Revealed: Corbyn adviser’s links to Kremlin cronies
After former communist’s claim that MoS revelation was work of ‘deep state’ is mocked by his own deputy leader...
THE row over the alleged links between a key Jeremy Corbyn aide and the Kremlin deepened last night as new evidence emerged of his associations with Stalinist activists accused of spreading propaganda for Vladimir Putin.
Former communist Andrew Murray has shared a platform with key members of the Borotba group who have been accused of being ‘agents of influence’ for Moscow.
Last weekend, The Mail on Sunday revealed that Mr Murray had been barred from entering Ukraine on the grounds of ‘national security’. In response, the adviser claimed his name was being blackened by ‘deep state’ British spies working to prevent a Corbyn government.
His theory provoked derision from Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, who described his account as ‘a bit John Le Carré’, and called on him to provide evidence ‘otherwise it’s just fake news’.
Officers with the Ukrainian state security service, the SBU, said they had banned Mr Murray for three years because they believe him to be part of President Putin’s ‘global propaganda network’ – something he denies.
This newspaper has now obtained evidence that Mr Murray – who has failed to receive security clearance for a Commons pass despite working for Mr Corbyn for a year – campaigned with activists identified in a cache of leaked emails as Putin pr o pagandist s . The so-called ‘Kremlin leaks’ listed a network of activists around the world and their importance to Moscow, including members of Borotba, a Stalinist group which supported Russianbacked separatism in Ukraine.
When Mr Murray addressed a meeting of the Solidarity With The Antifascist Resistance In Ukraine (SARU) group at the Marx Memorial Library in London in November 2014, Borotba’s leader Alexey Albu spoke to the group on a video link. Mr Albu is described in the leaked papers as ‘high-profile’ ‘nonstate effective personnel’.
And when Mr Murray spoke at another SARU meeting in June 2015, he was joined on video link by another Borotba leader, Viktor Shapinov, who is listed in the emails as ‘ personnel of medium effi- ciency’. A third member of Borotba, Sergei Kirichuk, who also spoke at the same 2014 SARU meeting as Mr Murray, via Skype, was listed as ‘state personnel’ in the files. A spokesman for Mr Murray, who was chairman of the Stop The War campaign group before Mr Corbyn took on the role, said: ‘Andrew has never heard of these people and has no connection with Borotba.’
The leaked emails from Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov – who has been dubbed Putin’s Rasputin – were revealed by a network of Ukrainian hackers in 2016. The Kremlin has dismissed material as ‘fabricated’, despite a number of individuals named in the messages confirming they were genuine.
According to the leaks, Surkov instructed his network to downplay suggestions of Russian involvement i n the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines’ MH17 plane over Ukraine in 2014, which investigators concluded had been hit by a Russian missile, killing all 298 people on board. At the SARU event in 2014, Mr Murray did just that.
There is no suggestion that Mr Murray was aware of the Surkov instruction, and he says he has been a frequent critic of Putin.