Nashi Youth Leader Reveals Existence of Kremlin-financed Spy Program

Last Updated on Tuesday, 10 February 2009 09:20 Written by admin Tuesday, 10 February 2009 08:36

From the Moscow Times:

Anna Bukovskaya, a St. Petersburg activist with the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth group, said she coordinated a group of 30 young people who infiltrated branches of the banned National Bolshevik Party, Youth Yabloko and United Civil Front in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh and six other cities.

The agents informed Bukovskaya, who passed the information to senior Nashi official Dmitry Golubyatnikov, who in turn contacted “Surkov’s people” in the Kremlin, Bukovskaya told The Moscow Times. Vladislav Surkov is President Dmitry Medvedev’s first deputy chief of staff.

The agents provided information on planned and past events together with pictures and personal information on activists and leaders, including their contact numbers, Bukovskaya said by telephone from St. Petersburg. 

They were paid 20,000 rubles ($550) per month, while she received 40,000 rubles per month, she said.

She said Nashi, which is believed to have been created by Surkov, had nothing to do with the project and speculated that Kremlin officials might be behind it.

From Russian Ren TV (Source: transcript of Russian TV broadcast on Feb 4, 2009)

[Bukovskaya] The project was to become more aggressive, i.e. videos and photos to compromise the opposition, data from their computers; and, as a separate track, the dispatch of provocateurs.

If only the interviewer asked Bukovskaya to clarify “how” data from computers was obtained. Is it too far a leap to say “hacking”? Remember that the sole Russian hacker who confessed to launching DDoS attacks against Estonia, Konstantin Goloskokov, was a Commissar in Nashi. 

Bukovskaya’s revelation colors Goloskokov’s admission in a whole new way. We now have evidence that the Kremlin is enlisting and financing espionage by its youth up to and including the “cyber” domain.

How many nationalistic hackers were members of Bukovskaya’s crew, I wonder?

UPDATE: Just found this article from March 14, 2008 wherein Nashi hackers are accused of launching DDoS attacks against the Kommersant newspaper Web site.