Panic on Russian right-wing radical websites

Between end-February and early March 2006, Russian police arrested two right-wing radical activists engaging in hate propaganda over the internet.

On 28 February, in Kaliningrad, police searched the home of Alexei Safin, a leader of the local Movement against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) branch; Safin was subsequently arrested, but then released on recognizance. On 4 March, in Astrakhan Oblast, police arrested Igor Mogilyov who describes himself as leader of a few regional groups, the best known of them being LDPR (Zhirinovsky's party), DPNI, and Alexander Ivanov's (Sukharevsky's) People's National Party.

Both right-wing radicals face charges under art. 282 of the Criminal Code for incitation of ethnic and religious hatred through dissemination of xenophobic materials, including dissemination through the internet. At the same time, the website of Kaliningrad DPNI disappeared.

The news provoked panic among owners of right-wing radical websites, in particular those hosted by Russian providers. Starting on 1 March, websites related directly to the arrested individuals or to the organizations they represented, as well as some other websites, either removed some of their most offensive content, or became inaccessible.

Only one right-wing radical website called Posledny Chas (Last Hour) openly announced that awaiting the outcome of proceedings against Igor Mogilyov they removed all his articles and other materials subject to review by the Astrakhan Oblast Prosecutor's Office. Cerberus of Freedom, a neo-Nazi paper also currently reviewed by prosecutors, placed an announcement on its website saying that it was temporarily unavailable. The Wagtarey Community website where Mogilyov was the key contributor and ideologist, had the entire content of its main pages, including the home page, removed.

Some websites became unavailable without any reasons given - these include Narodnaya Zaschita (People's Defense) and the website of DPNI branch in Tula (access restored by now).

Others announced limited access due to technical upgrade - as, for example, the website of Grazhdanskaya Samooborona (Civil Self-Defense) organization associated with DPNI whose activists were behind a number of attacks against ethnic Azeri in Moscow. Access to the said websites was limited for periods between a few hours and a few days.

Overall, a couple of dozen right-wing radical websites became unavailable, and some continue to be. In particular, access to the Youth National Patriotic Gateway with all its websites (including the mentioned Cerberus of Freedom, Tyumen, Tver, and Kurgan skinhead sites, etc.) was unavailable from their U.S. hosting provider ostensibly for exceeding a bandwidth limit. The gateway has been down for more than two days by now, so we assume that rather than a technical problem, the reason was either an extremely powerful hacker attack or the gateway owners' decision to lay low for a while.

While in some other instances we can assume authorities' pressure against hosting providers, it is highly unlikely in the case of Youth National Patriotic Gateway hosted by a U.S. provider. Most likely, they were affected by a denial-of-service (DoS) attack.

Most websites that restored access after a while also revised their guestbooks and forums, removing especially radical xenophobic pronouncements.

At the same time, on 9 March 2006, the official website of Nikolay Kuryanovich, State Duma member of LDPR party, published a call to skinheads - the MP's close associates - to change their tactics. The MP openly warns :young Russian patriots,; for security reasons, against possessing neo-Nazi papers, literature, and similar materials, including in electronic form; to refrain from discussing their actions in internet forums accessible to the public, and limit such discussions to private space. Notably, while the MP stressed that unlawful methods of fighting against opponents are unacceptable, his perception of lawfulness is well-known and rather odd; in January 2006, he openly encouraged hacker attacks against :Russophobic websites; - which is a crime in Russia - and in 2005, he supported DPNI's initiative of setting up :patriotic; armed units to fight illegal immigrants and potential outside attacks against Russia.