Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Over recent months we have argued many times that the driving force of Russian policy is paranoia.  Factors contributing to Russia’s feeling of vulnerability include its irrevocable loss of superpower status; the continuing drift of the western and southern former Soviet republics away from the Russian orbit; the challenge of China in Central Asia and the Far East; jihadist extremism in the still-Russian north Caucasus; its declining population; the overwhelming ascendancy of Nato; and the nascent democratic threat to the Russian party of power.  The level of Russian paranoia was exemplified in remarks made earlier this week in Tashkent by the first deputy director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), General Sergey Smirnov.

Smirnov was in Tashkent for a meeting of the Regional Antiterrorism Structure (RATS) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the meeting included discussions on cyber security.  There were two important points about Smirnov’s remarks.  The first was definitional.  In the West, the term cyber security normally refers to hacking and viruses and other attacks on a nation’s public and private IT infrastructure.  Not so, it seems, with Russia.  Smirnov also employed the term in reference to the phenomenon of social networking, which he identified as a danger to the state.  The second important point was that he saw Western hands behind this danger.  Speaking on 27 March, Smirnov said: “We have to secure our society against the activities of Western security services, which would like to inflict some damage to us in terms of cyber security.”

Smirnov then went on to make clear that what he was referring to was not the usual definition of cyber security but to the social networking phenomenon.  He said: “We know that Western security services set up special subdivisions within their agencies to create the requisite basis in the countries where they wish to engage in these activities.  We know, and it is no secret, that the problem of the ‘Arab Spring’ and the problem of the revolutions that took place on the African coast encountered this.  These are new technologies which Western security services use to create and maintain constant tension in societies.  The aims are serious too, up to and including the overthrow of the political regime that exists or existed in those countries.”

Smirnov then added that this problem “is topical not just for us in the Russian Federation [but for] all countries in the SCO”.  He said: “We have to analyse the situation in this matter in our countries, combine it all, and map out countermeasures of appropriate response to these activities of various security services.”  And he concluded: “Society...has to defend itself.  If a foe uses dirty tricks, we have to somehow clear this space of these activities.”

Smirnov’s protestations that any countermeasures “will have no effect on society in terms of democratic norms” are unlikely to reassure Russia’s opposition groups.  However, Smirnov will have be gratified to see that support for protests seems to be falling.  After the December elections, 44% of respondents to a Levada Centre poll said they backed protests against electoral violations.  By mid-March, this figure was down to 32%.  Most gratifying for the authorities (if the figures are true), 78% of respondents said they would not take part in protests if they were held in their district in the near future.