Saratov prosecutors have meanwhile declined to file similar charges against the plant itself, which did nothing to mollify fears of hundreds of local residents and issued dozens of contradictory statements about the state of the plant. A leaking pipe in the plant’s coolant system in reactor no. 2 was eventually established to have triggered an emergency shutdown of the plant’s second reactor unit.

Authorities and the defendant’s former employer have declined to identify him in full. Prosecutors said only that he was a 23-year-old information technologist from the Samara based information laboratory Wenses. His former co workers at Wenses, when contacted by Bellona Web, would identify him only as “Sergei.”

The information posted by Sergei gave a completely unclear and dubious picture of the situation developing at the plant, but in the hours following the emergency, his site accidentally emerged to fill the vacuum of deafening official silence.

The emergency shut-down at the Balakovo plant – situated some 700 kilometers southwest of Moscow - occurred during the early morning hours of November 4th around 1 a.m. The malfunction caused wide-spread panic among residents of nearby cities and villages.

Many residents, with Chernobyl fresh in the memory, refused to believe the contradictory offical information that was eventually issued and, according to local press reports, awaited the shadow of a radioactive cloud from the Balakovo plant. Emergency workers were evidentially unprepared for what may or may not have been about to happen and authorities at all levels clashed on how to handle the situation.

People identifying themselves as being from the Civil Defence (CD) and Emergency Services (EC), called schools, universities and other institutions, saying people should take iodine. It’s still unclear, whether they really were emergency officials but in the lack of information following the Balakovo incident, it is possible that even officials did not have reliable information and thus overcompensated by suggesting what emergency measures to take.

Residents, meanwhile, flooded drug stores and cleared shelves of iodine as a prophylactic measure against an initial influx of radiation poison, but had little information – both from emergency officials or nuclear authorities about how to correctly use the potentially dangerous substance. As a result, several local suffered iodine overdoses.

The panic continued late into the night until Presidential Plenipotentiary for the Povolzhsky Federal District Sergei Kiriyenko was shown on television gripping the repaired pipe with his hands.

By November 5, the Saratov Region had already filed criminal charges under Article 207 of the Russian criminal code “On Spreading False Information about an Act of Terrorism”. As Nina Gellert, public relations secretary for the Saratov Regional Prosecutors’ office explained to Bellona Web, the article deals not only with terrorism, but also with any false information about situations that could endanger significant numbers of people.

The answer from A. S. Kovalyov, inspector for especially important cases in the Saratov Regional prosecutors' office to the complaint of 23 NGOs.

In their inquiry, the group of ecologists showed that on November 4th at 1:20 p.m. a press release was issued by the Balakovo plant's public information centre which stated that an on-going repair of a coolant pipe in reactor 2's steam generator was underway, beginning from 1:24 a.m. this day.

By the next day, Nikolai Shingaryov, press secretary for the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency, or RosAtom, announced in an interview with the Russian news wire RIA Novosti that Balakovo's reactor no. 2 had experienced an out of the ordinary situaton – an emergency shut down of the reactor resulting from self – activation of the reactor's emergency system resulting from the damaged coolant pipe.

”In this manner, during the 48 hour period beginning with the shut down of the reactor official structures responsible for alerting the public presented at least two versions of what happened at the plant,” the ecologists wrote in their inquiry.

Aside from that, wrote the ecologists, one important foundation for their inquiry was that “the first appearance of any officials on television in Balakovo – the most populated area in the region of the plant – did not occur until 8 p.m. the evening of November 4, a full 17 hours following the incident.” The officials informed the public that there had been no fallout.

In their letter, the ecologists requested that prosecutors investigate the delay and contradictons in information issues regarding the situation – which itself is proscribed by Article 8.5 of Russia's administrative code and article 140 of its criminal code.

In return, the ecologists received, through Greenpeace Russia who had initiated the initial inquiry, an answer from one A. S. Kovalyov, inspector for especially important cases in the Saratov Regional prosecutors' office, who wrote that the contradiction answers given by officials the day the accident occurred that “both pieces of information compliment one another.”

“During the course of investigation No. 1325, initiated on suspicion of falsified information concerning an accident at the Balakovo NPP,” Kovalyov wrote, “it was established that official information on the incident, sent by the Balakovo NPP following the discovery of the malfunction appeared in six federal, 17 regional and 10 city media outlets.”

Without establishing when this information was sent, the bureaucracy of the prosecutors’ office announced that “tardy information” was not issued and “a foundation for applying prosecutorial measures does not apply.”

But Vladimir Chuprov, head of anti-nuclear campaigning for Greenpeace Russia is not satisfied to let it rest at that. “We will try to compose one more letter to the Prosecutor General’s office about how their Saratov colleagues are, in fact, wrong regarding the question of timely and correct release of information, specifically concerning concrete information about the accident,” he said in an interview with Bellona Web.

In December, at a meeting at Kalinin NPP, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin opposed nuclear officials who linked Balakovo panic to mass-media. “People don’t give credence to the state bodies… to gain such credence, the state needs to show openness in such a sensitive sphere as nuclear energy,” he said as quoted by the NTV channel.

The silence of Russian officialdom, or alternatively, lies from their lips, are a time-worn habit. Most recently, one need only recall the catechism of lies surrounding the tragic sinking of the Kursk submarine propagated by chief naval press secretary Igor Dygalo, particularly that communication had been established with the doomed sailors, or, more recently the fabrications swirling around the Beslan school hostage taking tragedy, during which officials intentionally under-reported the number of hostages. In times of crisis, it could be said that the least reliable source of information is that which is officially reported by the Russian government.

Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace Russia

“Some representatives of the ‘greens’ made their investment in inflating hysteria, advising the public to take iodine pills and drops. Therefore, on the Greenpeace Internet site currently notes that ‘because of their unexpected and effect on hundreds of thousands of people, the events bear the tracings of a meticulously planned provocation.’ This creates the impression that after the prosecutors' office filed charges of spreading false information about the accident at the Balakovo NPP, those who were connected with it, are taking steps to dodge responsibility.”

Greenpeace representatives and those of 22 other ecological organisations also turned to the Saratov Prosecutors’ offices with a demand that they get an evaluation of the complaint filed by Balakovo’s press service. They demanded further that suit be filed on their behalf for libel because the text of the Balakovo release basically implied that “greens,” specifically Greenpeace, were accessories to spreading obviously false information about an act of terrorism, suggesting that they were accessories to a crime and therefore were “taking steps to dodge responsibility.”

The prosecutors found no specific reference to any ‘green’ organisations in the Balakovo posting, thus flattening Greenpeace’s foundation for a libel suit, as seen in the following answers received from the prosecutors office.

“Explanation: within the text posted by the Balakovo NPP, it is written that some representatives of the ‘greens’ made their investment in inflating hysteria, advising the public to take iodine pills and drops. At the same time, no references to any concrete organisations, representatives of which gave the aforementioned information are given.”

The Mednovosti news site
After the panic had begun, the Russian media supplied completely erroneous information about how to take iodine against impending radiation threats. Many news outlets asserted that iodine could be taken only in tablets. Other outlets questioned outright the absolute need to take iodine preparations in the event of a nuclear accident.

Even the specialised medical news site, Mednovosti.ru, published an article asserting that “taking iodine in the event of a radioactive fallout is unjustified from a medical point of view.” Mednovosti’s article, moreover, made the incredible assertion that the notion of taking iodine arose mistakenly from directions given to chemotherapy patients who are required to take iodine prior to treatment involving radioactive iodine.

It is common knowledge within the nuclear community that reactor accidents and emergency shut down cause radioactive fallout of radioactive iodine significant enough to effect the surrounding environment. It is also common knowledge that taking iodine – in tablets or a solution– is a time-worn and proven practice in the event of an accident at a nuclear site. The only dispute that remains concerns dosages. According to medical authorities in New South Wales, Australia, the proper dosages in the direct wake of a nuclear accident are: 16 drops for a water based solution of iodine, 100 milligrams in tablet form or 116 milligrams of iodine drops taken directly.

The Russian norm as defined by “authority of organisations of sanitary-hygienic and curative and prophylactic measures in a large-scale radioactive disaster” documentation, the appropriate dosage for adults is 125 milligrams in tablet form or a twice daily dosage of 20 drops of 5 percent iodine solution taken in a half cup of water or milk.

The highest dose of iodine is 20 drops increment not to exceed 60 drops within a 24 hour period.

Is the Internet to be blamed for everything?
At the end of December, charges for spreading false information fell on the man identified by authorities only as an employee of a Samara concern called the Wenses Laboratory for Information Systems. According to police documents, it was him who, on the day following the incident – November 5th - opened a free personal Internet page on the free of charge Russian server narod.ru, a part of the Yandex network. His page indicated that “an accident had occurred” and spoke of “four dead and 18 wounded.”

“Inquiries about Balakovo appeared on the Russian search engine Yandex in a noticeable quantity on November 5th, something on the order of 10,000,” wrote a spokesman for Yandex in an statement to Bellona Web. “On November 4th, there were units of inquiries beginning around 11 p.m. Moscow time.”

Because the site aesbalakovo.narod.ru was created on the Yandex hosting network, explained the spokesman, the firm could determine that the page was visited by 2000 people, and that the first links to it began to appear on forums – as well as on the sites of large publications, like the Kommersant daily Russian newspaper - on November 6th. On November 8th, the site was shut down. “It physically exists,” said the Yandex spokesman, “but the material has been removed.”

“Regarding the exposure of the author and proof of authorship – this is not our business and it's not a question that should be addressed to us,” said the Yandex spokesman.

“We don’t think that web sites should be regarded as equal to the media – aside from those sites that call themselves mass media and have an existing publication licence –like lenta.ru, gazeta.ru, two influential daily Russian news outlets and so on. The information appearing on the sites of narod.ru users is generally available and because of this, as a rule, expresses the private opinion of citizens,” he said.

It should be noted that the site balakovoaes.narod.ru, created by pesons unknown, and which contains similar information to that of the now defunct aesbalakovo.narod.ru continued to exist on the narod.ru pages. Instead of an answer to an inquiry from Bellona Web, — because this site was not the object of attention that its half brother aesbalakovo was, Yandex simply closed the site.

The Wenses' former specialist, is meanwhile facing a three-year-prison sentence. A source at Wenses, said that this specialist, named Sergei, was fired in mid-December. Wenses has refused to comment in more details about the case.

Secret civil defence workers
“I think they just found a patsy. During the panic, Civil Defence (CD) and Emergency Services (EC) workers were allegedly alerted, and they called schools and kindergartens and informed them to take iodine,’” said Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of the Russian anti-nuclear group Ecodefence. “ And why wouldn’t they look for someone to blame. And the management of these organizations call didn’t call the CD or the EC back, they didn’t verify the information – is there even a protocol for dealing with such incidents?”

Already by November 5th, Alexander Rabadanov, the CD and ES minister for the Saratov region informed journalists that the panic was brought about by “someone posing as a civil defence or emergency services worker, who called various institutions and schools in the region with the recommendation that people... drink iodine.”

Anatoly Gorshkov, an investigator with the especially important matters unit of the Saratov Prosecutors’ office, told Bellona Web, Wenses' specialist was their one suspect.

“He created the site with bad intentions. As concerns those emergency workers who contacted various organizations and advised personnel to take iodine, they, most likely, were innocently led astray, and tried to anticipate the situation and secure the surroundings,” he said. “I am convinced that the consequences of this site will be serious. It put an innumerable number of people in danger.”

When asked how this site could be blamed for the panic when it appeared only later in the day on November 5th, Gorshkov said; “Personally speaking, the circumstances and consequences are not important because, whether the panic emerged or not, it is not the subject of the accusations in spreading information.”

Anton Nossik

gzt.ru

Nosik said that Article 57 of the Law on Media covers various circumstances when the media are free from liability for misreporting news. One is if the source of information was an official, or an information agency so proven to be so by the media. The notion of anonymous web pages is not covered by the law. Likewise, the law does not say that the media are exonerated from liability if they get information from an unknown source.

According to Gorshkov, the prosecutors’ office does not intend to file charges against any media outlets that used Sergei’s web site a source because those media “were not the source of the information.”

“The site was opened on November 5th, but the wide-spread panic had already begun on November 4th,” said Greenpeace's Chuprov.

“The state is simply looking for a patsy, regardless of whether the reason for the information failure was systematic. Why do we need the government that you can frighten with one amateur web site?” he added.

Ecologists say that the reason for the panic was precisely the fault of the information vacuum surrounding the events at the Balakovo NPP on in the pre-dawn hours of November 4th. Nossik thinks the same. That Internet forum users began to pass this information to one another, and then that the media published the address of this site is a rare stroke of luck, said Nossik.

“It is doubtful that any anonymous page on any anonymous hosting site would cause a fall in the stock market or a flight of the population from radiation,” said Nossik in an interview with Bellona Web.

Amidst this, Nossik wrote in one of his recent columns on the Internet-based Gzt.ru, that “the declarations of ministers, mayors, governors, deputies, senators and special services generals, made during 2004 about the growing, pointed necessity of boosting government control over the Internet, its servers and users and the materials put on it sound threatening.”

The status of the Internet in Russia
Currently developing practice shows that the internets is, in point of fact, a self regulating field beyond the reach of government. Strictly speaking, one can consider “official” only those sites that announce themselves as media sites – and none of them supply any information that might run contrary to their authenticity - and official sites of the authorities and organisations. The remaining information is just snippet of personal conversation.

One web master from a division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who asked not to be named in this article, said that “all the words about information on, say, livejournal or on narod.ru is public just because it is accessible to an unlimited circle of people is nuts. That’s what people who have poor perception of the Internet think.”

“By the same logic, one could say that an ‘unlimited circle of people’ can come into my apartment. Or that a conversation between two acquaintances via walkie-talkies is public just because someone else may be on the same frequency.”

The this sources opinion, “bringing criminal charges for amateur use is the same as Stalin-era surveillance of personal conversations.”

The Skovorodnikov affair
Recently, Andrei Skovorodnikov of the Central Siberia city of Krasnoyarsk was sentenced to six months of community service. Because of his membership in the fringe National-Bolshevik party he was accused of creating a web site that contained an obscene play on words involving President Vladimir Putin’s last name.

In an interview with Bellona Web, Skovorodnikov said that the site he was accused of creating was put up on the free www.newmail.ru where members can situate personal web pages. As it turns out, a web search including the obscene phase used by Skovorodnikov on his page returns 401 other web pages containing the same phrase.

Control over the Internet?
“It is stupid and unjustified to accuse the Internet of creating panic. The Internetisation of the Russian population is low, people here don’t have wide-scale access to the Internet,” said Slivyak.

“Russia has very few Internet users. In this sense, Russia cannot even compete with, say, Egypt, which I visited recently. There, they have a lot of cyber-cafes, practically one in every building on the ground floor... even very poor people can be seen in them, smoking hookahs, surfing online and looking at the news.”

Shohdi Naguib, a famous figure on the Russian Internet, who holds dual citizenship with Russia and Egypt, said in an interview with Bellona Web that Skovorodnikov’s case is very similar to his own: In 2002, Naguib was found guilty by an Egyptian court of posting a satirical poem written by his father on a server that was pysically located in the United States.

“The only difference my case and that of Skovorodnikov is that I was not even on trial for the publication of my own opinion, but for a poem written by my father 30 years previous. I am in absolute solidarity with this young man,” he said.

In Naguib’s opinion, in conditions of virtual absence of any political freedoms in Russia and of the arbitrary rule of bureaucrats, electronic sources of information become the only uncontrollable space, which is what makes it so difficult for the ruling classes to demolish Perestroika’s last big achievement - Glasnost.

“This is why any incursion by the authorities into cyberspace must be met with aggressive opposition, even in a case where the authorities decide suddenly to start a crack-down on spam,” he said.