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Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 11:34:11 -0500
From: Graeme Price
Morning all. Just found the story below... one for our Moscow office? Another Karotechia tie in given the nature of the newspaper involved? or GRU-SD8 activity?
___________________________________________
Doctors quiz Moscow 'bomber'
A RUSSIAN nationalist blamed for exploding a car bomb in Moscow's
Red
Square on Wednesday night was carrying a portrait of Stalin during the
attack.
Ivan Orlov, who has been working for a radical anti-Semitic newspaper,
was being examined by psychiatrists in hospital yesterday. The 65-year-old
freelance journalist, jumped from his car seconds before the explosion
but three Kremlin guards were injured in the attack. Orlov had allegedly
been planning to demand a meeting with President Yeltsin and Yevgeny Primakov,
the Prime Minister.
Marcus Warren, Moscow
From: Jacob
Date: 9 Nov 1998 14:54:07 GMT
>I can't remember quite well who sent the post but I read about GR8.
They
>are somewhat equivalent of DG in Russia. I know there will be
plenty
info
>about them in DG:COUNTDOWN but we'll play the next session this
weekend.
Can't help on the "what's-in-Countdown" question but you might want to check out the Dark Conspiracy supplement "Among the Dead" for a few ideas for Russian adventures and a Russian DG(-ish) society.
From: Phil Ward
> Can't help on the "what's-in-Countdown" question but you might want
to check
> out the Dark Conspiracy supplement "Among the Dead" for
a few ideas
for
> Russian adventures and a Russian DG(-ish) society.
Yup, I've got that if anyone wants a summary.
From: Shane Ivey <sivey@ebsco.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 07:55:01 -0600
Walker in the Wastes fans might be interested:
Disputed Kuril Islands dominate Russian-Japanese summit
http://www.foxnews.com/news/wires2/1112/n_ap_1112_94.sml
ObDG: Could there be remnants or artifacts of the Windwalker cult still hidden at odd places in this island chain? Could that be a rationale, behind the scenes, for renewed diplomatic interest?
From: Graeme Price
>ObDG: Could there be remnants or artifacts of the Windwalker cult
still
>hidden at odd places in this island chain? Could that be a
rationale,
>behind the scenes, for renewed diplomatic interest?
Or possibly something related to Unit 731 still out there? IIRC, they did some research up there on remote islands. More recently I heard of a proposal to sell the islands back to Japan to make some hard currency for the Soviet Federation. I guess it beats selling nuclear submarines to Columbian drug lords....
From: Graeme Price
Just found this in today's Electronic Telegraph. It just goes to prove that some things never change.....
Article Follows:
_________________________________________
Britain in battle for a bug-free embassy
By Marcus Warren in Moscow
BRITISH builders are hard at work on the most sensitive construction
project undertaken by Her Majesty's Government abroad, a new embassy for
Russia's capital.
Negotiating with the Soviet Union for a site took decades. Some
Moscow officials even objected to the post-modern look of what is the Foreign
Office's largest building scheme, on a bend in the Moscow river. Those threats
to the £60 million project from Russia's bureaucrats have
been seen off.
But now site managers have to defend the building from another danger,
Russian intelligence and its armoury of hostile listening devices. Staff
are due to move into their new premises in a year's time and the aim is
to ensure that, when they do, the Chancery section, where most diplomats
will work, is free of bugs even if the rest of the site is
"compromised".
At the back of everyone's mind is the Americans' disastrous experience
with their embassy compound's new block. Built with Russian labour during
the Cold War, it is so riddled with bugs that it stands unused to this
day.
Finnish and Russian builders are working on parts of the new British
embassy which will not be "secure": flats for diplomats' families and
the consulate, which must cope with the tens of thousands of Russians who
apply for British visas every year. But only British workers are allowed
into
the sensitive main tower of the embassy and even they are frisked whenever
they enter the area.
All cement is mixed on site under close supervision, building materials
have to be imported from Britain under escort and closed-circuit television
cameras are trained on the block's perimeter and also the rooms inside.
The KGB used to be expert at setting "honey-traps" in the shape of attractive
young women and scored some spectacular successes with its targets, among
them a Sixties British ambassador and several Marines guarding the US embassy
in the Eighties.
Modern Moscow has no shortage of female temptresses and the British
builders working on the embassy have been told to report anything suspicious.
The only strange episode in the building's construction so
far was the frequency with which Russian helicopters flew over the site until
the roof was finished. With the roof in place, the flights mysteriously
stopped.
At the moment the builders' real enemy is the Russian winter and
temperatures which have already dropped below 14F (-10C). Graham Doughty,
37, from Portsmouth, said: "It's bearable over here but it's a bit cold
for my liking. And Moscow's a bit of an untidy, dirty place; you've got to
be truthful after all."
Andrew Meek, 33, from Winchester, Hants, said: "I'm one of the few
who don't mind it here. Moscow seems very Westernised."
Even before the builders have finished, the embassy stands out from
its surroundings, the heavy, monumental architecture favoured in Soviet times
and still the idiom preferred by Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's powerful mayor. Richard
Burton, its architect, said: "The embassy sets out to add elegance to this
dramatic river site and the two quite lumpish buildings on either side.
Everything about it is supposed to be elegant and yet in scale."
Next year's move to the new premises means more office space for
diplomats, now crammed into the grand, but impractical, Kharitonenko mansion
opposite the Kremlin. Some have to work in Portakabins at the back of the
building.
At present, the ambassador lives over the shop in the embassy. After
the move, he will share the 19th century residence with other diplomats in
flats converted from what are now offices.
