FSB agent Novikov who infiltrated into Kasparov organization has fled to Denmark

In February 2008 a former opposition activist, Alexander Novikov went to the offices of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in Copenhagen, and claimed to have been an FSB plant in the United Civil Front organization, a liberal political group that had been formed to try to preserve democratic electoral procedures in Russia. Novikov had first appeared in Denmark in early 2008. Novikov had apparently traveled from Russia to Finland, where he applied to the Red Cross for help, before making his way to a refugee camp near Copenhagen.

Novikov related to Andrei Soldatov that he had been raised in Transnistria, a small breakaway province of the Republic of Moldova. He said he had graduated from medical school and continued his training in Russia at the Tomsk Medical Institute, a military institution. In 2002 he moved to Moscow where he worked as a doctor in several clinics. At the time of his first contact with the FSB, Novikov reported that he’d been working as a representative for Werwag Farma, a German pharmaceutical company. In exchange for a modest salary, he ran from clinic to clinic, trying to sell Werwag Farma products.

Novikov claimed that at the beginning of 2006 he was recruited by and FSB officer named Alexei Vladimirovich. The officer brought three sheets of paper to the meeting, saying it was a contract for cooperation with the FSB. The contract had a one-year term, with an op- portunity for extension. Novikov was said to be paid a flat rate of 8,000 rubles per month (this would be the equivalent of more than $320, a third of his Werwag Farma salary).

In exchange, the officer asked Novikov to infiltrate the newly formed United Civil Front (UCF) to collect information. Upon ac- cepting the offer, Novikov was given the operational name “Mikhail.” With Alexei Vladimirovich, Novikov outlined a cover story that would help him penetrate the organization: He would tell the movement staff he was planning to help form an indepen- dent trade union for medical workers.

Novikov was regularly asked to give a written account of his activities inside the UCF, as well as receipts for the money he received from his handlers. Novikov always wrote it by hand and signed it “Mikhail.” His handlers were interested in any information about the UCF: the dates of planned protest actions, relations inside the movement, and the names of individuals close to Garry Kasparov. Novikov was instructed to open an email account where he would receive email from the UCF, which he would then forward to the FSB.

Novikov suggested that he had personally played an important role in helping the FSB disrupt Kasparov’s political activities. Specifically, he said, he had provided information to the FSB about where Kasparov planned to hold meetings to obtain signatures to become a candidate in the 2008 presidential election. On Decem- ber 10, 2007, the Kasparov initiative group was blocked without explanation from renting a theater hall in Moscow. When Kas- parov’s supporters tried to find another location, the proprietors of venues large enough for his purposes all flatly refused. Kasparov needed to gather five hundred people, but it became difficult with- out a hall, and the Central Election Commission forbade dividing the group into parts. According to Novikov, he provided the FSB the information about each venue that Kasparov wanted to rent.

The story of Novikov was reported in Novaya Gazeta, and picked up by The Moscow Times, BBC, Le Figaro and so on.

Agentura.Ru March 15, 2011

See the whole story in The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB, from which this story is adapted. The book was published in September 2010 by PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group.)