Читаем Putin's Wars полностью

Another high-placed victim was the ambassador of Estonia, Marina Kaljurand. She was attacked when the Estonian government removed a Soviet-era war monument, the Bronze Soldier, from the center of Tallinn. Starting April 30, 2007, members of Nashi picketed the Estonian embassy in Moscow. They blocked the street on both sides, making it impossible for the embassy’s staff to leave. Rocks and paint were thrown at the embassy building and slogans painted on the walls, such as “We reached Berlin, we will reach Tallinn too.” Day and night Nashi members played loud music in front of the building. The embassy personnel noted that “the young people were equipped with everything necessary to maintain round the clock presence, including portable toilets, a field kitchen and electricity supply.”^[22] Tents had even been erected in front of the embassy in which the protesters were taking turns to sleep. On May 1, 2007, the Estonian flag was torn down from the embassy and shredded into pieces. On May 2, the ambassador had to break through a Nashi cordon to give a press conference at the offices of the magazine Argumenty i Fakty. On her arrival, there were attempts to attack her physically in the press room and gas had to be used by the guards to set her free. On the street outside rioting youths attacked the ambassador’s car and tore off the Estonian flag. These attacks on the embassy were preceded by organized riots in the center of the Estonian capital Tallinn on April 26 and 27 by Estonian Russophones, led by Russian Nashi activists who had come over specially from Russia.^[23]

Cyber Attacks

On April 27, cyber attacks started, aimed at paralyzing the web servers of the Estonian government. These attacks originated from Russian state IP addresses. Due to the attacks access by foreign users of the government web pages had to be restricted.^[24] Nashi also seemed to be involved in cyber attacks on the Georgian government’s website before and during Russia’s war against Georgia in August 2008. In a report of the Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in the Estonian capital Tallinn, the authors wrote: “In the case of possible Russian government involvement with the cyber attacks on the Georgian government website in July and August 2008, the available evidence supports a strong likelihood of GRU/FSB [respectively, the Russian military and the internal secret service] planning and direction at high level while relying on Nashi intermediaries and the phenomenon of crowdsourcing to obfuscate their involvement and implement their strategy.”^[25] The close, almost symbiotic cooperation between Russia’s secret services and the youth movement is particularly interesting. In this context the project of the “Kremlin School of Bloggers,” set up in 2009 by the Fund for Effective Politics of Kremlin ideologue Gleb Pavlovsky, should also be mentioned. The “Kremlin School of Bloggers” sells the Kremlin’s policies to the young Internet community by writing blogs, attacking opposition websites, and posting ideological YouTube videos.^[26] The name of its website (liberty.ru) is Free World (Svobodnyy Mir), and its motto is—why not?—“Freedom is better than no freedom.”