17:45 DEC. 17, 2015

Investigative film seeks to shed light on Russia attempts to undermine EU unity

In Ukrainian capital Kyiv a new investigate documentary film has been presented which sheds light on the Kremin’s system of influence on Czech President Milos Zeman.

Zeman has been criticized for his accommodating stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and toward the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine.

The Czech leader has questioned the need for sanctions from the European Union on Russia in reaction to Moscow’s invasion and annexation of Ukrainian territory.

Zeman has tried to cast doubt on the presence of Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

Read also Czech President Zeman cancels WWII Victory Day plans in Moscow after being criticised by Americans

At the screening of the new picture, which carries the title ‘Czech Friends of the Kremlin’, Andrej Soukup, a Czech journalist who features heavily in the film, said he thinks it highly unlikely that the Czech president will change his ways.

Andrej Soukup: “As far as Zeman is concerned, in future he’s basically going to continue acting the same way that we’ve seen, no matter what. “

The film seeks to cast light on the theme of Russian propaganda in Europe more widely and not just in the Czech Republic. Experts at the screening said that whilst Russia under President Putin has for some time been trying to undermine European Union unity, it is only recently that the bloc has come too see Russian propaganda as a real threat.

Bohdan Yaramenko: “Putin and Russia are consistent. Putin all the time talks about a multi-polar world. In his view, the world order needs to change at it should become multi-polar. There should be several spheres of influence. Of course Russia should be one of these centres of influence.”

‘Czech Friends of the Kremlin’ will be screened on Ukraine Today on January 8.

Source: http://uatoday.tv/society/new-documentary-czech-friends-of-the-kremlin-gets-first-screening-in-ukrainian-capital-556061.html

1. Though shall not attack the person’s character, but the argument itself. (“Ad hominem”)

Example:  Dave listens to Marilyn Manson, therefore his arguments against certain parts of religion are worthless. After all, would you trust someone who listens to that devil worshiper?

2. Though shall not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make them easier to attack. (“Straw Man Fallacy”)

Example:  After Jimmy said that we should put more money into health and education, Steve responded by saying that he was surprised that Jimmy hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenceless by cutting military spending.

3. Though shall not use small numbers to represent the whole. (“Hasty Generalization”)

Example:  Climate Change Deniers take a small sample set of data to demonstrate that the Earth is cooling, not warming. They do this by zooming in on 10 years of data, ignoring the trend that is present in the entire data set which spans a century.

4. Though shall not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (“Begging the Question”)

Example:

Sheldon: “God must exist.”
Wilbert: “How do you know?”
Sheldon: “Because the Bible says so.”
Wilbert: “Why should I believe the Bible?”
Sheldon: “Because the Bible was written by God.”
Wilbert: “WTF?”1

Here, Sheldon is making the assumption that the Bible is true, therefore his premise – that God exists – is also true.

5. Though shall not claim that because something occurred before, but must be the cause. (“Post Hoc/False Cause”).

This can also be read as “correlation does not imply causation”.

Example:  There were 3 murders in Dallas this week and on each day, it was raining. Therefore, murders occur on rainy days.

6. Though shall not reduce the argument down to only two possibilities when there is a clear middle ground. (“False Dichotomy”)

Example:  You’re either with me, or against me. Being neutral is not an option.

7. Though shall not argue that because of our ignorance, the claim must be true or false. (“Ad Ignorantiam”).

Example:  95% of unidentified flying objects have been explained. 5% have not. Therefore, the 5% that are unexplained prove that aliens exist.

8. Though shall not lay the burn of proof onto him that is questioning the claim. (“Burden of Proof Reversal”).1

Example:  Marcy claims she sees the ghosts of dead people, then challenges you to prove her wrong. The burden of proof is on Marcy, not you, since Marcy made the extraordinary claim.

9. Though shall not assume that “this” follows “that”, when “it” has no logical connection. (“Non Sequitur”).

Similar, but the difference between the post hoc and non sequitur fallacies is that, whereas the post hoc fallacy is due to lack of a causal connection, in the non sequitur fallacy, the error is due to lack of a logical connection.

Example: If you do not buy this Vitamin X supplements for your infant, you are neglecting your her.

10. Though shall not claim that because a premise is popular, therefore, it must be true. (“Bandwagon Fallacy”).

Example: Just because a celebrity like Dr. Oz endorses a product, it doesn’t make it any more legitimate.

Source: http://www.relativelyinteresting.com/10-commandments-rational-debate-logical-fallacies-explained/

By Michael Weiss

The propaganda war propping up Putin and his cronies has reached new heights with the bombing campaign in Syria.

When Vladimir Putin spoke before the UN General Assembly last week, he proclaimed the need for an international coalition to destroy ISIS. But when Putin then went to war in Syria, his fighter jets began by rocketing everyone opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad except ISIS. At a superficial level, this discrepancy is explained by Moscow as follows: There is no such thing as a moderate opposition in Syria and that includes the U.S.-backed rebels. In fact, as Putin darkly insinuated at the General Assembly, ISIS was “initially forged as a tool against undesirable secular regimes,” and the unnamed smith here was not terribly hard to discern.

The jihadist army rampaging through the Middle East was therefore America’s Frankenstein monster and it was now up to a confident Russia, a year into a failed U.S.-led coalition campaign, to deliver this reanimated corpse unto eternity. Anyone not willing to join with Russia, Assad, Iran, and Hezbollah was a “terrorist” or a covert sponsor of terrorism, who’d do well to get out of Putin’s way. He arrogated to himself a very broad martial remit to bomb whenever and whomever he pleased, which is precisely what he did a mere 48 hours later, hitting several Free Syrian Army targets, including those which have received advanced U.S. weaponry courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

We’ve seen this movie before—a mere 18 months ago. When the Euromaidan protests rocked Kiev after the Ukrainian government’s failure to sign an association agreement with the European Union, it was announced on Russia state television that those demanding the resignation of Viktor Yanukovych were neo-Nazis in the pay of the U.S. State Department or the CIA. They, too, were rampaging through Ukraine and perpetrating pogroms against embattled Jewish and ethnic Russian minorities who demanded Moscow’s fraternal assistance. That these minorities demanded no such thing didn’t matter.

Although it would not be acknowledged until much later, or simply not at all, the seizure of Crimea and the “separatist” war in the Donbas were framed as Putin’s sole resistance to America’s other Frankenstein monster—its sinister, covert plot to suborn fascism in the breadbasket of Europe. That actual fascists on the continent celebrated and certified Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his invasion of the Donbas was an ignorable detail.
The reductio ad Hitlerum looms large in Putin’s rhetoric landscape, and in his blitzkrieg on any semblance of objectivity or truth. Not for nothing did he invoke the Allies’s united front against the Third Reich in his General Assembly speech, conveniently eliding the Soviet Union’s initial role in inaugurating the Second World War by carving up Romania, Poland, and the Baltics—as an ally of Hitler. Where once Russia faced U.S.-backed “Banderites” in Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk, now it powders U.S.-backed “ISIS” in Homs, Hama and Idlib—provinces where ISIS either does not exist or has a minimal presence.. But so what?

Lenin wrote that “there is no more erroneous or more harmful idea than the separation of foreign from internal policy.” Moscow, famously, has two audiences to which its caters: the domestic and the foreign. The former matters more for keeping Putin in office, alive, and out of the dock. It’s also designed to position Russia as a bulwark against sinister American and NATO designs, through the application of soft and hard power. SA-22 anti-aircraft missiles and advanced fighter jets equipped with air-to-air missiles are not in Syria to deter Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s flying carpet.

Domestic propaganda is a negative definition of national greatness, with Russia set against an external conspiracy and all the mightier for having fended it off while rising from the state of a demoralized and defeated ex-superpower.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, as Putin notoriously said, was the 20th century’s greatest geopolitical tragedy, but not because it put an end to world communism but to imperial grandeur and self-respect. He is an derzhavnik, an ideologist of great power, and seeks to restore Russia as a dominant force in geopolitics (always the puncher, never the counterpuncher) but one politically promiscuous enough to allow Alexis Tspiras to Marine Le Pen and Pat Buchanan to all find something to favor.
To feed this manic triumphalism, then, the domestic gaze has to be directed outward, onto the international scene because internally Russia’s present and future are bleak. It is bleeding money and brainpower and ever more resembling Upper Volta with sanctions. Look here but not there.

The historian Timothy Snyder explains it well in a recent, Spinozan essay of logical propositions: “(1) President Putin’s popularity depends upon television. (2) Russian television news is devoted to events beyond Russia. (3) This means the president’s triumphs against American hegemony, etc. (4) In Ukraine, a weak Ukrainian army and limited EU sanctions hindered Russia. (5) Point #4 must not be noticed inside Russia. (6) Russian television just changed the subject from Ukraine to Syria.”

Peter Pomeranzev, author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, a remarkable book that explains contemporary Russia as a kind of mass public relations experiment run by lunatics and merry pranksters, says Putin’s Syria messaging is so far characteristic. It is also just the beginning.

“Syria is an exercise in narrative escalation dominance,” Pomeranzev says. “It’s setting the agenda, making the U.S. look weak and putting Putin center stage—whether good or bad is irrelevant because for the Kremlin any publicity is good publicity. The exact, on-the-ground aims can be interchangeable. ‘Terrorists’ in Syria are just as vague as the ‘fascists’ in Ukraine, and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s true, as long as the story keeps moving and the U.S. is kept off-balance, distracted and dismayed.”

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On the domestic side, Russian state television “just repeats the same trick as it did in Ukraine,” according to Vasily Gatov, a former employee of Russia’s now-disbanded RIA Novosti news agency and an expert on propaganda. “They’re trying to distract public opinion locally and maintain this idea that everyone lies internationally. Official Russian coverage is that they suggest that there is an organized campaign to discredit Russian participation in Syria. They’re saying that America and NATO are engaged in an information war against Russia in order to prevent Putin’s return to the top of the global leadership order.”
One article published recently by that wire service argues that U.S. airstrikes against ISIS are in fact part of an anti-Russian conspiracy designed to push the terror army toward the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, where the resources are greater and Russia has new and old military installations.

Even this dread accounting for CENTCOM’s lackluster campaign in Raqqa is a dramatic improvement on the earlier insistence by government relays that Russia wasn’t about to go to war in Syria at all. On September 10, Konstantin Kosachev, the head of Russia’s Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council (the upper chamber of parliament), flat-out denied a Russian military buildup in Syria. He accused the U.S. of hypocrisy and the spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in Moscow of unprofessional behavior by calling attention to the obvious buildup. “If I allowed myself to publicly comment on the policies of a host country, and even accused the country of supporting extremism, there would be many who want to ask me out of this country in 24 hours,” Kosachev thundered to Rossiya Segodnya, lamenting that Russia was only backing Assad politically and not with direct military intervention. On October 2, however, Kosachev was complaining in the same outlet that the U.S. was now irresponsibly accusing Russia of striking non-ISIS targets in a war whose inevitability he disclaimed three weeks ago.

“Putin and the Russian military didn’t really want to communicate their intentions to the news organs,” according to Gatov, who says that this accounts for the abrupt 180 in party line swapping. In some cases, even high-level Russian officials don’t seem to know what the current line is.

In the space of a single news cycle, Putin’s own press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, doubted that the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the catchall name to describe moderate or nationalist rebels, even exists anymore, saying Thursday, “Haven’t most of them switched to IS group? It existed but whether it does now nobody knows for sure, it’s a relative concept.” But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov certified the FSA’s existence that same day and even called those rebels necessary interlocutors with Russia for solving the Syrian crisis. “We don’t consider Free Syrian Army a terrorist group, and believe [it] should be part of the political process,” Lavrov told reporters in New York. As his air force bombed the FSA.

Another, paradoxical, theme is Putin’s indispensability to the United States—the nemesis of his worldview, but against which he is determined to wage peace. “Something I see on the Russian talk shows and in the newspapers, which I poisoned myself with watching and reading, is that the West simply cannot wait for Putin to die or retire but it must deal with him in his present form,” Gatov says. “This opens the door for dealing with him on Crimea, Ukraine and sanctions.” It also engenders the sort of speculation in Russia that puts Putin at the center of all international decision-making.

Indeed, when he was photographed clinking rose glasses with Obama during an awkward UN dinner last week, the impression given to many Russians was that of a deal in the offing. To ultranationalists, wary that Putin isn’t quite the imperialist he plays at by Anschlussing his way through Europe, this scene of forced comity constituted “a moment of truth,” as Dmitry Bobrov wrote on his blog. “Now we’ll see if the national-betrayer, Putin, is ready to flush down the toilet all Russians in Novorossiya,” referring to the aspirational blood-and-soil Russian imperium that was to have started in the Donbas and fanned out from there.

The Kremlin’s foreign media outlets are simply click-bait conduits for “active measures,” an old Soviet intelligence technique by which Moscow tries to manipulate foreign societies, usually against their own governments, using furtive and transparent methods of persuasion. For this, Putin relies on his English-language portals, chiefly Sputnik and RT, which have had a slightly trickier go of adapting to new Middle Eastern realities, or pseudo-realities.
As The Daily Beast reported a month ago, RT lies not only about world events or concocts batshit “alternative” explanations for quotidian or self-evident phenomena (the pope is a space alien, the CIA invented Ebola as a bio-weapon, 9/11 was an inside job), but it also inflates its global ratings to justify a ridiculously high annual budget, prospectively set to be close to half a billion dollars this year, if RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan gets her way (and she may not).

But because the channel doesn’t just fabricate the “news” but reacts in real time to Western reporting, it’s pivot on Syria has been more cumbrous, shrill and imaginative than its domestic counterparts. For instance, its website had earlier run several items denying and mocking allegations of any Russian military buildup in western Syria—in one case, even trolling The Daily Beast, which reported on it in early September. Now, with nary a hint of contradiction or irony, RT has accelerated straight past the buildup, into full-on war propaganda mode, offering jingoistic rah-rahs for Putin’s Top Gunnery, falsely characterized, of course, as anti-ISIS in nature.

Still, that doesn’t stop the basic facts from being falsified or fudged. Take, for instance, “US Can’t Find 9 CIA Trained Rebels in Syria, but McCain Claims Russia Did,” which suggests that Sen. John McCain, who accused Russia of bombing CIA-backed rebels in Syria, can’t have been correct since the Pentagon had earlier stated that its rebel proxies had gone “missing” in country. “If only nine out of these US-trained rebels are actually fighting ISIL,” the article read, “while the rest are ‘missing’ somewhere in the Syrian desert, and even worse have joined [al Qaeda franchise] al-Nusra or perhaps other jihadist groups, including ISIL, then the US government is doing an awful and counterproductive job, to say the least.”

CIA-backed rebels never went missing. There are, in fact, two separate U.S. programs, one run by the clandestine service and the other by the Department of Defense. They differ in remit in that the CIA program was designed to help rebels fight the Assad regime, whereas the Pentagon’s train-and-equip program (now abandoned due to myriad problems, which even Sputnik can have exploited without the bullshit) was intended to create a rebel counterterrorism strike force to only fight ISIS, not the regime. Sputnik has conflated two policies as one to argue, disingenuously, that U.S. officials are falsely accusing Russia of killing the proxies Washington supposedly can’t find.

In truth, active measures and disinformation don’t have to work very hard to sow skepticism, doubt, and confusion among Americans. Given the schizophrenic nature of U.S. policy in Syria, most Americans will already have a hard enough time deciding why they should care about what Putin’s Sukhois are annihilating. Yesterday, President Obama said all of these things all at once by way of acquiescing to Russia’s war on U.S. proxies: “We are going to continue to go after ISIL. We are going to continue to reach out to a moderate opposition… We’re not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia. That would be a bad strategy on our part. This is a battle between Russia, Iran, and Assad against the overwhelming majority of the Syrian people. Our battle is with ISIL.”

If the commander-in-chief believes that he can reach out to a moderate opposition while casting the overwhelming majority of the Syrian people to its fate against three different militaries, then who needs RT and Sputnik to keep the United States off-balance, distracted and dismayed?
With additional reporting by Anna Nemtsova.

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/04/russia-s-propaganda-blitzkrieg.html

Here is a video which kept me spellbound from beginning to end.

Talk about an inspirational speech, this is one of the great ones.

I was not a SEAL, I served in the US Army Special Forces during my enlisted career.  In ‘pre-phase’, which is now the selection course, my particular class received an inspirational speech one morning at 0500 from our 1SG who was later killed in Somalia after a storied career in Delta – “you are the top 1/2 of 1%” – “you must persevere in the face of adversity” – those words stuck with me. When Admiral McRaven says “you never ring the bell”, I couldn’t even conceive of that – that possibility just did not occur to me.  I had an unfair advantage over my peers in the SFQC, I had spent seven years in the Boy Scouts. I was more at home in the woods, fields and mountains of the SFQC than most people are in their own living rooms, so I tried to help those with less training, less ability and less confidence. …and we cheated as a class. We were so tight that those of us a bit stronger than the others helped the rest along, I got partnered with possibly the weakest guy in the class, so I must have been pretty good. We snuck beer into Camp Mackall on weekends from Southern Pines. We snuck out to find the mythical alligator in the pond and found nothing.  Then there was the Sunday we decided to do PT on our own wearing nothing but patrol caps and boots, nothing else. That was also the day the Camp Commandant and his wife decided to swing by his office.  We figured, how can they kick out an entire class?  …and they didn’t.  She got an eyeful!

So please, view this video and take his advice for life.

Hooah!

University of Texas at Austin 2014 Commencement Address – Admiral William H. McRaven

By James Nixey

Russia and Eurasia Programme head, Chatham House 

Whether Russia, one of 15 successor states to the USSR, which broke up in 1991, is still a genuine world power in 2015 is open to question.

• It remains the world’s largest country and the largest oil producer
• It retains its permanent seat on the UN Security Council (one among five)
• Its nuclear arsenal (in Cold War times one of five countries, but now one of nine) has been progressively modernised
• Sustained increases in defence spending have brought it close to its goal of escalation dominance in local and regional war

But the economic base for these capabilities is steadily declining.

Russia’s economy is the 10th largest in the world, producing little of value beyond hydrocarbons.

Corruption and rent-seeking extract an enormous economic toll.

It remains burdened with Soviet era infrastructure, and its ability to meet the educational and medical needs of its population is rapidly declining.

Whatever one’s view, two further points for and against Russia’s global standing are undeniable:

• Russia regards itself as a great power – it is not in question anywhere inside the country
• China has long since eclipsed Russia as the world’s number two power behind the US

Yet for all Russia’s pretence about a rebalancing of priorities towards Asia, since the fallout over Ukraine, it still measures itself against the West, and America in particular.

Distinct Eurasian niche

Regardless of hypothetical rankings or real-world measurements, Russia has carved out a niche for itself as a distinct Eurasian pole in world politics, allied to neither Europe nor Asia but seeking influence there and beyond.

Its membership of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group of rising powers suggests an acknowledgement that Russia has not quite arrived (there is no contradiction for Russia between this and pre-existing great power status) but also that is it is civilisationally distinct from Europe.

Certainly, there is no current desire to be part of most prominent Western-led organisations such as the European Union.

Indeed, Russia has striven to come up with its own alternatives over the years, the latest of which, a Eurasian Union, is designed precisely as a counterweight but free of the burden of Western norms and values.

Whether it will have a longer life than its antecedents, considering Russia’s failing economic fortunes and other countries’ evident reluctance to be joined too closely, remains to be seen.

Russia’s mission beyond the quest for influence is hard to discern.

It is the world’s most ostentatious foe of democracy promotion.

But its foreign aid is minimal (especially beyond the other former Soviet states – where its purpose is often regarded as a double-edged sword), and its contribution to UN-led peacekeeping has withered since the 1990s.

World’s largest economies by gross domestic product (GDP) (in millions of US dollars, 2014):

• US: 17,419,000

• China: 10,360,105

• Japan: 4,601,461

• Germany: 3,852,556

• UK: 2,941,886

• France: 2,829,192

• Brazil: 2,346,118

• Italy: 2,144,338

• India: 2,066,902

• Russian Federation: 1,860,598

Until the recent campaign in Syria, Russia had talked of itself as a global power, but behaved like a regional power.

Russia’s greatest challenge is to preserve its global importance while most of the relevant indicators are dropping and its allies are few and far between (dictators, largely).

For some, Russia’s natural and historical pre-eminence mean it will always be a key player.

Others fear Russia may compensate for weakness with risky foreign adventurism.

Indeed, for many, it is already doing just that.

James Nixey is head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34857908

In the past few weeks, the White House has sought to step up its messaging efforts on counterterrorism, scheduling a prime-time television address and visits to the Pentagon and National Counterterrorism Center in an attempt to better explain progress made against the Islamic State group.

But Obama conceded those efforts, prompted by an ISIS-inspired attack that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, came after inadequate efforts to relay the work of a U.S.-led coalition in combating ISIS.

“We haven’t on a regular basis, I think, described all the work that we’ve been doing for more than a year now to defeat ISIL,” Obama told NPR in an interview taped before he departed for his holiday vacation in Hawaii. He called the communications blunder a “legitimate criticism of what I’ve been doing and our administration has been doing.”

But he also pinned Americans’ renewed unease about terror attacks on U.S. soil to blanket media coverage of ISIS attacks. The November ISIS terrorist massacre in Paris, which left 130 people dead, led to “a saturation of news about the horrible attack there,” Obama said in the interview.

Russian propaganda twists this into the US is “protecting” Jihadists.

GlobalResearch.ca, once again, proves they cannot be trusted to relay news without imparting undeserved anti-Western Russian bias.

Returning the volley, Russia kills indiscriminately, while operating in Syria. Horror as children and babies are among 14 people killed and 20 injured in Russian airstrikes on rebel-held areas of Syria.  I have yet to discern any Russian attempts to limit collateral damage.

U.S. has mapped ISIS hiding spots, but won’t launch strikes for fear of civilian deaths

Civilian casualties, desire to study operations cited as reasons

The most recent Democratic Party debate referred to a Daesh video, “No Respite”.

Contrary to what Hillary Clinton claimed, President Obama and President Bill Clinton are featured prominently (:41-:45), not Donald Trump or his anti-Muslim rhetoric as she claimed.

Here is the video (please excuse that the writing is not in English):

If the video is not available, as it is Daesh propaganda on YouTube, just search for “No Respite”, it’s widely available.

One of the takeaways should be ‘don’t trust traveling Russians – ever.’

Russia May Aid ‘Comrade Tourists’ Who Were Really Soldiers

MOSCOW — The soldiers were told to grow their hair long and were given civilian clothes. From then on, their superiors said, they would be addressed — and were to address one another — as “comrade tourist” as they sailed aboard a cruise liner to Syria.

With this simple trick, the Soviet Union managed to sneak thousands of soldiers into Syria in 1983 during the Lebanese civil war, in which Syria, Moscow’s close ally, was deeply involved.

Valery S. Anisimov, then a 19-year-old draftee, recalled that his boxy Defense Ministry-issued gray suit was several sizes too large. “It was not something I would have bought myself,” he said. But the cruise ship, Ukraina, which left from a Black Sea port, slipped unmolested through the strait in Turkey, a NATO member, and on to Syria.

But the story did not end there. Today, Mr. Anisimov, the head of a veterans’ group representing these one-time tourists, is leading a campaign in Russia to gain formal recognition from Parliament for this secret wartime service.

The soldiers in tourist guise. Credit From the collection of Valery S. Anisimov
It is an effort with clear implications for the veterans of Russia’s more recent secret deployments, to Ukraine and Syria under various guises — as so-called green men in uniforms without insignia, “vacationers” in eastern Ukraine or humanitarian aid workers in Syria.

Mr. Anisimov is lobbying for a bill granting the status of combat veterans to the covert soldiers, about 800 of whom are alive today, according to a draft of the law. Parliament on Dec. 4 delayed a planned first reading of the bill, which would entitle them to additional pension payments for combat service. “It is important that the government recognize our service to the motherland,” Mr. Anisimov said in an interview. The Defense Ministry never declassified the “comrade tourist” deployment, so the veterans never received the extra benefits.

“Our documents are all secret,” Mr. Anisimov said. “They are so secret nobody can find them.”

In the war in eastern Ukraine, thousands of Russian soldiers served on the pro-Russian rebel side, but their status is disputed. Western governments say they were on active duty; Russia says they were volunteers.

A leader of the pro-Russian separatists, Aleksandr V. Zakharchenko, said in 2014, at the height of the war, that between 3,000 to 4,000 Russian soldiers were fighting on the rebel side, but all the while on their vacations. “There are active soldiers fighting among us who preferred to spend their vacation not on the beach but among their brothers, who are fighting for freedom,” he said.

Such unacknowledged deployments form one element of the broad doctrine of maskirovka, or masking, which encompasses a range of ideas about misdirection and misinformation that military analysts say is integral to Russian operations and has been for some time. “The Russian approach demonstrates remarkable historical continuity,” wrote Dmitry Adamsky, a professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy in Herzliya, Israel, in a research paper about Russian psychological warfare published last month.

The doctrine of maskirovka, he wrote, is “one of the main virtues of the Soviet-Russian intelligence and military art — a repertoire of denial, deception, propaganda, camouflage, and concealment,” as useful today as it was decades ago. Soviet maps, for example, often included inaccuracies that frustrated drivers but served a national security purpose: If taken by a spy, they would confuse an invading army as apparently useful roads, for example, led into swamps.

In another example, the Russian military makes and exports bulky, rubber inflatable versions of most of its tanks and rocket launchers, to trick spotter planes.

Last summer, as the United States said Russia was shipping military equipment to an air base at Latakia, in Syria, Moscow said it was humanitarian aid, before shifting gears and publicly announcing a deployment. The men in green who appeared on Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in February 2014 were said to be a local militia or members of motorcycle gangs. President Vladimir V. Putin has since acknowledged that they were soldiers.

The bill Mr. Anisimov helped write tries to correct what he sees as an injustice imposed on soldiers who served such an operation decades ago.

President Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current embattled Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, had intervened in the Lebanese civil war but quickly suffered setbacks in fighting with Israel’s superior military, which had invaded southern Lebanon in clashes with the Palestine Liberation Organization. In a secret visit to Moscow, he convinced the Soviet leadership that its support was crucial to maintaining a balance of powers in the Middle East, and soon enough a sightseeing trip was being planned.

“In cooperation with the Syrian air defense forces, on a war footing and in lethal danger, the regiments took active part in rebuffing Israeli airstrikes,” the Russian draft law says of the soldier-tourists in Syria in the 1980s. In short, they were not merely taking in the sights.

Yet this service was whitewashed from the historical record. “In the files of the officers, it was written that ‘from 1983 to 1984 they served in air defenses in the Moscow region,’ ” the draft law notes. “Not one legal act has been taken to create conditions to support a dignified life, gainful activities, honor and respect in society,” for the tourists, it says. “Passing this law will restore historical justice.”

If designated as combat veterans, participants would be entitled to additional pension payments of 2,500 rubles, or about $36, per month, priority consideration for state-provided apartments and access to veterans hospitals. But that designation would raise delicate questions.

Mikhail V. Degtyaryov, a lawmaker with the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia who sponsored the bill, said it should not be read as a sign that Russia would eventually own up to the deployment of “vacationers” in eastern Ukraine. “So many years went by, it’s just history now,” he said of the Syrian operation.

In total, according to the draft law in Parliament, about 6,000 soldiers in two air defense units served in Syria in 1983 and 1984. These units left from the port of Nikolayev, now known as Mykolaiv, in Ukraine on cruise ships.

Commanders ordered soldiers to grow their hair long and paint their equipment, sent separately in civilian cargo ships, in desert camouflage colors. The suits, Mr. Anisimov said, were issued in three colors: gray, black and blue. Once in Syria, the soldiers wore Syrian military uniforms.

On the day of the departure, a local newspaper reported this large group of lithe and healthy young men, mostly all the same age of about 20, were setting out on a cruise they had won in a socialist competition. Aleksei S. Diyakov, then a captain in the air defense forces, said the men gleefully played along. “The Russians know dramaturgy,” he said. “We used the Stanislavsky method.”

Passing through the Dardanelles in Turkey, they were ordered to sit quietly in their cabins below deck, lest an American warship sailing nearby and bristling with listening equipment pick up their conversations.

Waitresses in the ship’s restaurant kept up the ruse, flirtatiously calling the young men “comrade tourists,” Mr. Anisimov said. “We joked with them, saying ‘You see we are not tourists,’ ” he said. “And they would say, ‘Shush, oh, no, please don’t joke with us that way.’ ”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/world/europe/russia-may-aid-comrade-tourists-who-were-really-soldiers.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=1

Russia’s show trial of Nadiya Savchenko grows more ridiculous daily. 

</end editorial>

Posted on December 20, 2015

By Maria Semenchenko, Den’ [Day], Kyiv newspaper, “Ukraine’s Day” section, #232
12.18.2015
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine

“Nadiya is doing everything right.” The Russian court has extended Nadiya Savchenko’s arrest until April 16, 2015; she has announced a hunger strike.

A photo of Nadiya Savchenko at the court hearing spread online like wildfire yesterday. Dressed in a promotional T-shirt of the Day newspaper that her sister Vira was able to pass along, Nadiya wrote a single question on it, “When are you going to set free the Ukrainians you abducted and illegally detain in Russian prisons?” This question was addressed to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, who held his traditional end-of-the-year press conference at the same time. During the conference, Roman Tsymbaliuk, a Ukrainian journalist from the informational agency “UNIAN” asked [Putin] a similar question. [Roman] received the answer that: “the exchange of Ukrainian hostages, who are held in Russia, must be equal.”

At the same time, a panel of judges presiding over the case of the Ukrainian pilot in the Donetsk City Court of Rostov region has denied a request to admit the documents into evidence in the criminal case, made previously by the defense [counsel]. [The documents] were received via the Ukrainian Consulate General in Rostov-on-Don. Savchenko’s attorney Nikolay Polozov also wrote that “the court has granted the prosecution’s request to extend the detention of Nadiya Savchenko until April 16, 2016.” In response, Nadiya stated that she was on a hunger strike until the court’s ruling, and after the ruling, she would be refusing water as well.

“This continued detention until April 16 became a rather unexpected [development] for me. Like a bolt from the blue. This is really bad. But Nadya [diminutive from Nadiya] has announced her hunger strike. Nadya is doing everything right, she shows that once “the goods are spoiling – you need to sell [them off] fast, [that is] exchange [her fast]. But they are haggling instead. She is doing her work, [trying] to save herself. This is important,” Vira Savchenko, the sister of the illegally detained [pilot], stated to Den’ newspaper.

“Putin wants to exchange all for all – he said so. He was asked whether he was ready to exchange Yerofeev and Aleksandrov [a Russian soldier and an FSB officer detained and held in Ukraine] for Savchenko, Sentsov, Kolchenko, Afanasiyev, Karpiuk, and others [Ukrainian detainees in Russia], and Putin said that he needed an equitable exchange. That is, there are too few Russian detainees in Ukraine for him. Does he imply that we now have the task of catching Russians in Syria? Or do we need to exchange the militia held at detention centers in Kyiv? Does Putin [really] need them? But these are the people of Donbas, the ones Putin is [allegedly] defending. Maybe he is not aware of them?,” Vira Savchenko continues.

A position was voiced that Putin and Poroshenko are on the same page regarding the issue [of exchange]. But the question remains, of what exactly are they in agreement? We need to think and analyze what is happening. From what I have heard, Putin allegedly wants to exchange the prisoners. Doesn’t Poroshenko want the exchange as well? I do not believe that he does not. So what is the problem after all?”

[Video of Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsymbaliuk asking Vladimir Putin at 0:15.]

Vira talked about how she plans to go to Russia in the nearest future. Both she and their mother, Maria Ivanivna, will go. They are permitted to visit Nadiya. Vira is not afraid to go to Russia, but she notes that now she has to be more careful. “I definitely know that if Russia really wanted, it would put me in prison – they have no law there. That is why they simply flex their muscles now, and it really got more frightening to go there. That is why I only cross the border with the [Ukrainian] consul in a consular car. I am grateful to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for doing this,” she says.

Not so long ago, Vira bought books published by the Den’ newspaper – the new journalistic investigative trilogy and books on history. At our request, she gave her sister a T-shirt Nadiya wore in court yesterday [December 15, 2015]. “The T-shirt really looks good on Nadya,” – Vira says. “But I did not give your books to my sister. First, I bought the books for myself. I am not done reading them because I am forced to devote all my time to this pseudo-court, but I did manage to start them. I will make sure to finish reading them. Second, it is difficult to pass Ukrainian books over to Nadya. [The Russian authorities] confiscated even the books written by [my sister] at the border. And this situation is not only limited to Nadya. I sent your book to Karpiuk – I think it was Petro Hryhorenko (“Armored journalistic investigations” series – Ed.) – and they let it through. But now, the prisoners are prohibited from receiving Ukrainian books and press. I bought different magazines and the Den’ newspaper and sent them to the detainees [before]. And I am afraid that now everything gets thrown away. This is how it is for now. For now, they keep on tightening the screws,” Vira summarized.

Source: Day.kiev.ua 

Source: http://maidantranslations.com/2015/12/20/russian-court-extends-nadiya-savchenkos-arrest-savchenko-goes-on-hunger-strike-freesavchenko/

Brandishing the Cybered Bear: Information War and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

• Azhar Unwala, Georgetown University
• Shaheen Ghori, National Defense University

Russia’s use of cyber power against Ukraine offered renewed insight to Russian cyber strategy and capabilities. This article dissects the Russia-Ukraine conflict by analyzing Russia’s strategic doctrine, tactical maneuvers, and capabilities in the information realm. Understanding the Russia-Ukraine conflict in this manner can inform and strengthen U.S. cyber policy and strategy. In particular, U.S. strategic planners and cyber professionals should consider internalizing Russian strategic thinking regarding cyber power and promote tactical improvements in resilience, intelligence, and information among itself and its allies.

INTRODUCTION

When Russian forces entered the Crimean Peninsula on March 2, 2014, they had already shut down Crimea’s telecommunications infrastructure, disabled major Ukrainian websites, and jammed the mobile phones of key Ukrainian officials. Undeniably, Russia’s use of cyber power was crucial in its offensive against Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea. However, realizing the extent of Russia’s cyber power in this conflict requires grasping Russia’s strategic and tactical maneuvers in this domain. This article analyzes Russia’s cyber strategy and tactics against Ukraine in an effort to inform U.S. cyber policy. Part I surveys the strategic cyber doctrines of Russia and the United States. Part II examines a case study of Russia’s cyber power against Ukraine. Drawing upon insights from the Russia-Ukraine case, Part III offers strategic and tactical recommendations that the United States should employ as well as promote among its allies.

http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=mca

At least 200 civilians have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria, an Amnesty International report says, quoting witnesses and activists.

It says it “researched remotely” more than 25 Russian attacks in five areas between 30 September and 29 November.

The findings indicate “serious failures [by Russia] to respect international humanitarian law”, Amnesty says.

Moscow has repeatedly denied causing civilian deaths, describing such claims as part of “information warfare”.

Russia began air strikes targeting Islamic State militants (IS) and other groups on 30 September, saying it was acting at the request of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Moscow has also been accused of bombing rebel groups opposed to Mr Assad but backed by the West.

‘Russian strikes kill scores’ in Syria

Activists criticise Raqqa air strikes

‘No military targets’

In the report, Amnesty said it had researched the Russian attacks in Homs, Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Aleppo.

The group said it had “interviewed by phone or over the internet 16 witnesses to attacks and their aftermath”, including doctors and human rights activists.

In addition, Amnesty “obtained and reviewed audiovisual imagery” relating to the attacks and “commissioned advice from weapons experts”.

The report gives more details about six attacks.

On 29 November, for example, 49 civilians were killed and many others injured when three missiles hit a public market in Ariha, Idlib province, Amnesty said.

It added that testimony by witnesses and research by human rights activists had shown that “there were no military targets in the vicinity”.

Amnesty said there was also evidence that Russia’s military “unlawfully used unguided bombs in densely populated areas and inherently indiscriminate cluster munitions”.

Russian officials have so far made no public comments on the report’s accusations.

The Kremlin has previously described similar reports as attempts to discredit its operations in Syria.

President Vladimir Putin said in October that reports of alleged civilian casualties had emerged before the first air strikes were even carried out.

Russia’s air campaign comes as a US-led coalition continues its own air strikes against IS targets in Syria.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35162523

Why do all Putin’s critics get arrested and their offices get raided?

Russian corruption and Russian politics.

</end editorial>

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Armed Russian police on Tuesday raided the offices of a pro-democracy movement founded by outspoken Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a move they said was part of a criminal investigation into the former tycoon and his associates.

Khodorkovsky, whom police accused this month of organizing a contract killing in 1998, interpreted the latest pressure on him as payback for his criticism of President Vladimir Putin.

“Searches at the Open Russia (movement) after my meeting with journalists,” the 52-year-old wrote on his official Twitter feed. “A repeat of 2003. Putin has become predictable.”

Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia movement, which says it unites groups and individuals who want Russia to change, said police had also searched some of its staff members’ apartments in Moscow and St Petersburg and taken away documents.

Khodorkovsky has criticized the Kremlin repeatedly in recent months, accusing Putin of leading Russia into a 1970s Soviet-style period of stagnation that could eventually trigger its collapse.

Putin freed Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, in 2013 after he had spent a decade in jail for fraud, a charge that Khodorkovsky said had been fabricated to punish him for funding political opposition to Putin. The president has said he regards the businessman as a common thief.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said Tuesday’s raids were part of a criminal investigation into the former shareholders and management of Yukos, the now defunct oil major that Khodorkovsky ran until he was arrested at gunpoint in 2003.

Investigators said the latest case centered on allegations of oil theft and money laundering, and was related to a legal standoff between the Russian government and former Yukos shareholders.

An international arbitration court ruled last year that Russia must pay $50 billion to the firm’s former shareholders for expropriating its assets.

The shareholders began to seize bank accounts and properties in Paris and other parts of France belonging to the Russian Federation in June this year. A French court last week rejected Russia’s request to suspend the seizures.

The Investigative Committee said Tuesday’s action was part of an exercise to check whether the shareholders had acquired Yukos shares legally in the first place.

Khodorkovsky, who spends much of his time in London, likened the raids to repression in the Soviet era.

“The decay had entered its final stage,” Khodorkovsky told the Ekho Moskvy radio station. “We are all familiar with this from the time of (Soviet leader Leonid) Brezhnev.”

Earlier this month, Russian police said they had uncovered evidence suggesting Khodorkovsky had ordered the 1998 contract killing of the mayor of an oil town in Siberia.

Khodorkovsky denies any involvement.

Source: http://www.newsweek.com/khodorkovsky-putin-russia-moscow-police-yukos-murder-arrest-408403

Too good not to share.

Sveinald Ingvarsson, of course, is a  pseudonym.

By Sveinald Ingvarsson

I thought about building this chart 6 months ago, but it looks better now. Formal multilateral collaborative defence arrangement between Norway, Sweden and Finland, between the Baltic States and Poland, between the Poles, Baltics and Scandinavia. Bilateral defence collaboration arrangements between Poland, the Baltics and Ukraine. Ukraine now forming bilateral relationships with Israel and Turkey, while it appears Turkey might be restoring ties with Israel.

In parallel, Canada, UK and US are forming bilateral relationships with Ukraine, while NATO is building an alliance relationship with Ukraine.

Russia successfully hobbled NATO and the EU unity by compromising the Germans and the French through infiltration of industry, politics and media. Yet this play failed to stop the formation of an anti-Russian bloc within NATO and the EU, from Oslo through to Kiev. Meddling in Syria is now seeing this bloc now expand to encompass Turkey and Israel.

Wildcards are Belarus and Kazakhstan both of whom seem to have remarkably good bilateral relations with Ukraine. As Russia’s economy collapses, they are more likely to realign to Kiev simply as Kiev becomes the economic lifeline via the EU, and the Ukrainians are not bullies like the “Moskals”.

The Chinese have probably studied this well as the timing of their Silk Road project meshes with this remarkably well. The game will be to make lots of money and build relationships along the Silk Road into the EU. The future “Eurasia” will be the Silk Road between the EU and China, not Putin’s grand vision. Russia is economically a midget compared to the EU and China. The Silk Road provides the opportunity Central Asia and the Caucasus lost when the Tsarist Empire colonised them, destroying a trade route that existed since antiquity.

The challenge for the West is managing the development of Central Asia so it does not become a gaggle of dysfunctional Chinese vassals – Ukraine is a potential political gateway for the West into the post-Soviet republics.

Russia having self destructed is now inevitably a vassal of China – China will buy it out when the Russian economy tanks, and the Federation starts to fragment. Vassalhood was predicted 18 months ago – but it seems the Chinese are being especially kind to Russia, letting them dangle and completely self-destruct, before playing their move.

The big question is whether China will see its interests best served by creating a bigger mess in Central Asia, as they seem to be doing in the West Pacific, or whether sanity prevails. There are ample economic opportunities for both China and the West in the resuscitation of the Silk Road, so the question remains whether loony geopolitics or enlightened self interest end up driving China’s play. That is something I cannot predict and would not even think about trying. The insane play in the Senkakus and South China Sea is convincing proof of loony geopolitics getting ahead of sane enlightened self interest.