Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 11 – The FSB is
spreading stories claiming that Ukrainian nationalists are behind the protests
of Kuban farmers and may soon do the same with the tractor drivers’ march as
well, an obvious effort to discredit these popular movements as well as an
indication of Moscow’s concern about them.
The tractor drivers said on Friday
that if they will expand their protest throughout Russia if the demands of the
Kuban farmers are not met (rosbalt.ru/russia/2016/09/09/1548909.html).
Apparently to forestall that possibility, the FSB has come up with this story,
Newsader.com reports (newsader.com/29959-kubanskikh-fermerov-obvinili-v-svyazyakh/).
But there is another possible
explanation as well, one that Newsader.com doesn’t mention and it is even more
worrisome: any suggestion that Ukrainians are trying to influence domestic
Russian affairs could spark an upsurge in anti-Ukrainian feelings among
Russians and be used by the Kremlin to justify a new wave of Russian aggression
against Ukraine.
One tractor driver, who was detained
for ten days that that FSB officers told him that he was “a traitor to the
motherland” because “Ukrainian nationalists had given” the drivers money. Such statements are not true, the driver
said, but undoubtedly some Russians are prepared to believe them.
Another farmer said that the FSB and
other force agencies had been putting pressure on the farmers and tractor
drivers and that “FSB officers were searching for foreign citizens,” clearly in
the hopes of coming up with evidence for the links between the Russian
protesters and Ukraine that they claim exist.
And a
third activist said that the Russian police who had detained him charged him
with having links to “’the fifth column’” and having “’sold out’” to the
enemies of Russia. He said that such charges are untrue noting that “we have
never gotten involved in politics,” despite official pressure on the movement.
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