The game is afoot: Following a kidnapping and torture allegations, political tensions have escalated

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – October 29, 2012)

When Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov was released from the Investigative Committee on Friday after being charged, he seemed more baffled than relieved.

“The investigators are playing some sort of game,” he tweeted ominously. A week after his fellow activist, Leonid Razvozzhayev, was kidnapped in Kiev and claimed he was tortured for two days on the way to Moscow, it was a game taking on international proportions ­ one that left more questions than answers, rights activists and oppositionists say.

Razvozzhayev, a veteran political activist with the Left Front and an aide to Duma deputy Ilya Ponomaryov, had been charged earlier this month with conspiring to organize mass unrest. The riots, according to a virulently anti-oppositionist film “The Anatomy of a Protest ­ 2,” were meant to eventually topple President Vladimir Putin’s regime.

But before the charges could be brought, Razvozzhayev fled across the border to Ukraine in a bid to seek political asylum.  He almost succeeded ­ only to be snatched by masked men on Oct. 19 outside the Kiev office of the UN Refugee Agency, while stepping out for a bite to eat as he waited for paperwork.

According to an account Razvozzhayev gave to a human rights group that visited him in a Moscow jail, he was then bound with duct tape and driven in a van back to Russia, where he was held chained in a basement without food. Masked men, he claimed, threatened to kill members of his family.

Late on Sunday, Oct. 21, Razvozzhayev was brought to Moscow’s Basmanny Court, where he was arrested. The following day, the Investigative Committee issued a statement that Razvozzhayev had turned himself in and signed a hand-written, ten page confession that he had helped Udaltsov procure financing from a Georgian official to stage riots.

That was the official version ­ except that it was upturned when a video surfaced of Razvozzhayev being led out of court, shouting, “I was tortured for two days.”

The Investigative Committee denied this, saying that Razvozhhayev had made no complaints, and that there were no signs of injury on his body.

But when Valery Borshchyov, of the Public Observation Commission, was allowed into the detention center to speak with Razvozzhayev, his kidnapping story surfaced with all the details.

What had actually happened?

“This could not have been done without an agreement with Ukrainian security services,” Borshchyov told The Moscow News. “I’m sure there was some unspoken agreement at the very top.”

The incident, he said, was unprecedented ­ but if true, he was baffled as to its motive.

“They may have been hoping this wouldn’t spill out into the public. They [may have] expected Leonid to be so scared that he wouldn’t say what actually happened,” he said.

Razvozzhayev has recanted his confession, saying that it was signed under duress.

‘Trickery’

What actually happened still remains a mystery. The UN Refugee Agency confirmed that Razvozzhayev was taken by unknown men, and has asked Kiev for an explanation. Washington, too, has asked that the Russian government investigate the matter.

Meanwhile, Kiev neither confirmed nor denied that its security services were involved. Ukraine’s Interior Ministry representative Vladimir Polischuk ruled out that Razvozzhayev was kidnapped by criminals. “If these were the actions of officers of another government, then I don’t think that security services should share their plans,” he was quoted by Ukrainian media as saying. The issue, he added, was political, not criminal.

Meanwhile, after Razvozzhayev recanted his confession, the Investigative Committee issued a statement that his confession wasn’t very valuable anyway ­ and that they had enough evidence against Udaltsov without it.

That made little sense to Just Russia Duma Deputy Ilya Ponomaryov, who traveled to Europe where he spoke with officials from the UN and the European Parliament on behalf of Razvozzhayev.

“There’s some trickery going on,” he told The Moscow News from Berlin. “I don’t think they have any clear strategy, they’re trying to do whatever they know best. They’ve started backtracking. If Razvozzhayev didn’t say anything interesting, then why start the mess?”

Elaborate intimidation

After Udaltsov’s indictment and release on Friday, the consensus among the oppositionists was that whatever happened to Razvozzhayev could have been part of an elaborate scheme to intimidate the entire protest movement.

“The point could have been to scare Sergei into fleeing, so that they could capture him in a humiliating way, with his hands chained, possibly gagged,” Alexei Sakhnin, coordinator of Left Front, told The Moscow News outside of the Investigative Committee Friday, where a few dozen journalists were waiting to find out whether Udaltsov would be released or not.

The opposition’s coordination council issued a statement on Razvozzhayev and staged an impromptu protest Saturday ­ but according to one of its members, journalist Oleg Kashin, its strategy on the case is still unclear.

Razvozzhayev’s case, Kashin said, may not have gained such publicity if it weren’t for an escalating standoff between the government and the opposition that began with mass anti-Kremlin protests in December 2011.

“It turned into a scandal because of the media,” Kashin, who has reported extensively on radical leftist groups like the National Bolshevik Party, told The Moscow News. “In reality, there are two groups that have members fleeing through neighboring countries ­ Chechens and [members of the] National Bolshevik Party.

“They were often taken in Ukraine under similar circumstances. In that regard, it’s more effective to flee through Belarus, because even though they have a KGB, it’s less friendly with our security services than Ukraine’s SBU. They’ve been cooperating with the FSB for quite some time.”

But while the Kremlin saw NBP as a direct threat, the Left Front is “relatively harmless.” The authorities, Kashin said, are aiming for intimidation.