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Saturday, November 23, 2019

The Russian Security Services Throwing Their Intimidating Weight Around

"[The raids had] delivered colossal reputational damage with law enforcement organs discrediting themselves in the eyes of the scientific community."
"[The actions of the security forces] are impossible to imagine in a civilized country in which law enforcement agencies concern themselves with real, not invented, problems."
Lebedev Institute Scientific Council statement

The Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow. Many were shocked last week when its halls were suddenly swarming with security officers wearing masks and armed with automatic weapons.

Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

Vladimir Putin issued both a congratulation and a caution to the Federal Security Service, better known at home and abroad as the F.S.B. -- successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B., referring to its increasing presence within "Russia's integrated security", at the same time referring to its need to pay attention to "strengthening public confidence" in their operations. They are, in fact, rather clumsy in their operations, using easily-traced toxic chemicals abroad intending to extinguish critical voices of expatriates living abroad, say in London, England.

As for a lack of discretionary class, and choosing to behave like thugs, that too occurs not only abroad but right at home as well. And sometimes in the most unexpected of places. Take, for example, the Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow, a highly respected professional body of elite scientific investigation known internationally for the precision and high integrity of its research. Its usefulness in enabling the USSR to build a hydrogen bomb after detonating its first nuclear device should have endowed it with 'hands-off' status.

All the more so, given that seven of its employees, scientists who won Nobel Prizes further distinguished the Institute's glowing international credentials. This is a different time and era, however, a return to state-sanctioned thuggery in the name of safeguarding the Russian Federation's 'security'. Still, it occasioned surprise and shock when masked security officers armed with automatic weapons stormed the halls of the institute, searching the director's office, questioning him for six hours, over a 'plot' to export military glass abroad.

Nikolai N. Kolachevsky, director of the Lebedev Institute is not accustomed to such rough, disrespectful handling, denouncing the raid as a "masked show"; an intervention by law enforcement that far exceeds both their authority and the purported intelligence they were in hot pursuit of. This, at a time when Vladimir Putin exhorts Russian scientists to use their expertise in helping construct a modern economy, and for their efforts are subjected to abuse by 'law enforcement'.

Even as security services raided the Lebedev Physics Institute they also conducted raids simultaneously on scientists' homes, along with those of their family members for good measure. They appear to have been targeting the 36-year-old daughter of a Lebedev scientist, owner of a company that sells precision glassware out of an office rented at the Institute. Olga Kanorskaya's apartment was raided by security officers, as another team searched the apartment of her parents.

In a search for evidence to prove their accusation that she exported glass whose properties have potential military applications to Germany, her possessions were thoroughly inspected. This charge, they claim, represents a criminal offence carrying a sentence of seven to 20 years in prison. She was taken into custody and questioned by police investigators along with an interrogation by an F.S.B. officer. President Putin would know all about what that entails from his own years with the K.G.B.

Neither Ms.Kanorskaya, her father Sergei, nor Mr. Kolachevsky have been charged with any criminal offence. Nor will they ever expect to receive an apology for the humiliating treatment they were exposed to. "There is nothing especially surprising here. Everything fits into the 'witch hunt' script that has been gaining momentum with every year", commented Mr. Kolachevsky.