15 No documentary evidence exists for the promise. If it was made (or understood) orally, it was to a state that no longer exists, under duress and without consultation with the other countries concerned. Moreover, Russia can hardly argue both that it is no threat to its neighbours, and that it has a right to veto their security choices. See Opening NATO’s Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era by the late Ronald Asmus (Columbia University Press, 2002).
16 A Washington Post investigation in 2010 ‘Top Secret America’ highlighted the unmanageable size and complexity of the nation’s intelligence agencies. http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
17 ‘Polish FM in WikiLeaks: Germany is Russia’s Trojan Horse’, by Andrew Reitman, EU Observer, 16 September 2011 http://euobserver.com/24/113652
18 Welt am Sonntag, ibid.
19 ‘Time to Shove Off’, The Economist, 10 September 2011 http://www.economist.com/node/21528596
20 This is actually the wrong acronym, as FAPSI has been incorporated into the FSB. http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/fapsi/index.html
21 http://www.panoramio.com/photo/38125772 by P. King.
22 As reported here: ‘Seen from on high’, Europe.view column, The Economist 3 April, 2008 http://www.economist.com/node/10950261. The Inmarsat satellite was repositioned in 2009. Russia could in theory have built the station in the Kaliningrad exclave – but any data sent back to the rest of Russia would have been vulnerable. Modern interception technology is able to obtain not only microwave and radio transmissions, but also data carried on seabed fibre-optic cables, by means of a ‘collar’ placed at a point where the cable curves.
23 Russia is now a participant in the Wassenaar Arrangement, which restricts the export of sensitive equipment to so-called rogue states. http://www.wassenaar.org/guidelines/
24 This is an archaic bit of legislation dating from 1974 intended to put pressure on the Soviet Union to allow Jewish would-be émigrés to leave the country freely. It is routinely waived by the Senate, but remains an irritant. See http://www.cfr.org/trade/jackson-vanik-amendment/p18844
25 Discussion of this case is difficult for legal reasons. For some years Mr Deripaska, an aluminium tycoon, has had difficulty gaining an American visa because of what officials described as ‘concerns about his business practices and associates’. The FBI is believed to have an audio recording in which he discusses some business difficulties and a planned solution in robust terms. He recently received a visa in exchange for a lengthy interview with officials from the criminal-justice system who sought his help in areas of interest to the US government. Nothing concrete resulted. See ‘FBI Lets Barred Tycoon Visit US’ by Evan Perez and Gregory White, Wall St Journal 30 October 2009 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125685578903317087.html and also Mr Deripaska’s response http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125687000832717809.html
26 http://valdaiclub.com/ gives a flavour of the lavish nature of this event.
27 Other papers which have swallowed this include European Voice (published by the Economist), where I write a weekly column; Le Figaro (France); the Economic Times and the Times of India (India); Duma (Bulgaria); Folha de São Paulo (Brazil); la Repubblica (Italy); Clarín (Argentina); El País (Spain); Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany) and Geopolitika (Serbia). http://russianow.washingtonpost.com/about/ and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/
28 On 8 September 2007 it printed a commentary claiming that the Katyń massacre of Polish officers in 1940 was not the work of the Soviet secret police, but of the Nazis. The original article is available here http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t147/apamyatnykh/GAZETA1s.jpg?t=1191101536. See also http://katynfiles.com/content/pamyatnykh-sabov-strygin-shved.html
29 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipGjIs3ovIc
30 Such as complaining about the language and citizenship laws in Estonia and Latvia: see for example ‘Latvia and Estonia discriminate against non-citizens’ by Yevgeny Kryshkin, The Voice of Russia, 26 February 2010 http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/2/26/4852056.html. Both countries have substantial, though declining, populations of Soviet-era migrants who have so far declined to learn the national languages or take the test that would entitle them to citizenship. Estonia’s non-citizen population dropped below the symbolically important 100,00 mark in April 2011; in Latvia the Russian-speaking population is better integrated socially but more active politically (partly as a result of Latvian state weakness, and partly because of Russian state interference).
31 See http://www.siac.tribunals.gov.uk/Documents/zatuliveter_substantive_29Nov11.pdf
4 Real Spies, Real Victims
1 ‘Russian Spy Has Defected to Canada’ by Jim Bronskill and Mike Trickey, National Post, 9 March 2001. Not available online directly but copied at http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/intelforum/2001-March/04354.html
2 Snapshots of the site are available at http://www.domaintools.com/research/screenshot-history/ for subscribers, or via the Wayback internet archive.
3 AIA listed its contributors as follows: Michel Elbaz – general coordinator; Allister Maunk – administrator and editor; Can Karpat – Turkish and Balkan section; Simon Araloff – European section; Anders Asmus – regional and international politics of Baltic states; Pavel Simonov – Russian section; Ulugbek Djuraev – Central-Asian section; Asim Oku – Turkish section; Sami Rosen – Israeli section; Alexander Petrov – webmaster.
4 One oddity was that on 13 May 2009 the privacy-protection had slipped. The registrant’s email was now listed, with an Israeli postal address: m_falkov@yahoo.com. Ha-Ela 16, Bene Ayish 79845. Whoever had been so keen to protect the site’s identity was now either careless or carefree.
5 ‘WikiLeaks cable: Russian leadership viewed Lieberman as “one of its own”: Message from US embassy to State Department shows FM was treated as an “old friend” during a 2009 visit to Moscow’ by Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 29 November 2010 http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/wikileaks-cable-russian-leadership-viewed-lieberman-as-one-of-its-own-1.327694