With post-Soviet (Armenian) organized crime boss Andranik Soghoyan being convicted in absentia to 22 years in prison in Prague Municipal Court, and with the commercial rivalry over the Temelin nuclear power initiative leading to inevitable dark mutterings about Russian criminal and espionage activities in the Czech Republic, I’m especially pleased to be speaking about the myths and the realities of Russian organized crime in Prague in a couple of weeks’ time. It’s a public event organized by NYU’s Prague Center and PIDEC, the Prague Institute for Democracy, Economics & Culture, and is open to all (please RSVP if you plan to attend, but the email address on the poster may not be working, in which case please use pidec.nyu@gmail.com).

I’ll cover developments in Russia a little, but mainly look at how Russian and Russia-based organized crime has — and has not — spread internationally, and what its real relationships with the intelligence services are. Considering that I think Prague and the Czech Republic risk becoming a renewed focus of their operations, it seems to be a timely opportunity to discuss these guys.