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NY Times, May 29 2017
Foot Soldiers in a Shadowy Battle Between Russia and the West
By ANDREW HIGGINS
MELNIK, Czech Republic — Working at his computer, as he does most
weekends, on an anti-Western diatribe for a Czech website, Ladislav
Kasuka was not sure what to make of the messages that began popping up
on his Facebook page, offering him money to organize street protests.
“Do you need help?” read the first message, written in Russian, from a
person he did not know. This was followed, in a mix of Russian and
garbled Czech, by gushing encouragement for street demonstrations and
increasingly specific offers of cash.
An initial payment of 300 euros ($368) was offered for Mr. Kasuka, a
penniless Czech Stalinist, to buy flags and other paraphernalia for a
protest rally in Prague, the Czech capital, against the NATO alliance
and the pro-Western government in Ukraine. Later, he was offered €500
($558) to buy a video camera, film the action and post the video online.
Other small sums were also proposed.
“It was all a bit unusual, so I was surprised,” Mr. Kasuka recalled in a
recent interview at a shopping mall north of Prague where he works on
security and maintenance.
He decided the cash “was for a good cause” — halting the spread of NATO
and capitalist Western ways into the formerly communist lands of Eastern
Europe — so he accepted.
The strange relationship that followed, consisting of passionate social
media exchanges about politics and a total of €1,500 in cash transfers,
was one of many forged across Eastern and Central Europe in summer 2014.
They were part of a frenetic, though often clumsy, influence campaign
financed from Moscow and directed by Alexander Usovsky, a Belarus-born
writer, Russian-nationalist agitator and ideological hired gun in a
shadowy battle for hearts and minds between Russia and the West.
Compared with Russia’s supposed meddling in the recent presidential
elections in France and the United States, the activities of Mr. Kasuka
and those like him are of little consequence. He belongs firmly to the
fringe of Czech politics, and has never aspired to any higher office
than local councilor in Melnik, the town north of Prague where he lives
with his girlfriend in a graffiti-smeared housing block.
Mr. Kasuka’s collaboration with Mr. Usovsky first came to light in a
cache of emails, Facebook messages and other data pilfered by Ukrainian
hackers from Mr. Usovsky’s computer. It provides a rare ground-level
view of a particularly murky aspect of Russia’s influence strategy:
freelance activists who promote its agenda abroad, but get their backing
from Russian tycoons and others close to the Kremlin, not the Russian
state itself.
Mr. Usovsky’s focus was on marginal political players in the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, and his efforts mostly fell
flat. The protests organized by Mr. Kasuka and others attracted only
handfuls of people. Pro-Russian websites that Mr. Usovsky helped to set
up all fizzled. A Polish politician he was in touch with, Mateusz
Piskorski, was arrested last year on suspicion of spying for Russia.
None of that seemed to deter Mr. Usovsky, who was still pitching wild
plans and detailed budgets to potential backers in Moscow early this year.
His communications offer a revealing glimpse into Russian thinking,
ambitions and frustrations. His dealings with the office of Konstantin
Malofeev, a nationalist billionaire who was hit with sanctions by the
United States over his alleged support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern
Ukraine, are especially notable.
After Mr. Usovsky managed to orchestrate only a few tiny demonstrations
in Prague, Warsaw and other cities, an assistant to Mr. Malofeev
demanded in October 2014 that Mr. Usovsky produce “a clear, concrete and
realistic plan for the coming to power of pro-Russian forces.”
Mr. Malofeev declined to be interviewed, and his spokeswoman, Nadezhda
Novoselova, said the billionaire and his staff had nothing to do with
Mr. Usovsky.
Mr. Malofeev has acquired a reputation as the Kremlin’s version of
George Soros, the Hungarian-American billionaire whom pro-Western forces
across Eastern Europe often turn to for money. Unlike Mr. Soros, though,
the wealthy Russians who support activists abroad generally try to keep
their roles and spending secret. That allows the Kremlin to keep its
distance as well.
Mr. Malofeev has in the past insisted he supported only humanitarian
work, not political trouble-making.
Reports that Russia used cyberattacks and disinformation to meddle in
the American election have persuaded many that Moscow runs a
sophisticated influence machine. But interviews with several of Mr.
Usovsky’s collaborators, and the contents of his hacked computer,
suggest that it was at times a more shambolic affair, hampered by money
squabbles, intramural rivalries and absurdly distorted views of how
politics works outside Russia.
Jakub Janda, deputy director of European Values, a Western-financed
research group in Prague that has tracked Russian influence campaigns,
said that Mr. Usovsky seemed so far out of touch with reality that he
might even be “a decoy” meant to make people say, “Look, this whole
Russia threat thing is just not serious.”
Others, though, see Mr. Usovsky as evidence of Russia’s mastery of
plausible deniability and its willingness to bet on opportunists, no
matter how slim their chances of success.
Mr. Usovsky “is a good case study in Russian methods,” said Daniel Milo,
a former official of the Slovakian Interior Ministry who is now an
expert on extremism at Globsec, a research group in Bratislava, the
Slovak capital. “He is a small cog in a big industry,” Mr. Milo said.
“There may be dozens more.”
Mr. Usovsky declined to be interviewed for this article without being
paid. But in response to emailed questions, he confirmed that his
computer had been hacked, and he did not dispute the authenticity of the
leaked messages.
A resident of Vitebsk, near the Russian border with Belarus, Mr. Usovsky
started his operation in 2014, riding a wave of nationalist fervor in
Moscow after the annexation of Crimea and the widespread belief among
Russia’s political and business elite that united European backing for
sanctions against Russia could be quickly dissolved.
He set up a network of websites in various languages to promote Slavic
unity, rented an office in Bratislava and established a sham foundation
nominally dedicated to promoting culture.
Asked by email how much money he had received from sponsors in Moscow,
Mr. Usovsky initially denied receiving any. Then, when he was sent a
copy of a message he had written in October 2014 detailing €100,000 he
received to finance the “preparatory stage” of his work in Eastern
Europe, he stopped responding to inquiries.
Other messages taken from his computer by hackers suggest that the money
came from Mr. Malofeev. Mr. Usovsky’s assistant badgered Mr. Malofeev’s
assistant for hundreds of thousands more euros in late 2014 and 2015, to
finance pro-Russian candidates in Polish elections.
Though he never even came close to bringing any pro-Russian groups to
power, Mr. Usovsky was able to identify partners in Eastern and Central
Europe ready to accept his help. He also showed a grasp of the
internet’s power to amplify fringe voices and make thinly attended
demonstrations seem like major dramas. He worked closely with
state-controlled Russian news outlets to ensure that the activities of
his Czech, Slovak and Polish collaborators received extensive coverage.
For example, Mr. Kasuka, the Czech Stalinist, has appeared regularly in
Russian media as a commentator on Czech affairs and geopolitics. He once
told RT that the United States might drop an atomic bomb on Ukraine and
blame Russia to create a pretext for war. And a small rally that Mr.
Kasuka organized in Prague was featured on Perviy Kanal, a major Russian
TV channel.
“It is totally crazy,” said Roman Mica, an analyst based in Prague.
“Pervy Kanal presents as serious news a protest by 10 or so people who
are mostly ready for the psychological hospital.” He said Mr. Kasuka had
become “one of the best known Czechs in Russia, after our hockey players.”
One person Mr. Usovsky did not want in the limelight, however, was
himself. When a Slovak group, Peaceful Warrior, wanted to thank him
publicly at a rally for his financial support, he swiftly vetoed the idea.
After Mr. Malofeev, his main backer, cooled on his ambitious but
unrealistic political plans, Mr. Usovsky grew increasingly desperate for
money. He told Mr. Malofeev’s assistant in March 2015 that his “Polish
friends” needed €292,700 ($327,000) to win seats in Parliament. He also
asked for €10,000 ($11,175) for Jobbik, a far-right Hungarian party, and
€3,000 more for a neo-fascist paramilitary group called the Hungarian Guard.
Apparently rebuffed by Mr. Malofeev, he peppered other prospective
Russian donors with detailed plans for a “pro-Russian fifth column,”
claiming that he could destroy “Europe’s anti-Russian front” by
channeling money to politicians who opposed NATO and the European Union.
Among them were the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, headed by a
former intelligence officer, and Konstantin Zatulin, a hard-line member
of the Russian Parliament.
Short of funds, Mr. Usovsky looked to Mr. Kasuka, the Czech Stalinist,
as a low-cost project that could keep him in the game. Unlike Mr.
Usovsky’s Polish partners, Mr. Kasuka was not constantly asking for
money, and had even turned some down when he ran for a seat on the
Melnik town council in 2014.
But Mr. Kasuka lost interest in street politics. Though he is still in
touch with Mr. Usovsky on social media, he says he now concentrates on
his writings about the risk of war, Stalin’s achievements and the misery
caused by capitalist exploitation.
“It does not matter to me whether money comes from the Kremlin or from
America, so long as it helps the cause,” he said. “What matters is the
idea.”
Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting from Moscow, Hana de Goeij from
Prague, and Miroslava Germanov from Bratislava, Slovakia.
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