U.S. War Reporter Kicked Out Of Russia

An American journalist who covers the war in Chechnya has been declared an "undesirable person" and barred from entering Russia in the first such incident since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the curtailing of the long arm of the Soviet censor.


Steve LeVine, a freelance reporter for Newsweek, the Financial Times of London, and The Washington Post, was detained at Moscow's Vnukovo airport Monday evening after he flew in from Tbilisi. The border guards confiscated his Russian multiple-entry visa, held him for the night, and put him on the next plane back to the Georgian capital.


"They told me their orders were to put me on the next plane to Tbilisi," LeVine said from Georgia on Wednesday afternoon. Returning LeVine's passport with a slip of paper that labeled him as "undesirable," the officials refused to say where the order originated.


U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering appealed to Foreign Ministry officials Tuesday to intervene in the LeVine affair, but thus far there has been no response, an embassy spokesman said Wednesday.


LeVine was offered no explanation for the expulsion, nor was Newsweek's Moscow bureau chief, Andrew Nagorski, when he spoke by telephone to the border guard detaining LeVine. Nagorski later phoned the Foreign Ministry, which had renewed LeVine's visa and accreditation only three months ago. "They seemed to be taken totally by surprise by the news," said Nagorski.


Igor Bulai, the head of the Foreign Ministry's press center, said Wednesday they did not know about the order to expel LeVine. "The fact that we just renewed his accreditation shows our attitude to this correspondent," said Bulai. "We hold nothing against him."


Nagorski, who was himself declared persona non grata and expelled from Russia while working as the Newsweek correspondent in 1982, was unconvinced.


"For me, coming back here as a regular correspondent, I felt that working had changed so much for the better," said Nagorski, who returned to head the Moscow bureau in January. "But this really smacks of the old days."


The same day LeVine was sent back to Tbilisi, the Foreign Ministry announced the official reason for his expulsion. In accordance with a 1992 agreement signed by several CIS countries, Russia cannot admit foreign citizens who have been refused entry into any of the cosigning nations. LeVine, who formerly wrote from Tashkent, was expelled from Uzbekistan last September when the Foreign Ministry there refused to renew his visa.


"The press director felt I was unnecessarily negative against the Uzbek government and President Karimov in my reporting," said LeVine.


The Uzbek government would have sent the information on LeVine directly to the Russian border guards, Bulai said. Despite this, LeVine has been traveling freely throughout Russia for the past several months. "Maybe the news came late," Bulai said.


A spokesman for the border guard service Wednesday declined to comment.


There has been some speculation that the order may have originated from the Federal Security Service in response to Levine's coverage of the war in Chechnya. LeVine spent the better part of January and February writing from Chechnya -- and many of his stories covered allegations of atrocities committed by Russian forces against the local population.


But the Federal Security Service denied any involvement in the affair Wednesday, pointing the finger instead at the Foreign Ministry and Border Guard Service.


"I must have struck a raw nerve," said LeVine, adding that he had experienced trouble with the border guards before. In late February, as he was flying through Moscow on his way back from Chechnya, he was detained on the premise that there was something wrong with his visa. After two hours they let him go, but on several occasions after that he was held at the border longer than usual.


"This doesn't bear the fingerprints of the Russian Foreign Ministry," said Levine, adding that the order to expel him was more issued by someone who is not involved in international affairs. "It is absurd for Russia to imply its foreign policy is directed from Tashkent."


But Bulai said there was little the Russian authorities could do unless Newsweek tried to smooth things out with the Uzbek government. "We have to abide by the terms of our agreement," said Bulai.


Only if the American government makes an official request for Russian officials to intervene can they take action, said Bulai. In this case, he added, their action would be in the form of an official statement that the Russian government has no claims against LeVine. It would not necessarily result in LeVine being readmitted to Russia.


In the meantime, LeVine, who has been reporting in the former Soviet Union for the past three years, is hoping the matter will be resolved. Shuttling between his offices in Almaty and Tbilisi, LeVine focuses on the Causcasus and Central Asia. Aside from his recent stint in Chechnya, he rarely writes about Russia.


"This is a bad sign for the evolving character of Russia," said LeVine.