Should 'Liberty' Leave?

It is obvious that the United States' lavishly financed Radio Liberty quickly shifted into high gear after federal armed forces moved to free a number of regions in Dagestan from the Chechen separatists. Under pressure from fighters of Dagestani villages and towns, a touching concern for those trying to unite a solid portion of Dagestan with the Chechen republic started to appear in the reporting of Radio Liberty's correspondents.


At the same time, it was noticeable that the subsequent blowing up of apartment buildings in Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk, bearing a telltale Chechen stamp and wiping out the lives of hundreds of civilians, were met with no comment from the aforementioned radio station.


The name of Andrei Babitsky began to appear often in the reporting of "Liberty Live" (the name of the programs that Radio Liberty broadcasts by its correspondents reporting from the field) soon after federal forces crossed the Terek River and surrounded Grozny.


Judging from his special reports, this correspondent, who covered the events in Chechnya off and on during the 1994-96 war, was moving about actively among illegal armed formations during the current campaign, having received special passes allowing him unlimited movement "throughout the territory of Ichkeria" from at least six Chechen field commanders.


Before the storming of the Chechen capital, Babitsky made his way into Grozny. One of his reports, broadcast live in December, attests to the scope of his activity in the city. In that report, he said an entire brigade of assistants - eight people - was working for him.


Each had clearly defined duties: A group of four people kept in contact with the fighters, while the other group of four interacted with "refugees," or those who had been forced to flee. Of course, practically all of Babitsky's reports from Grozny, based on materials gathered by his underlings, were sharply anti-Russian, giving the separatists a moral boost, and certainly dramatizing the humanitarian problem in an excessive way.


It should be acknowledged that Babitsky does have two key characteristics.


First of all, he's daring and courageous. He wasn't afraid to go to Chechnya, into the territory of illegal armed formations, although his immediate supervisor, Savik Shuster, head of the Radio Liberty Moscow bureau, publicly admitted that he tried in every way to dissuade Babitsky, for security reasons, from undertaking this venture.


Second of all, if one considers the materials prepared by Babitsky's Radio Liberty colleagues, the reports Babitsky relayed from Chechnya were beyond compare on a professional level. But, unfortunately, both his courage and his journalistic qualities were not utilized for the good of Russia, but to its detriment.


In discussing the "Babitsky factor," many government representatives and members of the press in the West probably dream of once again slamming the present Russian leadership, slamming the image of our country on the world stage in conditions at a time when the West has been unable to successfully play the humanitarian or political cards in resolving the Chechen issue.


That is, they dream of exacerbating the issue of those forced to flee and foist on us irrational plans for the political resolution of the situation in the North Caucasus.


And in exploiting the Babitsky phenomenon, the proponents of undermining Russian unity once again try to gain the upper hand in the information war, in which there has been a shift in favor of federal forces.


That Babitsky voluntarily and actively cooperated with the Chechen armed formations and by his own free will went back to their side is not, in my view, the main question. That is a question of his conscience. There is also the question of responsibility for his fate by those who sent him to Chechnya - and who paid for his trip - to gather kompromat, or compromising material, on Russia and to egg on its enemies.


But there is another, more significant element to this problem.


That involves the open and provocative threat made to the Russian leadership by the higher-ups at Radio Liberty, who publicly promised to increase pressure on the Russian government in connection with the Babitsky matter. Such a threat appeared in its Russian-language program broadcast Feb. 7 at 9:10 p.m., and also in the announcement of the director of the Russian service, Mario Corti, which was broadcast on an NTV television program Feb. 8 at 7 p.m.


It should be stressed in particular that there is not a single government in the world that would allow itself to quietly accept such open threats directed at it by a foreign radio station, branches of which are in fact located on its own territory.


One can imagine what would happen if some foreign correspondent, accredited, say, in the United States or Britain, disseminated such provocative warnings. There's no question - he would be deported immediately for one simple reason: Such statements may easily be classified as interference in the internal affairs and undermining to the existing order of any government.


So in general, might it not be better to close down the branches of Radio Liberty on Russian territory, which once again is acting in the spirit of the counterproductive Cold War and has lost a sense of moderation?


Viktor Kozin is a senior adviser in the Foreign Ministry's European cooperation department. This comment originally appeared in Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper. The views Mr. Kozin expresses here are his own.