Quote from Timothy Fitzpatrick on May 31, 2025, 19:51

NewsMax.com
Thursday, August 3, 2000

They may call it the FSB (Federal Security Service) but it’s the same old KGB (Komitet Godarstevenoy Besnoplasti), still striking terror in the minds and hearts of Russians.

That’s what student Dmitri Barkovsky found out when he was hauled to FSB headquarters and told to spy on a dissident political party – or else.

Last spring Barkovski, a 20-year old student at St. Petersburg’s Baltic State University, worked as a volunteer for Yabloko, a small political party that opposed the election of now Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Not long after, on May 24, Barkovski was told to report to the university’s head to discuss his studies. When he arrived he was confronted by two FSB agents, who began interrogating him about his activities. He was informed that he had been under surveillance. "They seemed to know everything," he told a Washington Post reporter.

He was then informed that he was to become an FSB agent and spy on his friends in Yabloko. The agents told him that Yabloko was passing secret information to unnamed foreign agencies. If he would agree to join the FSB, he was told he’d have a bright future.

The FSB would see to it that when he graduated he’d easily find jobs in the top research institutes; the FSB would smooth his way. That was the carrot they offered.

This stick came next: Turn down the assignment and he’d be thrown out of the university, drafted into the army and given a one-way ticket to the blood-soaked Chechnya battlefield. Intimidated at first, he agreed, but afterward had second thoughts and went public.

He was promptly expelled and, according to the New York Post, is now living underground, ducking the FSB and the threatened draft.

Barkovski’s revelations angered a former top KGB officer, now a vigorous opponent of the resurgent agency.

Writing in the Moscow Times, Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former KGB colonel turned intelligence critic, warned: "Democracy in Russia is threatened today. Once again, the KGB is coming to power. ... A newly resurgent KGB will use old KGB methods: creating a cult of secrecy, 'imposing order' in dealings with foreigners. Not everyone will like this. Dissidents will appear again. That's just what the security service needs, someone to work on, to compromise, to arrest."

In response to the incident, Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky wrote to both Putin and the FSB demanding to know if his followers are being spied on. He suggested that he’s also under FSB surveillance.

"Are the Yabloko movement and its leaders targets of a covert surveillance operation, and if so on what legal grounds?" he wrote in his letter to the FSB. "Is it true that you, in the name of orders from the president of the Russian federation ... have ordered a covert surveillance operation against me and my loved ones?"

St. Petersburg FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev denied the charge. "No investigative action in relation to Yabloko, you personally, or other leaders of the party of Barkovsky have been conducted or are being conducted," he wrote in reply.

Baltic State University head Yuri Savelyev confirmed the FSB presence at the school and denied Barkovski and another student, who also fled FSB recruitment and went underground, were punished for their actions. They were expelled, he said, for missing classes.

"The FSB is very active in our university. They get 20 or 30 graduates from us every year. I am very happy about this, because an organization like that needs prepared staff," said Savelyev.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20011109013123/http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/3/104955