I'm very concerned for the staff at the BBC in Moscow, who have experienced a spate of individual violent attacks outside of work in recent weeks. First native Russian reporter Davlat Qudrat was assaulted on the Moscow metro after work, and subjected to racial abuses. The very next day Mikhail Denisov was attacked in his home and robbed by two men. Later Yevgeny Demchenko was jumped while walking home from work, receiving a head injury which required stitches.
The news organization has registered its alarm, and has requested the Russian Foreign Ministry to investigate the attacks. I suspect that the Kremlin will respond to this violence with diplomatic rhetoric (they still haven't said a word), yet I really doubt that anyone believes they will treat the matter with any urgency or sincerity. The open hostility by the Russian state toward the United Kingdom predates the Litvinenko affair and Lugovoi extradition requests, and is better explained by the Kremlin's determination to "reassert" its influence as a global power (which obviously can only be defined through confrontation with the West). Last August, the BBC World Service was pulled off the air on the FM signal, after the radio host mysteriously declared the output to be "foreign propaganda." Among the more absurd attacks against British entities was the attempt to evict the harmless young English teachers of the British Council from their offices over worries that they enjoyed unfair diplomatic immunity.
As Luke Harding commented in his article on the beatings, these attacks appear to be "the latest episode in a semi-official campaign of harassment and intimidation in Russia against British targets," which has been most recently capped off with a renewed campaign of harassment by the Nashi of the British Ambassador.
That's precisely the problem with the extreme nationalism and the politics of hate that the Putin administration has indoctrinated in these sponsored youth corps - it can quickly snowball out of control and result in violence or worse. Can you imagine the reporters of RIA Novosti beaten in the streets of London, lavishly sponsored rallies by a government youth group in front of the Russian Embassy (calling the Ambassador a "loser" on giant placards), and various attacks on cultural institutions like Pushkin House? It's entirely implausible. Why is Putin allowed to get away with this with no credibility lost?
Robert:
Please.... give us a break. Sure, you don't like Putin. We all understand, But try to be intellectually honest and not use half truths to try to prove unknowns.
The unknown is what's happening to the BBC employees. Neither you nor I know 100% whether there is a concerted campaign to intimidate the BBC or whether the incidents are coincidence.
The half-truths are that yes, the BBC was taken off the FM band but not as you suggest because the Kremlin was trying to limit media freedom. Rather, the BBC was piggy-backing on another Russian stations FM frequency and was neither properly registered nor was it paying the required fees.
Now Robert as a lawyer you know that it again intellectually dishonest to set-up the Kremlin by saying that they always respond with diplomatic rhetoric but that they have yet to respond.
Obviously Robert, it will be impossible for the Kremlin (or anyone else for that matter) to disprove the negative you have set-up.
It's analogous to calling someone with whom you are having an argument stubborn when they respond to your argument. Simply by voicing their opinion they are "proving" that they are stubborn and that you are correct.
Clever but unfair.
...and to suggest that Russia instigated this whole period of mutual frustration and cooling is simply silly.
Again you are mixing apples and oranges.
Yes, Russia wants to reassert itself as an international power. Why shouldn't it want to do so?
But that has nothing to do with its relationship with Downing Street.
Russians were just a few short years ago the biggest Anglophiles anywhere.
The relationship between the two countries started to deteriorate when initially refused to extradite BAB and a few others.
And finally, when Nashi using free speak to call the British Ambassador a loser you suggest that it's somehow a regression to a darker less free time.
Why shouldn't the group offer its opinions. Are you arguing that the British Ambassador isn't a loser?
And lastly, please... pleaser stop accusing Putin of being responsible for everything bad in this world.
"You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts." - Patrick Monihan
Shall we really go through this tedious exercise yet again? It's such a waste of time.
First, your comment lacks coherence for any real discussion. For example, you should read more about what happened when the BBC was pulled off the air. Finam spokesman Igor Ermachenkov told the press that it was "foreign propaganda."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/17/wbbc117.xml
Furthermore Bolshoye Radio was the third (!) station to drop the BBC in less than one year.
Regarding the response from the foreign ministry, I am purely sticking to the facts: they have not said a word in response. If you can find any statement to the public on this matter, please post it.
Of course there's nothing wrong with Russia vigorously pursuing its interests and reasserting itself - the problem is when that the current government seems only able to define this through confrontation, not cooperation.
Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions in a moment when the Kremlin is snarling at the West, calling people "scavenging jackals" while the British Embassy is besieged by the Nashi, that there are three practically simultaneous separate assaults on foreign journalists.
Thankfully the law the does not require a person to instrumentalize the presumption of innocence in a scenario such as one sees in Moscow - a situation in which the government fans the flames of xenophobia and pays street thugs by the thousands to simulate national fervor, to siege embassies and harass Ambassadors. I am comfortable in drawing fair minded presumptions regarding who may be behind these attacks, or perhaps how they were inspired.
The Kremlin has created this poisoned atmosphere, it has orchestrated this xenophobia, and it has instrumentalized the police and brought back the "telephone justice" that was the shame of the Soviet system. It is time for the apologists to wake up and smell the Nashi.
Timothy:
Please.... give us a break. Sure, you like Putin. We all understand. But try to be intellectually honest: do you really think that in such a highly regulated state as Russia, where nothing is left to chance, where even minimal dissent is brutally crushed, where not only participants in peaceful "Dissenters' Marches", but even innocent bystanders, are violently beaten by the riot police, where members of the National Bolshevik Party receive long sentences merely for entering a public office building (and this list can go on and on) – do you really think that a bunch of pimply-faced youths would simply be allowed to harass the British Ambassador without tacit approval, if not clear instructions, on the part of the highest authorities? Do you really think that the Russian Information Ministry would dare take BBC off the air without direct instructions from above? And finally, yes, I agree with you that the most recent incidents with the BBC employees could be a coincidence - just like the huge number of other journalists, Anna Politkovskaya included, who have been killed, poisoned, beaten, jailed and otherwise harassed under this administration.