Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Evidence gathered by the BBC Monitoring service suggests strongly that the child abuse allegations against Russian opposition activist Rustem Adagamov are part of a classic Kremlin-orchestrated black propaganda operation.  The operation appears to have been timed to detract from the 25,000-strong 13 January ‘March Against Scoundrels’, a march against the ban on the adoption of Russian children by US citizens which was introduced by the Kremlin as retaliation for the US’s Magnitskiy Act.  The latter imposes various sanctions on Russian officials for human rights abuses, including the death in custody the Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitskiy in 2009.

Instruments in the campaign against Adagamov include his ex-wife Tatyana Delsal who made the first allegations of child abuse in a blog dated 27 December.  The giveaway was that this allegation was re-tweeted within hours by Timofey Vasilyev, a former employee of the news website Ridus which is suspected of Kremlin links.  The key point is that Delsal’s blog had been dormant for some time so it is highly unlikely that Vasilyev would have picked up the 27 December allegations within hours of being published without some inside knowledge.

Supporting evidence includes the way in which other pro-Kremlin bloggers have been active in disseminating the allegations, including a video posted on You Tube in 29 December accusing Adagamov of abusing a 12-year-old girl.  One of those to post further allegations against the “paedophile” Adagamov was Kristina Potupchik, former press secretary for the pro-Putin youth movement Nashi.

As 13 January march approached, Delsal gave interviews to two pro-Kremlin media outlets: Russia Today (RT), the state-owned TV channel, and the daily Izvestiya.  The RT interviewer failed to question the allegations in any depth to test their veracity.

The offences are said to have taken place in Norway, where Delsal lives, and to have begun between 10 and 15 years ago (some of her statements have been inconsistent).  The Norwegian authorities, however, have shown little interest in the allegations as no victim has come forward to corroborate them.

According to BBC Monitoring, on the day of the march “a concerted spamming operation” on Twitter “ensured that two hashtags linking the march to paedophilia allegations were among the top trending topics in the Russian Twittersphere”.  There were also clear plants within the march, with a number of people carrying banners referring to the allegations of paedophilia against Adagamov.  Naturally these banners appeared in the coverage of the march carried by the state-controlled Channel One and Rossiya 1 television stations.

BBC Monitoring notes: “This campaign against Adagamov is just one of series of media attacks on opposition activists that began in March 2012 with the TV film Anatomy of a Protest, but it provides a particularly instructive example of how the Kremlin's black propaganda machine operates across a range of platforms and involves different types of protagonists from journalists on state TV to foul-mouthed bloggers and anonymous spammers.”

It is, of course, possible that the allegations against Adagamov are true, although it seems significant that Delsal first spread the allegations through pro-Kremlin bloggers rather than lodging a complaint with the Norwegian police.  But even if the allegations were true, that wouldn’t negate the fact that the Kremlin has used the allegations in the way it has to attack a much wider target.

How successful the tactic has been is another question.  The ‘March Against Scoundrels’ rally in Moscow was relatively large-scale, and it was accompanied by smaller but nevertheless significant rallies in a number of other major cities.  Equally significant is the fact that the protests were provoked by the law against US citizens adopting Russian children.  On the face of it this would not appear to be the sort of issue to get people out on the streets, yet it did, suggesting that protests are capable of being triggered by a wide range of perceived misgovernment.  A recent survey by the Levada Centre found that more than a third of Russians sympathise with the mass protests.

There have been recent protests on environmental issues, such as the protests organized by the ‘Kranoyarsk is Opposed’ movement which forced the halting of the construction of a new iron works in Yenesei.  A petition was signed by over 180,000 residents of Kranoyarsk, which is over a third of the adult population of the city.  There have also been protest rallies in Volgograd, Kaliningrad, Bryansk, Omsk, Pervouralsk, and other Russian cities against increasing utility rates.

One future trigger-point could be the criminal charges against those who demonstrated in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on 6 May last year against Putin’s inauguration the following day.  Although about 70 activists who were facing charges have fled the country (including Aleksandr Dolmatov who committed suicide in the Netherlands on 17 January), some dozen activists are due to go on trial in the spring.  Ten of the accused face public-order charges entailing 3-8 years in jail.  One activist faces up to 10 years in jail for a charge of using violence against a public official that endangered life or health.  One suspect who pleaded guilty to charges in November still received a sentence of four and a half years, which suggests clemency is not on the cards.

Thirteen of the suspects are being held in jail, without bail, where they have been since May/June.  Interestingly, however, two protest leaders currently facing charges are out on bail – Sergey Udaltsov and Aleksey Navalnyy (who is facing fraud and embezzlement charges).  The suggestion is that the Kremlin is trying to cause dissension by this tactic.  Many of those charged have had little previously to do with the protest movement or its leadership.  Again, protest sources say this is a deliberate tactic.  Yaroslav Belousov, a 21-year-old student, says: “[It is] no accident that random people have been singled out for trial.  The random factor in this politically motivated case should in the view of the punishers play the most effective part in warning millions of our citizens of the dangers of supporting the opposition.”

Russia’s opposition Coordination Council has begun to plan for a renewal of the protest movement in the spring.  The 26 members of the council have reportedly voted to hold a mass protest in the spring under the title “March Against the Hangmen”.