Attention Seeking at Kremlin’s Secret Service

On May 23, 2:35 pm Kyiv time, a Belarus journalist and senior advisor to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya Franak Viačorka reported that Lukashenko regime forcefully landed Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius in order to arrest NEXTA founder and Belamova editor Roman Protasevich who was on board. Together with his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, who is also engaged into Belarus democratic opposition, Protasevich was arrested, and, according to videos published afterwards, visibly tortured. When in ten minutes before landing in Vilnius the plane turned towards Minsk, Protasevich panicked and told passengers and flight attendants that he is an opposition activist and faces the death penalty in Belarus. This act of state terrorism and air piracy already resulted in restraining flights above Belarus.

However, as researcher of Russian malign influence Anton Shekhovtsov reports, while it is unclear so far whether Russian secret services participated in this kidnapping or not, it is revealing that it is Kremlin agents who are activated to either justify or normalize this operation. International support for Belarusian Protasevich is currently undermined by pushing two major narratives. The first one is whataboutism about Evo Morales grounding incident in 2013, and the second one is “Protasevich is a neo-Nazi”.

The examples of the latter can be seen done by a nice cluster of people. Infamous pseudo-journalist Ben Norton. A conspiracy theorist Ivan Katchanovski, known in Ukraine for online ballistic “expertise” of trees on Instytutska square to “prove” Maidan protesters shot each other, and for specific style of addressing the critique which is more or less limited to “I am an academic, I do science, my pinned tweet states that my findings are scientific”. Also is widely cited by a Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik (also known as Petro Baranenko). A problematic left-wing sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko.

Meduza journalist Alexey Kovalyov managed to find the primary source of the fake claim: a post from September 2020 in pro-Lukashenko anonymous Telegram channel. Other users attributed it to pro-Kremlin pundit Sergey Markov or to Russian propagandist media News Front. The problem seemed to be solved, the sources of fake information seemed to be found.

But suddenly the journalists who report Ukrainian far-right decided to ride the wave.

Twitter account Anti-Fascism & Far Right @FFRAFAction asked his followers whether it is known anything about Protasevich in this regard. Christopher Miller first replied that he knows nothing so far, but then added that Protasevich definitely could be far-right just because why not!

(See Russel’s Teapot logical fallacy)

Twitter user Пан Скоцький @skotzkyi politely objected that such serious claims should not be waved without strong actual evidence, and that in current context this could be the matter of life or death. Miller banned him without discussion, however, deleting his tweet afterwards.

(See screenshot saved here)

(Recently Christopher Miller mistook Ukrainian coat of arms for a far-right symbol, despite living previously in Ukraine for 11 years and claiming extensive expertise on the matter. That day he banned a lot of Ukrainian Twitter users pointing at the mistake and deleted the tweet only when 12 hours after that he was being called out on Facebook)

Then, Bellingcat researcher Oleksiy Kuzmenko found somewhere in Telegram a cover for Azov Black Sun magazine which shows a young man in a uniform with a combat weapon suggesting it is Protasevich. To be fair, the author of this text has seen this information nearly six hours before Kuzmenko. It was posted on a small Telegram channel whose administrator is allegedly a former anarchist and a dishonest drug dealer from Azov circles who even had to move abroad fearing consequences for his frauds. Also, he allegedly spreads rumors that Azov leaders attend a synagogue. Not the most reliable source in the world, I guess. That is the example why local expertise from the ground matters, just finding something in open sources is not enough.

To be fair, just finding something in open sources is never enough. A good journalist’s work implies the reader gets a full picture of the situation — what has happened, where and when, in what way and what for, in what context does the situation exist. If a person in a photo is indeed Protasevich, where, when and for what particular reasons could he be engaged to Azov military unit? How does it work together with other known facts from his biography? Can we be sure that he actually fought, not only posed as a model?

A necessary side remark: even proving that one has fought is not an accusation. Azov is not an Einsatzgruppe, but an official military unit of the National Guard of Ukraine. Azov unit (first a battalion, then since autumn 2014 a regiment) is official, well-trained, well-funded and has a high-quality PR. Messages that Azov unit sends to a broad audience stress they are sincere patriots and defenders of Ukraine. (Since they liberated Mariupol from Russian aggression, the latter is ultimately true.) Though it is true that its leaders are known for far-right beliefs and the broader Azov movement is in touch with foreign far-right, there is no evidence that every single person randomly picked up from the unit (not even from the movement) shares neo-Nazi beliefs. As it is a strong accusation, in each case it should be proven separately. Defending Ukraine from Russian aggression in itself is a person’s merit, not a fault.

(A second necessary side remark: far-right fighters can be found on both side of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Choosing to criticize only one side for this is not a sign of a great virtue.)

Kuzmenko neither provides this context for his readers, nor addresses any of the questions I mentioned above, but just singles out a photo from a magazine cover.

The quality of the photo from a magazine cover:

Then, he uses some neural network demo software to compare this picture with the portrait of Protasevich, and it shows they are similar. Both the person in the cover and Protasevich, indeed, share a rather popular Slavic anthropologic type, and I do not want to sound ad hominem here, but cannot help mentioning that Kuzmenko himself belongs to this type as well. The cover and the screenshot of the comparison are shared together, and, while somewhere at the end of the thread Kuzmenko admits it is not the strong proof in itself, the damage is already done and the magazine cover starts circulating widely, for sure, mostly by anonymous accounts. The comparison is also shared by Kuzmenko’s colleague by Bellingcat Michael Colborne and by official Bellingcat pages.

Then, users from Ukraine find another person who could probably be on this cover. This was Andriy Snitko, an actual Azove serviceman who also looked quite similar. He died in 2014 in Ilovaysk, being only 18 years old. Was awarded the Hero of Ukraine title.

This version is directly confirmed by Azov unit veteran and former National Corps politician Serhiy Filimonov. Another confirmation, though indirect one, is that the magazine cover (can be accessed here) contains a verse about a tragic battle among sunflowers, an image well-known to be associated with Ilovaysk. Another thing why context knowledge matters — the cover from 2015 does not look like memorial one without understanding the verse, but can be understood as such with it. At the same time Mikael Skillt, a Swedish citizen who used to fight with Azov in 2014, is asked whether he knows Protasevich and he denies he ever met him in a battlefield.

Bryce Wilson (@brycewilsonAU): @MikaelSkillt Any validity to this?

Mikael Skillt: I can’t remembering meeting him and I’m pretty sure I met all Belarusians. They where just a tiny group.

Ukrainian users reply to Bellingcat with links to Snitko, then the dialogue follows:

Eliot Higgins: What’s this based on?

Ukrainian user 1: this group of people is searching for the info and bio of the deceased Ukrainian defenders to make a database and conserve the memory of all of them. they mostly contact relatives and people who served with these defenders to write a unique true bio.

Eliot Higgins: Is there anything more than the visual similarity?

Ukrainian user 2: Wait, that whole tread above was literally just about visual similarity

Higgins blocks Ukrainian users, Ukrainian users get angry on their pages and complain that they used to spend vacations on Azov sea resorts, and maybe this qualifies as neo-Nazism now as well. Some users in the thread suggested not to use neural network software for identifying people, as it is not good enough for this, this was ignored as well.

(For instance, a black image can be taken for a paper towel, and a panda for a vulture)

So, how do I see the situation in its entireness:

1. Knowing for sure that accusations in neo-Nazism are quite serious, Bellingcat team engages in spreading them.

2. Without having strong evidence. How much of their research is based on “we just loaded some random data into some randomly working machine and it did bzzzzz”? Without bothering to ask for any confirmation from anybody who could know for sure?

3. Applying double standards, all in order to ignore contradicting evidence.

4. In a larger context where it could be literally a matter of life or death. Was the decision to spot if there is one more Nazi somewhere far-far away the most ethical and reasonable behavior in the context of terrorist state torturing a hostage?

5. In a situation where Protasevich literally has no possibility to confirm, deny or explain anything.

6. Proving accusations for Protasevich has bigger priority than investigating details of plane hijacking and state terrorism.

7. Do you see any signs of journalist solidarity here? I do not.

8. All this situation exists not in a vacuum, but in a context where the very same accusations are already spread by pro-Kremlin propagandists.

9. My honest opinion on that matter is that what I’ve seen was just trading a hostage’s life for five minutes of attention and it was utterly disgusting.

P.S. Finally, Azov commander Andriy Biletsky has made a statement. He confirms that he is aware of Protasevich, but insists that he only worked as a journalist covering the Shyrokine operation, where Azov and other military units (a dozen of military units in general) took part. While bringing that into discussion, Michael Colborne made a mistake and translated “боровся” (“struggled”) as “fought” (“бився”), which slightly changes the style and the message of Biletsky’s statement.

P.P.S. While Michael Colborne is not a native Ukrainian speaker and can surely be given the benefit of doubt here, Volodymyr Ischenko, whom I have mentioned above, indeed is and so can not. Citing Colborne’s translation and screenshot provided, he comments it not as “Biletsky confirmed that he did not fight”, and not as “Biletsky confirmed that he did not fight, but I don’t believe him”, but as “Biletsky confirmed that he could fight”. This is direct gaslighting.

P.P.P.S. I omitted vague claims as the one from Mirror Weekly op-ed that Protasevich “worked in a press-service” (without any evidence, and the author is in no way expert on Ukrainian far-right), and the one from some Twitter user outside Ukraine stating basically “I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy etc, I’ve got no footage though”. They could also be based on said pro-Lukashenko fake report.

P.P.P.P.S. I did not even start to speak of this story in terms of global inequality, where first world men with blue check marks put on their pith helmets and use Eastern European countries with their contexts, people, difficulties, and personal and political choices as if it were a safari and they hunted for wild animals. This story is yet to be told.

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