Imprisoned “Russian March” organizer Aleksandr Belov (Potkin), former head of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration has given a sensational interview made by his supporters to prominent Russian blogger Oleg Kashin, claiming that Russian intelligence officers began persecuting him after he refused their demand to collaborate with them in corporate raids and even terrorism and murder in Ukraine, slon.ru reports.

Slon.ru reports that Potkin, who was arrested last year right before the nationalists’ annual Russian March, said the Federal Security Service (FSB) promised to “leave him in peace” if he would perform certain assignments for them, even the murder of a figure in Ukraine believed to be oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, who recently resigned as governor of Dnepropetrovsk Region under pressure from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

The Interpreter has translated an excerpt of the interview published by Kashin:

“Finally I realize that the FSB had no interests in national security. All the offers and questions amounted to a wish to involve me in raiders’ seizures of Russian companies and participation in terrorist activity on the territory of Ukraine and France. At least, the promise to leave me in peace (and people who are connected to me in one way or another) was given under the condition that we resolve the question of Boroda [Beard] (we had a dispute about who was referenced here; there is a theory that this is Rabbi Boroda, but I believe Boroda is what they called Kolomoisky, he is bearded–Kashin). There was talk of organizing liquidations, murders, or lobbying for the arrest of Igor Kolomoisky on French territory.

Apparently after they realized I wouldn’t take part in such projects, they decided to offer me up as a sacrifice to [Kazakh President Nursultan] Nazarbayev, taking into account concerns about my possible participation in any popular demonstrations against the policy of the RF government. After all, Russian intelligence agencies today are forced to fulfill any request of the aging dictator since Kazakhstan’s position on Ukraine depends on him and the future of the crippled child of Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] called the Customs Union. Simultaneously mercantile interests were decided involving corrupt bureaucrats and officers of Russian intelligence; after all, in the eastern tradition, Kazakh ‘interested parties’ lavishly grease the machine of the justice and court system so that it goes in the direction needed.”

Potkin said that had he followed along with the FSB’s plans, they would have left him and those connected to him in peace.

TV Rain reports that Potkin’s lawyer also says his client’s arrest was related from his refusal to take part in “illegal actions” in Ukraine including the removal of Ukrainian political leaders.

Potkin is accused of money-laundering and also “propaganda of exceptionalism, superiority or inferiority of citizens on the basis of their affiliation to religious, class, national, birth or racial origin” under Kazakh law. The charges, which relate to advocating Russian separatism in Kazakhstan, have not been formally made. Slon.ru covered Potkin’s business and political activities in Kazakhstan last October. Potkin is currently in the Matrosskaya Tishina federal detention center. He is accused of laundering $5 billion stolen from depositors of the BTA Bank by former owner Mukhtar Ablyazov.

A French court rejected Ablyazov’s petition to stop the extradition to Ukraine and Russia from a French prison, and French authorities are now likely to send him to Russia. BTA Bank accused Ablyazov of embezzling billions of dollars and won “massive judgements” against him, the Wall Street Journal reported. He was accused of lying under oath and violating an asset-freezing order. He fled Britain in 2012 and was arrested in the south of France a year and a half later.

Potkin was sent for psychiatric evaluation at the Serbsky Institute, known in the Soviet period and still today as providing politically-motivated diagnoses. He is currently in solitary confinement.

As he said in the interview:





“If you speak of my case, then it is undoubtedly politically motivated. As can be seen from the notices provided by the Department for the Protection of the Constitutional Order of the Federal Security Service (UZKS FBS) to the Investigative Department of the Interior Ministry, I am a dangerous anti-state element. I am closely connected with the leftist, rights, and liberal opposition, with officers of the US and West European diplomatic missions, and with Right Sector in Ukraine. And since I supposedly planned to flee to a country in Europe where I intended to ask for political asylum, I had to be immediately held. It was these notices that became the basis for conducting special activities regarding me to detain and arrest me. I think that the main reason for the negative attitude toward me on the part of the intelligence agencies and the government administration of the RF is their complete inability to understand that you can be involved with politics even if no one pays you and no one orders you to do anything. Fear in lack of understanding of any independent and non-controlled position forces them to step up repression.”

There is nothing to confirm Potkin’s story, which may be a desperate bid to gain support. Evidently Kashin didn’t think it was fabricated, however as he decided to publish it.

Last year, slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov made a videotaped statement in defense of Belov, saying that while their views differed, he knew him to be a peaceful dissenter and that the case against him was fabricated. He called him a political prisoner.

This kind of story is something of a classic in the annals of Soviet and Russian persecution. It’s believable for many Russians precisely because of the ubiquitous presence of intelligence in their lives and the prevalence of efforts to co-opt people as informers against others and to serve as accomplices in the FSB’s own operations.

Recently, such a claim of retaliation was made by Ilya Goryachev, the Russian ultranationalist and leader of BORN (Battle Organization of Russian Nationalists) arrested for multiple murders. Last December, he said that his arrest was allegedly revenge by the FSB for his refusal to collaborate with them before his departure from Russia to Serbia.

Nothing short of a credible defection by an FSB agent would help confirm these stories. Belov’s story about the plot against Kolomoisky strains credibility; if the FSB were going to engage in sensitive operations to disrupt and destabilize Ukraine (and there is evidence that they do this) it does not seem likely they would risk involving suspects they’re putting under pressure — given that they might refuse and wind up speaking to bloggers like Kashin.

When Kommersant correspondent Grigory Tumanov wrote for Slon.ru about Belov and his last meeting with another Russian nationalist, Dmitry Dyomushkin before his arrest in October 2014, the name of Kolomoisky was not mentioned, although “the murky project of the FSB in Ukraine” was referenced.

While the FSB might find it useful to do its dirty work via criminal suspects over whom it has some leverage, it seems unlikely they would use a Russian nationalist suspected of money-laundering for a high-profile assassination when they have their own trained agents and other trusted volunteers.

Even so, currently the FSB appears to be carrying out a “purge” of nationalists who would not cooperate with the Kremlin, and there may be truth to some elements of Potkin’s story.

Last week searches were carried out in St. Petersburg against several nationalists even as a widely-covered international conference of far-right European parties and Russian nationalists led by the Rodina [Motherland] party was held.

As Paul Goble wrote in his column syndicated by The Interpreter last week, Dyomushkin, who heads the Russkiye [Russians] ethno-political

movement, said:

“…the Kremlin simply persecutes nationalists, and

the force structures threaten them independent of the position of the

nationalist on any particular question [such as Ukraine]. You can even glorify

Putin, but this is no guarantee that you won’t be arrested or treated

illegally. One must love Putin only with permission.”

The

Russian nationalist activist was recently subjected to the eighth search of his

residence and person by the security agencies, one that involved 12 officers

and lasted seven hours. They found

nothing because “what could be found after seven earlier searches had taken

place?” It was simply a form of harassment, he says.

Tumanov also wrote last year that Dyomushkin said the FSB had asked him to help recruit fighters for the “Novorossiya” cause in the Donbass.

— Catherine A. Fitzpatrick