Articles Non Grata

The expulsion of British journalist Luke Harding from Russia greatly resembles the story with Natalia Moral. Unknown security officials have already appeared there, and the Foreign Ministry again says that it has nothing to do with it. It seems that the British went to publish with a description of the roofing of all the security forces according to Wikileaks.

Russia refused to let in a full -time journalist, correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian Luke Harding accredited at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (Luke harding)

He was stopped at customs control and sent on the first plane back to Britain. The correspondent of the British newspaper Guardian Luke Harding is really listed in the list of persons whose entry to Russia is undesirable, a source in one of the Russian power structures said on Tuesday. “Harding was not allowed to enter the territory of Russia at the request of one of the Russian structures,” the agency’s interlocutor said, without specifying why the foreigner was on this list.

Britain Foreign Minister William Heig on Monday contacted his colleague Sergei Lavrov and asked to explain what happened. According to Forein Office, Lavrov could not report anything and promised to figure out the situation. While the British Foreign Ministry is waiting.

The story with the curtain resembles, although not identical, the story of the journalistic Russian New Times Natalia Moral. It differs because Morar wrote for the Russian media, being a citizen of Moldova, and Harding is a British subject accredited at the Russian Foreign Ministry.

But then there are completely coincidences. In December 2007, Natalya Morar returned to Russia from a business trip to Israel. When passing passport control, she was told that, by decision of the FSB, she is prohibited from entering Russia. Moral flew to his homeland.

On January 17, at the Russian Embassy in Moldova, Natalia Morar was reported that she was forbidden to enter Russia in accordance with paragraph 1 of Article 27 of the Federal Law “On the Procedure for Departure from the Russian Federation and Entrance to the Russian Federation”. This article says: “Entrance to the Russian Federation to a foreign citizen or stateless person is not allowed if it is necessary in order to ensure the defense capacity or security of the state, or public order, or to protect health to the population.” For the same reason, the authorities ignored all attempts to journalistic to obtain Russian citizenship. Luke Harding, we believe, will not occur to it.

In the Federal Migration Service and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from their involvement in the events around Morar, they disowned.

Formally, in the actions of the FSB in the case of Morar and the unidentified power department in the case of Harding, everything is legal. However, questions remain - what journalists were engaged in such terrible. As the reasons for the expulsion of Morar, the topics of her articles were called at random (“The Black Cash desk of the Kremlin”, for example). The most promising version was the publication of Natalia Moral and the Discontus case. The New Times then submitted a request to the FSB. Having registered the first request on December 20 under No. 3955, the FSB letter department transferred it for execution to the Office "K" Economic Security Service (SEB) of the FSB. The full name of the board "K" - the counterintelligence department of the credit and financial system. The economic security service, which includes this management, was led by Alexander Bortnikov.

As the magazine wrote, General Bortnikov was one of the main defendants in a high -profile investigation to withdraw the money with high -ranking Russian officials through the Russian Bank Discont and the Austrian Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich.

In other words - in each case, there is a resentment of a certain organ or even a unit for a particular writing journalist. Here, really in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they can not know anything, because the security forces live their own separate life, often subordinate to anyone.

The version that Harding was sent for his publications according to the Wikileaks project was also characteristic. Especially where Putin is compared with Batman, and Medvedev with Robin. It was in it that Harding was the first to disclose the report of the Barlie Ambassador on the “mafia state”, where it all depends on the “roof”, which is provided by various law enforcement agencies. In particular, the Federal Security Service, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor's office.

The resentment of the security forces is generally understandable, but WikiLeaks was officially subjected to obstruction and boss riding. Medvedev, commenting on the leaks on WikiLeaks, first accused the American diplomats of cynicism, and then added that if the media leaked to the assessments that Russian diplomats give to their American partners, "they would also have a lot of pleasure." In the Foreign Ministry, the publication was called "funny reading. One of the high-ranking officials joked in the spirit of "I looked, I have not yet." Others were somewhat more serious-Putin's prime minister, Dmitry Peskov, proposed to verify the authenticity of documents, the accuracy of the translation and, finally, is talking about Putin at all. And a certain source even suggested Russian human rights activists to nominate WikiLeaks founder Julian Paul Assange to the Nobel Prize. Everyone joked. The security forces were offended.