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Article snippet: MELNIK, Czech Republic — Working at his computer, as he does most weekends, on an anti-Western diatribe for a Czech website, Ladislav Kasuka was not sure what to make of the messages that began popping up on his Facebook page, offering him money to organize street protests. “Do you need help?” read the first message, written in Russian, from a person he did not know. This was followed, in a mix of Russian and garbled Czech, by gushing encouragement for street demonstrations and increasingly specific offers of cash. An initial payment of 300 euros ($368) was offered for Mr. Kasuka, a penniless Czech Stalinist, to buy flags and other paraphernalia for a protest rally in Prague, the Czech capital, against the NATO alliance and the pro-Western government in Ukraine. Later, he was offered €500 ($558) to buy a video camera, film the action and post the video online. Other small sums were also proposed. “It was all a bit unusual, so I was surprised,” Mr. Kasuka recalled in a recent interview at a shopping mall north of Prague where he works on security and maintenance. He decided the cash “was for a good cause” — halting the spread of NATO and capitalist Western ways into the formerly communist lands of Eastern Europe — so he accepted. The strange relationship that followed, consisting of passionate social media exchanges about politics and a total of €1,500 in cash transfers, was one of many forged across Eastern and Central Europe in summer 2014. They were part of a f... Link to the full article to read more