Undercover pro-Kremlin agents have worked in opposition groups across Russia to provide the presidential administration with information on opposition activists and rallies, a self-described handler said Thursday.My calendar says this is 2009...but the little voice inside my pointy little head says its 1980 again. Hmmmm...
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.
Incidentally...Natalya Krainova (Staff Writer for the Moscow Times) is one brave lady. I'm not so sure I'd be stirring the pot considering the expiration period of a journalist rivaling non-homogenized milk in Russia these last few years.
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