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Putin’s agents try to recruit German politicians as spies – newspaper
30,000 former KGB employees monitor today’s poll in Russia
Federal Security Service put in charge of Russian vote security
Litvinenko's widow says former FSB colonel will support case against Russian government
Former Russian FSB Colonel Trepashkin released
Crimes of Soviet secret services in Western Ukraine revealed
US radar project, nuclear smuggling makes Prague espionage nerve centre - newspaper
Putin’s agents try to recruit German politicians as spies - newspaper
Russian agents have been accelerating efforts to recruit young lawmakers and academics in Germany, daily Die Welt reports. The Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz ) possesses information according to which the Russian intelligence services are active above all in the sphere around of the German Bundestag, or the
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| German Bundestag |
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lower house of parliament. According to the Die Welt, the spies have not taken only parliament members, but above all younger employees of the parties or foundations close to parties in their visor. They are also being targeted with a view to gathering current inside information or recruiting those with good career prospects, the paper said.
Who as a German visits Russia more often on business or private trips, has to reckon on getting in the visor of the Federal Security Service, or the FSB, the paper marks. The service also does not stop at extortion. German security experts see the reason for the fact that in Russia the intelligence services still plays the central role in deep scepticism of the government towards openly available information. There is no foreign intelligence service that is so active in Germany as the Russian one. Also economic strategies, for instance in the energy policy field, are transmitted to Moscow. One assumes that a large part of Russian diplomats and journalists in Germany are paid by one of the intelligence services. In the embassies there are so-called legal residentura’s; because of immunity criminal pursuit of diplomats is not possible.
In Germany the target persons are contacted at first without any reference to the Russian secret service. In friendly atmosphere the Russian agents, many of whom speak German, try too tax away their interlocutors. Then step by step they convert the open contact into a conspiratorial collaboration. Besides, the services use more and more money. „ Just with young Germans understanding of the subject of spying is beyond their comprehension. Many of them think that agents do exist only in movies”, a representative of the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution notes.
30,000 former KGB employees monitor today’s poll in Russia
30,000 former KGB employeees and retired members of the Soviet era law enforcement bodies have been mobilised by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to thwart possible rigging of ballots during today's poll to the State Duma, news agency PTI reports, referring to Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov.
The party leader noted that they will monitor the polls to the lower house to thwart rigging of ballots in favour of President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, which has been widely using its administrative resources during the campaign. Zyuganov said his observers will monitor counting of ballots in at least 30,000 polling stations spread over 11 time zones and their reports would be used for projecting a true picture of the polling. According various opinion surveys, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation KPRF, the only potent opposition to the pro-Kremlin party, is poised to get at least 10 per cent votes threshold for its proportional representation in the 450-strong State Duma.
Over 450,000 police officers and para-military forces have been deployed to avert terror strikes, local media reported.
Federal Security Service put in charge of Russian vote security
Russia's domestic security agency, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, has been put in charge of coordinating police and military forces tasked with providing security for today's legislative election, Moscow-based daily Kommersant reported.
"The responsibility for ensuring the security of the election has been handed to the FSB, all the police headquarters have for the first time been subordinated to the Chekists," the paper quoted a law enforcement official as saying, using the name of the predecessor agency of the KGB and FSB. However the FSB strongly denied the report. "Our agents are present in the headquarters only for coordination of joint operations, and they would take control only in case of the outbreak of some emergency," a FSB spokesman told the newspaper. "Currently, it is the public security police that run the headquarters," Kommersant cites the official.
Former Russian FSB Colonel Trepashkin released
Mikhail Trepashkin, 50, a former Russian Federal Security Service Colonel, who accused Russia's secret services of state terror, was released from a Urals prison camp the day before yesterday, Russian news agencies reported. He said he would fight for his conviction to be thrown out and would continue his activity as a lawyer and human rights defender.
Trepashkin was released from a prison near Nizhny Tagil, an industrial city in the Ural mountains region, a few hours ahead of schedule, a local prison administration official was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
AIA has repeatedly reported that the ex-colonel was arrested on charges of illegal weapons possession and imprisoned for revealing state secrets after alleging that Russian authorities were behind a spate of apartment bombings in Russia in 1999 in which hundreds of people were killed. Trepashkin has been connected with the Public commission on investigation of explosions of 1999 in apartment houses and office buildings in the city of Ryazan.The bombings were among the justifications mentioned by Russian officials for resuming full-scale war in Chechnya, but some critics alleged they were staged by the Federal Security Service.
As a secret service investigator, in the 1990s Trepashkin got two state awards for breaking up criminal gangs and seizing their arms caches; he also has a three-year record of serving on Soviet nuclear submarines, The Associated Press adds in its reports. Trepashkin left the FSB in 1996; he claimed he was removed in connection with a corruption investigation. He was among the participants of a press conference in 1998, when the group of the FSB officers accused the leadership of the FSB of organization of custom-made murders. In 2002, he acted as a lawyer of the former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, killed at mysterious circumstances last year in London.
Litvinenko's widow says former FSB colonel will support case against Russian government
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Marina Litvinenko |
The International Herald Tribune reports today that the widow of the poisoned former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officer and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, Marina, held an emotional conversation yesterday with a former FSB Colonel Mikhail Trepashkin who says he warned her husband about a Russian government plot to kill him.
They spoke by phone a day after Trepashkin was released from a Ural mountains prison. Trepashkin has said he was asked in 2002 to join a group of Russian secret services agents targeting Boris Berezovsky, a self-exiled Russian tycoon living in London, and Alexander Litvinenko. He said he warned Litvinenko that he was being hunted by government assassins.
Marina Litvinenko said that her husband, himself an FSB agent, had been asked in August 1997 to organize an assault on Trepashkin to "shut him up." Litvinenko refused and filed a complaint about extra-judicial activities being carried out by the FSB.
After the phone call, Marina Litvinenko told The Associated Press that Trepashkin had promised to provide a written deposition on his claims to lawyers who have opened a case against the Russian government in the European Court of Human Rights for complicity her husband's murder.
Ukraine needs top class foreign intelligence service – President Yushchenko
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko congratulated the staff of the foreign intelligence service in the connection with the agency’s 16th anniversary, news agency ITAR-TASS reports, referring to the presidential press-service.
Yushchenko said that no strategic decisions, including those in the sphere of foreign policy, were being made these days without taking into account the information and situation analysis provided by the foreign intelligence service.
“Today, as never before, Ukraine needs an up-to-date, properly equipped, high-class intelligence service capable of creating conditions for the reliable protection of national interests in no easy conditions of tough competition,” news agency cites Yushchenko. The President pointed to “deeper, systemic work to identify and analyze political and economic threats to Ukraine’s national security as one of the key tasks the foreign intelligence service was facing.”
The chief of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence, Nikolai Malomuzh, said that in his opinion the idea of pooling the foreign intelligence and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) looked not very effective to him, according to ITAR-TASS. He thinks that certain officials or politicians simply would like to concentrate the maximum strength in the hands of one secret service.
Under the law the staff of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence is set at 4,350; the President exercises general control of the foreign intelligence service and appoints and dismisses its chief, news agency adds.
Crimes of Soviet secret services in Western Ukraine revealed
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has publicised documents on special-task groups of the
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| UPA anniversary celebrated, October 14, 2007 |
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Ministry of State Security (MGB) of the USSR which gave out themselves for soldiers of Ukraine’s Insurgent Army (UPA)/ Ukrainian Underground Army (OUN/UPA)and operated in the western areas of Ukraine in 1944-1954, online paper CityNews reports.
According to the head of Branch State Archive of the SBU, Sergei Bogunov, documents have been found in the archive of intelligence agency attesting that the special-task groups during performance of the mission gave out themselves for one of divisions of the OUN/UPA and operated on its behalf. An operative who carried out practical guidance of the group which represented fighting unit of 3-50 persons entered into structure of groups.
Such special-task groups carried out tasks on check-up of information concerning the persons suspected of participation in underground OUN/UPA, their capture, reception of evidence by interrogation on behalf of Security service or heads of the OUN centres.
Up to the end of 1945 communist law-enforcement bodies and state security agencies used 150 special-task groups consisting of 1,800 persons. In April, 1945, the special-task groups have been disbanded and in further they were authorized to be used only by the city and regional bodies of the MGB. As of February, 1950, there was 19 special-task groups consisting of 130 persons.
According to Bogunov, there is no generalized data on the ctivity of these formations, as the majority of materials has been destroyed in 1990, and only separate data is available in the SBU archive. As of July 1, 1945, the special-task groups have liquidated 1,980 underground activists and seized 1,142 people. At the same time the surviving archival materials attest that the special-task groups committed grave crimes against local residents, CityNews notes.
AIA already reported on announcement of the acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine, Valentin Nalyvaychenko, who speaking on air of the Ukrainian 5th TV channel said the SBU possessed the document demonstrating crimes committed by the agents of the Soviet Ministry of State Security, who destroyed people in the Western Ukraine dressed up as soldiers of Ukraine’s Insurgent Army.
US radar project, nuclear smuggling makes Prague espionage nerve centre - newspaper
Russia's threat of a new arms race and the rise in the numbers of Middle Eastern and North Korean agents setting up shop in Prague have made the Czech Republic's capital the latest espionage nerve centre, the Sunday Herald writes today.
Prague's spy invasion has been triggered by a controversial US plan to build a radar base in the Czech Republic as part of America's anti-missile defence shield.
AIA already reported about the annual report of Czech Counter-Intelligence (BIS) for 2006, just released in Prague. A half of the Russian Embassy's 60-strong staff, and many of the Russian consulates in the country, has been working for one the Russian intelligence services, it says.
Czech Public Television (CT) has revealed some of the service's triumphs in the fight against nuclear smuggling. Jan Subtr, a BIS spokesman, confirmed that counter-intelligence last year thwarted three attempts by North Korean secret agents to purchase high-tech Czech machine tools for the production of small nuclear weapons, the Sunday Herald notes.
Czech Military Intelligence's (VZ) report on 2006, also recently released, has further increased public concern over Eastern spies' penetration. It reveals that the secrets of the planned US anti-missile radar base are acting as a powerful magnet for spies of all nationalities. This upsurge, according to the VZ report, is linked to foreign powers' interest in every aspect of the US base, especially the anti-missile defence shield technology, plus Czech military defence strategies.
The Sunday Herald is quoting Jiri Schneider, director of the Prague Institute of Security Studies, as saying about Prague's main concern: "Russian spies are trying to secure impunity for their operations by targeting and compromising key decision-makers and persons in leading positions. They also attempt to influence state decisions, especially by the judiciary and law enforcement."
In his turn, Andor Sandor, a former director of Czech Military Intelligence, says that activities of Russian, Iranian, North Korean and Soviet successor states' spies is “completely logical." “I would be more alarmed if they did not register any activity at all. These countries think the radar is targeted on them."
However, not only countries with direct interest in the high-spec US technology are sending spies to Prague. Sandor points out that, as the US radar's technical details are classified, foreign agents are naturally trying to discover its real capabilities. "It has been said that the radar will be able to detect something as small as a tennis ball from a distance of 6000km, so naturally foreign intelligence agencies want to know what it can really do." By unearthing technological secrets, the spies' masters are hoping that the information would enable them to construct the best possible defence against the radar, Sandor said in an interview with the Prague Post weekly.
However, Prague's "resident" foreign spies are also apparently involved in more devious political activities, spreading false rumours among people living near the proposed base to inflame opposition to this US project. Sandor said: "Foreign intelligence services are financing carefully selected organisations, which speak out against the US base and spread false rumours about the radar's possible health risks." Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the Czech government has decided to increase substantially the secret services' operational funds for the fight against foreign spies, the Sunday Herald marks.
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