THE BIG CHILL….

The dead horse of professional collaboration between Russian and Western military experts will get another heavy beating when the trial of Igor Sutyagin resumes later this month in a courthouse in Kaluga, near Moscow. Sutyagin, 35, was an analyst at the USA and Canada Institute when he agreed to do some work for a British consulting firm. He was arrested in October 1999, and though prosecutors no longer contend that he sold secret information, he faces up to twenty years’ imprisonment for “assisting a foreign organization … in hostile activities.” Sutyagin’s trial follows the espionage conviction of retired American naval intelligence officer Edmond Pope (later pardoned); the espionage trials of military journalists Aleksandr Nikitin and Grigory Pasko (both acquitted, though Pasko faces a retrial); the espionage trial of Foreign Ministry official Vladimir Moiseev (convicted, acquitted on appeal, now facing retrial); and the continuing investigation of environmental scientist Vladimir Soifer. Diplomatic as well as scientific exchanges are under scrutiny. Human rights activist Sergei Grigoryants of the Glasnost Foundation quotes an unnamed diplomat who says that a confidential hotline has been installed at the foreign ministry, so that diplomats can fink on their colleagues. Other reports say Russian diplomats have been ordered to conduct negotiations only in pairs, so one can always keep an eye on the other.