Dublin Dossier Pat Keenan reports on happenings in and around the capital
Russians see red at Orwell Road protest
Resisting the Reds on Orwell Road Orwell Road is long, extends almost 2miles (3km) from Rathgar to Milltown/Churchtown and involves two local authorities, Dublin City Council to the north and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown on the south. The road has been in the headlines lately because on the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown end it contains the large embassy of Vladimir Putin's Russian Federation. The embassy on a 5.5-acre site next to Milltown Golf Course has become the focus of continued daily protests ever since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February. Barriers had to be erected across the embassy entrance after a truck-driving demonstrator smashed down the gates. Temporarily Garda squad cars were used to block the exposed opening. Ironically, by squad cars in their usual blue and yellow livery, matching the Ukraine national flag. Why the Russians need such a large embassy also came under scrutiny on RTE's Prime Time programme. ‘Russia has the second-largest number of embassy staff in Ireland’ they told us ‘with 30 Russians accredited to the diplomatic mission.’ In contrast we had four Irish diplomats at the Irish Embassy in Moscow. These figures have altered by minus two in recent tit for tat expulsions over the war. It seems that alarms here raised when the Russians applied to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Council for planning permission to enlarge the embassy to four times its existing size, adding two new accommodation blocks, an underground car park, water storage tanks, a new ESB substation and a large extension to the existing embassy. The three-storey development was of particular concern to our security officials. On Prime Time Cathal Berry TD, a former Irish Army Ranger explained that they planned a major, underground subterranean complex, comprising, he added, twenty storage rooms, ten power plant rooms and four rooms with no description, which they called 'voids'. 60 Senior Times | May - June 2022 | www.seniortimes.ie
Some thought the Orwell Road name was so appropriate, given that George Orwell was a staunch critic of Stalinist Communist Russia and Hitler’s Nazi Germany in his famous Nineteen Eighty-Four novel which centres on totalitarian repressive regimes.
The plans also included the provision of 13 toilets in the basement, which is considered unusual for a storage area. Mr.Barry considered that all this might pose a threat to ourselves, Britain next-door, the EU and to US companies operating here. He concluded: ‘You could have the GRU, which is the Russian military intelligence, or the SVR, which is their foreign intelligence service, operating underground’. Potentially Irish security experts suggest that the expanded areas might contain an array of computer servers for what are called 'influence operations', 'data mining’ and 'troll farming' - all techniques used in modern spying. The Russian ambassador to Ireland, Yury Anatoliyevich Filatov, rejected the premise that the new embassy expansion poses any threat to Ireland. Some thought the road name was so appropriate, given that George Orwell was a staunch critic of Stalinist Communist
