REVIEW TOPICS:
Russian Security Council Secretary Patrushev lost one of his posts to President’s order
President Medvedev rejected Russian secret service activities in Czech Republic
Finnish citizen charged by Russian Federal Security Service with illegally crossing Russian border with son
Polish, Ukrainian security forces finished training for Euro 2012
Ukraine’s Security Service provides PACE with Holodomor proofs
Authentic Communist-era police report does not prove Milan Kundera's guilt of denunciation
Russian Security Council Secretary Patrushev lost one of his posts to President’s order
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev demanded at the session of the Presidential Council on Development of Physical Culture and Sports that state officials should leave the posts of heads of sports federations, news agency Regnum reports.
President Medvedev expanded at the opening of Russian sports forum in Kazan that he had given an assignment to the government and Presidential administration to replace within a month the officials heading the sports federations with «the professionals, giving 24 hours a day to their kinds of sports».
The president of the Federation of sports journalists of Moscow Alexander Kozlov is convinced that the President simply deduces government officials from under impact of public opinion, leaving them the opportunity to not directly but still directly to influence business of the federations, ANN writes.
Daily Kommersant notes that in a number of sports federations mentioned by Dmitry Medvedev, the President’s statement caused a shock.
For instance, journalists were told at the Russian Federation of Volleyball that the federation’s head General Nikolai Patrushev, the Russian Federation Security Council Secretary and the former FSB chief, was a genuine fan of volleyball and has done very much for this kind of sports. “The modern training centre in Anapa would be never constructed without him”. However, Patrushev will stay close to his favourite sports as he will be heading the supervising board of the federation, ANN adds.
It is worth mentioning that among the state officials who have been heading different sports federations there is the head of the Presidential administration Sergei Naryshkin (head of the Swimmers federation), director of the Federal Protection Service (FSO) Yevgeny Murov (head of the Boxing federation) and others.
President Medvedev rejected Russian secret service activities in Czech Republic
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev rejected reports on the strengthening activities of Russian intelligence services in the Czech Republic after a meeting with his Czech counterpart Vaclav Klaus in Moscow last week, news agency CTK reported.
AIA have also expanded on the Czech security services claims on noticeable interest of the Russian secret services' in the Czech Republic. Czech intelligence services report Russia has even an interest in Prague's Ruzyne airport - which will undergo privatization in the coming years. Reports appeared in the Czech media in summer that two Russian diplomats were expelled from the Czech Republic over their suspected link to Russian secret services. Russia allegedly took a similar reciprocal measure, but this information has not been confirmed officially.
Medvedev said, however, that it were "conspiracy theories of the Cold War times," according to CTK. "Life would be boring without conspiracy theories and conspiracy of special services," the news agency is quoting Medvedev as answering jokingly when asked about intelligence service activities at a joint press conference with the Czech President.
He said that although he was following reports from the Czech Republic closely, especially peripeties around the ratification of the EU reform Lisbon treaty and commentaries about alleged danger of Russian dominance in energy industry, "the information about the increased activity of the Russian special services somehow escaped my attention."
"The Russian Federation does not have this problem. There are no reports in our country about increased activities of the Czech secret services on our territory. This threat does not exist. I think that what is now going on on the pages of the Czech mass media is a mixture of conspiracy ideas originating from the Cold War times and that it is necessary to rid ourselves of them," Medvedev reportedly said.
Meanwhile The Prague Post underlines that the bigger threat for the Czech Republic remains less direct Russian takeovers of strategic companies. The close and often personal ties between large Russian state companies and intelligence services would lead to a likely increase in influence for Russian intelligence in the Czech Republic. Frequent rumors also allege President Klaus has close ties to the private Russian company Lukoil, the paper marks.
Finnish citizen charged by Russian Federal Security Service with illegally crossing Russian border with son
The St.Petersburg and Leningrad area Border Guard directorate of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) charged Finnish citizen Paavo Salonen with illegally taking his son Anton by a vehicle to Finland with the help of a Finnish diplomat in April, Russian news agencies are reporting.
The boy has joint Finnish-Russian citizenship. His mother, Rimma Salonen, was earlier this month given an 18-month suspended sentence for illegally taking Anton out of the country last year.
On April 12 this year, Salonen took Anton out of Russia with the help of St. Petersburg-based Finnish diplomat Simo Pietilainen, who drove through the Russian-Finnish border with the 6-year-old boy in the trunk of his vehicle. The incident sparked a diplomatic row between Russia and Finland, news agency RIA Novosti expands.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later protested to his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb, over the incident, and Pietilainen was declared persona non grata in Russia.
According to information from the Prosecutor General's Office, Salonen attempted to take his son across the border on April 4, but border guards refused to allow the child to cross and the two returned to St. Petersburg. The FSB brought a criminal case against Paavo Salonen on illegal crossing of the Russian Federation’s border, news agency Interfax notes.
Polish, Ukrainian security forces finished training for Euro 2012
The Polish and Ukrainian police and members of other governmental security services have concluded a three-day training of anti-terrorism tactics in preparation for the 2012 European Football Championship, the Warsaw Voice reports.
President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko visited joint Ukrainian-Polish tactical special anti-terrorist exercises, held at the Boryspol international airport, according to the website of the President. The President pointed to good coordination of the security services of Ukraine and Poland, which was demonstrated at the high level thanks to effective preparatory engineering works. "We have today seen that the connection between them was adjusted in real time. We are talking about joint organization of anti-terrorism actions and current exercises showed the high organization and communication", the online site cites President Yushchenko.
According to the BBC News, concerns were expressed in the 2007/08 report of the UEFA President and Executive Committee which warned that "the political instability in these countries [Poland and Ukraine] and the delays in work being carried out mean that the preparations require constant scrutiny".
Ukraine’s Security Service provides PACE with Holodomor proofs
The head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Valentin Nalyvaychenko met Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Vice President and rapporteur for problems on the famine in the former Soviet Union, Ukraine’s National Radio Compnay reports, referring to the SBU press service.
Nalyvaychenko, by authorization of an investigator, informed the PACE official about the progress of investigation into a criminal case on genocide in Ukraine in 1932-1933, the radio expands. The Ukrainian investigation established that genocide was committed by way of creating an artificial famine using such mechanisms as isolation of Ukraine's territory by special armed military units; inscription of districts and localities into the so-called 'black boards', blockade by troops, ban on people's movement outside the bounds of these areas, full seizure of foodstuffs and seed stocks, trade ban; restriction of free movement of peasants with the aim of looking for foodstuffs. In the course of the investigation, Ukraine received absolute evidences of committing crimes against humanity by the USSR top officials.
Radio marks that the genocide in Ukraine in 1932-33 is proved by 3,685 Soviet classified documents, including with Joseph Stalin's signature, and many other papers, as well as 933 mass burial places of genocide victims. The SBU head also said that in order to collect proofs of genocide of Ukrainians in other countries, in full compliance with the international law, the SBU investigators have submitted petitions on providing legal assistance to law enforcement agencies of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Italy, the United States, Germany, Austria and Poland. According to different estimates, the Great Famine (Holodomor) took from 7 to 10 million lives in Ukraine, including around 4 million children, which was 25% of the country's population at that time.
Authentic Communist-era police report does not prove Milan
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Weekly magazine Respekt |
Kundera's guilt of denunciation
A year ago, the Prague-based weekly magazine Respekt published a story about Milan Kundera, a famous Czech-born writer, having denounced in the 1950s an agent of Western security services who was then arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Now a second document was found, mentioning Kundera’s name, too.
Historians have uncovered a new document proving that the Communist-era police protocol, in which the name of Kundera figured, is authentic, but it does not clearly prove Kundera's guilt of denunciation, the daily newspaper Lidove noviny writes.
The police protocol on the arrest of Miroslav Dvoracek, a Czech agent of Western security services, in March 1950 was found last year. The new document is a transcript of a lecture by then deputy National Security Minister Jaroslav Jerman from 1952 that refers to the police protocol and proves that the agent was detained on the basis of denunciation, according to Lidove noviny. The newly found document, which is available in the National Library, rules out that the police protocol from 1950 mentioning Kundera could have been a fake, the paper says.
According to archive documents, Dvoracek fled from the Communist Czechoslovakia to West Germany in 1949 and he returned home under cover as an agent.The
The newly found document reads, just as the first one does that on March 3, 1950, “M.K.” came to the district police station of Prague 6 and “reported that student Eva Militka told his colleague that she met Miroslav Dvoracek who asked her if he could leave his luggage at her place and picked it up later.” “Based on that information,” the document continues, the police raided the place and waited there for Dvoracek, a Czech who fled the country in 1949 and returned home under cover as an agent. When he showed up, police arrested him on the spot.
The document doesn’t prove Kundera’s direct guilt but it doesn’t clear him off suspicion either. Milan Kundera is still a man who went to the police station and reported on Dvoracek’s presence in Prague. Kundera, then a film student in his early twenties, was an open admirer of socialism and was bewitched by the USSR. Why would he do it if he hadn’t known about Dvoracek’s label as “enemy of the state”? – Respekt asks.
Kundera declines interviews with the press and he didn’t answer questions on his role in Dvoracek’s arrest that Respekt sent him via fax a year ago. He only issued a statement deploring a “campaign against him” but he would not clarify the findings, the magazine notes.
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