986 г.г.) в советском ГУЛАГе. После суда его по непонятной причине в нарушение ст. 14 ИТК РСФСР ⁵ ещё почти полгода незаконно держат во Владимирской тюрьме и только в конце 1980 г. этапируют на зону. ⁶

Ужесточение условий его содержания неуклонно наращивается на протяжении всего лагерного срока, и в этом просматривается инициированная КГБ (а кто ещё определял режим политзэков в ГУЛАГе?) тенденция. Вот несколько примеров.

В ноябре 1981 г. после месяца, проведённого в тюремной больнице, его, ослабленного болезнью и далеко ещё не выздоровевшего, сразу же помещают на четыре месяца (!) в ПКТ.

За все семь лет заключения он получает только одно (!) личное свидание c женой.

В октябре 1982 г. по решению внутрилагерного суда его по надуманному, нелепому для политзека обвинению - "не хочет вставать не путь исправления" - отправляют на три года (!) в Чистопольскую тюрьму.

По возвращении из тюрьмы лагерная администрация сделала всё, чтобы превратить оставшийся срок его заключения в ад. Всю зиму 1985-1986 г.г. его держат в ШИЗО: из 200 зимних дней 111 (!) он провёл там.

Могут сказать, что жестокое обращение с В. Некипеловым не должно вызывать удивления. Когда в ГУЛАГе с политзеками обращались иначе? Но солагерники передавали на волю, что "Виктора мучают особенно сильно, больше, чем кого-либо другого!".

В полной мере это проявилось в начале сентября 1981 г., когда у него неожиданно начались резкие боли в суставах, в области почек и мочеиспускательного канала, сопровождающиеся высокой температурой. Шли дни и недели, а ему не оказывали никакой медицинской помощи, и политзаключённые были вынуждены объявить голодовку, затем забастовку ("У нас на глазах убивают нашего товарища!"), а 30 сентября выступили с ультиматумом, что "если до 12-ти дня не будет уролога, грянет такое, чего этот лагерь ещё никогда не видел!" По зоне стали зловеще прохаживаться автоматчики... Однако в тот же день (почти через месяц /!/ после первых жалоб) его, наконец, осмотрел специалист-уролог. (По словам А. Огородникова, "уролог в лагере уже какое-то время был, его просто придерживали").

Затем был месяц тюремной больницы, где его практически не лечили, а по возвращению в лагерь, как мы уже писали, его прямо из воронка больного бросили на долгие четыре месяца в ПКТ. Причём из больницы его выписали за день до того, как в лагере истекал срок постанавления о помещении его вместе с другими политзеками в ПКТ "за организацию голодовки". (А состояние его, между тем, было такое, что товарищи не верили, что он выйдет оттуда живым).

Случай с урологом не единственный. Все семь лет неволи, ему постоянно приходилось бороться за то, чтобы получить какую-либо медицинскую помощь. Однако, это звучит очень зловеще, если вспомнить, что В. Некипелов скончался от запущенного (читай, не лечёного), уже не операбельного рака.

Попробуем, насколько это удастся, проследить динамику развития у него этой болезни. Вот некоторые выдержки из его писем жене, Нине Михайловне Комаровой:

"... беспокоет то, что увеличены подчелюстные лимфатические узлы ⁷ и довольно сильно, теперь даже видно со стороны. И чувствительно...

Была сегодня комиссия ВТЭК. Осмотрели меня... ощупали лимфатические узлы, оказалось, что, кроме подчелюстных, увеличены и болезненны ещё и паховые..." (февраль 1982 г., первое письмо с августа 1981 г.).

"...железы на уровне того, что писал в предыдущем письме... Справа опухоль величиной с добрый орех. Даст Бог, пройдёт. А может быть, обследуют..." (май 1982 г.).

"...Где-то в конце июня взяли кровь из пальца на общий анализ. Результатов... не знаю..." (июль 1982 г.).

Вникните, дорогой читатель! Комиссия ВТЭК констатирует у пожилого человека ярко выраженные признаки заболевания, которое вполне может оказаться смертельным. Проходит месяц за месяцем, а все его настойчивые просьбы о специализированном обследовании остаются без внимания! Более того: его вообще никак не обследуют! (О лечении мы уж не говорим!) Только через 5 месяцев у него берут из пальца кровь, да и то - на общий, а не на специализированный анализ.

Но вернёмся к динамике заболевания:

"Всё время почему-то воспаляются дёсны и нёбо... Парадантоз ⁸... С железами - всё то же..." (1апреля 1983 г.).

"...Беспокоят... только железы, т.е. лимфатическте узлы подчелюстные, которые по-прежнему увеличиваются, особенно справа, и побаливают. Что-то непонятное! Прошу об обследовании специалистами. Я уж думаю, не того ли это типа, что было у Асеньки или у Виталия..." (друзья Некипеловых, скончавшиеся в разное время от рака - В.К.). (21 апреля 1983 г.).

В. Некипелов очень встревожен, он буквально кричит о помощи! Жена обращается в Медуправление МВД СССР, она требует направить мужа на специализированное обследование. Проходит ещё полгода (!), когда его, наконец, снова показывают врачам, однако среди них опять нет онколога!

"...Вчера была медкомиссия из Казани. Смотрели хирург и терапевт. Предложили взять биопсию из подчелюстных желез... Анализ будут делать в Казани... Даст Бог, анализы окажутся хорошими. Врач говорит, что это какой-то сиалоаданит, т.е. опухание и слюнной железы, и подчелюстных лимфатических. Ну а от чего?.." (из того же письма).

Наконец-то! Через четырнадцать (!) месяцев после появления у В. Некипелова странных, опухолей, у него всё-таки возьмут биопсию.

"...Результатов анализа пока ещё нет... Хочу надеяться, что не будет онкологии. Хотя обследоваться, что же это, всё-таки... всё равно надо. Тем более, что увеличены и паховые узлы..." (май 1983 г.).

"...12 мая сказали, что "анализы хорошие", онкологии нет. Ну, слава Богу! Обещали... сообщить письменно, но пока ничего нет... Ну а железы всё на том же уровне. Что это - неизвестно. Может быть, и лимфогранулематоз ⁹, а как уточнить?! Анализов никаких больше не было. И нет никакого лечения, никаких рекомендаций..." (июнь 1983 г.).

Вдумайтесь! Человек в таком положении втечение шестнадцати(!) месяцев не получает никакого лечения и никаких врачебных рекомендаций!

"...Сдаётся мне, что у нас с Асей всё-таки одна болячка..." (июль 1983 г.).

"...Письменного результата анализа так и нет. Лимфомы ¹⁰ на том же уровне... Ощущаю их постоянно, даже во время сна. Непонятно, что же это всё-таки..." (август, 1983 г.).

"...Лимфомы - в том же положении. Есть уже за левым ухом. Беспокоят по-разному. В лежачем положении меньше... В сидячем и стоячем давят больше, особенно на животе, где сейчас уже и со стороны видны выступающие бугры. Результатов биопсии так и нет, что и смущает..." (сентябрь 1983 г.).

10 сентября 1983 г. В. Некипелова неожиданно взяли на этап в Ленинград, сказали: "В больницу!" Везли через Казань, а потом зачем-то через Владимир, хотя этот город был совсем не по пути.

Впрочем, скоро стало ясно, зачем КГБ понадобился Владимир, город в котором он был под следствием, в пригороде которого проживала его семья. Лубянка рассчитывала, что оказавшись вблизи от дома, измученный болезнью зэк, расслабится, станет более сговорчивым...

Во Владимире его продержали полтора месяца, и всё это время его куратор, местный майор КГБ Г.П. Кузнецов в долгих, навязанных, как ему так и его жене беседах, всячески старался внушить обоим, что Виктор "тяжело болен, может быть, даже смертельно, и срок ему не вытянуть..." Но можно сделать так, чтобы его выпустили... Он "сможет жить дома, пройти обследование у хороших специалистов, у него будут все необходимые лекарства"... Ему "нужно только отказаться от своей антисоветской деятельности и публично - по радио и телевидению осудить её..." Излишне описывать с каким негодованием В. Некипелов отверг это предложение. Интересно другое.

Говоря о смертельном заболевании, пытаясь склонить В. Некипелова к публичному покаянию, майор КГБ вполне мог блефовать. Однако логика подсказывает иное.

Врачи, которые почти два года преступно игнорировали у В. Некипелова распухшие железы, повторяя при каждом осмотре, что "ничего страшного нет", безусловно находились под полным контролем КГБ, а потому и вести себя так могли только по приказу КГБ. В то же время, они не могли не видеть неотвратимого ухудшения его здоровья, о чём и информировали исправно своих гебистских хозяев. Т.е. майор КГБ Кузнецов, шантажируя В. Некипелова и его жену, хорошо знал, о чём он говорит. Лубянка, блокируя онкологические обследования, сознательно загоняла В. Некипелова всё глубже и глубже в неизлечимую болезнь...

"...Онколог во Владимире ещё не смотрел. Что же всё-таки значат мои опухоли? Ведь месяц от месяца увеличиваются и становятся болезненнее. На шее ты видела, на животе - ещё объёмистее. А ведь в апреле, когда брали биопсию там были лишь небольшие узелки. Сейчас там и на животе болит чувствительнее, больше справа. Иногда мне кажется, что всё это - вторичное, типа метастазов уже, а где же тогда главное? На печени? На пузыре? В кишечнике? Основные боли где-то в правом нижнем углу живота, но есть

чувствительные точки и вдоль некоторых ребёр, у таза...

Конечно, я хочу верить, что всё - не злокачественное, но ведь надо же на чём-то основываться! Смущает молчание из Казани (отсутствие результатов анализа на биопсию - В.К.).

3 октября взяли кровь из пальца на общий анализ и мочу..." (октябрь 1983 г.).

Специалисту-онкологу В. Некипелова не показали не только во Владимире. Не смотрел его онколог и в ленинградскй больнице им. Ивана Гааза, куда его повезли, как он надеялся, именно на онкологическое обследование. Никаких анализов на онкологию тоже не сделали, хотя у него уже два года имелись стойкие вторичные признаки рака.

"...Двадцать дней был в ленинградской больнице... С чем уехал с тем и вернулся. Собственно, был один единственный осмотр... Врачи сочли, что ничего злокачественного нет. Один врач считает, что увеличение лимфоузлов вызвано парадонтозом, другой - слюнной железой. Главное и радостное - не рак! Основной аргумент: "Если бы рак, то Вы бы уже давно..." Ну и казанский анализ. Новой биопсии не брали. Обнаружили туберкулому ¹¹ в левом лёгком. Назначили фтивазин ¹²..." (декабрь 1983 г.).

Зачем же всё-таки его возили в Ленинград? Для галочки? Чтобы никто потом не мог сказать, что В. Некипелова никак не обследовали? А может быть, это был формальный повод, чтобы доставить его во Владимир для проведения описанной выше психологической обработки?

"...Лимфомы абсолютно в том же состоянии, что и во Владимире. Только я уже вроде как-то обвыкся, особенно сейчас, "дома" (в Чистопольской тюрьме - В.К.). И кажется, будто они беспокоят меньше. Хотя ощущаю их всё время, особенно к концу дня и по ночам..." (январь 1984 г.).

"...На лимфомы стараюсь просто не обращать внимания. Хирург будет только весной..." (начало февраля 1984).

Сколько мужества в первой фразе! И сколько безнадёжности и трезвой покорности судьбе - в последней! Человек, судя по всему, смертельно болен, а его не только не показывают онкологу, но и просто хирургу собираются показать только лишь через месяцы! А болезнь тем временем не стоит на месте, она развивается! И врачи не могут этого не понимать!

"...Всё-таки сдаётся мне, что лимфомы мои - какая-то гематология, немобластад какой-то, скажем, типа лимфо - или миелолейкоза..." ¹³(середина марта 1984 г.).

"...Врач (хирург из Казани) не возражает провести курс гаммаглобулина ¹⁴, так что можешь прислать. И раверон - для простаты..." (конец марта 1984 г.).

Долгожданный хирург опять проигнорировал воспалённые лимфатические узлы, как будто бы их совсем и не было, но разрешил написать жене, что она может прислать некоторые препараты - это, мол, не повредит... Кто скажет теперь, что В. Некипелов не получал никакого лечения?!

"...Не лучше и не хуже. Но то, что не хуже, - безусловно хорошо! К тому же месяц был на больничке. 13 марта (в тюремной больнице в Чистополе - В.К.) меня смотрел врач и сказал: "Слюнная железа. Биопсию брать нет необходимости: гематологических анализов в Казани не делают... и Вы ведь были в Ленинграде!.." (апрель 1984г.).

Когда контролируемые КГБ тюремные врачи лукавили со смертельно больным человеком? Тогда, в апреле 1983 г., когда после взятия хирургом биопсии, через некоторое время объявили, что сделанный в Казани анализ, "хороший"? Или в марте 1984 г., когда его заверили, что "гематологических анализов в Казани вообще не делают"?

Или это: "...и Вы ведь были в Ленинграде!.." Ведь у врача под рукой была медицинская карта В. Некипелова, из которой явствовало, что в Лененграде у него никакую биопсию не брали!

А это, прозвучавшее для него (несомненно с подачи КГБ), как приговор: "Биопсию брать нет необходимости!..".

"...С опухолями похуже. И всё-таки это не простой лимфаденит ¹⁵, что от зубов! 17 апреля была комиссия ВТЭК из Казани. С прошлого года опухоли увеличились вдвое! Я просил опять, чтобы меня всё-таки осмотрел онколог или гематолог. Доктор сказал, что доложит в Казани о необходимости обследованиия. Ещё он сказал, что постарается найти результат биопсии, а то ведь его так нигде и нет" (конец мая 1984 г.).

Итак, с той комисии ВТЭК, которая впервые официально констатировала увеличение и болезненность лимфоузлов, должно было пройти два (!) года, опухоли неизвестного происхождения должны были увеличиться вдвое (!), чтобы врачи заговорили, наконец, о необходимости онкологического обследования!

В июле 1984 г. в Чистопольской тюрьме В. Никипелова осмотрел казанский онколог, канд. мед. наук Рахимов.

"...Был врач-онколог. Итог: "...Как показывает опыт и интуиция, это - не злокачестенные опухоли... Хотя... Вперёд ничего сказать нельзя. Cегодня - нет. Завтра - да... Хотите глубокого обследования? Это надо делать не в этих условиях. Договаривайтесь с КГБ! Всё зависит о Вас! " (июль 1984 г.).

Вскоре В. Некипелов получит из Казани письменное заключение Рахимова :

"...Данных за онкологическое обследованиие не обнаружено. В дополнительном обследовании и лечении не нуждается..."

А уже осенью он напишет жене:

"...Даже за эти два месяца опухли заметно увеличились..." (сентябрь 1984 г.).

Конечно, можно на все посмотреть формально. Ну и что, что не лечили? Лагерь - не санаторий! А тем более - политзона!

Да, на обывательском уровне такие рассуждения, к сожалению, могут иметь место. Однако согласно 128-й статье УК РСФСР "не оказание помощи больному без уважительных причин лицом, обязаннным её оказывать" считается уголовным преступлением.

Суд приговорил В. Некипелова к лишению свободы, а не к медленной мучительной смерти. Скажут, врачи не знали, что у него рак! Но для этого и существует такая поцедура, как обследование, на котором он столько лет настаивал! А то ведь диагноз ставился (это в наше-то время!) по принципу "Как подсказывает опыт и интуиция..." или ещё чище: "Да если бы рак, Вы бы уже давно!..." И годами - ни серьёзного обследования, ни лечения!..

Но это не всё. В процессе болезни В. Никипелова имели место странные и никак не объяснённые врачами явления, укладывающиеся, однако, по мнению опрошенных правозащитниками независимых экспертов, в некую картину хронического отравления. Нестерпимые боли суставах, в области почек и мочеиспускательного канала; непонятные кожные высыпания, временное нарушение чувствительности в кисти и пальцах, зернистая шершавость на языке, сопровождающаяся жжением; хроническое воспаление лимфатичеких узлов, а позже обширная потеря памяти - всё это могло быть не чем иным, как реакцией организма на методичное, растянутое во времени, дозированное введение в организм определённых токсичных препаратов.

А ведь весь срок заключения В. Никипелов находился под самым пристальным наблюдением КГБ (с политзэком, такого калибра и не могло быть иначе), и никакие действия по отношению к нему ни со стороны лагерного начальства, ни со стороны (мы уже говорили) врачей не могли быть произведены без ведома Лубянки.

"...12 сентября приехал хирург из Казани, доктор Анохин. Его мнение прежнее: ничего страшного, хронический сиалоаденит, "у Вас просто онкофобия, надо психиатру показать...." (сентябрь 1984 г.).

Все запросы жены в Медуправление МВД СССР пересылались в Медотдел МВД Татарской АСР, о чём ей аккуратно сообщалось. И ответы, всегда затянувшиеся во времени, были похожи один на другой: "Состояние здоровья осуждённого Некипелова удовлетворительное..."

"... Наш (тюремный - В.К) врач сказал мне, что пришло письмо из Казани, из медотдела МВД, в котором, говорится, что в октябре будет решён вопрос об оперативном лечении "в условиях больницы МВД... необходимо выслать согласие на операцию."

И в Ленинграде в прошлом году, и онколог в июле, и этот хирург сейчас - все говорили, что ничего серьёзного нет. И все ответы, из медотдела были: "в лечении и обследовании не нуждается..." И вдруг - операция!.." (октябрь 1984 г.)

Он дал согласие на операцию, но при условии предварительного обследования и обязательного согласования с женой на свидании.

Нина запросила Казань, почему вдруг возникла необходимость оперативного вмешательства? По какому поводу? По каким показаниям? Ей не ответили. На её просьбу о свиданиия с мужем начальник тюрьмы ответил отказом. А между тем...

"...Опухоли не уменьшаются..." (ноябрь 1984 г.)

"...13 ноября была здесь комиссия, в том числе врач Анохин. Диагноз в медкнижке: "остеохандроз ¹⁶, хронический сиалоаденит, туберкул, онкофобия. Оснований для освобождения от работы и облегчения рабочего дня не обнаружено..." (декабрь 1984 г.).

В ноябре 1984 г. Н. Комарова получила из Медотдела МВД ТАСР сообщение о том, что в декабре её муж, "осуждённый Некипелов" будет направлен в Казань на "медицинское обследование". И ни слова об "оперативном лечении"!

В Казань его повезли, но не в декабре, а в марте 1985 г., т.е. через полгода (!) после того, как сообщили о необходимости оперативного вмешательства. Значит, не было никакой срочности?! Но о какой операции тогда шла речь?! Всё это выглядит очень странно, особенно если учесть, что в медотделе МВД Татарской АССР несомненно сидят серьёзные люди!

В Казани В. Некипелова поместили в следственный изолятор, откуда 7 марта на три часа привезли в тюремную больницу, где амбулаторно взяли пункцию из подчелюстной железы. 11 марта его привезли в больницу опять, на этот раз на четыре дня. За это время его смотрели - терапевт, неврапатолог, хирург, оккулист, дерматолог. Онколог не смотрел. Сделали ЭКГ, рентген поясного отдела позвоночника, взяли кровь на общий анализ и мочу, удалили два зуба. Заключение: ничего страшного, практически здоров, анализы хорошие, в лёгких ничего нет (а куда же делась туберкулома?! - В.К.), в оперативном лечении (оказывается! - В.К.) не нуждается!

Результат анализа пункции В. Некипелов узнал только через (!) полгода. И не от врачей, а от подполковника КГБ Г.П. Кузнецова, приехавшего в конце сентября 1985 г. в Чистополь для очередной "душеспасительной беседы" с ним.

В октябре 1985 г., по окончанию тюремного срока, перед возвращением в лагерь В. Некипелов вновь предстал перед комиссией ВТЭК. На этот раз выводы комиссии существенно отличались от прежних.

Нет, все его хронические болезни были подтверждены. Разрастающиеся опухоли на шее, по-прежнему объяснялись "хроническим сиалоаденитом", а паховые по-прежнему не объяснялись никак... Доктор Анохин, несмотря ни на что, по-прежнему считал, что "ничего страшного нет " и настаивал на онкофобии. Однако в диагноз на этот раз онкофобию не вписали. Вместо неё появляется зловещее "склероз сосудов головного мозга", заболевание, которое диагносцируется впервые: за шесть лет лагерей и тюрем ни один врач ни о чём подобном В. Некипелову не упоминал. Впервые появляются и ограничения по линии трудоспособности: "Трудоспособен, но с ограничением".

По возвращению в лагерь, над ним (как мы уже сейчас знаем, - смертельно больным) была учинена жесточайшая расправа: за две недели пребывания в лагерной зоне его лишают личного и общего свидания с женой, бандероли, ларька и первой за всё время неволи посылки... А затем, мы уже говорили, всю зиму 1985-1986 г.г. его держат в ШИЗО (ограничив таким образом ещё и право на переписку!): из 200 зимних дней 111(!) он провёл в ШИЗО. Делаются попытки создать вокруг него психологический вакуум: за простое общение с ним заключённых наказывают водворением в ШИЗО!

Именно в это время зловеще меняется стиль его писем: они становятся короче, в них появляются не свойственные ему повторы, выражения, которые он никогда раньше не употреблял... На волю доходят слухи, что В. Некипелов болен, теряется в простом: не может даже усвоить правильное расположение бытовых служб...

Весь последний год заключения лагерные тюремщики добивают его, уже полуживого, а подполковник КГБ Г.П. Кузнецов периодически наезжает в лагерь и всё призывает его "одуматься, раскаяться, публично осудить свою антисоветскую деятельность"... (А вдруг измученный неволей и болезнью зэк под самый конец дрогнет?!). Аргументы всё те же: "пора бы уже В. Некипелову всё-таки обследоваться у хороших специалистов, жить и лечиться в нормальных условиях, иметь все необходимые лекарства!.."

В конце 1986 г. в ходе перестроечной кампании по выдворению политзеков из мест заключения В. Некипелову предлагают написать заявления о помиловании ("помиловку") по состоянию здоровья. Он отказывается наотрез, потому что не хочет вести никаких переговоров с КГБ, преступной, по его убеждению, организацией, а главное потому, что по-прежнему считает, что "ничего противозаконного... не совершал..."

Лагерный срок он отбыл от звонка до звонка и был выпущен в ссылку в посёлок Абан, один из районных центров Красноярского края. Тут ему надлежало пробыть ещё пять лет. Жена приехала к нему, чтобы разделить с ним эти годы, и была поражена. Самые тревожные опасения оправдались. Перед ней был другой человек. "Личность, структура сознания - всё чужое, несвойственное Виктору... Всё так неправдоподобно, - писала она в одном из писем друзьям в Москву, - что было страшно и больно до какой-то окаменелости..."

"Помиловку" В. Некипелов всё-таки написал. Его об этом очень просил Андрей Дмитриевич Сахаров, уже вернувшийся к тому времени из горьковской ссылки. Через Нину он убедил Виктора не упорствовать, так как тот таким образом задерживал выход на волю других политзэков. (Глядя на него, - а он пользовался у политзаключённых, огромным авторитетом - они тоже отказывались просить о помиловании).

В своём заявлении В. Некипелов просил освободить его из ссылки "по состоянию здоровья", однако говорил, что не совершал никаких противоправных действий и предупреждал, что он и впредь всегда будет бороться с нарушениями прав человека.

Он освободился в марте 1987 г. Мария Подъяпольская, вместе с друзьями встречавшая его в Москве на Ярославском вокзале, напишет потом: "Общее ликование не задевало его, шло по касательной. И в это свидание... и во все следующие меня каждый раз снова и снова потрясало, насколько он стал другим. Некогда богатейшая память удерживала лишь отдельные события дочистопольской жизни. Со времён Чистополя она вся оказалась дырявой... Миша Ривкин, сидевший с ним в одной камере и вспоминавший об этом периоде, как о лучшем из своей гулаговской жизни,.. прибежал повидать его. Виктор его не узнал..." ¹⁷.

Не смотря на всё это, на семейном совете было решено добиваться в первую очередь онкологического обследования. Когда-то по своей первой профессии В. Некипелов занимался биохимией раковых заболеваний, и чутьё подсказывало ему сейчас, что опасность для жизни надвигается именно отсюда. Он хотел глубокого, а главное, разностороннего объективного онкообследования, что в Москве лучше всего можно было бы сделать в специализированом НИИ им. Герцена или во Всесоюзном Онкологичском Научном Центре на Каширском шоссе.

Но дорога туда ему была сразу заказана: в эти клиники без специального направления попасть было невозможно, а во вручённой ему в лагере выписке из истории болезни чёрным по белому было сказано, что у него "склероз сосудов головного мозга" и "онкофобия" (всё-таки вписали!), то есть, что никакого рака нет, а есть плод больного воображения психически нездорового человека. Кто бы ему дал направление на онкологическое обследование?

К тому же они жили в подмосковном Фрязино (семья переехала туда в 1984 г. по обмену), а у тех, кто жил в Московской области, а не в самой Москве было очень мало шансов попасть на обследование в какую-либо городскую клинику.

Его удалось устроить в областной НИИ им. Владимирского, что на ул. Щепкина в Москве в терапевтическое (а не в онкологическое, как он очень хотел) отделение, где он пробыл десять дней. Ему провели "полное", как могло бы показаться стороннему наблюдателю, обследование. Его осмотрели - терапевт, хирург, неврапатолог, уролог, отоляринголог, окулист, дерматолог... Сделали электрокардиограмму (ЭКГ), электроэнцфалограмму (ЭЭГ), рентген лёгких, рентген пояснично-крестцового отдела позвоночника... Был и общий анализ крови, и анализ мочи... Онколог не смотрел, хотя, по словам жены, "и невооружённым глазом было видно, что Виктор - весь в опухолях..."

Вывод врачей: "Здоровье в пределах возрастной нормы"... Болезни, конечно, есть... Как им не быть в 58 лет?! Но всё - в пределах нормы!

Когда Нина попросила провести онкологическое обследование, реакция зав. терапевтическим отделением была неадекватной. "У него онкофобия! - врач буквально кричала, - Вы это понимаете или нет?! О-нко-фо-би-я! Дать направление? Только к психиатру!" У Нины создалось твёрдое убеждение, что зав. отделением находится под полным контролем КГБ. Круг замкнулся.

Некипеловы решили срочно уехать на Запад, и тут выяснилось, что это для них очень не просто. Вокруг них, по словам жены, "люди освобождались и уезжали, освобождались и уезжали..." а их не выпускали, мотивируя отказ тем, что у них, якобы, не было вызова (они хотели уехать по израильской визе) ¹⁸.

На самом деле вызов у В. Некипелова был: десять лет назад, при первой неудачной попытке уехать из СССР он сдал его во Владимирский ОВИР. Тогда отказ был мотивирован тем, что его выезд из страны "противоречит интересам государства". Теперь ему говорили, что тот вызов "недействителен" (хотя у него с израильской стороны не было срока давности) и "нужен другой"...

На пресс-конференции, организованной Сергеем Григорьянцем ¹⁹, редактором известного самиздатского журнала "Гласность" В. Некипелов обратился ко всем присутствующим иностранным корреспондентам с просьбой прислать ему новый вызов. С просьбой оказать с Запада давление на советские власти обратились к проживающим там правозащитникам Леониду Плющу и Анатолию Корягину ²⁰...

Шёл месяц за месяцем, вызов не приходил. Между тем, стало известно, что французская семья Жестковых из Парижа, вызвавшаяся быть гарантом пребывания Некипеловых во Франции, выслала им приглашение. Оно до них не дошло. И всё это время Виктор не получал никакого лечения...

Но власти по-прежнему не хотели ни признавать старый вызов действительным, ни разрешить В. Некипелову (как это было с целым рядом других освободившихся политзэков) выехать на Запад без всякого вызова. По какой-то своей внутренней причине КГБ не хотел выпускать его из страны...

И вдруг всё изменилось. В начале сентября 1987 г. к Некипеловым домой нагрянул участковый милиционер и сообщил удивительное: к ним в отделение специально приезжали два офицера КГБ, вопрос о выезде В. Некипелова из СССР решён положительно, о чём областной ОВИР уже поставлен в известность...

Их оформили по старому вызову, который вдруг сделался действительным. Оформили быстро, без проволочек.

Некипеловы покинули страну в конце сентября 1987 г. и обосновались под Парижем в г. Нантер, где их тепло приняла семья Плющей, у которых они прожили почти полтора года.

Бывшим политзаключённым сразу занялась гуманитарная организация "Врачи без границ". Её представители, по словам жены, были очень внимательны и отзывчивы и "чуть ли не носили его на руках". Очень оперативно они организовали направление в одну из парижских клиник. Начались обследования...

Ничего особенного врачи не нашли, подтвердили все заболевания, которые были диагносцированы в Москве и которые, по их словам, "вполне могли быть у человека его возраста"...

Приехавший специально из Швейцарии друг В. Некипелова психиатр А. Корягин, сидевший с ним в Чистопольской тюрьме, нашёл у него начало "старческого склероза", подтвердив тем самым диагноз тюремных врачей - "склероз сосудов головного мозга".

Решили показать Виктора известному парижскому психиатру К.Н. Купернику, который никаких психических отклонений у него не нашёл. Интересно, что, опираясь на результаты сканирования мозга, он сделал вывод, что "никакого склероза головного мозга у В. Некипелова нет".

Правда, на одном из снимков была обнаружена маленькая, почти невидимая инородная точка. Её происхождение, природу, а также последствия, к которым могло привести появление в недрах мозга этой непонятной точки, К.Н. Куперник объяснить не смог. Он только сказал, что к психике, по его мнению, это никакого отношения не имеет. Он согласился, что эти выборочные провалы в памяти у Виктора (а именно это и затрудняло общение с ним), - скорее всего, "лагерный шок", выход из которого потребует времени...

Однако, никаких онкологических обследований проведено не было. Жена потом объясняла это тем, что друзья, которые выступали переводчиками при её общении с французскими врачами (сами Некипеловы не знали по-французски ни слова), были абсолютно уверены, что у Виктора никого рака нет (не может же рак - видимо, им очень хотелось в это верить - тянуться так долго!). У него, считали они, просто "синдром лагерного шока", который "обязательно пройдёт". Именно на это они и нацеливали внимание врачей, представляя им недавно вышедшего из советского ГУЛАГА политзаключённого.

Сама Нина, понимала, что никакого "лагерного шока" у её мужа нет. Виктор не новичок, он отсидел уже по второй ходке, да и вообще, это был бывалый и мужественный человек, на которого в лагере равнялись другие политзаключённые... Но так хотелось верить, что это не рак... К тому же между переводчиками и работниками клиники, конечно же, был определённый языковый барьер, который мешал ей направить внимание врачей в область онкологии. Да и внешних признаков рака у Виктора уже не было видно, ещё в Москве они куда-то практически исчезли...

А вот почему французские врачи сами не увидели, не почувствовали, не выявили насущной необходимости онкологического обследования - остаётся загадкой!

Так или иначе, шли месяцы, В. Некипелов жаловался на боли в груди. В апреле 1989 г. при обследовании была обнаружена объёмистая масса диаметром более 10 см., причём, именно там, где когда-то была крошечная туберкулома. Эта масса, большая часть которой, по мнению врачей, уже разложилась, плотно окружала аорту. Поэтому выявить природу этого образования с помощью биопсии было невозможно: можно было легко повредить аорту. Нужна была операция...

17 мая 1989 г. В. Некипелова соперировали. При вскрытии оказалось, что опухоль так разрослась, что видимых распознаваемых тканей уже нет, к тому же она действительно частично разложилась. Разрез просто зашили...

Врачи объяснили жене, что В. Некипелов болен раком уже много лет. Это - особая труднодиагносцируемая форма клеточного рака, распространяющегося по лимфатической системе и требующего для своего выявления особого специального теста. (Традиционной биопсией тут не всегда обойдёшься). Однако, такой рак вполне поддаётся химиотерапии, и если бы болезнь распознали в самом начале...

И если бы в ГУЛАГе Виктору Некипелову провели добросовестное обследование и выявили бы болезнь в самом начале...

Через полтора месяца Виктор Александрович Некипелов скончался...

P.S.

Казалось бы, на этом можно было бы поставить точку, с полным правом назвав убийством то, что произшло с В. Некипеловым во время его второго пребывания в советском ГУЛАГЕ. Он умер от нелечёного, запущенного рака, приобретённого именно там, и, когда его ещё можно было спасти, его сознательно (хоть это и трудно юридически доказать) не только не лечили, но и добивали жесточайшими, часто искусственно создаваемыми условиями содержания.

Однако Мария Подъяпольская поставила целый ряд вопросов, которыми сразу сделала невозможным разговор о какой-либо "точке". Вот некоторые из этих вопросов:

- Что за странное, так и не продиагносцированное медиками заболевание, сопровождающееся нестерпимыми болями и высокой температурой, случилось с В. Некипеловым в сентябре 1981 г. на 36-й Пермской политзоне? Если оно не было спровоцированно КГБ, то почему элементарная медицинская помощь была ему оказана только после того, как его товарищи по лагерю объявили голодовку и забастовку?

- Почему тогда в 1981 г. его, только что выписавшегося из больницы, ещё очень больного на четыре месяца упрятали в ПКТ, а по выходе из ПКТ лишили личного свидания с женой?

- Почему общее свидание с женой, которое ему спустя некоторое время дали, проходило в присутствии пяти (!) сотрудников МВД и в тёмном помещении (сказали, что перегорела лампочка, а запасной нет)? Что скрывала от его жены администрация лагеря?

- Не на введение ли каких-то инородных медикаментозных препаратов отвечал его организм воспалением и увеличением лимфатимчески узлов? Не было ли это на самом деле проявлением отравленности организма?

- На каком основании появился диагноз "онкофобия", вписанный в его медкнижку и закрывший ему после освобождения доступ в спецализированные онкологические клиники?

- На каком основании появился диагноз "склероз сосудов головного мозга"?

- По какой причине и в какой момент психически здоровый В. Некипелов частично потерял память, превратившись в инвалида, и почему об этом не было сообщено его семье? |

- Какую роль КГБ играл в медицинском обслуживании политзаключённого В. Некипелова в лице его куратора майора, а потом подполковника Владимирского УКГБ Г.П. Кузнецова?

Версия автора,

которая по понятным причинам

не может быть юридически доказана

Интересно, почему тогда в 1973 г. из 200 свидетелей, проходивших по делу Сергея Мюге, только один В. Некипелов, войдя в очень узкий круг подозреваемых, был арестован? Только его одного из свидетеля превратили в подозреваемого, затем по уголовному делу, возбуждённому уже против него самого, - в обвиняемого, арестовали судили и дали два года лагерей.

Но это ещё не всё. На его деле чьей-то пристрастной рукой был поставлен лиловый штемпель "ОН" ("Особое наблюдение" - зачем?), благодаря чему на пересылке он "был надёжно замурован в полуподвал 13-го блока (Бутырской тюрьмы - В.К.), где содержались смертники, в глухую одиночку, где под потолком день и ночь тлела тусклая лампочка, где не полагалось ни радио, ни книг, и где ежедневно камеры обходила команда пьяных, диких надзирателей с деревянными молотками и прожектором - они стучали по оконным решёткам и стенам, ища подпил или подкоп..."²¹

А ведь В. Некипелов, казалось бы, как писала тогда Мария Подъяпольская, "не подписывал обращений за рубеж, не хранил и не распространял крамольную литературу, не нарушал общественный порядок демонстрациями или голодовками..." Он "даже не собирался выезжать за пределы СССР. На обыске у него обнаружили единственный самиздатский документ - письмо тридцатых годов Фёдора Раскольникова Сталину, да, кажется, кто-то сказал на допросе, что

то ли, что Некипелов дал ему, то ли, что он дал Некипелову неустановленный номер "Хроники текущих событий..."²²

Однако всё было не так просто. Накануне первого обыска у Некипеловых в г. Камешково Владимирской обл. был произведён обыск у его тёщи в Москве. Поздно ночью она приехала к ним, чтобы предупредить.

"Примчалась Нинина мама, держась рукой за сердце, прямо в домашних тапочках, так и ехала в такси, - напишет потом В. Некипелов, - Ну мы конечно, произвели некоторую "чистку". Не могу сказать, что очень уж много было, но кое-что убрали, спасли. Самиздат, имеется в виду - рукописи, собственные стихи... Так и просидели всю ночь, проговорили. Мама уехала чуть свет, никто и не видел, даже сынишка..."²³.

К сожалению, мы должны здесь констатировать, что Некипеловы не cовсем понимали тогда, с кем имеют дело. Мы убеждёны, что обыск у его тёщи был не что иное, как "ход конём", предпринятый КГБ для того, чтобы посмотерть, не начнутся ли в связи с этим у Некипеловых какие-нибудь "движения". Гебисты наверняка видели (а может быть, и на видеоплёнку сняли), как сразу же после обыска тёща в домашних тапочках вышла из дома, как она села в такси, как вошла в Камешково в дом дочери, как рано утром, якобы, никем не замеченная, вышла. Да и такси, "случайно" проезжавшее мимо, наверняка было оперативным - известный, на каждом шагу применяющийся КГБ приём.

Кроме того, квартира у Некипеловых к тому времени могла уже прослушиваться, и разговор с тёщей воплне мог быть КГБ записан и, разумеется, проанализирован со всеми вытекающими отсюда последствиями. Совершенно уверены в том, что за входом в квартиру всю ночь велось наблюдение, так как гебистам нужно было посмотреть, будет ли предупреждённый тёщей В. Некипелов прятать что-нибудь вне дома. Именно по всему по этому и обыск у Некипеловых на другой день, как выразился Виктор, "был каким-то игрушечным, кукольным", как бы "пробой пера..."²⁴

На этом обыске к КГБ попадают стихи В. Некипелова, те, что он счёл возможным не прятать. В них, как и в стихах, найденных у C. Мюге, перед гебистами встаёт его мировозрение - активное неприятие советской системы, бескомпромиссность, непримиримость, органическая потребность "жить не по лжи".

Отсюда и четыре обыска за год, и наверняка наружное наблюдение: его не могло не быть "по протоколу", просто Некипеловы не обращали на это внимания. А следовательно КГБ каждый день фиксировал все его контакты, и очень вероятно, что, по меньшей мере, часть его разговоров с друзьями была подслушана.

Один из обысков (за пять дней до ареста) Виктор опишет потом. "... Таких тотальных обысков не было даже у московских диссидентов. Они (гебисты - В.К.) срывали обои, штукатурку в "подозрительных местах", какой-то специальной острой спицей прокалывали стены, стулья, детские игрушки. На кухне оторвали плинтус, разобрали газовую колонку, снимали дверь..." Один из них "лично обыскал уборную - простучал стены, слазил в унитаз..." Сыскным щупом много раз проткнули банку с заплесневевшей борщовой заправкой... Применяли миноискатель. Разобрали: "а) все стулья и табуретки.., б) портретные и картинные рамки, в) магнитофон, г) транзисторный приёмник, д) будильник и настенные часы, е) электроутюг, ж) катушку для бельевой верёвки, з) электрозвонок..."²⁵

На обысках у В. Некипелова, кроме его стихов и уже упомянутого письма Раскольникова, нашли:

- тетрадь с его размышлениями о советских спецпсихбольницах, где он рассуждает о применении в СССР репрессивной психиатрии, о превращении ряда медицинских учреждений в удобную для властей "бессрочную и бесконтрольную тюрьму"

- два (на разных обысках) машинописных экземпляра его статьи "Нас хотят судить - за что?!" - об антогонизме между советской Конституцией, которая "щедро дарует гражданам... свободу слова, печати, собраний", и статьями 70-й и 190-1 УК РСФСР, которые "тут же всё это у этих граждан крадут"

- ряд старых черновиков, среди которых - наброски стихов о вторжении советских войск в Чехословакию в 1968 г., где на советских танках "паучья свастика под лаком звёзд", где он рассуждает в раздумье: "то ли Родину, то ли шлюху прикрываем серпом и молотом..."

- черновая тетрадь записей, классифцированных КГБ, как "план и начало клеветнической на советскую действительность книги под названием "Книга гнева" (название В. Некипелова - В.К.)

- стихи, в том числе "Интермедия с филёрами", "Отречение", "Административное выселение", "Баллада о форме № 15", где раскрывается его очень личностное часто аллегорически выраженное видение того, что происходит в стране.

Вот этим своим очень личностным отношением к советскому режиму, материализованном в его искрящихся талантом стихах, В. Некипелов выламывается не только из длинной вереницы вызваных по делу С. Мюге свидетелей, но и из узкого круга подозреваемых.

Он не боится ареста и, назвав статьи 70 и 190-1 Уголовного кодекса "каннибальными", отказывается "от какого бы то ни было участия в предстоящем судебном расследовании" ²⁶; он просит родных и друзей "твёрдо знать", что не станет "давать ни следствию, ни суду никаких показаний" ²⁷, потому что то, в чём его собираются обвинить, предусмотрено Конституцией и не может быть квалифицировано, как преступление; он просит друзей в случае его ареста не подавать "никаких просительных бумаг" в его защиту ²⁸ Всем этим он загоняет власти в угол, практически лишая их возможности хоть как-то сохранить лицо...

Отсюда и попытка заключить его в сумасшедший дом (только заявление-протест Инициативной группы по защите прав человека в СССР спасло его от психиатрического диагноза в Институте им. Сербского, где его обследовали сразу после ареста).

Отсюда и описанный выше полуподвал смертников в 13-м блоке Бутырки.

Отсюда и применение к нему КГБ преступных методов дознания: на пересылке в Бутырской тюрьме ему, по его словам, что-то подмешивали в пищу, от чего у него разбух язык, во рту появилась сухость, а главное, возникло неудержимое желание говорить. Не думая о последствиях, он вызвал из Владимира следователя и охотно подтвердил ему своё авторство некоторых, найденных у него на обыске стихов (раньше он предпочитал об этом молчать)...

В лагере он наверняка был пристрастно окружён стукачами (на уголовной зоне это легко делается), о которых он, конечно же, не всегда догадывался. Так что его образ мыслей до мельчайших подробностей был известен КГБ.

Мы пытались понять, почему В. Некипелова убили? Почему дали второй срок, это понятно: он был известным диссидентом, членом МХГ, и уже за одно это по определению по нему плакала 70-я статья... (Хотя с другой стороны, его, казалось бы, могли, как некоторых других правозащитников выпустить на Запад).

После второго ареста офицер КГБ М.А. Кривов на вопрос жены Виктора, за что арестован её муж, лаконично ответил: "За вредную для (советской - В.К.) системы деятельность!". Что он конкретно имел в виду?

Диапазон правозащитной деятельности В. Некипелова был очень широк. Он выступал в защиту малоизвестных политзаключённых; защищал тех узников совести, с кем власти расправлялись с помошью уголовных статей; тех политических противников режима, к кому применялись бандитские методы - угрозы, избиения, шантаж, вторжения в жилища с помощью отмычек и т.д.; разоблачал практику "секретных характеристих" КГБ, нередко сопровождающих ни о чём не подозревающих политзэков в их странствиях по ГУЛАГУ; писал о психологических пытках в страшном мордовском лагере для особо опасных государственных преступников (посёлок Сосновка)...

Поднимая нравственные проблемы, В. Некипелов говорил о позорном, трагическом положении инвалидов в стране, в том числе и инвалидов Великой Отечественной; о недостойном, варварском отношении страны-победительницы к могилам немецких военнослужащих, скончавшихся в советском плену, в сущности - солдат, подчинявшихся приказу своих правителей... Он первым призвал мир защитить вьетнамских беженцев, бегущих на утлых судёнышках из коммунистического ада и на глазах у всех гибнущих от голода и в морской пучине...

На призыв советского правительства к всенародному обсуждению проекта новой Конституции СССР В. Некипелов откликнулся статьёй "Это не моя Конституция", где на пальцах показал, что это опять будет "немощная, фальшивая, бутафорская Конституция", защищающая всё ту же "рабовладельческую Идеологию"²⁹.

Многое ещё можно было бы тут вспоминать...

Ко всему этому он был профессинальным литератором, был очень работоспособен и продуктивен. Более 50-ти документов Хельсинкской Группы вышли при его непосредственном участии. "Опричнина" - самиздатский публицистический журнал, как мы уже писали, был его детищем, и до самой тюрьмы в каждом номере обязательно шёл (иногда - с кем-нибудь в соавторстве) какой-нибудь его острый злободневный материал. Разобравшись до мельчайших деталей в советской системе, В. Некипелов и в стихах и в своих блистательных очерках и статьях прицельно бил по её самым уязвимым местам...

Нет, выслать из страны его не могли. В КГБ понималиа, что на Западе он может развернуться, пополнив собой русскую редакцию одной из западных радиостанций... Судьба его была предрешена - долгий строгорежимный лагерь...

Но почему искалечили и убили?! И почему его не удалось спасти?

В. Некипелов был достаточно известен на Западе, и не только, как член Хельсинкской Группы. Он подписывает многочисленные обращения к западной общественности, он - член ряда западных ПЕН-клубов. Его публицистические работы печатаются в зарубежной прессе и передаются зарубежными радиоголосами, а книга "Институт дураков" (мы уже говорили об этом) переводится на английский язык и издаётся на Западе. Когда его арестовали, с Запада в адрес советского правительства стали поступать письма и телеграммы с просьбой освободить его, а некоторые западные адвокаты потребовали от советских властей допустить их к его защите... И ничего не помогло. Почему?

В начале августа 1977 г. он написал на имя Председателя Президиума Верховного Совета СССР своё знаменитое "Заявление о отказе" (от советского гражданства - В.К.)³⁰, где просил выдать ему разрешение на выезд из страны.

Очень доходчиво он мотивировал свой отказ тем, что абсолютно разочаровался в советской системе, убедившись "на личном примере", что "СССР... вовсе не светлое царствие трудящихся, а жестокое тоталитарное государство, в котором извращены и поруганы элементарные права человеческой личности, в котором владычествует антигуманная антихристианская идеология, сеющая вокруг насилие и ложь..." Он "каждым узлом, каждым нервом" ощущает "свою чужеродность, свою несовместимость с системой, из которой фактически выпал..."

"...Я пришёл, - пишет он, - к полному отрицанию коммунистической идеологии и всех советских доктрин, т.е. к антисоветскому образу мышления... я - антисоветчик и антисоциалист... Ваши планы и цели - не мои! Ваша так громко обсуждаемая сейчас Конституция - не моя Конституция!.."

Через полтора месяца, не дождавшись ответа, он высылает в Президиум Верховного Совета СССР по почте свой паспорт³¹, явочным порядком складывая с себя звание гражданина СССР .

Последующим поколениям будет нелегко понять, каким чудовищным преступлением в глазах властей и каким бесстрашным вызовом им в те годы был отказ от советского гражданства. Да ещё по таким причинам! Да ещё публичный, вынесенный на всемирное обозрение в Самиздат!

"Заявление об отказе" - очень личностный документ и по смыслу, и по форме, и по заложенному в него эмоциональному заряду. И практически оно направлено, хоть В. Некипелов и не называет никаких имён, персонально против каждого партийного номенклатурщика... Каждый партийный аппаратчик, начиная от первого лица в государстве, прочтя "Заявление об отказе", должен был почувствовать себя лично задетым за живое, уязвлённым до тех глубин души, куда он давно уже сознательно не заглядывал. "Заявление об отказе" начисто преречёркивало всю жизнь этих людей, делало её никчёмной, никому ненужной... Такого они не могли простить и были страшно опасны, потому что, живущие по понятиям мафии, любое разоблачение советского режима (основы их сытого, паразитического существования) воспринимали как покушение на своё личное благополучие.

В своей публицистике В. Некипелов замахивается на святая святых этих людей (они потом сами, каждый для себя определят, что и кому из них принимать на свой счёт):

- ...СССР - огромная раковая опухоль...

- ...Мы живём в обществе, исковерканном насилием и ложью...

- ...Наш народ бьётся в дьявольских сетях зла в обличии добра!..

- ...Разбойная практика государства..

- ...Гангстеры от власти...

- ...Опричный разбой...

- ...Разгул государственной уголовщины...

- ...Разбойный... террор... Ивана 1У... в ряде случаев бледнеет перед уголовными... "подвигами" сегодняшних охранителей режима.

- ...Кто-то возьмётся его вести - точный и полный список всех уголовных мерзостей, которые использует сегодняшний режим в России для подавления свободомыслия..."

А ведь одной такой фразы, высказанной публично, тогда было достаточно для того, чтобы человеку на хвост плотно сел КГБ со всеми вытекающими отсюда последствиями.

Но В. Некипелов ничего не боится. В ожидании второго ареста, он пишет: "...Постараясь преодолеть брезгливость, я буду затворяться и каменеть, сколько бы ни катал меня этот зверь по своему ненасытному чреву. С первого же дня я не намерен ни говорить со своими тюремщиками, ни подписывать бумаг, ни исполнять их обрядов..."³² , "...ибо даже тюрьма в СССР есть форма... сотрудничества с системой... в случае ареста я сделаю всё возможное, чтобы такое сотрудничество свести на нет..." ³³.

В другом месте он снова возвращается к этой теме: "...даже там, куда вы постараетесь... теперь меня запихнуть - за колючкой Мордовского лагеря, в психушке, в каземате Владимирской тюрьмы, - я всегда, каждый день, каждый час, каждую улучшенную минуту буду делать одно и то же - говорить людям правду о вашем дьявольском р е ж и м е"³⁴

На самом верху на Лубянке, мы думаем, минимум на уровне одного из замов Ю. Андропова, было принято решение превратить В. Некипелова в интеллектуального инвалида³⁵. И тот следователь, который на допросе как-то сказал ему: "Мы Вас выпустим на Запад, но сначала мы Вас превратим в ничто!", совершил серьёзное должностное преступление. Он по сути раскрыл В. Некипелову все планы КГБ. Последний просто ничего не понял: могло ли прийти такое в голову нормальному человеку?

Но почему с В. Некипеловым решили поступить именно так?

Года за полтора до ареста, добиваясь разрешения на выезд из Советского Союза, он писал в своём очерке "По режимным соображениям" (именно так была сформулирована одна из причин отказа ему в выезде): "...Ваши "режимные соображения" - это моя правозащитная деятельность, это моё творчество, публикации в зарубежных изданиях стихов, очерков, публицистических статей. И это - поистине р е ж и м н ы е с о о б р а ж е н и я, ибо, выросший в вашей "большой зоне", я слишком хорошо знаю о её режиме, и вы боитесь, что это знание я вывезу с собой за рубеж!"

Их реакция (они просто органически не могли выносить, когда кто-нибудь, пусть даже виртуально, брал над ними верх), нам кажется, была такой:

"Боимся, - говоришь? Ошибаешься! Ты уедешь и "вывезешь за рубеж" всё, что тебе будет угодно. Только вот сумеешь ли ты там всем этим воспользоваться?!" Теперь можно представить себе, какой зловещий смысл был вложен тогда в эти слова...

Тайная операция против В. Некипелова, вероятнее всего, началась сразу после его ареста. А чего было ждать? Когда ему дадут срок и отправят в лагерь? Тюрьма, где запертый в четырех стенах человек совершнно беззащитен - куда более удобное место для подобных акций, чем лагерь.

Нам трудно сейчас, не будучи специалистами, сказать, какие именно отравляющие препараты применялись к В. Некипелову. Возможно, его стали подтравливать органическими фосфатами (ОВ, воздействующие на центральную нервную систему), хотя вполне могло быть и что-нибудь другое.

Мы сознательно сказали "подтравливать", а не "травить", ибо в задачу КГБ входило вызвать постепенные, растянутые во времени, неприметные в своей динамике изменения структуры личности.

Отравление В. Некипелова, судя по всему, осуществлялось на протяжении всего срока заключения. Во всяком случае все эти так и не продиагносцированные странности с его здоровьем, упомянутые выше (а всё они, мы уже говорили, по мнению независимых экспертов, укладывались в некую картину хронического отравления), имели место в разное время на протяжении всего его срока пребывания в ГУЛАГЕ.

Причём, совсем не обязательно, что В. Некипелову всё время что-то подмешивали в пищу (хотя, наверняка, было и такое). Известно, что КГБ обладает технологиями насильственного введения ОВ в организм человека - через лёгкие (вдыхание из воздуха) ³⁶ и через кожу ³⁷. Причём, существуют определённые, известные токсикологам дозы ОВ, при которых человек может даже вообще и не заметить ничего. На него просто "откуда ни возьмись" в какой-то момент ("эффект накопления") сваливается болезнь. (Вот почему токсикологи в Советском Союзе были так засекречены!).

Мы, кажется, подошли к ответу на вопрос, почему В. Некипелова после суда без всякой видимой причины, не отправили в лагерь, как должно было быть, а полгода незаконно продержали во Владимирской тюрьме. Дело, по-видимому было не только в том, что в тюрьме, как мы уже сказали, жертва беззащитна и очень доступна для своих палачей, но ещё и в том, что на зоне человек имеет возможность много двигаться, много бывать на воздухе, а потому естественный процесс вывода ОВ из его организма может показаться его палачам нежелательно быстрым.

Думаем, что главным образом по этой причине тоже, его приговаривают к 3-м долгим годам Чистопольской тюрьмы. По этой же причине его так часто бросают в ШИЗО и ПКТ (условия очень приближенные к тюремным), в том числе и тогда в конце 1981 г., когда после больницы его больного прямо из воронка (!) на четыре месяца упекают в ПКТ.

И уж конечно же по этой же причине половину своей последней зимы в ГУЛАГЕ он чуть ли не сплошняком проводит в ШИЗО. Именно в это время (срок заканчивается, всё - по программе) "зловеще меняется стиль его писем: они становятся короче, в них появляются не свойственные ему повторы, выражения, которые он никогда раньше не употреблял... На волю доходят слухи, что он болен, теряется в простом: не может даже усвоить правильное расположение бытовых служб..." ³⁸

Попробуем теперь ответить на вопрос, что за странные нестерпимые боли в суставах, в области почек и мочеиспускательного канала, сопровождающиеся высокой температурой, случились у В. Некипелова в сентябре 1981 г.?

В тюремной больнице, как он потом напишет, "никакой урологической почечно-каменной болезни не обнаружилось... Врач определил какой-то спинально-вентральный миозит ³⁹..." (февраль 1982 г., первое письмо с августа 1981 г.).

Давайте сразу договоримся! В этом исследовании мы не будем верить ни одному слову тюремной медицины. Ни одному слову! В ГУЛАГЕ В. Некипелов имел дело не с врачами, следующими клятве Гиппократа, а с зомбированными подневольными существами, действующими не иначе как, и только по указке КГБ ⁴⁰.

Вспомним вот о чём. Все эти недомогания у него, в конце концов, прошли и больше никогда не повторялись. Это с натяжкой позволяет сделать вывод, что причина этих недомоганий - внешеняя, она была привнесена в организм В. Некипелова извне, а потом, исчерпав себя, перестала действовать. Если принять нашу версию о целенаправленном превращении его с помощью химических препаратов в интеллектуального калеку, можно сделать следующий вывод:

- либо эти недомогания являлись побочными эффектами действия этих препаратов (что нам представляется мало вероятным),

- либо...

Нам очень больно об этом говорить, и мы понимаем, насколько страшно это прозвучит для близких В. Некипелова... Мы считаем, что тогда в сентябре 1981 г. над В. Некипеловым был проделан биологический эксперимент. На нём был опробыван новый медикаментозный препарат, изготовленный в спецлаборатории КГБ ⁴¹ и воздействующий на почки и мочеиспускательную систему (боли в суставах могли быть побочным явлением). Поэтому-то ему и не оказывали так долго никакой медицинской помощи: нужно было посмотреть, как эта, искусственно вызванная болезнь, будет развиваться.

Что касается других необъяснённых врачами (это в ХХ-то веке при современном уровне медицины!) явлений, проявлявшихся у В. Некипелова в процессе болезни - непонятные кожные высыпания, красные, маленькие, не вызывающие зуда; временное нарушение чувствительности в кисти и пальцах; зернистая шершавость на языке с белыми точками, ощущаемыми языком и сопровождающаяся жжением и горением... Так вот все эти странности, по мнению независимых экспертов, мы уже говорили, могли быть результатом хронического отравления. Внесём поправку: "побочным результатом". Ибо основным результатом многолетнего хронического отравления В. Некипелова, по нашему мнению, стала обширная выборочная потеря памяти ("Мы Вас выпустим на Запад, но сначала мы Вас превратим в ничто!").

В этом смысле очень интересна та маленькая инородная точка, которую французский психиатр обнаружил на одном из снимков сканирования головного мозга. Мы так и не знаем ни её происхождения, ни природу, ни последствий, к которым может привести наличие в глубинных структурах мозга такой аномалии. Кто может гарантировать, что это никак не связанно с серьёзными мозговывми нарушениями, проявляющимися у В. Некипелова именно в провалах долговременной памяти?

Правда, психиатр сказал, что эта точка "к психике... никакого отношения не имеет". Но у В. Некипелова психика и не была нарушена. Он производил странное впечатление из-за провалов в памяти. Это да... Но психика, в классическом смысле этого слова, была совершенно сохранена...

Интересно, что диагноз "Склероз сосудов головного мозга" тюремные врачи в Чистополе поставили В. Некипелову перед самым его возвращением в лагерь. А вот Генрих Алтунян, сидевший с ним в Чистопольской тюрьме, впоследствии уверял автора, что "перед отправкой на зону у Виктора с памятью всё было нормально". Г. Алтунян несколько раз настойчиво подчеркнул это: "Всё было в полном порядке! Никаких провалов!" Получается, что провалов в памяти у В. Некипелова ещё не было, а диагноз "Склероз сосудов головного мозга" в медкнижке уже появился. Почему?

Видимо врачи-исполнители, проводившие операцию по превращению В. Некипелова в интеллектуального калеку, предвидели, что через каких-нибудь пару-тройку месяцев он по их рабочему графику должен потерять память и спешили это как-то заранее "узаконить". Такой диагноз для этой цели был очень подходящим: разве не может такое случиться с пожилым человеком?!

Однако склероза головного мозга у В. Некипелова никакого не было. Анатолий Карягин, подтвердивший у него "начало старческого склероза", попался на гебистскую удочку.

И не только сканирование подтвердило, что склероза никакого нет. По словам жены, "Виктор помнил наизусть все 24 тома своего дела". Он вышел на волю со стремлением "всё зафиксировать, ничего не забыть, не потерять" и начал работать. (Окончить, к сожалению, не успел).

Он очень быстро освоил парижское метро, знал наизусть название всех станций по своей линии... Он восхищался архитектурой Парижа: "Как красиво!" Он был переполнен любовью к детям, тянулся к ним... Но был неадекватен. Разговор с ним иногда обрывался из-за того, что он, например, не мог вспомнить кто такая, скажем,.. Анна Ахматова!.. Такое, вероятно, и могло бы быть при тяжёлой форме старческого склероза. Но склероза у В. Некипелова не было! Но тогда что же было?! А вспомним-ка опять: "Мы Вас выпустим на Запад, но сначала..."

А это выражение "лагерный шок"... Кто его придумал?! Оно сослужило не очень хорошую службу Некипеловым...

Обратимся теперь к заболеванию, от которого В. Некипелов скончался.

Мы думаем, что рак у него всё-таки не бы запланирован КГБ. Рак возник, вернее всего, спонтанно, очевидно у В. Некипелова была определённая предрасположенность к нему... Хотя... Помните, Ю. Власов говорит, что КГБ может "разрушать... иммунитет, способность сопротивляться болезни"...

Можно предположить, что дело тут было даже не в "разрушении иммунитета", а просто эти препараты, которые в итоге вызвали у него обширные провалы в памяти, могли (как, например, канцерогены) попутно способствовать возникновению онкологических образований. Причём, как гебисты, так и их врачи-исполнители сами этого вполне могли не знать!

Так или иначе, когда у В. Некипелова в начале 1982 г. были обнаружены первичные признаки онкологического заболевания, в КГБ было принято решение его не лечить: "Пусть погибает!" Тюремным врачам была дана команда делать вид, что ничего не происходит, никак его не обследовать и не оказывать никакой онкологической помощи..

Так они себя и вели эти тюремные врачи. Единственная биопсия, которую у В. Некипелова взяли через четырнадцать (!) месяцев после появления первых опухолей, была взята скорее всего только потому, что на Лубянке сами хотели убедиться, действительно ли у него рак. И очень даже может быть, что результаты анализа были положительными и явственно показали, что у него рак. Просто, это от него элементарно скрыли, цинично убедив его, что "всё в порядке", и так и не показав ему этих результатов. А зачем было показывать? Чтобы он, зная, что смертельно болен, требовал к себе адекватного отношения?

Причём, все эти долгие четырнадцать месяцев, когда его никак не обследовали (не считая одного общего анализа крови), картина его ракового заболевания представала перед гебистами во всей своей динамике. Каким образом? А из его писем жене. Он же там всё подробно описывал, и письма эти шли через КГБ. Именно поэтому-то ему и разрешали (беспрецендентный случай!) описывать подробно все свои перепитии со здоровьем. (А также ещё и в рассчёте на то, что жена, ужаснувшись, начнёт - вот такая была у КГБ логика!- подталкивать его к публичному покаянию).

Так всё и шло все годы по этому сценарию до самого последнего дня заключения. Он медленно умирал, а они (режиссёры из КГБ), передавая друг другу для чтения его письма жене, наверняка, садистски глумились над каждым новым появляющимся у него признком смертельного заболевания...

Впрочем не лечили его от рака не только из одного садизма. Мы уже говорили о том, как майор, а затем - подполковник КГБ Г.П. Кузнецов практически до конца лагерного срока В. Некипелова, всё журчал и журчал ему в уши о том, что "пора бы уже нормально обследоваться иметь свободный доступ к хорошим лекарствам..."

Кака в песенке:

"...Врачуют меня врачи,

Кроят из меня Иуду!.."

При всём при этом основная линия по превращению его в интеллектуального ивалида продолжалась без изменений. Могут спросить, зачем это было КГБ нужно: ведь В. Некипелов уже был обречён на смерть? А потому что В. Некипелов, даже умирающий всё равно был очень опасен. А что если он - хоть его совсем и не лечи - переживёт свой срок (так оно и получилось) и полный творческих планов и каких-то там ещё всё-таки сил выйдет на волю? С ним хлопот не оберёшься! А ещё и на Запад уедет и там развернётся! Нет, им был нужен калека, неспособный к полноценной творческой деятельности.

Сейчас, в конце этого исследования нам всё больше и больше кажется, что появление онкологичских образований у В. Некипелова как-то всё-таки связано с его хроническим отравлением.

Вспомним, что воздействовать медикаментозно на его здоровье удобнее всего было во время его пребывания в тюрьме (мы уже объясняли, почему), лагерных ШИЗО и ПКТ, а также в тюремных больницах, где через подконтрольный КГБ медицинский персонал, он был более, чем где-либо в ГУЛАГЕ уязвим.

Тогда в октябре-ноябре 1981 г. он месяц провёл в больнице со всеми вытекающими отсюда в свете только что сказанного последствиями, а затем, как мы знаем, его прямо без передыху ещё на четыре месяца бросили в ПКТ. Именно там в феврале 1982 г. он впервые жалуется жене на болезненные и разрастающиеся лимфоузлы - подчелюстные и паховые. Совпадение? Может быть.

Однако по выходе из ПКТ его лишают личного свидания с женой, а общее свидание с ней, которое ему всё-таки дают, проходит в тёмном помещении (дескать, лампочка перегорела, и никакой другой на лагерном складе, представьте себе, нет!), да ещё в присутствии пяти (!) сотрудников МВД. К чему такие меры предосторожности? Думаем, что гебисты опасались, что жена, увидев его близко и при нормальном освещении, чутьём родного человека почувствует, что "тут что-то не то".

Существуют ещё некоторые указания на то, что хроническое отравление В. Некипелова и появление у него зловещих опухолей как-то коррелируются между собой. По словам жены, через полгода после освобождения "внешние признаки рака у Виктора уже не были видны, они практически исчезли". Ну не от того же они исчезли, что он сменил лагерные нары на чистую постель и стал нормально питаться!

Дело было в другом. По возвращении из ссылки ему, наверняка, уже не вводили никаких препаратов: он был в таком состоянии, что это уже никому было не нужно. КГБ, наоборот, был очень заинтересован в том, чтобы до отъезда на Запад все ОВ из его организма вышли. Потому-то его и не выпускали из страны целых полгода, пока, повидимому не посчитали, что он совершено очистился, и теперь никакие анализы, если они на Западе и будут проделаны, ничего не покажут. Только вот очищение его организма от ОВ и исчезновение у него внешних признаков рака проходили как-то уж очень синхронно друг с другом...

Как же они (КГБ) не боялись идти на такое? Ведь человек может догадаться, что с ним происходит, почувствовать что-то и поднять скандал?!

Ответ на этот вопрос очень прост: "А кто ему поверит?" Люди начинают шарахаться от него, потому что среднему человеку очень трудно представить себе, что такое вообще может быть! Ему гораздо легче не поверить в это, отринуть от себя, как плод больной фантазии! Иначе всё мироздание сразу - с ног на голову! Об этом говорил и Ю. Власов: "...Когда начинаешь говорить, что тебя насильно могут сделать больным, помочь тебе заболеть, люди склонны усматривать в этом... ненормальность... какую-то психическую неуравновешенность..." ⁴². Человек оказывается в изоляции.

Обо всём этом прекрасно знали и специалисты из КГБ. Именно на это у них был и рассчёт! Однако, несмотря ни на что, они в таких случаях всегда подстраховывались, и любое запланированное хроническое отравление неминуемо сопровождалось каким-нибудь ложным приписываемым человеку психиатрическим диагнозом.

Вот почему у В. Некипелова и появился диагноз"онкофобия". Помимо того, что этот диагноз давал врачам от КГБ (и в заключении и на воле) прекрасную возможность безнаказанно не лечить его от рака, для гебистов это была ещё и гарантия их личной безопасности на случай непредвиденного скандала: раз человек страдает "онкофобией", значит он психически ненормален. Кто же ему поверит, что его там кто-то чем-то "подтравливает"?! И если бы у В. Некипелова не было бы рака, - можно не сомневаться - в его медкнижке красовалось бы название какой-нибудь другой фобии, а то и мании, настраивающее окружающих на определённый лад.

А если бы В. Некипелов вдруг догадался о том, что с ним на самом деле творят и рассказал бы кому-нибудь о своей страшной догадке, к нему сразу бы пригласили психиатра, а у него самого тем временем уже типически бы подёргивалась голова, типически бы пришёл в движение язык, а изо рта тихо бы посочилась слюна. Впрочем, всё это сразу бы прекратилось, как только он перестал бы убеждать окружающих в том, что его чем-то там травят.

Кажется, мы ответили на все вопросы Марии Подъяпольской, и можно, думаем, теперь поставить окончательную точку. Виктора Некипелова убили. Его, больного раком долгие годы сознательно не обследовали и никак не лечили. Кроме того, по отработанной технологии его превратили в интеллектуального инвалида. И до боли жаль, что мы никогда не узнаем имена тех несчастных, на которых эта технология отрабатывалась. Пусть эта глава будет посвящена светлой памяти этих мученников...

 

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П р и м е ч а н и я

¹ - Первый арест - июль 1973 г. по так называемому "Самиздатскому делу". Впоследствии В. Некипелов напишет: "... У моего друга Сергея Георгиевича Мюге, учёного биолога, 21.1Х.1971 г. был произведён обыск, на котором была изъята самиздатовская литература. Возникло "дело", пошли массовые допросы и обыски, в том числе и у меня... В 1973 г. по каким-то непонятным причинам (скорее всего, чтобы не создавать шумного, но безрезультативного судилища, поскольку почти все "подозреваемые" заняли позицию неучастия в следствии) "дело" решили свернуть. С. Мюге был неожиданно выпущен за границу. Из всех "подозреваемых" был арестован один я..." (Виктор Некипелов, "Обручение с Россией", Публицистика, Париж, 1999 г., с. 23).

В. Некипелов был осуждён по статье 190-1 УК РСФСР ("Систематичекое распространение заведомо ложных измышлений порочащих советский государственный и общественный строй") на два года лишения свободы в ИТК общего режима. Срок отбывал в лагере г. Юрьевец Владимирской области.

- Второй арест - декабрь 1979 г., ст. 70-1 УК РСФСР ("Антисоветская агитация и пропаганда").

К этому времени в его послужном списке - членство и активная деятельность в МХГ (около пятидесяти /!/ документов Группы вышли при его непосредственном участии), работа по выпуску экспресс-журнала "Опричнина",

авторство многочисленных антисоветских публицистических очерков и статей, опубликованных на Западе и в Самиздате (кроме упоминающихся выше, "Мысли о гражданстве", "Почему я не подписал Стокгольмское возвание", "О наших обысках", "Три года лагерей" /о Михаиле Кукобаке/, "Когда нет игры партий", "В защиту малоизвестных заключённых" и др.); тщетная попытка получить разрешение на выезд из СССР и официальный отказ от советского гражданства (вместе с "Заявлением об отказе" на имя Председателя Президиума Верховного Совета СССР он высылает свой гражданский паспорт)...

В июне 1980 г. выездная сессия Владимирского выездного суда в г. Камешково Владимирской области приговорила В. Никипелова к 7-ми годам лагерей строгого режима и 5-ти годам ссылки. Второй лагерный срок (тоже от звонка до звонка) он отбывал на 36-й пермской политзоне (учр.ВС-389/36) и в Чистопольской тюрьме. (Людмила Алексеева - "История инакомыслия в СССР. Новейший период", Khronika press, 1984, с.с. 289, 321, 342, 345, 371, 376; "58-10, Надзорные производства Прокуратуры СССР по делам об антисоветской агитации и пропаганде. Аннотированный каталог. Март 1953 - 1991", Москва 1999 г., с. 787).

²  - "Между Марсом и Венерой", стихи, издательство "Карпаты", Ужгород, 1966.

³  - Александр Огородников, 1950 г. р., бывший студент киноведческого факультета Всесоюзного Государственного Института Кинематографии (ВГИК), организатор нелегального Христианского семинара по проблемам духовного возрождения России (1974 г.), один из основателей и редакторов православного самиздатского журнала "Община" (до 1978 г.), в 1976 - 1977 г.г. подписал несколько писем в защиту Церкви и верующих в СССР.

Поздней осенью 1978 г. был задержан и привезён на Лубянку, где ему без обиняков предложили уехать из страны, а когда он отказался, сказали, что через месяц он будет арестован и уже больше никогда не выйдет из лагеря.

В ноябре 1978 г. А. Огородников был арестован, обвинен в тунеядстве и в январе 1979 г. судим в г. Конаково Калининской (Тверской) области. Приговор - 1 год исправительно-трудовых работ. Срок отбывал в уголовном лагере в Комсомольске на Амуре. Незадолго до окончания срока самолётом был привезён в Ленинград и помещён во внутреннюю тюрьму КГБ ("Большой дом"), где подвергся мощной психологической обработке: гебисты хотели, чтобы он написал расписку в том, что больше никогда не будет заниматься правозащитной деятельностью. Он это предложение отверг и за несколько дней до предполагаемого освобождения был арестован ещё раз, отвезён в г. Калинин (в Ленинграде КГБ опасался общественного резонанса) и по ст. 70-1 УК РСФСР обвинён в религиозной и антисоветской агитации и пропаганде в местах лишения свободы. (Кроме этого, в обвинительном заключении ему припомнили и издание журнала "Община", и авторство самиздатских антисоветских статей, и правозащитные письма на Запад...). Приговор - 6 лет лагерей строгого режима и 5 лет ссылки. Срок отбывал на 36-й пермской политзоне (учр. ВС-389/36).

В ноябре 1985 г., незадолго до окончания срока был арестован опять и в апреле 1986 г. по ст. 188-3 УК РСФСР (злостное неповиновение требованиям администрации ИТУ) приговорён к 3-м годам лагерей. Срок отбывал в Хабаровском крае в уголовном лагере посёлка Заозёрный, где в 1987 г. против него возбуждают новое уголовное дело по обвинению в антисоветской агитации и пропаганде в лагере (ст. 70-2 УК РСФСР). Освобождён в феврале 1987 г. в русле государственной акции по выдворению политзеков из мест заключения (указ Президиума Верховного Совета СССР от 13 февраля 1987 г.). После освобождения начинает выпускать самиздатский "Бюллетень Христианской общественности". С сентября 1989 г. - председатель организованного им Христианско-демократического союза (ХДС). (Людмила Алексеева - там же, с.с. 229-230; газета "Экспресс-Хроника" 20 октября 1995 г., № 39 (425), с. 1, "Помогите накормить голодных!"; 10 января 1997 г., № 2 (480) и 5 сентября 1997 г., № 32 (510), с. 4, рубрика "О тех, кто стучался в закрытые двери").

⁴  - В. Некипелов - "Стихи", избранное, издательство "Мемориал", Бостон, 1992 , М. Г. Петренко-Подъяпольская - Вступительная статья, с. 11.

⁵  - Исправительно-трудовой Кодекс РСФСР (ИТК РСФСР) действовал на территории СССР и России с 1/У1-1971 г. по 1/У11-1997 г. Ст. 14 этого Кодекса - "Направление осуждённых к лишению свободы для отбывания наказания"

гласит о том, что осуждённый к лишению свободы должен быть направлен к месту отбывания наказания "не позднее 10-тидневного срока со дня вступления приговора в законную силу".

⁶  - Условия содержания заключённых в советских тюрьмах брежневского периода были намного тяжелее лагерных, и поэтому лагерное начальство в расчёте подрезать крылья несломленным политзэкам, нередко, как суровое наказание, помещало их (через формальные, подконтрольные КГБ внутрилагерные суды) на длительные сроки в тюрьму.

⁷  - Лимфатические узлы - одна из составляющих лимфатической системы.

⁸  - Парадантоз - воспаление дёсен.

⁹  - Лимфогранулематоз - злокачественное заболевание лимфосистемы.

¹⁰  - Лимфомы - злокачественные образования лимфосистемы.

¹¹  - Туберкулома (туберкул) - одна из форм туберкулёза (ограниченный капсулой туберкулёзный очаг).

¹²  - Фтивазин (в медицинских справочниках - "фтивазид") - препарат, применяемый при любых формах туберкулёза.

¹³  - Гематология - раздел медицины, изучающий состав, свойства и болезни крови.

- Немобластад (нейробластома) - злокачественная опухоль из нервных тканей.

- Лейкоз - заболевание кроветворной системы, характеризующееся среди прочего увеличением числа белых кровяных клеток и уменьшением красных кровяных клеток.

- Лимфолейкоз - один из видов рака крови.

- Миелолейкоз - один из видов рака крови с преимущественным поражением костного мозга.

¹⁴  - Гаммаглобулин - препарат, применяемый для повышения иммунитета при инфекциях.

¹⁵  - Лимфаденит - воспаление лимфатических узлов.

¹⁶  - Остеохандроз - окостенение хрящей.

¹⁷  - В. Некипелов - "Стихи", Избранное, издательство "Мемориал" Бостон, 1992, М.Г. Петренко-Подъяпольская - вступительная статья, с. 14.

¹⁸  - В то время из СССР эмигрировало большое количество евреев, и, пожалуй, единственный способ для не еврея покинуть страну тогда был - попросить кого-нибудь из знакомых в Израиле прислать ему израильский вызов, якобы, от дальнего тамошнего родственника. В КГБ, разумеется, обо всех этих махинациях были прекрасно осведомлёны, однако, смотрели на всё сквозь пальцы, сами пользуясь иногда этим способом для своих оперативных нужд.

¹⁹  - Сергей Григорьянц, 1941 г.р., москвич, по профессии литературный критик, арестован в марте 1975 г. за распрстранение антисоветского Тамиздата и незаконную торговлю предметами исскуства (соответственно ст. 190-1 и ст. 154 УК РСФСР). Приговорён к 5-ти годам лишения свободы. Срок отбывал в Ярославской и Чистопольской тюрьмах, а также в Верхне-Уральской спецтюрьме для особо опасных рецидивистов. С 1980 г. после освобождения, лишённый московской прописки, проживал в г. Боровске Калужской области, работал оператором котельной. С 1981 г. - соредактор, а с 1982 г. - главный редактор Самиздатского Бюллетеня "В".

Арестован второй раз в мае 1983 г. в Калуге по ст. 70-1 УК РСФСР, приговорён к 7-ми годам лагерей строгого режима и 3-м годам ссылки. Два года провёл в Чистопольской тюрьме, около года - на 37-й пермской политзоне и остаток срока - снова в Чистопольской тюрьме. Освобождён в 1987 г. в русле государственной акции по выдворению политзэков из мест заключения. После освобождения приступил к изданию самиздатского публицистического журнала "Гласность".

Лауреат международного конкурса "Золотое перо Свободы" (Всемирная Ассоциация Издателей).

²⁰  - Леонид Плющ, 1939 г. р., киевлянин, по профессии математик; с 1964 г. посылал в редакции газет и частным лицам документы о нарушении прав человека в СССР; в 1969 г. вошёл в Инициативную группу по защите прав человека в СССР. В 1972 г. арестован по самиздатскому делу об изготовлении и распространении самиздатского журнала "Хроника текущих событий" (так называемое "дело № 24") и обвинен по ст. 62-1 УК УССР в антисоветской агитации и пропаганде. В январе 1973 г. Киевским облсудом признан невменяемым и направлен на принудительное лечение в спецпсихбольницу г. Днепропетровска (экспертами на процессе выступали академики Г. Мороз и А. Снежневский). В 1976 г. под давлением общественного мнения на Западе выслан из СССР во Францию (Людмила Алексеева - там же, с.с. 15, 24-27, 30-31, 38, 267, 286; "58-10, Надзорные производства Прокуратуры СССР по делам об антисоветской агитации и пропаганде. Аннотированный каталог. Март 1953 - 1991", Москва 1999 г., с. 746. ; газета "Экспресс-Хроника" 24 января 1997 г., № 4 (482), с. 4, рубрика "О тех, кто стучался в закрытые двери").

- Анатолий Корягин, 1938 г.р., харьковский врач-психиатр, с 1980 г. - консультант Независимой рабочей комиссии по расследованию использования психиатрии в политических целях. Арестован в феврале 1981 г. после того, как он провел независимую психиатрическую экспертизу донецкого правозащитника Алексея Никитина, борца за социальные права советских шахтёров и, найдя его психически совершенно здоровым, передал своё заключение иностранным корреспондентам. Официально он был обвинён по ст. 62-1 УК УССР в распространении Самиздата и "устной антисоветской пропаганде" (о его работе в Независимой рабочей комиссии на суде не было сказано ни слова) и приговорён к 7-ми годам лагерей строго режима и 5-ти годам ссылки (во время суда - с 3 по 5 июня 1981 г. - въезд в Харьков иностранным журналистам был запрещён). Срок отбывал на 35-й пермской политзоне и в Чистопольской тюрьме. Освобождён в 1987 г. в русле государственной кампании по выдворению политзеков из мест заключения (Людмила Алексеева, там же, с.с. №321-324); газета "Экспресс-Хроника" 30 мая 1997 г., № 22 (500), с. 4, рубрика "О тех, кто стучался в закрытые двери").

²¹  - Виктор Некипелов - "Обручение с Россией", Публицистика, Париж, 1999, очерк "Склонен к побегу и самоубийству", с. 121.

²²  - В. Некипелов - "Стихи", избранное, издательство "Мемориал", Бостон, 1992, М. Г. Петренко-Подъяпольская - Вступительная статья, с.c. 3-4.

²³  - Виктор Некипелов - "Обручение с Россией", Публицистика, Париж, 1999, статья "Белозубые пушкиноведы", с. 22.

²⁴  - Там же, с. 22.

²⁵  - Там же, статья "Налётчики с миноискателями", с.с. 35-36.

²⁶  - Там же, статья "Нас хотят судить - за что?", с.с. 7-8.

²⁷  - Там же, с. 8.

²⁸  - Там же, с. 8

²⁹  - Там же, статья "Это не моя Конституция", с.с. 54-58.

³⁰ - Там же, Заявление об отказе, с.с. 58-61.

³¹ - Там же, статья Заявление об отказе с.с. 58-61.

³²  - Там же, очерк "Если я не вернусь", с.с. 15-16.

³³  - Там же, Заявление об отказе, с.с. 58-61.

³⁴  - Там же, очерк "По режимным соображениям", с.с. 65-67.

³⁵ - Юрий Власов, многократный чемпион мира и Олимпийских игр по поднятию тяжестей, а позднее - видный инакомыслящий, вступивший в конце 80-тых в единоборство с КГБ, считает, что подобные решения принимались не столько в КГБ, сколько - в более высоких инстанциях. В своём интервью Марку Дейчу в 1990 г. он говорит: "...Вместе с Комитетом все это решается нашей центральной властью - кому болеть, кому выступать (на международных спортивных соревнованиях - В.К), кому как жить. Они просто прячутся за КГБ..." (Газета "Час мужества", 1990 г., №№ 15-1, 15-2, Ю. Власов - "Пока существует КГБ, демократия в СССР невозможна...", интервью независимому журналисту Марку Дейчу).

³⁶  - Юрий Власов, которому гебисты, судя по всему, именно таким образом испортили лёгкие, впоследствии говорил, что один из способов КГБ "тайно уничтожать людей это - наносить вред их здоровью, прививать различные болезни..." "Тебя могут, - продолжает он, - насильно сделать больным , могут помочь тебе заболеть... Это не выдумка!.. И Калугин это подтвердил. Когда нужно, КГБ может сделать так, что человек начинает болеть. Причём, подбирается такая болезнь, к которой ты склонен. Если у тебя, например, больные лёгкие, тебе помогут всё время болеть лёгкими, самое главное - разрушают твой имунитет, способность сопротивляться..." (Ю. Власов - там же; Ю Власов - "Огненный Крест", Новости, Москва, 1992, часть 11, с.с. 565-570).

³⁷  - Христофер Эндрю и Олег Гордиевский - "КГБ. История внешнеполитических операций. От Ленина до Горбачёва" (Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievskiy - "KGB. The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev"), "Nota Bene", с. 647; Юрий Власов - "Огненный Крест", Новости, Москва, 1992, часть 11, с. 573).

³⁸  - В. Некипелов - "Стихи", Избранное, издательство "Мемориал", Бостон, 1992, М.Г. Петренко-Подъяпольская - с. 13.

³⁹  - Спинально-вентральный миозит - воспаление мышц, расположенных вдоль позвоночника

⁴⁰ - По словам бывшего политзаключённого Генриха Алтуняна, сидевшего с В. Некипеловым на 36-й политзоне и в Чистопольской тюрьме, врач политзоны иногда говаривал с гордостью: "Я сначала - чекист и только потом уже врач!"

- Генрих Алтунян (1933-2005), харьковчанин, по профессии инженер-радиоэлектронщик, член Инициативной группы по защите прав человека в СССР, в прошлом - майор советской армии (в 1968 г. был исключён из партии и уволен из армии без выходного пособия), был 11 июля 1969 г. арестован в Харькове и обвинён по статье 62-1 УК УССР (антисоветская агитация и пропаганда). Ему вменялось в вину составление и подписание письма в защиту генерала Петра Григоренко, писем в ООН (конец мая 1969 г.) и "К Совещанию коммунистиических партий" (июнь 1969 г.) о нарушении гражданских прав в СССР, а также хранение и распространение Самиздата (сочинения академика Андрея Дмитриевича Сахарова, статья академика А.Г. Аганбегяна "О современном состоянии советской экономики", стихотворение В. Высоцкого "Ледоход", не подписаннное автором, в котором были такие слова: "Снизу - лёд, сверху - лёд..." и др.). В какой-то момент статья 62-1 УК УССР была заменена на ст. 187 УК УССР ("Систематичекое распространение заведомо ложных измышлений порочащих советский государственный и общественный строй"). На суде в конце ноября 1969 г. не признал себя виновным, а в своём последнем слове заявил, что всегда будет бороться против сталинизма. Приговорён к 3-м годам исправительно-трудовых работ, срок отбывал в Красноярском крае, посёлок Ингаш.

Второй раз арестован в Харькове в середине декабря 1980 г. и обвинён по ст. 62-1 УК УССР в хранении и распространении книги А. Солженицина "Архипелаг ГУЛАГ" и "Хроники текущих событий". В конце марта 1981 г. приговорён к 7-ми годам лагерей и 5-ти годам ссылки. В своём последнем слове сказал, что "с литературой нужно бороться только литературой". Срок отбывал на 36-й пермской политзоне, в Чистопольской тюрьме и мордовском лагере (посёлок Барашев).

В январе 1987 г. в русле государственной кампании по выдворению политзеков из мест заключения привезён в Харьков для психологической обработки: гебисты очень хотели, чтобы он написал прошение о помиловании, и пытались подключить к этому его жену. В конце концов, после двух месяцев противостояния с КГБ он написал заявление, в котором просил освободить его из заключения, так как он "никаких преступлений не совершал и ни в чём не виноват". (Людмила Алексеева, там же, с.с. 31, 41, 267, 281; газета "Экспресс-Хроника" 22 ноября 1996 г., № 38 (473) и 28 марта 1997 г., № 13 (491), с. 4, рубрика "О тех, кто стучался в закрытые двери").

- Пётр Григоренко, 1907 г. р., москвич, известный правозащитник, один из основателей Московской Хельсинкской Группы, член Украинской Хельсинкской Группы, в прошлом - убеждённый коммунист, бывший генерал-майор советской армии, участник Великой Отечественной войн, начальник кафедры Академии Генштаба им. Фрунзе (был исключён из партии и уволен из армии после своего смелого выступления на районной партконференции в сентябре 1961 г.), в 1964 г., был арестован, признан судом невменяемым и помещён в спецпсихбольницу.

Второй раз арестован в мае 1969 г. в Ташкенте, куда он прибыл для того, чтобы выступить общественным защитником на суде над активистами крымско-татарского движения. В конце февраля 1970 г. предстал перед судом по обвинению в содействии национальному движению крымских татар, снова признан неменяемым и отправлен в Казанскую спецпсихбольницу, где провёл более 5 лет.

В ноябре 1977 г. ему было разрешено поехать в США в гости к сыну, а через несколько месяцев он был лишён советского гражданства. Умер в 1987 г. в Нью-Йорке. (Людмила Алексеева, там же, с.с. 32-33, 36,38, 119, 121-122, 131, 245, 249, 265, 271, 281, 284-285, 312, 316, 321, 362-363, 404). Газета "Экспресс-Хроника" 21 февраля 1997 г., № 8 (486), с. 4, рубрика "О тех, кто стучался в закрытые двери"); 18 октября 1997 г., № 38 (516), с. 4, Александр Подробинек - "90 лет Петру Григоренко").

⁴¹  - Cверхсекретная спецлаборатория КГБ (по изготовлению ядов - В.К.) при Оперативно-техническом управлении (ОПТ), находящаяся под прямым контролем председателя КГБ (Христофер Эндрю и Олег Гордиевский - "КГБ. История внешнеполитических операций. От Ленина до Горбачёва", "Nota Bene", с. 646; Ю Власов - "Огненный Крест", Новости, Москва, 1992, часть 11, с. 572).

⁴²  - Газета "Час мужества", 1990 г., №№ 15-1, 15-2, Ю. Власов - "Пока существует КГБ, демократия в СССР невозможна...", интервью независимому журналисту Марку Дейчу.

 

Владимир Кыловский

What Happened to Marinna Ovsyannikova, State TV Picketer? Was She Legit?

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

 

This was drafted in March 16, 2022 and then not published for some reason, I suppose because so many Russian colleagues were shushing me and seemed to NEED Ovsvyannikova's story to be "true" in order to encourage other establishment media figures to break with the regime.

 

I hope they're past that now, although I know a few who are not.

 

 

***

 

I'm happy to go on record as a skeptic of the dramatic story of the top Russian domestic propaganda channel airing a staged one-woman picket with a sign "It's all lies!" as a Kremlin kukla anchor droned on about glorious Russian troops liberating grateful Ukrainian villagers.

 

Everybody is trying to parse the story of Marina Ovsyannikova who staged the anti-war protest on live TV. Was she a false flag op? What happens to her next will tend to confirm her authenticity -- or not. Currently she's missing. If she recants on state TV tomorrow...

— CAFitzpatrick 🌻 (@catfitz) March 15, 2022

So Ovsyannikova, the TV1 gal, is trending on Moscow Twitter https://t.co/En1AzwUZAi I continue to believe this story is a bit of chum that too many people have bit down hard on, and will come to regret it. The question is: whose chum?

— CAFitzpatrick 🌻 (@catfitz) March 16, 2022

 

Was It Live?

 

The questions to ask aren't about whether it was a real live broadcast -- as a former producer explains, and as I can confirm having worked at one time as a translator on the local

public television station that broadcast Russian state news (fortunately a failed Polish entrepreneurial project), it was live and she really did pop in like a Saturday Night Live skit (and hey, where is that SNL skit imitating this stunt?!). 

 

The next scene to which they cut which contains medical personnel in a hospital corridor isn't some rich Aesopian message but merely the next story in the queue. So let's take that off our list of queries. It was live, and that was not the point. Yes, it really was live, guys. But not any more, as now there is a report from an independent journalist formerly of BBC and Meduza (so really, really independent!) as well as a former Lenta.ru journalist that TV1 now has a one-minute time delay to ensure that sort of thing never repeats.

 

Was It Stage-Managed By More Than the Protester?

 

Could it, even live, have been stage-managed? I think there was signs that it was, but the question is, by whom? And for what purpose? For you to even know about this stunt, there had to be at least two other people involved, many more -- the person who filmed her pre-recorded message, and the person who ensured it got maximum play on first Russian, then world social media.

 

So it was managed, but was it a 360 degree Kremlin propaganda package micro-managed by FSB psy-war specialists? Not likely.

 

As one colleague asked, how would any kind of Kremlin false-flag op involving this hitherto unknown TV1 propagandist serve Putin's agenda? It can't look good for Putin if his often pre-recorded but still loyalist-while-live national TV broadcasts can be invaded by spontaneous anti-war solo picketers of the kind routinely dragged away by their arms or legs or hair from anywhere near Red Square or indeed any public square. Although solo pickets are technically allowed under the Russian law on demonstrations -- we can expect a "spontaneous" redaction of this law soonest to specify "without media present" -- thus ending the scores of blurry and crooked camera-phone arrest photos on the pages of my still remaining Facebook friends from Russia. A mobile phone that can reach 2000 people on social media can be characterized as media that failed to register under the Russian press law.

 

It might be easy for a formerly loyal TV worker drone to pop up with a protest, but how will she ensure that it is taped, and that this message gets out to the world (the capacity for snuffing out such an event is enormous as I will explain later.

 

She Had Help

 

Here, she obviously had help -- she planned the action, she made a pre-recorded message to release after her expected arrest, and was able to quickly get it to Ksenia Sobchak , usually described as a "media manager and socialite," the chief "sort of" opposition TV personality.  Sobchak was the ideal link for such a caper because while she has at times had her shows canceled, she always seems to get a new one, and has hung on to her access as the daughter of the former mayor of St. Petersburg. Whoever gave it to Sobchak would be an acquaintance who could vouch for its authenticity so that she could instantly put it on her Telegram channel called "Warning, News!" which has 1.49 million subscribers.  Telegram is the venue of choice for Russian message-sending from all quarters as it is quasi-independent, not technically part of the Kremlin media empire, but not part of the now-banned Western empire of Facebook, Instagram, etc. (My many questions over the years about all the fairy dust sprinkled on Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, and all his works I will save for another day.)

 

From Telegram, the haven of news junkies for whom even mainlining Twitter is never enough, it reached mainstream media. Yesterday, Marina was a top trend on Moscow Twitter; today she's gone.

 

Sobchak isn't exactly a figure to inspire hope in Ukrainians or long-time Russian activists -- some felt she seemed more upset about losing her YouTube channel revenue than the deaths of people in Ukraine. (Of course, every impression like this has to be researched to see if in fact she attempted more protest but was smothered.) The operative point is that Sobchak is connected yet relatively free to speak out and make the synapse jump between the communities of TV propagandists and establishment social media critics -- and reach the Western media. Yes, you can find screenshots of Sobchak's loyalist "Krym Mash" (Crimea is Ours") sentiment on Twitter which she may have deleted, but it should be seen in context of all her statements on Crimea still standing. which is still critical.

 

So the questions I've said needed to be asked now are not "was it live" or "did someone choreograph it" but chiefly: why was she released from lock-up?! 

 

Two Court Cases

 

In an unfolding story like this, many Russia-watchers like to one-up you with late-breaking news that appears to undo your theory, i.e. the fine point that she is technically facing two court cases. One  is a charge under the administrative code Art. 20, very frequently used for tens of thousands of anti-war protests, for unauthorized picketing. As a first-time offender, that got her only 30,000 rubles ($280, but possibly half that by the time I finish typing this sentence given Russia's near default under sanctions). It might have been 3 days or 15 days but wasn't, but she faces another charge for "organizing an unauthorized mass protest" -- obviously if you appear on national TV, even as a solo flyer, it can become "mass".

 

It didn't. Novaya Gazeta, a leading independent paper barely hanging on when others have closed published a picture of the incident with the text of her sign blanked out. But people even with blank posters, or just literally the phrase "Two Words" (hinting at "no to war" which is just to words in the Russian language) are dragged away commonly if they don't have a permit -- which are not always granted and if given, forced on the outskirts of town, far from view.

 

But in addition to the charges that seemingly led to a mere slap on the wrist, she faces more serious charges that could lead to 5-10 years under Art. 207 of the criminal code, according to an independent lawyer.

 

There is an old Soviet joke about how people were free to protest on Red Square. It's just that they weren't free afterwards. So what happens to Marina O. afterwards is the space to watch.

 

Such lawyers are not saying her case will fall under the new draconian law about disparaging the "special operation" which is punishable by 15 years. But we don't know yet, really, what her case will involve by the time it gets to court again.

 

Her act becomes more understandable -- and possibly even more important -- if it is the tip of an iceberg involving sub-rosa mass protest of some kind within state TV walls.

 

There are reports of other state TV resignations or slow-downs, some less visible, even if during a work shift, others through sick-outs. Maybe we will see mass firings of the disloyal, or even just two dismissals and arrests -- as with the FSB operatives responsible for the war in Ukraine recently -- or maybe we will see mass resignations, but so far -- not.

 

And far from actually explaining away the mystery of her release (only one of her cases was heard in court; the other is pending) the fine point only ADDS to the mystery -- with TWO cases, how on earth can she released from Matrosskaya Tishina, the prison I translate as "Sailors' Haven," which some frightened protesters manage to signal to their families by posting an innocuous phrase  to social media or a DM to friends like "Enjoying a walk around Moscow" -- but with the location clearly visible on the cell phone message. How?

 

You don't even have to wonder about her perfectly put-together foreign-made outfit and make-up after two sleepless nights or look to see if she is wearing Louboutins like in the Leningrad video; you can just ask why she wasn't held like scores of other famous or unknown people with several charges like this who are *kept in jail*. And the fact is, like so much that goes on in Moscow, we don't know and I personally think it's ok to be skeptical and have questions.

 

Disappointing Heroines

 

You can skip ahead to more current concerns but it helps to understand that very few heroes from Russia and this part of the world in general live up to the expectations of their Western -- or even Eastern -- admirers.

 

If you accept such stories as authentically sincere and heroic, you can be very disappointed later. I'm old enough to remember the dramatic story of Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot who was Joan of Arc,  Amelia Earhart, and Nadezhda Popova all rolled into one, whose release from Russian prison came after a surge of sustained world-wide protest, but who wound up with a ruined political career when she went to negotiate with the leaders of the soi-disant People's Republic of Donetsk and even less disant Luhansk Democratic People's Republics, and was willing to give up Crimea to stop the war. And I speak as someone who went over every inch of ground on the road to Luhansk from every available footage of the scene on the bridge where Igor Kornelyuk, a Ukrainian-born state TV anchor without a bullet-proof vest, and other crew members were killed by Ukrainian shelling as they were  being taken around by DNR fighters, in an effort to exonerate Savchenko from the claim that she was the military spotter who guided the mortar fire on to the Russian TV group -- a charge I think can be demonstrated as false.

 

So you do have to ask the age-old Leninist question of "who profits," as well as look for the Louboutins. And even if the TV1 worker drone's stunt is thoroughly authentic and had help from genuine opposition/newly former establishment quarters, it is still possible for Putin not only to make lemons from this lemonade but to totally sugar the pitcher.

 

In the grand picture, as Ukrainians have pointed out, for at least two days, hopefully not more, the world was riveted to the absorbing tale of a brave Russian woman standing up against the war machine, and didn't see small towns that most of the world had never heard of until now essentially falling to the Russians, despite brave Ukrainian resistance battles still ongoing.

Here’s my prediction for #Ovsyannikova thread. You will forget about Chernihiv, Sumy, Mariupol, Bucha, Irpin, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Kyiv... & will be too busy discussing how near is the end of totalitarianism in Russia when a propagandist does an anti-war performance. Wanna bet?

— Viktoriia Zhuhan (@uziaka) March 14, 2022

 

#notallrussians #WARINUKRAINE
So about this "live performance".
It looks like one NO WAR poster (for English-speaking Russians, I presume) is enough to make it all about good Russians suffering while Mariupol is just being destroyed, nothing serious.
Masters to shift the blame. pic.twitter.com/8MpNAIBqMg

— Ostap Ukrainets (@Ukrostap) March 15, 2022

 

I could add that as an extra bonus from the Kremlin propagandist perspective,  if you were a Fox News supporter and Trump voter, you were distracted from perhaps changing your mind over the death of a Fox News reporter in Ukraine, the other brave journalist story of the hour. It's not "genius". People are getting killed.

 

Do Russians Suffer?

 

Some Russian friends are ranting at me that I am heartless to be skeptical of Marina, a mother of two children facing serious jail time, but I'm dry-eyed -- Ukrainian mothers of two are being killed under Russian artillery fire -- along with their two children. Let's be crystal clear about who is suffering the most here. As someone who has spent my entire life helping Soviet and later Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Central Asian dissidents of all kinds to escape imprisonment, their countries, and their language limitations, I get to do that. All kinds of people are needed to make up successful anti-war movements in any country, including our own. Some people will be willing to pound Trident missiles or chain themselves to embassies and face jail time for "civil disobedience" (although I find the concept of what that involves less coherent in our time); others may only light a candle and put it their window. All levels of activism have to be accepted to succeed.

 

And you do have to be brave in Russia and take risks. Even so, I don't think fear of imprisonment or old age is an excuse for a prominent figure like historian and author Edvard Radzinsky to low-ball his response to the war; I don't see liberal science leader Evgeny Velikhov, said to be ailing, even with a poster saying "War is Unhealthy for Children and Other Living Things" -- remember that witless wonder of the 1960s? -- although he was well enough to step out and receive his Order of Labour star from Putin recently. There is an awful lot of veniality and shocking distortion of universal principles and outright support of the war in Russia that seems needless even to keep one's job (100 rectors isn't all the rectors in Russia -- do we see a lot of names from the North Caucasus on this list, for example?)

 

It's sad that the emblematic "Kremlin establishment figure breaks with the establishment" is more riveting even than the Ukrainian grannies hurling canned tomatoes at the occupiers or farmers towing away disabled BTRs but that's how life works. It's even more riveting than highly visible Russian public personalities in the music and arts industry opposing the war in February -- nobody in the West knows these people, by and large. These people have -- had -- millions of fans and are now non-people.

 

Tens of thousands of Russians have been willing to sacrifice their freedom, even if only for a few days or weeks, or their jobs or their school placements to protest this war, with 1/100th the attention of Ovsyannikova, and that burns for a lot of us, for example, who saw the sainted Svetlana Gannushkina spend her 80th birthday in jail for an anti-war vigil , for example, who, despite being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her work with refugees within Russia's empire, is unlikely to own a suit like Ovsyannikova's or apply her make-up for the cameras quite as expertly Ovsyannikova after sleepless nights at the precinct.

 

The Propaganda Pickles in the Brave Club Sandwich

 

There are aspects of this story that don't hold up to scrutiny -- at least now -- although that doesn't mean it was scripted at the Kremlin as a 4D chess move and false-flag oppo to confuse those rooting for Ukraine and a few brave Russians by smuggling in the message of Ovsyannikov's pre-recorded message:  that "the Russian and Ukrainian people are one."

 

They aren't.

 

This thesis, rooted in her own personal origins both in Russia and Ukraine, is genuinely held by many post-Soviet people of mixed parentage and life experience but it really is not how to understand this war. It's not "fratricidal," as eloquent as the sign of one Russian personality -- "Cain, where is they brother Abel?" The war in Ukraine is an international war crime by a terror-state against a people struggling to break free of the Soviet past and integrate with Europe.

 

This poem made into a song will help you out with understanding this.

 

 

 

 

 

Russia is huge -- YUGE as Trump might say. But Ukraine is great -- as in valorous.

 

As great and powerful as it is, Russia clearly isn't winning this war -- at least not yet -- and that's important to grasp. 

 

I believe the way to understand the war in Ukraine is that it is not always Putin and Surkov and Zolotov puppeteering the events -- they can only fit so much puppeteering in a day's work, and Surkov seems to have been furloughed from his puppeteering duties. But all kinds of other actors may bid for their patronage or even manipulate those at the center of power in the Kremlin, whether a pro-Russian oligarch like Akhmetov who is denounced by Ukrainians in Kyiv but who back in 2014 put his coal miners on the streets in patrols in Mariupol to keep the Russian "little green men" out and his millions intact, or the unfortunate bejeweled woman mayor of Slavyansk with a Russian side hustle who went to jail, or Odessa trade union leaders who stockpiled food, medical supplies and weapons in the trade union building days before the soccer fan marches ended in clashes between Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Moscow Russian speakers, culminating in a fire killing 46. Or even Ukrainian army officers with cross-river smuggling operations willing to kill their own. 

 

Many DNR and LNR leaders were assassinated but were home-grown and more possibly killed by local rivals, not Moscow-run saboteurs, like the mayor of Luhansk who came up through the KGB-run Soviet sports mafia. If the theory is that the GRU kills all their operatives who "know to much," you have to ask why the mainland Russian FSB collaborators like Col. Strelkov or Alexander Borodai (who got his career started at the White House siege in 1993) are now safely back in Moscow making the talk show circuit on creepy semi-Orthodox/semi-Slavic pagan YouTube channels. 

 

Various local and national pro-Kremlin factions made their attempts on Kharkiv, Mariupol, and Slavyansk in 2014-2015 and were beaten back, with Ukraine holding these cities all these years, but now I don't need to explain what has happened to them. The land bridge to Crimea is shaping up. Sometimes Moscow crushes resistance; sometimes not. Sometimes that resistance is real, but the people involved are no Andrei Sakharovs. 

 

Inside the sprawling Kremlin complexes of the presidential administration and the power ministries, not everything is hand-scripted by Putin, who reportedly does not use a cell phone or computer, as Oliver Stone once unwittingly revealed in one of his enthusiastic agit-prop movies.

 

One thing that was useful about the much-aligned Steele memo, which we covered in exhaustive detail in an 80,000 word piece cut for space that showed where statements were wrong or misleading, and where they might be right but unconfirmed, is that it confirms the saga of how the Kremlin first influenced the domestic parliamentary elections, then later the US and other foreign elections, by running it out of the Presidential Administration, not the GRU or FSB as such. The maestro of this effort, Volodin, was then moved to the position of speaker of the supine Russian parliament, along with other apparatchiks far less visible and known. Putin apparently didn't trust his own FSB to do the job and when it was finished, those in the know from the PA weren't defenestrated, but they were moved to influential, but less powerful positions. 

 

We saw how Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR or Foreign Intelligence Service, was humiliated on national TV when he began to stammer and bumble the script, speaking about how the DNR and LNR should be "incorporated into the Russian Federation," a remark that brought a nasty smile to Putin's lips, because the cover story was that these "republics" had "declared their independence" -- although many of its assets were already stripped, including entire factories whose equipment was hauled to Russia.  There are obsequious oligarchs and KGB yes-men around Putin and his lovely former bodyguard Viktor Zolotov, now head of the Rosgvardiya or National Guard (whose main mission is to crack the heads of any protesters), who recently received a "protective icon" from the utterly compromised Patriarch Kirill on Russian Orthodox TV, which is helpfully named Soyuz (Union) so you can understand its mission better in reconstructing the Russian World or Greater Russia that once made up the Soviet Union.

 

So as I noted I think it's likely there is an inside faction around the center of power that is angry and scared about the loss of their privileges and riches -- all tied to the perfidious West  -- and doesn't want to spend decades under war communism. 

 

This faction wants to show it is safe for elites to protest  -- this faction will work the courts to ensure light sentences like fines still payable on seemingly banned credit cards -- to ensure more protest, as mass protest is one way to end this war with Putin's demise.

 

But this faction is still careful to include in this message the thesis that "the Russian and Ukrainian people are one" to keep the shaky alliance of pro-Kremlin insiders and top influences of the masses on board. Some Russians are joking that Konstantin Ernst, CEO of Channel One is going to emerge and say in fact she was fired last week and has a visa application to France. Ernst was included in EU sanctions along with Roman Abramovich last week before the prime-time protest; maybe he's in on it; maybe he will be fired -- who knows? Who was the camera person for her pre-recorded video statement? Ksenia Sobchak was the first to post her pre-recorded video address on Telegram; how did Ovsyannikova get to her? These are questions asked by the English-language edition of NV (New Voice of Ukraine),  a business paper which I don't think of exactly a bastion of anti-Russian resistance, but ok.

 

They published a complete English translation of Ovsyannikova's pre-recorded speech, which is accurate, where those getting into the weeds could wonder why only Putin alone is singled out for blame, when an entire literal army and numerous supporting propagandists and enablers are responsible for this spectacularly evil war, and that budgets willing, an entire cast of characters should go to the Hague and be prosecuted for perpetrating it.

 

They can also wonder about Soviet catch-phrases like "fraternal peoples" which is a code phrase justifying the Anschluss of Crimea. Does Marina O., like Navalny and other Russian opposition leaders whose dissent ends at the border, favour keeping Crimea? Whatever Putin's lackeys turned possible coup-plotters want, it won't involve letting Crimea go.

 

Speaking of Navalny, who is lucky to be alive after the assassination attempt against him with nuclear warfare, who had a certain amount of clout in his day and garnered 30% of the Moscow mayoral elections and stayed out of jail for years on the varied trumped-up charges leveled against him, would not -- and now has not  been able --  to escape long-term internment once he's arrested on a minor charge like "failure to make parole appearances" if he also had this other job of organizing mass unrest or worse. 

 

In theory, Ovsyannikov could be facing 15 years under the new law, or at least a more serious charge punishable by several years for organizing a mass protest, although technically it was a solo picket which is allowed under the law in theory but not in practice (and a solo picket on national state TV may not fit their "time, place, and manner" legal criteria). Yet she was released from lock-up! 

 

NV concludes that Ovsyannikova's protest (not her acknowledged pre-recorded statement) was live, although armies of armchair generals on Twitter who look at Putin's watch on TV to see if it matches with the actual time -- or even week -- in Moscow -- think it's fake. The war-mongerers are busy, and unlikely have the time and budget to mount an operation as complex as an entirely fictive protest and arrest and post-jail comment.

 

Still, there's the odd fact that she is out of jail now. Will we find that she has later walked out of Russia to Finland, as some have actually done, or made her way to another "post-Soviet republic" or Turkey or Israel as others are managing to do? If she is authentic, one hopes so for the sake of herself and her children.

 

The good news, as a Ukrainian blogger explains, if we take the faulty story at face value, is that it proves sanctions work. Not everyone affected by them is going to be sterling of character as they are motivated only by a loss of their privileges.

 

The interesting thing about this episode is that sanctions work (that's why the poster is in English btw); not that there's suddenly a saint, or that Russians are somehow miraculously redeemed. Sanctions work, elites started to crack, and this is a good news.

— mostaleoht 🇺🇦 (@mostaleoht) March 15, 2022

That's fine, we'll accept that to stop the bloodshed.

The hopes for those boosting this story are that it will work to create more protest, as indicated by Barbashin whom one might characterize as separate but establishment-oriented commentator. I've suffered all kinds of intimidation from him for pointing out that he once worked for a state-sponsored think tank which apparently no longer exists or whose web site was removed, headed by a former KGB official. No, the issue is NOT that his father worked for the "organs," as has been repeatedly and erroneously reported about him, enabling him to discredit all credits. My approach to his former media outlet strangely made to look like Index on Censorship is not to look at his parentage and his ticket stubs to strange conferences but just look at what is published. The line emerges. It can be soft on the Kremlin or more often hard on the anti-Putin contingent -- like anti-anti-Communism, the anti-anti-Putin project always appears liberal and independent and may actually be free of "Moscow gold."

Oops, he has now deleted his tweet even as I was trying to screenshot it, and has now redacted it and we can't be sure where it will be in an hour, hence these paste-ups:

The theory of "bounce back" (and not "blow back") is one that launched Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, of course, and the hard part is always to measure audience reaction and engagement, as the buzz word has it now, a task which the radios have refined over the years.  Its placement of this story is indicative  -- in old newspaper  lay-out conception, it is not in the "right-lookers" upper right hand corner where you put the latest and most important war news, or anywhere on the "front page" upper half -- today, it's "below the fold," i.e. down on the lower part of the page with "trending visuals".  It is under the story of a Fox News reporter killed in Ukraine -- and as much as you'd like to harden your heart against Fox News, which some might find responsible for aspects of the war in Ukraine, it's still the more important story of a person killed covering Russian warfare against Ukrainians and not making espresso in her designer kitchen now.

Will It Spread?

This story and the thesis that go with it -- that the children of oligarchs are going rogue on Ukraine -- doesn't have any play yet and I'm skeptical about it as much as the claims around Ovsyannikova. The daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov; the daughter of Boris Yeltsin and wife of a Putin advisor Yumashev; Deripaska's daughter, another member of "The Family," have all made anti-war gestures. How far will this go or how long will it last? It's been more than two weeks and not much follow-up.

Russian protests are a story -- but they aren't the only story or indeed the main story when Ukrainians are fighting for their lives with incredible sacrifices against the Russian war monster.

Meduza, whose urbane American anti-anti-Putinist micro-blogger Kevin Rothrock has had a recent ostensible conversion, like Saul/Paul on the road to Kharkiv but who was only recently turning in snotty tweets like this one, has the more sophisticated take on all this, safely from Riga, where the former Lenta.ru editor and her loyal staff decamped years ago when she and some of them were dismissed over publishing a factual story about Yarosh.

As suspected, she was the protege of "powerful figures," but of the then-director of Kuban TV,  which probably no one outside of Kuban ever watches or has heard of, as the actually powerful RT chief propagandist Marina said in a put-down disavowing she was Ovsyannikova's classmate, but admitting they once competed for a job position. And as suspected, and as is typical for Russian state media and any position of any influence, she got her job through her husband, Igor, whose mother already worked at TV1. So, Soviet and post-Soviet lesser royalty.

Meduza can perform the ultimate put-down of anything that seems like a "conspiracy theory" by getting a source who used to work at the station but resigned after his own personal disgust at his part in covering the invasion of Georgia (fortuitous, that). He described the building layout, the procedures, the lack of guards in numbing detail -- because many asked the question of why goons didn't instantly appear even live on screen to put a bag over  her head and rush her to Lubyanka -- like they did with those computer programmers contracted to the FSB who may or may not have leaked information about Russia's manipulation of the US elections. There are no bag-holders. There's no guards at all. They are placed elsewhere at the entrance -- which is why she didn't even get out of the building of the TV tower at Ostankino. Understood.  

As Meduza explains, people work in state media as loyalists, as naive newbies who think it's a resume builder even abroad, as lifers now fearful of leaving or they can't support their families. There is a lot of unhappiness there, and some of it might take the form of a Ukraine-related protest. As someone who has seen every kind of story from protesters from true to false, perhaps people resigning, especially in a dramatic stunt, want to build up their asylum case for when they flee abroad.

It's curious that no one seems to have come up with an actual job description and list of job duties for Ovsyannikova, except this strange source of Meduza who describes a sort of "city desk" called "City Services" collecting "stories from cities all over the world". About...what? Garbage disposal or street cafes or what? It is only admitted that she had sources of news about Ukraine -- but then any more or less savvy Internet user can do that with even just Russian social media and a VPN, some of which still work.

Meduza leaves to the very end the story of Ivan Urgant, the famous Vecherny Urgant (Evening Urgant) who is a kind of Jimmy Fallon of Russian TV -- very famous and rich and popular. Overnight, because he expressed outrage over the war in Ukraine, he was pulverized to dust, his show cancelled, his name erased from history. A figure like that had far more reach and was far more brave, really, than Ovsyannikova because he lost everything. He won't be able to make a career abroad, except possibly on the Brighton Beach comedy club circuit in New York City.  His refusal to speak to Meduza may only be related to his need to get out of Russia first as he may not actually have the protection that Ovsyannikova has. Maxim Galkin, husband of famed singer Alla Pugacheva, is another such hugely popular figure who protested against the war on Instagram and was demolished over night, forced to leave for Turkey. Pugacheva is on "vacation" in Israel with their children. Every Russian knows them; now they are non-people because no one in the West did. No Russian ever heard of Ovsyannikova; now she is ensured safety and some kind of future because every Western media outlet embraced her.

The absolute best take on the Ovsyannikov was broadcast by Evgeniya Albats on YouTube, who interviewed Ovsyannikova at length and asked her many probing questions, as only someone immersed in Russian media realities can do, dredging up her Ukrainian past, her conflicts with the RT dragon lady and all the rest. You always have to ask with these stories: who were their parents? Were they Soviet nomenklatura? Dissident royalty? NKVD/KGB? Somebody helped Marina get a job in Ukraine (her father was Ukrainian), a job that she got in competition to Dragon Lady -- and yet continued to succeed, ending up in Moscow.

Wikipedia, oh that font of wisdom that has now utterly polluted chatGPT as I predicted, now says that Marina's actual job wasn't "the local news desk" but something much more suggesting a KGB education/training/background/involvement (in my view) because it dealt with sifting through Western news and pitching it to be useful to Russia -- a traditional disinformation/influence operation of "the organs", I could add. But maybe not. 

***

So fast forward to 2024, more than two years later, how did this story turn out? As Reuters reported (using that awful word "fugitive" sounding like the person is an actual criminal, rather than political refugee) -- Ovsyannikova got an 8.5-year sentence in 2023.

As Reuters and others reported at the time, this sentence was not for her first TV picked, for which she was only fined. Rather:

But she later faced criminal prosecution for "spreading knowingly false information about the Russian Armed Forces" in connection with a July 2022 protest when she stood on a river embankment opposite the Kremlin and held up a poster calling President Vladimir Putin a murderer and his soldiers fascists.

But Marina had long before this fled with her daughter to an unknown location in Europe -- sometimes reported as Paris. And no, she was not poisoned as others have been.

Wikipedia recounts all her rather short-lived media jobs (it leaves out Italian TV for some reason), including Die Welt and her temporary departure from Russia (and leaving of her children to her now estranged husband), and her hounding out of Ukraine, where Ukrainians were really unimpressed with her "our two brotherly nations" stuff which she felt that "she herself embodied" no doubt in her parents. All of this is tiresome. The point is, while I'm personally skeptical that this isn't somebody's project, private or public, government or non-government, I'm also perfectly willing to say it's all true, and therefore you should be in despair, if you thought enabling picketers on state TV to get a soft landing at least on their first event will encourage others -- there haven't been any others and part of the problem is they are people like this.

 

 

 

 

 

Is Russia a Rogue State? Of Course It Is, and Has Been for a Long Time

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

I marvel at how some people are just tuning into the "Russia-as-rogue-state" understanding only NOW, two years into Russia's massively upscaled invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which of course followed its long war against Ukraine with many invasions, large and small, throughout 10 years since February 2014, starting with the seizure and forcible annexation of Crimea.

Many scholars began to concede this in 2014 -- after all, Russia had leased naval bases from Ukraine for decades, and its lucrative worldwide arms business out of Odessa had never been threatened by Ukraine, nor its presence in the Black Sea (now considerably diminished because of Russia's own actions, not Ukrainian policy or practice). Russia essentially owned and operated large parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts before the war via subsidies, Russian TV, and brute force as needed. It was only when Ukraine aspired to join the EU -- and not NATO, as some mischievously imply from wording in the EU accession agreement -- that Russian threatened and used massive force, that protesters amassed on Maidan Square, and then-president Yanukovych was forced to flee. (He fled, and was not "deposed" -- and fled to Russia. And then Russia invaded in earnest -- not in aiding one side in a "civil war" over "language rights" but in a naked land grab that is visible on the map.

IAN BREMMER

Ian Bremmer seems to have tuned into the "Russia is a rogue state" issue rather belatedly in 2022 although perhaps some assiduous troll can find a reference before that. My point is that now he is getting more rotation, although he began to get rinsed more and more as his predictions or punditry didn't add up, even in the New Republic where Andre Pagliarini pointed out that Bremmer's co-author in an enthusiastic piece about the new leader Putin -- Boris Nemtsov -- had been assassinated after becoming a vocal critic of VV.  He went on to explain how wrong Bremmer was on a host of other issues like Brazil's president and noted that tone of authority on TV that makes people feel he is an oracle -- and which never seems to get checked before or after the talk shows.

Here on January 3, 2023, Bremmer makes a frank call of "rogue" -- but he also believes that Trump is the greatest risk factor to world security. It's hard to know where to start with a statement like that, even as a past and future Biden voter. Yes, things were terrible and will be terrible again under Trump -- but a big factor is his friendship and soft take with Russia. And Russia has invaded not just its own provinces but Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine, with mass crimes against humanity. Unless you're peddling some extremist theory about "the patriarchy" and "American imperialism" being responsible for mass deaths in a general sort of way like the weather, Russia is the real disturber of world peace on every front -- remember Russia aids Hamas and sells arms to Iran and puts North Korean laborers to work in its timber industry.

If you recall Bremmer in 2022 didn't believe Russia would invade Ukraine but long before that, in 1998 happily took Carter Page (injured but not innocent in the Steele Dossier) on his first voyage to Russia in 2011 to greet the new president Putin (he later disowned Page as "wackadoodle" downplaying his role, although he didn't last three months at Eurasia. The press has never pressed further to ask why he was ever hired in the first place). Bremmer consistently provokes with interviews like this where he imagines there was something the US "could have done" to prevent Putin from invading Ukraine that didn't involve massive threat of force.

STEELE DOSSIER

To take a detour here, I personally believed after writing along with Michael Weiss the longest and most thorough piece on the Steele Dossier anywhere, that Page is "injured but not innocent". The FBI was right to take a look at someone in the Trump campaign going to Russia and taking a cheery view of people and events there after everyone had gotten off the love train.  But like so many stories related to Trumpkins and Russia, the smoking gun doesn't really materialize, although I personally agree "Michael Cohen was in Prague to meet the Russian" and "the server story" does have legs because sources don't keep their stories straight. (Note to self: save that article in case Coda goes under, like so many other brave publications these days.) That 8,000 word piece was actually cut down from much longer material.

Today, in headline after headline, under pressure and clouds of unknown from the GOP, plus the very real errors and distortions in the documents, the adjective "discredited" or even "fake" is used with regard to the Steele dossier. Even (especially?) VOA joins in this chorus deliberately missing the point. I don't think "falseness" is the way to understand this pastiche of materials, which we ourselves analyzed, showing how its internal workings weren't even consistent (speaking to the "pastiche" nature) and showing how there was a wrong or complete take on something like the "pee story" (it's not just that Trump is a clean freak; it's that the hotel rooms of such top figures as Trump are not controlled by the FSB, but by Putin's own Kremlin security force; hence the sourcing is dodgy). 

It's a collection of materials that is partly false, partly true, partly misleading -- I suggested that we assign a value to every line so we could get a percentage factor, so that statements like "Putin wishes to influence Europe" ("the sky is blue") would get a 10, and a statement like "a hotel manager says Trump peed on prostitutes" would get a 0 (or you could work the evaluation in the opposite way -- and in the end you might get "47% true" or whatever you got. Along the way, the chronicles of which official in the PA is still there, or has been rewarded with jobs like speaker of parliament or official in charge of the Minsk accords or whatever the story, is rated as true because it is true. No journalist bothered to research in the weeds with available Russian language sources where Igor Sechin and Carter Page were -- the fact is, that while Sechin does intersect with Page in Moscow briefly, he is hardly likely to have met with the lowly Carter when he could meet with Rex Tillerson, the Exxon head, briefly Secretary of State, at the St. Petersburg Forum not long before the same time frame (and appears to have done so) and accomplish the same influence operation, you know? And so on down the line. The Steele Dossier as an artifact of US foreign news drama is decidedly yesterday's newspaper wrapping the fish; it seems like a very quaint and silly thing now by contrast with the whole war in Ukraine since then.

And the real story of the Steele Dossier which I should try to explain some day is that it represents a tracking of the all-important Russian Presidential Administration and its takeover of functions that the FSB either use to have or does but now faces competition, and that the Russians took a complicated computer network and people network set up to influence their own parliamentary elections out of the PA their way, and turned it around and translated it for use against Hillary in particular, but to distract and confuse and disinform people in the US elections in general. That's all. Most of the sources are Russian emigres, some still with Russian passports. Who else can still go to Russia, talk to any kind of official, and leave and come back again -- and yet not really have serious access but only talk to those who themselves might have? 

Also at least one of the sources has even talked to me on Twitter; that is, a lower-level foreign-facing flak whose job consist of providing a mixture of facts (to retain credibility) and fakes to foreigners of varying levels of gullibility.

My point here with this detour is to explain that lots of stuff over the years gets discredited, discounted, written off, and then people sometimes realize they were too hasty with the box cutter, and too hasty in blessing or condemning this or that figure wholesale, and should realize it is all more nuanced. One humorous footnote is that Igor Danchenko was exonerated and released from custody, a story nobody noticed. 

So..."rogue presidents" have a variety of friends, in and out of office, and friendlies who are not knowing collaborationists always, and there are exposes of their antics over the years, whether the now-maligned Steele Dossier or new reporting on the member of the Latvian parliament working for the GRU. It's a shame that these new exposes keep needing to be done -- along with examination with facts on the ground like people turning up dead in the West (that they fall out of windows in Russia is a given). 

SHORT HISTORY OF CALLING RUSSIAN 'ROGUE'

This statement may have begun as an interrogative by the BBC in 2013, but Molotov's grandson, Putin loyalist, and Snowden greeter Vyacheslav Nikonov was there to tell you back then, now 14 years ago, that the real rogue was the US due to Guantanamo and Afghanistan. (Sound like the same formula again? "The real disrupter of world peace is Donald Trump.")

Brookings' respected Fiona Hill and Steven Pifer had Putin going Rogue in 2014.

Atlantic Council's Andrew Kornbluth tried to argue it was a "troll state" not a "rogue" state. That's cute, but trolls are mainly a nuisance on Twitter, where Russian disinformation activists run rampant -- that's not the same thing as massacring civilians in Bucha as a rogue state.

Time published Conservative UK parliament member Tom Tugendhat who called Russia "a rogue state" after the attempt to kill Russian defector Skripal and his daughter, but that doesn't count because he's right-wing, correct?

RAND Corporation called Russia a "rogue state" in 2019.

Journalist Luke Harding tweeted this in 2020.

Kristofer Harrison "either rogue or failed" in 2021.

The Obama Administration apparently only used the term "rogue" to refer to Russia once -- and this thinky piece tells you the criteria for the "rogues" -- but note that two out of the list -- Iran and Syria -- have long been armed by Russian and provided political cover. And that's why I wish the "rogue police" would look at not only the individual leader they to whom they wish to apply this designation, but the other world leaders they help. Nutty lefties on Twitter put up silly pictures of NATO bases saying "Russia, move your country away" but that disguises where Russia's bases are within its vastness, ready to deploy to Europe, and where they are throughout the rest of the world. Amnesty was once honest in admitting that Russia was the world's largest seller of armaments to rogue states and dictators massively violating human rights -- not America -- but now it puts out tables showing that the US is the largest arms dealer, obfuscating the fact that arms sales to...Canada or Australia or even Saudi Arabia...are very different than arms sales to Iran and Syria.

Why is this always so hard?

You could argue that by the second Chechen war, Russia was a rogue state although back in the 1990s, it was Chechnya that was called the "rogue". By 2007, when Russia invaded Georgia directly after the NATO summit in Germany where votes failed to be gathered to include Georgia in a process to join the EU. It's hard to pretend to justify as a security or anti-terrorism measure.

RUSSIA IS A TERRORIST STATE

In fact, if you really want to talk turkey here (BTW, Russia built a nuclear power station for Turkey and sells arms to its frenemy, although suspends these activities when Turkey shoots down a Russian plane near its border), the Russian state has always been rogue since 1917. It is and was a terrorist state, not under the rule of law, and not even under "rule-by-law" as the German term Rechtsstaat has it -- different but still better than rogue-ness. The Bolsheviks (and the Social Democrats and others before them) ran terrorist conspiracies and used bombing of government, business and residential buildings to "make a point", although with assassinating people in large numbers. Lenin's terror and then Stalin's terror are all mass crimes against humanity of a rogue state. As some dissident commentators have pointed out over the years, Russia never properly formed an open state; it was always a conspiracy of men who had personally used or directed terrorism and used cover names and body doubles.

When you get to Yeltsin and Gorbachev, the crimes in Chechnya are massive; the crimes of Lenin and Stalin were never tried. There was never a Soviet Nuremburg trial. Russia was included in world security structures  -- the UN, the OSCE (where the thinking was that in exchange for recognition of post-war borders, the Soviets could be coddled into recognizing human rights), many other institutions and agencies where really, they never had any business being in, ever (Interpol).

OLD ANECDOTES ABOUT EURASIA GROUP, OSCE, STATE

A word about all this from my own life, as I am beginning to realize that I will never get my memoirs written unless I use blog posts to start putting together things as I did with my Snowden book in 2013.

The Eurasia Group's initial embryonic form years ago in New York City was mainly in the form of luncheons with high officials from different countries, sometimes even leaders, often during the UN General Assembly, when many of them were here. They were "Chatham House rules" (or off-the-record) affairs and invitations could be hard to come by. In their earliest form, some of the colleagues of the Eurasia Group would insist on having human rights organizations send representatives to ask questions of some of these rogue world leaders, or they would at least bring in academics with a little more critical take on them. I'm not sure how big the staff or how big the Eurasia client list was back in the late 1990s but surely it was smaller than it is today or has been in the 30 years since. My recollection is that the Eurasia Group consulting firm founded in 1998 was preceded by the Eurasia Group policy luncheons by some years, so no double some people will begin to complain they were different things, but they involved the same people. The crew of those willing to follow what was happening in Kyrgyzstan back then was very small -- "Eurasia" generally meant "Central Asia, and Russia, and how it affects it." But the largest Eurasia -- which means whatever it means, ask around, you get a host of answers on that question -- meant Belarus as well.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the dictator of Belarus, came to power in 1997, at first with enthusiasm by some who thought he would clean up corruption. Unlike Russia at that time, Belarus had a robust, professional opposition in parliament, government, and with its own radio stations -- Belarus, despite all its trials and tribulations over the centuries, still is closer to Europe. In 1999 I believe, Lukashenka came to the General Assembly; by that time, critical figures like even Lukashenka's own Interior Minister and others in parliament, TV, and business, had begun to disappear as if in Central America, not Central Europe, never to be found. So it was felt Bat'ka should take some questioning on that subject. But in discussing this with a State Department official at the Belarus desk at the time, I found that State preferred groups not to meet with Lukashenka at all so as not to give him recognition. I told them about the Eurasia Group lunch which technically wasn't outside the mile limit from the UN that State was going to put on Luka. Well, State can inform you of their policy, but private groups can do what they wish within the law.

When Bremmer found out about my conversation through colleagues, he called me to yell at me at length and threaten me with loss of my job by getting my boss (who had invited me to the meeting) and others to turn on me. He was terrified at the time that with this news of his luncheon's existence reaching State (like that would remain a secret even under Chatham House rules with 40 people at a luncheon with a head of state?!), he would lose his generous State Department grants which he had at the time for his studies.

I shrugged at this because I did not fear him and did not feel it was my job to worry about his grants with State, which I was certain would not be discontinued over this and were not. That's not how the world works. There are officials within State and NSA and other agencies who may be more critical of these countries than their bosses or the current president would like to be, and sometimes they find themselves reassigned to Fiji, and during certain periods of history they suddenly get a hearing or a promotion but the bulk of the policy for 30 years has been Realpolitik and International Realism. This article in Mosaic , discussing the "peace processers" in the Middle East, provides background for the types we might call "the security arrangers" in Europe. These are certain people in and out of State, in its revolving door or proximity, who endlessly invoke "security arrangements" with Russia -- as if Russia could arrange any security now out of a paper bag, given its outrageous mauling of Ukraine.

As these six former ambassadors now loudly proclaim, the time for talking about "security arrangements" with Putin is long past the sell-by date. That's not just because Russia is a rogue state; it's a terrorist state; it's a state with a leader, Vladimir Putin, for him arrest warrants have been issued on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide notably on the matter of abducting large numbers of children into Russia from Ukraine because their parents were killed or lost or separated from them -- a warrant that became possible because Russia's own officials took pride in this massive abduction and spoke of it in glowing terms.

I wish these six former ambassadors/State Department officials had said these sorts of things while in office in the last 30 years -- the world would be a better place. But that's not how the world works.

I will mention my meetings with five of them over the years. The 6th, Jovanovich, I never met; she was not in her job long in Kyiv before she was targeted with an outrageous smear campaign run by Trump which ultimately led to her resignation (though she was not found to do anything wrong) -- a dreadful loss for the Foreign Service in the US and not the only one triggered by Trump.

I recall taking around to meetings in Washington, DC Andrei Sannikov, former deputy minister of foreign affairs in Belarus who resigned when Luka came to power, and who later had a brief life as a opposition presidential candidate before he was jailed for about two years. Back in the 1990s, he would visit Pifer and Pascual (then at NSA) to provide information about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Belarus and plead the cause for recognition of the independent sector and US sanctions. The US was uneven on this score, at one point developing a curious carrot-and-stick approach that seemed all carrot and never any stick -- although at a certain point, the US and numerous other foreign embassies were simply kicked out of Minsk. 

I recall dealing with Taylor during his time at the embassy in Kazakhstan, particularly when a US citizen in a media assistance program was murdered (and that followed the severe beating of another US government official involved in democracy aid and these cases were played down to maintain good relations -- Chevron is in Kazakhstan). And on other countries and cases later.

Meetings with Herbst took place over the years in various groups related to Uzbekistan and Ukraine, including the Atlantic Council.

All these officials were conscientious, informed, filled with good will, some of the "Guardians" as I call such people in these often large and faceless bureaucracies like State who do the right thing at crunch time, often as they are shredding papers and turning off the lights and fleeing a mob outside the door in a country under civil war  -- like an official who took the time among his last urgent chores to fax out the visa confirmation for a Tajik journalist who might have been murdered along with dozens of others in that civil war.

But they all had constraints in their jobs which related to the over all Borg or Blob or whatever you want to call the foreign policy establishment and actual foreign policy arm of the US government.

BUYING UP ALL THE GASOLINE IN INGUSHETIA

I'm also recalling what is called a "pull-aside" with the then-ambassador to OSCE -- that's when a busy aide won't give you an actual appointment for a meeting, but enable you to ask a few questions for 10 minutes in the hallway. I said I had an urgent report from Sergei Kovalev, then ombudsman for human rights in Yeltsin's government warning of the impending second invasion of Chechnya which had begun with the Chechen rebels attack on Dagestan in August 1999.  My pull-aside then turned into a meeting sitting in his office in the dark -- he had turned off his lights and was about to go to lunch. I gave him the translated field reports with information such as all the gasoline disappearing in Ingushetia -- the Russian army was buying it up. Families of certain officials fleeing the area -- they got a tip-off. Stuff. Nonsense. He took it seriously. But little could be done by then by the US, apparently. 

Make of it what you will but the fancy cars with Moscow license plates, the Russian equivalents of jeeps appearing en masse in a place like Ingushetia is usually the first sign of trouble -- as it was with the fake protest in parliament in Crimea. "Here's how protesters go out to demonstrations these days," said one Crimea-based photographer on Facebook who I knew from family -- they were cars with Moscow plates circulating around before the parliament was taken over. That fellow found himself arrested and it was a miracle that his camera -- his livelihood at a local news outlet -- was not broken merely because the regime goons got too busy with a lot of cases. When he was let go, he began posting pictures of his cats.

Everything is terrible. "That animal eye is just what you say". And "The world is ugly and the people are sad." I'm a footnote in history at best and my work has been futile and so has yours. As for Thomas Graham, excoriated by the six ambos in the Bulkwark, I know personally that even he has done good privately although publicly I view him as wrong about everything for most of his career at the Kissinger Associates. It doesn't matter now; it's larger than we are, and we let it get that way, to the point where assigning blame now would take away too much effort from emergency response and help to Ukraine rather than "peace processing" and "security arranging."

Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is, and has been a rogue state even if you don't believe it always was, or believe this only recently. I think we can all agree on this now, pretty much

So what are we going to do about it?