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Foreign Broadcasters, Governments, Top Putin's Conspiracy Lists

Jamie Dettmer

   MOSCOW - Apparently persuaded by groundless conspiracy theories of
   foreign meddling, the Kremlin and Russia's security agencies seem
   impervious to calls for them to adopt a more relaxed approach to their
   critics and opposition groups.

   The Kremlin is continuing a campaign of harassment against opposition
   leaders and their followers, say analysts and government critics, even
   though recent anti-government protests have not weakened Vladimir
   Putin's grip on power.

   Activities by Russia's security agencies

   "Hundreds of officers with salaries, bonuses and state-funded
   apartments are carrying out ridiculous work: on orders from the very
   top, they are searching the apartments of ordinary people, going
   through their personal belongings, photographs, rifling through
   documents, confiscating computers and other electronics, and then
   carrying out lengthy interrogations that can last hours," complained
   Fedor Krasheninnikov in the Moscow Times newspaper.

   "They are sent on a pointless search for evidence to confirm conspiracy
   theories thought up by their superiors," added Krasheninnikov, a
   political commentator for the independent radio station Echo of Moscow
   and an organizer of environmental and political protests.

   Search for foreign influence in Russia's protests

   Among those conspiracy theories is that protests are fomented by
   conspiratorial foreign interests -- from Western democracy-promotion
   NGOs and international public broadcasters. On Friday, pro-Kremlin
   lawmakers accused Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and
   Britain's BBC among other broadcasters of violating Russian law in how
   they covered last month's local and regional elections.

   The lawmakers are members of a parliamentary commission established
   earlier in the year to explore whether international broadcasters and
   internet services, including Germany's Deutsche Welle news service and
   Google, meddled in Russia's internal affairs by allegedly promoting
   anti-Kremlin protests and encouraging people to attend them.

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