There are a great number of Russian community-based organisations in Australia. Some are benign and harmless, raising money for various charities and providing cultural support for Russian migrants. Other groups aggressively push the Putin ultranationalist line and get about in Russian military uniforms tailored for them in Australia.
Our national security agencies are well across the most potent pro-Putin agitators, but the Australian people have little or no knowledge as to how dangerous these groups might become now that the Russian military has invaded Ukraine and brought it to its knees.
Australian laws are not especially suited to dealing with this type of influence from abroad.
A successful multicultural nation encourages external cultural influences and the organisations that promote them. The problem is these groups can be infiltrated by foreign intelligence agencies and individuals acting on behalf of foreign powers to destabilise our political institutions. We have seen it in the dark hand of CCP influence in Australia across the political divide.
Many people would be unaware that similar influences in Australia are at work that once examined, go all the way back to the Kremlin.
In August last year in the US, the FBI jumped on a group known as the Co-ordinating Council of Russian Compatriots which goes by the Cyrillic acronym of KSORS. The Council announced its closure after reporting that some members had been spoken to by the FBI and reminded of US laws in respect of undeclared foreign agency known as the Foreign Agents Registration (FARA) Act.
It’s clear that the group’s focus had changed from a support group for the Russian diaspora in the US to one espousing and propagating pro-Putin, ultra-nationalist Russian propaganda.
A former chair of KSORS was dumped from the position because he reportedly refused to sign a statement supporting Russia’s annexure of Crimea.
“In the year 2014 when I left this organization, the Russian embassy took over and put in other people who had agreed to support Russia like a fifth column,” Baboshkin told a US media network. “They organised a fifth column from the people who are ready to work with the embassy.”
The ‘Aussie Cossack’
Simeon ‘The Aussie Cossack’ Boikov took to YouTube last night to speak to the 150,000 followers on his channel. He regurgitated the nonsense that Putin had ordered the invasion of Ukraine to bring about ‘demilitarisation and de-Nazification’ in the second-largest country in land area beside Russia.
It was textbook pro-Putin cheering with a little consolation thrown in of the “don’t worry, this will soon be over” type.
Boikov is Sydney born but received education in Russia. Now known as Ataman (Chieftain), Boikov is a fifth generation Australian of Russian heritage. His father was a Russian orthodox priest who sought to preserve Russian language and culture within the household.
Boikov studied at the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow when he was 18. The Monastery has close ties with the KGB agency successors, the FSB and the foreign intelligence service, SVR. Boikov now leads a group known as the Aussie Cossacks. Estimates in their numbers vary, perhaps 150 or 200 ‘cossacks’ cosplay in Russian military uniforms.
According to a Russian website, Boikov said of his time at the monastery, “One might say that while I was studying there I was, well, we must not say recruited, right? Basically, I fell under the influence of right thinking pro-Russian elements. They began to fashion a pro-Russian adult from a young Australian.”
Information ‘war’
Years later, Boikov told the Russian news service, Vglyad, “I consider myself a proponent of a strong state. We respect very much our Commander-in-Chief, Putin. And we have a unique capacity to support Russia from within a hostile state. Even the FSB or a battalion of the Russian SAS can’t achieve that, because unlike them, we are citizens of this state.”
“We organise demonstrations in support of (the annexation of Crimea in 2014), in support of our army in Syria, in support of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.”
The profile article concluded, “[Boikov] adds that while they cannot go into battle with sabres, Russian long rifles and Maxim machine guns, as their grandfathers did, they can prosecute another form of war – an information war.”
This information war has seen Boikov enter the fray at anti-vax and anti-lockdown rallies. He sneers at police and calls for protesters to ‘film the police’ and waltzes around rallies with a ‘FTP’ sweatshirt.
His frequent rants often relate to criticism of police and associated rhetoric that Australia during the pandemic has denied citizens fundamental freedoms. The talk has found favour in the so-called ‘freedom movement’ and Boikov’s following and his support within the broad movement has grown.
There was talk, too, that Boikov would run as an independent in the recent NSW by-election in Strathfield in Sydney’s west but when the ballot papers were printed, Boikov was a no-show.
As I wrote on Wednesday, Boikov was present in federal independent MP Craig Kelly’s parliamentary suite on 8 February when Kelly signed in a delegation of protesters.
All of this and presumably a lot more is known to our intelligence agencies. We must have faith and confidence that the agencies will act appropriately and always in the national interest. In another time and in different circumstances, many — if not all — the Aussie Cossacks would find themselves cooling their heels in internment camps, but that is not the solution in the here and now.
At a basic level, we need to understand the nature and the extent of the problem with targeted misinformation, who is behind it, and find a way to discern the truth.
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