RED SQUARE FIREWALL

SOURCE

Kremlin strategists

• Gleb Pavlovsky,

• Sergei Markov and

• Vyacheslav Nikonov

all gave speeches to the Nashi camp at Lake Seliger outside Moscow (as did, notably, leading Kremlin-backed presidential contenders Sergei Ivanov and Dmitriy Medvedev). Two years ago, following the uprising in Ukraine, Pavlovsky and co. were charged with making sure the orange tide never reached Red Square. One of the first things they did was establish Nashi - the name means "Ours" - to counter the pro-Western youth groups like

• Ukraine's Pora that formed the backbone of the revolutions that hit

• Serbia in 2000,

• Georgia in 2003 and

• Ukraine a year later.

The BBC crackdown is linked because Pavlovsky, Markov and Nikonov understand that anti-government media - namely

• B-92 radio in Serbia, the

• Rustavi-2 television station in Georgia and

• Ukraine's Fifth Channel -

were perhaps even more important than the youth groups in bringing Serbs, Georgians and Ukrainians into the streets.

While I'm quite cynical about the kind of "reporting" Fifth Channel did during the Orange Revolution - it wasn't so much as covering political events as inciting them -

W. Shedd said...

There is no doubt that NGO's funded by Western governments have fueled political dissent, this has been documented endlessly. We wouldn't accept such actions within our own country; in fact, our laws specifically prohibit foreign governments from taking such actions, via NGOs or lobbyists. So, we, the US and Western nations, took advantage of the former openness of Russian and CIS laws and regulations. Russia has had to change laws in the face of this and attempted to control dialogue and news and insert young people on the street.

In a sense, these are war-time measures for Russia. The West has been assaulting Russia for years now, in a soft campaign, attempting to dismantle the country in order to profit and disarm that nation further. Neo-con's click their heels in glee at the prospect of Russia being divided into a dozen smaller, less powerful nations.

SOURCE

Nashi (the word means "Ours") are the creation of

• Vladislav Surkov, Putin's deputy chief of staff and

• powerful Kremlin spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky.

Charged in the wake of Ukraine's Orange Revolution with making sure revolutionary tents were never pitched on Red Square, the two decided to implement strict new restrictions on Western NGOs (read Surkov's paranoid secret speech on NGOs and conspiracies against Russia here). Then they created Nashi, a group they hoped would serve as a counterweight to rabble-rousing pro-Western groups like

• "grape revolution" in Molvova

• Saffron Revolution in Myanmar

• KelKel is a youth movement in Kyrgyzstan

• Mjaft in Albania

• Zubr in Belarus, or "Jeans Revolution" revolution

• Sksela in Armenia

• Optor in Serbia (Resistance)
  

• Kmara in Georgia, (Enough!)
  

• Pora in Ukraine and now (It is Time)
  

• Oborona in Russia.

Today the group claims to have tens of thousands of members.

Anatomy of a Revolution