February 23, 2016

In recent months, the relative calming of the Russian-Ukrainian war in the Donbas has led many observers to describe this confrontation as yet another “frozen conflict” in the post-Soviet space. Yet even if Russian military activities ceased completely, the analogy is misleading. It is not always understood that Ukraine’s neighbor to the east is actively using three separate approaches to keep the Ukrainian state in crisis mode.
First, Ukraine has been the victim of “traditional” (if covert) armed aggression from Russia, which has ebbed but continues. Second, it is also suffering from the severe direct economic consequences of this war. Finally, the Kremlin is also conducting a non-military, multi-vector hybrid war against Ukraine that is only partially visible to the West. This carefully concerted and partly hidden subversion of the Ukrainian state is being pursued through a wide variety of means—economic sanctions, secret intelligence operations, international propaganda campaigns, purposeful cyber attacks, diplomatic interventions, and political pressure—and has many indirect consequences for the Ukrainian economy and society at large.

In this manner, for example, Moscow has equipped its puppet governments in the Donbas with one of the Europe’s largest tank armies—larger than the fleets of heavy armored fighting vehicles owned by Ukraine or Germany, for example. The enormous military buildup of the so-called “People’s Republics” is not only about preparation for an imminent military offensive. Instead, it serves to project Moscow’s power in eastern Ukraine and to create a constant threat to a militarily overmatched Kyiv. Russia’s arming of its two satellite regimes in the Donbas and large troop deployments along the Russian-Ukrainian border prevents Ukrainian society from focusing on internal matters, and diverts resources toward strengthening defensive capabilities and away from other needs.

Possibly the most important aspect of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare is not its immediate effects as much as the underlying socio-psychological and politico-economic calculus behind it. Ukrainians are becoming worn down by being held in a state of suspense over months and years—stuck between calm and tension, war and peace, insecurity and stability. In particular, this creates volatility and frustration in the Russian-speaking regions bordering Russia, and along the Black and Azov seas. Local entrepreneurs are discouraged, young university graduates disillusioned, civil society activists unsettled, international partners made nervous, and foreign investors scared off.

This tactic could eventually hollow out the territories of so-called “New Russia”—that is, southeastern Ukraine—to such a degree that they sink into isolation, depression, radicalization, and violence. According to the logic behind this approach, the region will sooner or later fall by itself into Moscow’s lap.

Moscow’s hybrid war also distracts Kyiv from reforms and, in a sense, makes them pointless. Of course, serious internal factors—most of all, the resilience of corrupt networks of oligarchs, compromised civil servants, and politicians for sale—share responsibility for Ukraine’s faltering reform efforts. However, the blowback effects of Russia’s multi-vector hybrid war on the Ukrainian state, economy, and civil society explain a great deal about why the country’s attempts at transformation have so far failed to bear fruit: the drafting and implementation of reforms is constantly being subverted by economic, political, psychological, military, and diplomatic harassment from Russia.

In fact, even a thoroughly reformed Ukraine would remain dysfunctional in the face of continuing Russian threats, pressure, and sabotage. Russia is too close, too powerful, too ruthless, and shares too long of a border with Ukraine to permit Kyiv to simply cut itself off from its neighbor.

In this way, the Kremlin is able to kill three birds with one stone. First, it prevents the consolidation, rebirth, and Europeanization of Ukraine—and with that, the rise of an eastern Slavic counter-model rivaling Putin’s system. Second, it weakens the project of European integration and the entire West, which will be forced to invest great sums of money for years to keep basic functions of the Ukrainian state intact. Third, the Kremlin is laying the groundwork for new territorial expansion, should its tactics of destabilization and disillusionment in southeastern Ukraine be successful.

Andreas Umland is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv and general editor of the book series Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society distributed outside Europe by Columbia University Press.

Source: http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/02/23/russias_pernicious_hybrid_war_against_ukraine_109066.html

Andreas Umland

The West has only recently started to understand how deeply public opinion in the Russian Federation has become infected with rabidly anti-Western conspiratorial and Manichean worldviews. During the last fifteen years, Russia’s citizens have been exposed to relentless demonization of the Western world, purposeful instigation of hatred towards the United States, and heavily manipulated foreign affairs reporting in Kremlin-controlled mass media. Thousands of cynical politicians, corrupt journalists, irresponsible showmen, and bizarre pseudo-experts are telling the Russian people, day after day, how immoral, degraded and dangerous Western civilization and, above all, the United States are.

In the spring of 2014, one hundred countries condemned Russia’s de jureannexation of Crimea at the UN, with only 11 states—various small allies of the Kremlin—voting against the resolution. Yet, as a result of the daily brainwashing by Kremlin TV, the overwhelming majority of Russians believe that the annexation was historically, legally, and morally justified. A largely similar story goes for Russia’s de facto annexation of Moldova’s Transnistria, of Georgia’s Akhazia and South Ossetia, as well as its occupation of the eastern part of Ukraine’s Donbas. Equally, Moscow’s increasingly heavy military involvement in Syria and tense political confrontation with Turkey are, in most Russians’ view, mere reactions to ever more aggressive Western policies towards Russia and her few remaining allies.

No surprise then that the West’s responses to Russia’s foreign adventures, i.e. political and economic sanctions, have only further heightened the sense of encirclement and paranoia among Russians. Public opinion formation in Russia has entered a vicious circle within which foreign victories and international defeats of Moscow can both, when well spun, work to strengthen an already established fortress mentality. Indeed, Russia’s spin-doctors have manipulated Russia’s worsening economic situation to foster an image of the Kremlin as a chivalrous fighter against an imperial and russophobic Washington. As long as Russia’s citizens remain within this alien parallel world, the Kremlin will remain a deadly danger to world peace and humanity’s future—with or without Vladimir Putin.

How to deal with such an intractable situation? After years of neglect, denial, and dithering, Western countries and organizations have begun to study and discuss this complex challenge. The EU has established a so-called Taskforce Stratcom East and started to publish a weekly Disinformation Review, which lists most of the Russian mass media lies, mystifications and half-truths about Western policies, Ukrainian affairs, the civil war in Syria etc. To counter Kremlin propaganda, a number of new East European web projects, such as the Russian sections of StopFake in Kyiv, Intersection in Warsaw, andMeduza in Riga, are targeting Russian speakers around the globe. A number of major international media companies, like the BBC in London, Radio Liberty in Prague, or Germany’s DW in Bonn produce Russian-language content aimed to balance the information war that the Kremlin is conducting on a world-wide scale. In fact, there are still some Russian independent media left that provide independent coverage, including the newspaper Novaia gazeta (New Newspaper), website Grani (Limits) and TV channel Dozhd (Rain).

Yet, all of these outlets have limited reach, and are so far, unfortunately, followed by relatively few Russians. They therefore cannot be counted as high-impact outlets. At the moment, all Russian-language electronic and print media with a wide audience inside Russia are controlled by Kremlin-friendly editors. As long as it stays this way, there is little chance to change the Russians’ increasingly foul mood and distorted worldview.

There is, however, a readily available channel through which accurate information, balanced journalistic reporting, alternative view points, and revealing artistic interpretation can be and, to some degree, already is being communicated throughout Russia—social media. Every day, more and more ordinary citizens are joining Russian social networks that are now playing almost as large a role in urban Russian life as they do in Western daily affairs. Thus millions of Russians have become members of major Western networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

But, most Russian speakers are registered with Russia-based and predominantly Russian-language social networks. The three largest are VKontakte (In Contact) with over 50 million users, Odnoklassniki(Class Mates) with over 40 million users, and Moi mir (My World) with over 30 million users. To be sure, most of the communication on these networks concerns private life, shopping, entertainment, business and other non-political themes. Yet, these networks—especially VKontakte, as Europe’s largest social network—also share political content, and thus represent an opportunity to engage the Russian people that has, until now, been used to only limited extent, by the West.

Those groups and individuals who wish to reach Russian citizens—pro-democratic Russian and Western groups, social and cultural organizations, international mass media and ordinary citizens alike—can easily do so throughsocial networks like VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Moi mir and others. Like in Western social networks, registration is not complicated, neither is the posting and sharing of texts, videos, graphs, and podcasts. These could include independent analyses of the post-Soviet political system, documentaries on current European affairs, investigations into corruption cases in former Soviet republics, reports on Moscow’s foreign adventures, interviews with prominent critics of the Kremlin, discussion shows on today’s world affairs, and so on. Ideally, this material should already be in Russian language. In addition, such posts could include entertainment shows, movies or programs that have some political dimension and may use satire, irony and other forms of humor.

The Kremlin is waging nothing less than an information war internationally and domestically. Its well-funded, highly professional and multidimensional propaganda campaign is, above all, designed to keep a kleptocratic regime in power, to diminish Western values as threats to its existence, as well as to expand its influence and reach. The current Russian ruling elite’s enormous prosperity is dependent on blind support of a brainwashed citizenry afraid of a Western invasion of Russia. It is time for the West to reach more actively out to ordinary Russians.

Andreas Umland is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv, and General Editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” published by ibidem Press in Stuttgart, and distributed outside Europe by Columbia University Press.

Source: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/russias-social-media-vs-kremlins-domestic-information-war

Russia’s favorite Western Russophile, Dr. Stephen Cohen, was recently interviewed on Russia Insider and made a remarkable statement.

Stephen Cohen: Not This Many Troops on Russia’s Border Since Hitler Attacked USSR

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/stephen-cohen-not-many-troops-russias-border-hitler-attacked-ussr/ri12954

Dear Dr. Cohen.  Four MILLION Axis soldiers invaded Russia in Operation Barbarossa in June 1941.

Talk about a vast overstatement, fear mongering and the gross abuse of numbers to make a point.  Dr. Cohen, your number is not only wrong, it’s wrong by several orders of magnitude.

I was stationed in then West Germany in the 1980s, during the Cold War. We had approximately five US Army divisions stationed in West Germany to counter a Soviet and East German invasion. Please see the illustration to the left.  Those two bigger patches, that look like the Chrysler symbol (Fifth Corps)  and the one with a Roman Number VII inside the heptagram (Seventh Corps), are Corp headquarters, under which the five Divisions worked. The horsey-looking patch and the green French looking patch were cavalry regiments, meant to screen and detect a Soviet invasion. In the north was 3rd Armored Division and 8th Infantry Division. In the south was 3rd Infantry Divsion, 1st Armored Divsion, and 1st Infantry Division.

The British, of course, were north of the US sector and French forces were in France.

Dr. Cohen, I know you did not research your statement before you spouted off, you intended to make a sound bite for Russian television.  Not surprisingly the Western press did not pick up on your statement.  Good for them.

A current, 2016, response to your ill informed statement can be made using yet another picture.

As can plainly be seen in this picture is that not even one US Army Division is in Europe.  A Division, for your non-military information, Dr. Cohen, is approximately 15,000 soldiers.   There are a bunch of Brigades, and separate Brigades, but that still does not add up to the number of soldiers during the Cold War and certainly does not add up to four million Axis troops about to invade the Soviet Union.

Dr. Cohen, you’ve been called Putin’s mouthpiece in the West for years.  If I were him, I’d reign you in before you state something awfully stupid, like the Russian Armed Forces are the most powerful in the world.

Once again, Russia failed, Russia lies.

Wed Feb 24, 2016 7:40pm EST

BY JULIA HARTE AND DUSTIN VOLZ

The U.S. government, acknowledging its limited success in combating Islamic extremist messaging, is recruiting tech companies, community organizations and educational groups to take the lead in disrupting online radicalization.

The change in strategy, which took a step forward on Wednesday when the Justice Department convened a meeting with social media firms including Facebook Inc, Twitter and Alphabet Inc’s Google , comes despite what critics say is scant evidence on the effectiveness of such efforts.

The meeting was “a recognition that the government is ill-positioned and ill-equipped to counter ISIS online,” Seamus Hughes, deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, said after attending the event, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

The federal government is not best placed to counter extremist online recruitment efforts with messaging of its own, said George Selim, director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office that coordinates the government’s “countering violent extremism” (CVE) activities.

The goal now, he said, is to help “communities and young people to amplify their own messages.”

Those messages stem from so-called “counter-narrative” programs underway at schools and community groups that have varying degrees of government support, according to government officials and private sector experts.

Past campaigns by the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama to thwart extremist propaganda globally were widely regarded as too reliant on fear-based rhetoric and graphic imagery to be effective.

But whether the new joint effort with the private sector will fare better remains unclear, say experts in countering extremism.

The Obama administration has had an uneasy relationship with Silicon Valley in recent years. Twitter and other tech firms have been reticent to appear too cozy with authorities on how they manage their content, though most have cautiously drifted toward being more compliant over the past year.

Facebook last year partnered with British research group Demos to examine the impact of “counter-messaging” against hate speech in four European countries.

The study, released in October, concluded it was “extremely difficult to calculate with any degree of precision” whether such efforts have a real impact on long-term attitudes or offline behavior.

“You don’t necessarily know if something is going to change the way someone thinks offline, but we can measure whether somebody shares that content or interacts with it,” Monica Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, told Reuters.

FINDING CREDIBLE VOICES

One of the new programs, funded partly by Facebook and multiple government agencies, underwrites “peer-to-peer” (P2P) college courses that teach students to create their own anti-militant messaging.

Facebook declined to say how much it was investing in the program, though Selim described Facebook’s overall investment in CVE initiatives as “very significant.”

Fatemah Yousef, a student at Kuwait Gulf University for Science and Technology student, flew to Washington this month to join a Facebook event showcasing counter-messaging projects created by students.

Yousef, 23, exhibited a blog that encourages Kuwaiti students to denounce violent extremism on social media.

Another P2P finalist, a group from the University of Arkansas, produced a video showing graphic Islamic State executions set to heavy metal band Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.”

Half way through, the video switched to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” as captions urged viewers to “raise a flag” against extremism.

After viewing the video, a judge in the contest told the students that “probably about 90 to 95 percent” of the images in the video had been used in violent extremist recruitment videos.

“We’ve had this problem in other places where people try to instill fear in target audiences by showing all this mayhem, but it actually does the reverse with some,” said the judge, Quintan Wiktorowicz, a former White House director for community partnerships.

Another effort is underway at WORDE, a Muslim educational organization in Maryland, which last week launched a campaign that aims to refute Islamic State messages through catchy videos and live broadcasts of discussions about mainstream Islam.

WORDE plans to use software or survey questions to gauge the impact of its new counter-messaging campaign, said Hedieh Mirahmadi, the group’s president.

“Everybody creates stuff but doesn’t really care about whether it’s connected to the science of evaluations,” Mirahmadi told Reuters.

Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker told Reuters that he is working on two bills — one of which has already passed committee in the Senate — that would give DHS the authority to fund more college classes and research on how to best counter Islamic State’s slick propaganda campaigns.

“Government messages do not prove to have that type of virality,” Booker said.

The P2P program is the only private sector counter-messaging initiative that acknowledges receiving training from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but a senior FBI official said the agency provides information to other non-governmental groups whose CVE-related work may include counter-messaging.

Some efforts avoid federal funding altogether.

Mohamed Magid, a Virginia imam who has counseled several youth targeted by Islamic State recruiters, leads an Islamic foundation soliciting donations to create a 24/7 online operation that would answer each Islamic State video with peaceful messages.

“If we say this is a government thing, it might not have legitimacy,” Magid said. “We’re challenging the Muslim community to say, on this, yourself, respond to the challenge.”

(Reporting by Julia Harte and Dustin Volz. Editing by Jonathan Weber and Stuart Grudgings.)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-internet-militants-countermessaging-idUSKCN0VY01O

Protests in Moscow and in the late opposition leader’s home town showed unprecedented public anger at Russia’s president.MOSCOW—If Boris Nemtsov could see people marching in his memory in dozens of Russian cities, he would smile his huge smile, make one of his saucy jokes, and laugh. Since Nemtsov was killed in Moscow one year ago today, his smile has became an icon, and the memory of his passionate struggle for Russia’s freedom has inspired even those who never gave much thought to Nemtsov when he was alive.

MOSCOW—If Boris Nemtsov could see people marching in his memory in dozens of Russian cities, he would smile his huge smile, make one of his saucy jokes, and laugh. Since Nemtsov was killed in Moscow one year ago today, his smile has became an icon, and the memory of his passionate struggle for Russia’s freedom has inspired even those who never gave much thought to Nemtsov when he was alive. Boris Nemtsov’ s ghost is rising in Russia.

Boris Nemtsov’ s ghost is rising in Russia. A year ago many people were afraid to talk about their memories of Nemtsov’s democratic reforms and his reports about corruption among Russia’s elite. Today people are joining the memorial movement for the murdered politician all across the country.

A year ago many people were afraid to talk about their memories of Nemtsov’s democratic reforms and his reports about corruption among Russia’s elite. Today people are joining the memorial movement for the murdered politician all across the country.

One year ago tonight, the tall, handsome, charismatic Russian opposition leader was walking with his girlfriend across Moskvoretsky Bridge by the Kremlin wall. When he served inside the Kremlin as vice prime minister in the 1990s, and then during more than a decade, during his long struggle in the opposition, Nemtsov always loved to walk. He loved to be around people in public places. Openness and freedom were his passion.
Nemtsov’s assassins arrived that night by car and shot the 55-year-old politician in the back.Throughout this last year, people have brought roses to the place where the body of their favorite leader fell. Every day the flowers would be cleared away by the authorities, but in the morning they would be there again. Many people now call the site Nemtsov Bridge.

Throughout this last year, people have brought roses to the place where the body of their favorite leader fell. Every day the flowers would be cleared away by the authorities, but in the morning they would be there again. Many people now call the site Nemtsov Bridge.
On Saturday tens of thousands of Russians walked across the center of Moscow in Nemtsov’s memory. Many participants put the blame for the assassination on Russian President Vladimir Putin.“Putin killed Nemtsov! Putin should go on trial!” they shouted. Some carried banners featuring President Putin next to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov smiling happily. “Accomplices!” they read.

“Putin killed Nemtsov! Putin should go on trial!” they shouted. Some carried banners featuring President Putin next to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov smiling happily.“Accomplices!” they read.

“Accomplices!” they read.People came out even in Nizhny Novgorod, Nemtsov’s home city, where authorities had tried at first to ban the march. Over 2,000 people gathered on Porovka Street at 3 p.m. waving the flags of the opposition PARNAS and Yaboloko parties. Many could not believe their eyes and ears, as criticism of President Putin grew especially sharp.

People came out even in Nizhny Novgorod, Nemtsov’s home city, where authorities had tried at first to ban the march. Over 2,000 people gathered on Porovka Street at 3 p.m. waving the flags of the opposition PARNAS and Yaboloko parties. Many could not believe their eyes and ears, as criticism of President Putin grew especially sharp.
Amazingly, the city’s mayor, Ivan Karnilin, joined the anti-Putin memorial. Together with activists he marched with a long banner that said: “We’ll never forget! We’ll never forgive!” A recording of Nemtsov’s voice played over loudspeakers in the city center, shouting, “Putin is a thief!” Karnilin, is the first Russian mayor to come out like this. “I knew Boris Nemtsov, worked with him in 1994-1997,” Karnilin told the independent TV channel Rain. “He carried out lots of reforms, opened this city for foreigners, organized the first democratic elections; he brought investments to town, opened an international airport. I came to pay my tribute to Nemtsov’s memory.”

Karnilin, is the first Russian mayor to come out like this. “I knew Boris Nemtsov, worked with him in 1994-1997,” Karnilin told the independent TV channel Rain. “He carried out lots of reforms, opened this city for foreigners, organized the first democratic elections; he brought investments to town, opened an international airport. I came to pay my tribute to Nemtsov’s memory.”

Karnilin spoke before the crowd of about 2,000 Nizhny Novgorod activists, promising to name a street after Nemtsov.

One of the key organizers of the march, Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, told The Daily Beast, “We all had a strong sense that Nemtsov was with us, we could hear his voice and our mayor was with us today, demonstrating real courage.”

One year ago nobody in Nizhny Novgorod could have imagined a street being named after Nemtsov. Why did authorities change their mind?

“We went to court against the ban, we made lists of activists who were ready to be detained and spend a few days in jail just to pay our tribute to Nemtsov,” Dmitritevsky said. “We were very stubborn.”

The Kremlin did not want the opposition to turn Nemtsov into a martyr. Police and interior minister soldiers were blocking roads all over Moscow’s center. Trucks full of uniformed officers parked on side streets. A couple of months ago Putin signed a law allowing the Federal Security Service (FSB) to open fire on crowds of activists without warnings. But people kept coming.

Ukrainian and Russian flags were flying together over the crowd.

It was a unique scene for today’s Russia, where the Kremlin almost never allows any anti-Putin rallies, and where any strong opposition voice is immediately condemned as someone pro-American, a traitor to Russia.

But that strategy has failed against Nemtsov’s ghost.

Walking along the boulevard, towards Sakharov Prospect, voices echoed through downtown Moscow: “Nemtsov is Russia’s hero!”

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/27/a-year-after-his-murder-the-specter-of-nemtsov-is-haunting-putin.html

“They will sentence me posthumously” – Nadiya Savchenko

23 years of imprisonment and nearly one thousand U.S. dollars in fines. It is the punishment the Russian prosecutors are seeking for Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko.

The final stage of the trial – the debates – started on Wednesday, March 2, in the Russian city of Donetsk in the Rostov region.

Ukrainian pilot’s powerful speech in Russian court: Full text

I’ll speak in Russian to save on a translator, a translator which, as I quite well understand, would be at my own expense. That said, according to human rights law, an interpreter ought to be provided free of charge.

Well, firstly, I want to apologize to the audience for my emotional behaviour. The fact is, it’s very difficult to listen to the same lies over and over again for six months and then hear them repeated all day long. Therefore, I couldn’t help reacting to the prosecutor’s speech like I did.

Now, regarding the debate. During this long and tedious six-month trial we learned that guilt was proven in the course of the judicial process. That guilt is of the Russian journalists [Savchenko is accused of involvement in the deaths of two Russian journalists]. They are guilty of lying and of providing false, distorted information regarding events in Ukraine, the world, and in Russia. They are to blame for neglecting their own security. If they had worn body armour, they would have survived. If they had not hung around where they shouldn’t have, they would have stayed alive.

Russian TV channels were also found guilty. Channels, their owners and their editors are guilty for sending their people – unprepared, unprotected – to their certain death, just for the sake of spreading pretty pictures and false information. They wanted to boost their ratings and made a quick buck. But they absolutely do not care about their journalists. They are the ones who are above all responsible for the deaths of Korneliuk and Voloshin [the two Russian journalists whose deaths Savchenko is accused of involvement in].

We watched here a video of Russia’s Channel 5, in which a reporter said Ukrainian media were lying and Korneliuk and Voloshiin fact were wearing helmets and body armour. But even in this very courtroom it has been proven they had neither helmets nor body armour. We can arrive at that conclusion that Russian TV channels are telling lies.

The guilt of Russian-backed separatist forces and Russian regular military troops has also been proven. They are guilty of killing Ukrainian people on our Ukrainian land. They are to blame for occupying Ukrainian lands. Let the Donbas’ so-called ‘peace-loving residents’, victims and separatists scream as loud as they can that it was only they who were are being killed by Ukraine’s armed forces. Even the video provided by Yegor Rossiysky [a Russian journalist] proved the opposite and showed separatists beating and killing Ukrainian prisoners of war.

This court also proved the FSB (Security Service) and Russia’s Investigative Committee guilty. They are to blame for kidnapping people. They are guilty of torturing people. The group of [Ukrainian prisoners being held in Russia] Sentsov, Karpyuk and Klykh were tortured. These services and committees are to blame for trying, bad-mouthing and accusing those they kidnap and torture. These services and committees forge expert findings, and this was proved.

My fabricated ‘case’ – 40 volumes of gibberish – testifies to this. During the trial, the prosecutor and Russian judges were also found guilty. During two years of my imprisonment and my tribulations here, I found out that those people had neither honour nor conscience, nor do they abide by laws. They absolutely do not care about international laws or human rights, they are instructed by the Kremlin, and they are committed to fulfilling this ‘state order’.

The trial proves the guilt of Russian authorities; they are to blame for seizing Ukrainian lands, capturing Crimea and starting a war in the Donbas region. They are to blame for trying to establish – through their foul undeclared wars all over the world – a totalitarian regime dominated by Russia.

They creep everywhere and kill people through genocide. We could observe the same practice in Chechnya, and Abkhazia. Now we are observing this in Ukraine, Dagestan, Syria. Everywhere, the Russian state’s policies and interests are above people’s lives, especially the lives of indigenous populations coming from the lands, which correspond to Russia’s national interests. And so the Russian authorities are guilty.

I am the only person the court failed to find guilty. I am an officer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I had every right to defend my land, I was fulfilling my duty. You do not judge veterans of World War II, and for the same reason you do not judge your own troops – but they also killed many people while defending their country.

You have no right to judge me. Considering my high self-assessment and examination results, the prosecutor’s office nonetheless dared to make such a statement here. That’s why I want to say – the more I meet these effeminate men, like prosecutors here, the higher grows my self-esteem as that of a woman, of a soldier and of a human being… Well, let’s go back to the case.

I do not know how long this ‘performance’ will take, but I want to say: if, again, the verdict debate take three weeks (as prosecutors requested once), I will immediately resort to defence tools. If the court takes more than two weeks to issue a verdict (which has already been dictated from above and recorded), I will go on a ‘dry’ hunger strike from tomorrow, and they will sentence me posthumously, ‘in absentia’.

I think it is pointless waiting for a POW exchange. If you want to find a political solution to this case and swap your two Russian Spetznaz [special forces] officers for one innocent person, it’s too unjust. You should have swapped your Spetznaz guys for [Ukrainian political prisoners] Sentsov and Kolchenko. I’m not a bargaining chip, I am an innocent person, and my guilt has not been and cannot be proven. Therefore, I will stand no POW exchange, no bargaining deal, and no procrastination.

And here is the most crucial thing. Let prosecutors sentence me to as many years in prison, as they wish. Not a day longer, not a day shorter. All 23 years. Do not issue a longer or shorter jail sentence for me – so they won’t make any further appeals or delay the procedure. You have proved that you are utterly impotent. You have already proved that Russia can disgrace itself, as exemplified in my case.

You have never defeated me and will never do it! Well, let’s finish it all as soon as possible, I will not wait any longer. It was not you who have given me life, so you can’t own it – and you can’t decide upon my fate. If the verdict takes more than two weeks, I will not wait for it. That’s all I want to say”.

Source: http://uatoday.tv/politics/112-nadiya-savchenko-s-emotional-speech-in-russian-court-603118.html

At last, a multi-pronged, multi-faceted approach to Russia.

The third option includes a multiple layered approach to information warfare against Russia.

Too often articles, pundits, talking heads, political leaders and writers offer a simplistic approach to countering, even fighting, Russian Information Warfare.  If we, the West, do not have a similarly complex Information Warfare strategy, our efforts will be less than meaningful and will likely prove ineffective to the extreme.

This article offers only a few options, but at least the authors seem to understand the complexity of the battle in the information environment.

Europe faces a migration crisis unlike ever before in history, of an exceptional magnitude and character. Migration and jihadism are used as weapons of blackmail not just by an adversarial Russia but a supposed ally in Turkey, and partners in East Europe.

By Mitchell Blatt and Sumantra Maitra*

For those who make a career out of observing and analyzing international relations, the Munich security conference is a surreal experience. A lot changed since the passive aggressive rupture in 2007 by Vladimir Putin, in front of a stunned and a little dismissive European audience, and the world has come a long way since then. Russia pummeled Georgia, annexed Crimea, divided Ukraine, andintervened in Syria.

Europe faces a migration crisis unlike ever before in history, of an exceptional magnitude and character. Migration and jihadism are used as weapons of blackmail not just by an adversarial Russia but a supposed ally in Turkey, and partners in East Europe. The liberal world order has crashed, and history has returned with a vengeance. Not everything has changed, of course… Stop the War, Code Pink and Global Research Canada still blames Western imperialism. Ed Snowden and Glenn Greenwald still think intelligence-gathering and espionage in times of war are totally outdated and provocative policies, a view shared (rhetorically, at least) by Ted Cruz, for some reason. Donald Trump proudly touts his support from Putin and pledges to buddy up to him in return, while Trump’s supporters comment on Facebook that at least they think an autocratic tyrant who is behind the deaths of dissidents is better than President Obama. Trump defended him, on the grounds that, “the U.S. kills people, too,” and “there’s no evidence” he has killed a journalist, but it doesn’t matter, because even if he did start shooting people on Fifth Avenue, they would still support him. Mitt Romney was mocked in 2012 for stating that Russia was America’s“biggest enemy.” Obama painted him as an out-of-touch old hawk who didn’t know the Cold War ended decades ago. Just this February, Russian PM Dimitry Medvedev, said, “We are in a new Cold War.”

So are we or are we not in a new cold war? And if we are, how big is Putin’s Russia a threat to the West, and how to deal with it?

Well…the question itself is complicated, and the key is in the wording. While news outlets that printed Medvedev’s quote used capital letters for “Cold War,” as if it were a proper noun, it is indisputable that we are in a cold war—not like the one between America and Russia, but a geo-political battle of a different scale. No matter how much German foreign minister tries to Germansplain Medvedev’s remarks, there is no questioning that is true. Russia is a shadow of the former Soviet self and simply lacks the capability for global political, military, economic and ideological confrontation. However, that doesn’t make it any less important, because unlike last time, the West is not united. Many in Western Europe and the U.S. and Canada are complacent and accommodating this time around. But for the Baltic countries and Ukraine, they are in big trouble, and they know it.

To deal with this new development, we need to understand and more importantly accept that we’re in a geo-political conflict. Here’s how. 

Firstly, West must admit that we are in one era of massive conflict and not try to play word salad. To accept the fact that there is no easy way out, and it is not going to end anytime soon. The enemy gets a vote, and if the Kremlin decides we’re in a Cold war, we’re in one…regardless of whether we want or not.

Second, West must bolster defense and force Europe to pay for their security, intelligence, surveillance and monitoring and border policing. It is not the job of British and American taxpayers to pay for the security of East Europe, when they don’t even keep up with NATO demands to spend 2 percent of their GDP on their own security and instead have lavish populist social welfare programs. If they are afraid of Russia, they should take the lead to stop it.

Third, the West needs to bolster their engagement in PR/propaganda in in countering the Kremlin’s propaganda. Russia is doing it, and unilateral disarmament won’t work. They have Russia Today and Sputnik putting their message out to the West and funding “anti-war” groups and have influenced much Western isolationist opinion. The “leave Syria to Russia” crowd certainly buys into their arguments. It’s time to identify Western activists and “useful idiots,” along with active Russian agents, who spread propaganda on Facebook and Twitter and comments boards and forums. Reach out to misinformed masses who innocently buy into these narratives, with structured and semi structured interviews and surveys, to find out what’s bothering them, and why they believe Kremlin more than their own government or news sources from their country.

Fourth, stop the migrant flow by any means. The disordered attempt to accept millions of migrants who came illegally on boats all at once and spread across Europe with no oversight has been a colossal failure. The neo-liberal order has failed, and illegal immigration is a threat. From ISIS sleeper cells, to sex starved uneducated job seekers from places like Morocco and Pakistan and Senegal and Ivory Coast—places that aren’t even at war and don’t have refugees—it is destroying social cohesion, and denigrating the genuine refugees and migrants. Researchers and academics who migrated to Europe in legal ways, and are helping and contributing in research or other jobs for their host countries, are now being targeted because European governments cannot control their public places or people. Migration is also weaponized by Russia. If Europe accepts migrants then Russia will be able to exploit nativist backlash and right-wing groups, which will eventually lead to catastrophic disintegration of a single Europe. These right-wing groups, like the Nationalist Front, UKIP, and Greek New Dawn, are already promoting Russia’s arguments in their home countries.

It is in no one’s interest that a new Cold war is waged. However, sadly, sometimes we don’t have a choice. And, walking out is not an option.

Joint editorial by Mitchell Blatt and Sumantra Maitra, editors of Bombs and Dollars. 

*Mitchell Blatt moved to China in 2012, and since then he has traveled and written about politics and culture throughout Asia. A writer and journalist, based in China, he is the lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong guidebook and a contributor to outlets including The Federalist, China.org.cn, The Daily Caller, and Vagabond Journey. Fluent in Chinese, he has lived and traveled in Asia for three years, blogging about his travels at ChinaTravelWriter.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @MitchBlatt.

Source:
This article was published by Bombs and Dollars

Source: http://www.eurasiareview.com/05032016-new-cold-war-and-policies-to-confront-russia-oped/

Reminiscing back to my Special Forces days, we had an especially distasteful description for anyone prone to committing multiple errors.

Switching thumbs.  The thumb that was in their mouth is  inserted into their anus, and vice versa.

RT, once again, distastefully attempts to obfuscate, distract, detract, and disprove accusations against Russia. Not only does the writer introduce spurious content, dive deeply into the cesspool of conspiracy theories, and ineffectually attack the credibility of the experts who rightfully expose Russia’s and especially RT’s ineptness, but they have unwittingly contributed to the immense file of examples of their bizarre lack of journalistic integrity. Publishing this offal rightly illustrates how bad RT really is.

Of note, the author labels one person as obsessed, whereas the cited article does not even remotely imply that. The accusation is made, however, in an attempt to discredit anybody associated with attempts to discover what happened to MH370. Never mind the facts, they just fling accusations.  They hope at least one of their accusations sticks.

Multiple sources are cited to disprove Bellingcat and Elliot Higgins.  The sources all appear to be Russian shills or “useful idiots”.

RT is nothing but a manufactured propaganda outlet, Robert Bridge is one of their useful idiots.

Fasten your seatbelts, Putin conspiracy theories taking off

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist based in Moscow, Russia. His articles have been featured in many publications, including Russia in Global Affairs, The Moscow Times, Russia Insider and Rethinking Russia. Bridge is the author of the book on corporate power, “Midnight in the American Empire”, which was released in 2013.

Published time: 5 Mar, 2016 16:01

Edited time: 5 Mar, 2016 17:45

A former CNN ‘aviation expert’ has teamed up with a British ‘sleuth’ outfit to accuse Vladimir Putin of masterminding the ‘hijacking’ of Malaysian Air Flight MH370, as well as Flight MH17, which went down in Eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

Jeff Wise, the very same CNN expert who led the world on a global goose chase to find Malaysian Flight MH370, now wants the world to believe President Putin is personally responsible for both Malaysian Air disasters.

For those who missed Wise and CNN’s non-stop marathon coverage of Flight MH370, which went missing on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board, every conceivable explanation was offered up for public consumption.

With the disappeared plane mystery grinding into its second week, Wise participated in a CNN panel discussion that could have been scripted by David Lynch for a Lost Highway segment.

During that episode, CNN host Don Lemon asked without a hint of irony if it would be “preposterous” to suggest that a black hole was responsible for the disappearance of MH370. Yes, very preposterous, but no matter. Mary Shapiro, former Inspector General of the US Dept. of Transportation, was happy to remind Lemon in strained yet patient teacher-speak that a “small black hole would suck in our entire universe, so we know it’s not that…”

Richard Quest, not to be outdone by a Lemon, raised the sanity stakes when he wondered – out loud for all to hear – why psychics with crystal balls hadn’t been allowed to participate in the search and rescue mission.

“It sounds preposterous but [psychics] have been used before,” said Quest, whose remark attracted mostly blank stares and the sound of chirping crickets.

Veteran television interviewer, Larry King, ridiculed his former employer for its reporting on MH370, which he very diplomatically labeled “abysmal.”

“Since day two, they’ve advanced nothing in that story but conjecture. It was breaking supposition, breaking speculation. It was never breaking news,” King said in an interview on The Rubin Report.

Indeed, if the media industry had award ceremonies for the most insane theories involving not just one Malaysian aircraft, but two, then Jeff Wise and his friends at Bellingcat would certainly be hauling home gold-plated trophies.

After describing Russia as a “paranoid fantasist’s dream” (does that make Wise a ‘paranoid fantasist?’), Wise forwarded information that he thought would incriminate the Kremlin in the MH370 mystery.

Reveling in ‘revelations’ that could have been lifted from Wikipedia, Wise noted that Russia is equipped with “technically advanced satellite, avionics, and aircraft-manufacturing industries.” And if that amazing feat of investigative journalism fails to convince you that Putin pirated the airliner to Kazakhstan, well then this next morsel of information certainly will: There were three Russians on board the ill-fated flight [Gasp]!

Who could have guessed in their wildest dreams that Russians occasionally convey themselves by means of air travel, and sometimes in gangs of three!

“Two of them reportedly had Ukrainian passports from Odessa and… might have been secret agents,” Wise surmised, as mentioned by Business Insider. Then, after finding photos of the ethnic Russians online, Wise behaved no better than a bouncer at a corner bar, proclaiming they looked like the type that would “battle Liam Neeson in midair.”

Some might call that comment bizarre, possibly even outright racist. Not living up to the family name, Wise fingered three Russians out of a line-up of 227 passengers from 15 different nations as the most likely suspects to overpower the aircraft. Talk about narrowing things down.

And what made Wise think fated flight MH370 was heading for Kazakhstan (which, incidentally, is not part of Russia, which further complicates matters)? Well, because the last blip received from the wayward aircraft placed it “somewhere” in one of two vast corridors stretching from northern Thailand to Kazakhstan, or a southern one going from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean. In other words, an area about 150 times the size of the Sahara Desert.

So out of the fantastic number of possibilities, Wise postulates the theory that the Russian-passengers-turned-hijackers broke into the aircraft’s control room and “spoofed” the plane’s navigation system to make it appear like it flew in another direction, but actually headed to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, as the Daily Mail reported.

When asked why Putin would want to steal a passenger plane when Russia already has its own shiny fleet, Wise found himself fresh out of material: “I had no idea.”

But that didn’t stop him from offering up some zany zingers anyways in an article for New York Magazine: “Maybe there was something strategically crucial in the hold, or maybe [Putin] wanted the plane to show up unexpectedly somewhere someday, packed with explosives. There’s no way to know.”

 

How an American Obsessed With the MH370 Case May Have a Found a Piece of the Missing Plane https://t.co/x2n8OQ3hJ6

— Jeff Wise (@ManvBrain) March 3, 2016

Come again? Excuse me, but when has there ever been something “strategically crucial in the &%$# hold” of a commercial airliner, and when has Russia ever been charged with sending a passenger jet “packed with explosives”anywhere?!

Aside from some sort of thinly veiled contempt for Russia, what could have made Wise compose such an awful work of fiction? The answer, it seems, appeared in the very next paragraph.

In a foggy stream of semi-consciousness, Wise suddenly sounds like he had just checked into a 12-step rehab clinic for unemployed missing plane experts: “The more I discovered, the more coherent the story seemed to me. I found a peculiar euphoria in thinking about my theory, which I thought about all the time. One of the diagnostic questions used to determine whether you’re an alcoholic is whether your drinking has interfered with your work.”

Suddenly, I was wishing Wise would stop unloading dirty laundry into my lap. But he didn’t, and frankly it was getting embarrassing.

“By that measure, I definitely had a problem. Once the CNN checks stopped coming, I entered a long period of intense activity that earned me not a cent.”

It is unclear if Wise is attempting to employ alcoholism as a metaphor to describe his giddy addictiveness for blaming Russia for air tragedies, but it would have been more prudent – all things considered – had he said his ‘work has interfered with his drinking.’ Whatever the case may be, we know one thing for sure, Wise was feeling the pinch since the “CNN checks stopped coming.” That kernel of information speaks volumes.

Could this have been the real reason that his spouse’s eyes would “glaze over at dinner” when the subject of MH370 was chewed over. Was she expressing some feminine angst over her husband’s work, and especially now that he was hanging around town with “a group of borderline-obsessive amateur aviation sleuths,” as he described these Dostoyevsky-type characters in the opening line of his New York Magazine piece?

Later, Wise provided information about his working relationship with CNN that almost sounds like a confession obtained via brutal police interrogation: “We were paid by the week, with the length of our contracts dependent on how long the story seemed likely to play out. The first couple were seven-day, the next few were 14-day, and the last one was a month. We’d appear solo, or in pairs, or in larger groups for panel discussions—whatever it took to vary the rhythm of perpetual chatter.”

https://www.rt.com/news/334358-dutch-question-mh17-investigation/video/

Now let me get this straight. Wise and his fellow guests were “paid by the week, with the length of our contracts dependent on how long the story seemed likely to play out,” as he confesses. Thus, it would behoove the ‘experts’ to keep the ball bouncing – and those CNN checks arriving – for as long as possible, right?

Thus, dragging Russia into the daily debate debacle was a perfect way to keep those checks and chatter rolling.

MH17: Wise teams up with Bellingcat for maximum chatter

So now we can see the bad influence those “border-line obsessive amateur aviation sleuths” were having on our unemployed CNN ‘expert.’

Citing the craftiwork of one Eliot Higgins, a self-taught British blogger who runs Bellingcat, a ‘citizen journalist’ site, Jeff Wise is now peddling the idea that Putin’s Russia was responsible for shooting down Malaysian Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, killing 283 passengers and crew on board. You know, because it was the most logical thing Russia could have done.

 

Separatist Convoy Linked to MH17 Buk Transport via @bellingcat https://t.co/nIqnfovBIP #PutinAtWar

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) March 4, 2016

Cui bono? Certainly not Russia.

As Ulson Gunnar patiently explained in New Eastern outlook: “From the moment the airliner was shot down, the US, NATO and Ukraine have used the incident to indict Russia and more specifically, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the court of public opinion. It has used legal maneuvering and its well-oiled press to turn the investigation of the disaster into a witchhunt with an inevitable outcome already eagerly determined to implicate Russia.

Along similar veins, Higgins and company goes to conspicuous extremes to ‘prove’ that particular state actors – and most notably those who don’t heed the commands of the US and NATO – have some sort of self-destructive tendency to engage in activities that go directly against their best interests.

Case in point. The August 2013 Syrian gas attacks in opposition-controlled areas on the outskirts of Damascus amid clashes between government and rebel forces. Washington, ever on the prowl for more regime-change prey in the region, was quick to blame the tragedy on President Bashar Assad. But Assad, who holds a degree from a medical school in the United Kingdom, did not maintain his grip on power for 16 years by being a dummy. So he certainly got the message loud and clear when Barack Obama declared that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross the “red-line,” thus provoking a US military response (and we all know how those things end).

Now ask yourself this question: Would Dr. Assad really go ahead and do the very thing that would invite a vampire into his home? Highly unlikely. In fact, Obama’s warning most likely encouraged the Syrian opposition – or those sympathetic to their cause – to carry out the attack, knowing full well that the Syrian government would be blamed. This is not rocket science.

Carla Del Ponte, a leading member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, agrees. She said her team’s numerous interviews with witnesses and victims on the ground in Syria following the attack indicated there were“strong, concrete suspicions” that the opposition was responsible for the use of the nerve gas sarin against civilians.

As far as the Syrian government being responsible for the attack, Del Ponte stated emphatically: “We have no indication at all that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons.”

Back to Bellingcat. These Wise-endorsed guys chose to ignore these comprehensive on-site investigations, preferring to pontificate on the subject from a great distance, saying the “complexities of manufacturing sarin” and the types of rockets used to deliver the gas precluded the possibility that the Syrian rebels – with known links to terrorist groups as well as shady state players (like Turkey) – carried out the attacks.

So now Mr. Higgins has waded waist-deep into the MH17 mess, sloshing around with an assortment of social media posts, Tweets and blurry photographs to prove his case that Putin’s Russia had some sort of plausible reason for targeting a Malaysian Airline’s commercial aircraft.

 

#MH17 – Zaroshchens’ke Revisited: Almaz-Antey’s New Launch Areas https://t.co/HTd5nZdmaU

— bellingcat (@bellingcat) February 29, 2016

I personally spent many tedious hours bouncing around in various Russian vehicles, radios blaring, getting vertigo watching Bellingcat’s collection of dashcam videos, as well as Instagram photos and other social media postings, and the result – if I may spoil the plot – was completely unconvincing.

First, a personal note: It is rather unbelievable that these ‘citizen investigative journalists’ think it somehow strange that Russian military convoys – some of them certainly containing BUK anti-aircraft missiles – were bumping around the Russian-Ukrainian border at the very same time Ukraine was in the midst of a national crackup.

Please imagine had a similar political crisis been playing out in Mexico, for example, and a nuclear-armed foreign country (Russia?) was antagonizing the situation on the ground in Mexico City, at the same time vilifying Washington – much the same way that US Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland were doing in downtown Kiev as they agitated the crowdagainst Russia as the protests were just beginning.

Would it really surprise anybody to see an endless convoy of US military vehicles racing towards the Mexican border with a head of steam – just in case?

And then there’s Bellingcat’s painfully pretentious bias against Russia, which is immediately discerned in the first footnote of their report, entitled “Zaroshchens’ke Revisited,” which reads: “Instead of using ‘pro-Russian separatists’ or a similar formulation, the terms ‘Russia’ or ‘Russian troops’ are used in this report…” That is a very ugly and unfortunate footnote, and only serves to tell the reader everything they need to know about this group.

In the wild world of Bellingcat, even rebels of ethnic Russian origin who have taken up arms against pro-Kiev forces are denied their legal status as legitimate Ukrainian citizens. This sort of partisanship stains the work of this organization and further compromises its dubious analysis.

Bellingcat’s ‘proof’ Russians shot down MH17

Although it would be impossible to mention every flaw in the Bellingcat report, a few examples can demonstrate the general approach. For example, after the Russian Ministry of Defense released satellite evidence clearly demonstrating that the Ukrainian military had BUK anti-aircraft missile launchers in the village Zaroshchens’ke on July 17, Bellingcat had nothing concrete to refute the evidence aside from brief footage of a BBC interview with a single elderly villager, and a laughable comment via Twitter by Dutch reporter Rudy Bouma that provided no names of the ‘witnesses’ nor a link to a report.

 

We went to #Zaroshchenskoye this weekend: villagers didn't witness #Buk-launch previous to crash #MH17 & say Ukrainian army was 4-6km out.

— rudy bouma (@rudybouma) October 13, 2015

Another example. Bellingcat attempts to prove that ‘Russian troops’ – again, as they prefer to call the Ukrainian rebels – had control of the village of Shaposhnykove on July 17. This is crucial to their argument since they assert the BUK missile that brought down MH17 was fired from this area under ‘Russian control.’

The basis for this assertion is that the area had purportedly come under attack six days after the air tragedy – June 23 – by pro-Kiev forces. Since not even the villagers could say who was firing at them, it is highly doubtful Bellingcat is any more clued up on the matter. Furthermore, pro-Kiev soldiers attacking the village six days after Flight MH17 went down tells us nothing; they may simply have been attempting to retake the territory after having been forced out by the military of the self-proclaimed republics in Eastern Ukraine.

Nor does Bellingcat mention a concluding statement from a BBC reporter, cellphone in hand, that negates their original argument: “I just got off the phone with a spokesman with the Ukrainian anti-terrorist operation and he says they didn’t shell the village. But fighting is getting worse and so is the information war that makes it so hard for us to get the facts.”

Bellingcat continues the speculation game as it points to “circumstantial evidence” that the village was under “Russian control” at the time of the downing of MH17. Why? Because the abovementioned BBC journalist is accompanied by a person “not coming from the village” and serves as “a local coordinator between the Russian troops and population of the village.”

Since no polite invitation was extended to the BBC journalist to view the pro-Kiev BUK launch site, Bellingcat interprets this to mean that such a launch site never existed.

“Tellingly, none of the locals or militiamen used the opportunity to show a Western journalist the traces of the Ukrainian Buks claimed by the Russian MoD to be just north of Shaposhnykove on 17 July 2014 or even the launch site of the missile in the area.”

But would the BBC reporter risk a 4-kilometer trip to the north of Shaposhnykove while the area was coming under rocket fire?

In any case, no solid, irrefutable evidence is presented, just a lot of heated speculation based on hearsay and Bellincat preconceived notions.

That pretty much sums up the way Bellingcat carries out its investigative work. Starting with the basic premise that Russia is to blame – no matter what the facts may say to the contrary – the group works backwards using an array of social media postings, maps and videos in order to arrive at its predetermined conclusions.

Read more

Official letter on MH17 investigation by top Russian aviation official Oleg Storchevoy

Although the product appears cutting edge at times, every other line betrays an inherent desire to pin the blame on Russia – no matter what the facts are. This eventually forces Bellingcat into a corner with nothing left but outlandish claims and groundless conclusions that no amount of social media buzz can ameliorate.

After all, facts are facts and there is simply no eluding them. But for Jeff Wise and Elliot Higgins, facts are mere play things that they toss around with gleeful abandon. Yet such groundless accusations can have tremendous repercussions in the world of reality.

Had Wise and Higgins really been interested in presenting an unbiased case against Russia, they could have started by asking some simple questions that even the Dutch parliament is now asking: Where is the satellite data that the United States claims that it has from July 17, 2014? Why was Russia’s satellite data ignored by the Joint Investigative Team (JIT) – comprised of the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine – investigating the crash of MH17? Why did Ukrainian air traffic controllers direct the Malaysian flight above a conflict zone, while earlier flights were circumvented? Why were Ukraine’s primary radar systems not operating on the day of the catastrophe? Why has Malaysia, a significant participant in the tragedy – been left out of the JIT? Finally, why was Ukraine permitted a seat at the JIT?

As Gunnar emphasizes, Kiev is “a possible suspect in the investigation,” as it had “confirmed to possess weapons capable of reaching the altitude MH17 was flying at when it was allegedly hit” – so Ukraine’s “inclusion in JIT represents a monumental conflict of interest.”

Tellingly, on such monumental questions, Wise and Higgins are largely silent, and that speaks more about their biased attitude towards Russia than any real desire they may have for shedding light on two Malaysia Airlines crashes, one of which has had deleterious consequences for Russia-Western relations and world peace.

That’s a fact no dashcam video or Tweet can dispel.

@Robert_Bridge

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Source: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/334649-mh17-conspiracy-theories-putin/

CROONING TO THE MASSES

03.07.16 12:03 AM ET

By ANNA NEMTSOVA

Who knew the Soviet Union’s great reformer, who just turned 85, could sing? Watch a (surprisingly smooth) sampling of his talent.

MOSCOW — We did not know that the man who changed the world could also sing. At Mikhail Gorbachev’s 85th birthday party last week, many jaws dropped in surprise as he crooned of love and peace.

Russians had no idea that their former president and the great reformer of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1986 to 1991, who brought the wind of freedom into the country 30 years ago, could also intone romantic ballads. But that was not the only surprise.

At his gala party on Wednesday, Gorbachev was singing to the accompaniment of a dissident musician, rock star Andrei Makarevich. And that in itself was a political statement: over the last two years authorities have cancelled Makarevich’s concerts all across the country because of the musician’s support for Ukraine.

There might even be an album in the offing, and if the sample we hear is any indication, then it will be easy listening for everybody but the Kremlin.

From 1986 to 1991 as General Secretary of the Communist Party and the first elected president of the USSR, Gorbachev conducted major democratic reforms, known as Perestroika, in a final effort to save the Soviet Union. That proved impossible, and in 1991 the USSR ceased to be.

The potential for Russia’s future was, and should have remained, a bright one. But today, there is nostalgia for the past built on fears for the present and the future, many of them generated by the present government’s statements and actions. Indeed, the Putin government’s heavy hand has many people afraid.

So, as we discovered at his party and in an exclusive interview, the aged Gorbachev charms the public with his sentimental songs, even as he levels pointed criticism at the Kremlin, calling on people to fight against the fear-mongering and resist the suppression of their freedoms.

“Fear is very bad and very dangerous,” Gorbachev told The Daily Beast. “When people are scared of the political power, things might turn out in the worst way. We need Glasnost [Gorbachev’s term for freedom of speech]. We need dialogue between society and those in power, especially dialogue about the most acute issues. I keep saying: We should not be afraid of our people.”

Russians who remember their history, recall one specific incident as an emotional turning point. In December 1986 Soviet leader Gorbachev personally called exiled political dissident Andrei Sakharov in Gorky, an industrial city on the Volga river that was closed to foreigners, and let the academic and his wife, Elena Bonner, know that they could come back home to Moscow.

The following year, Gorbachev ordered amnesty for all political prisoners, and hundreds of people were freed. “He was not afraid of the dissidents,” author and human rights defender Zoya Svetova told The Daily Beast. “Gorbachev’s voice, his broad personality is important now; he is known as the leader, who, unlike today’s president, was never grabbing at his chair to keep his power.” (Both of Svetova’s parents were freed from the Gulag in 1987 thanks to Gorbachev.)

The cult of personality was something that Gorbachev always despised. Instead of a portrait of Vladimir Putin, a common feature in most state offices today, Gorbachev’s has a big portrait of his wife, Raisa, on the wall over his desk. In 1999, Gorbachev lost Raisa to cancer; but it is clear in conversation, and indeed in his songs, that he still cherishes her memory.

Gorbachev was always a big fan of good jokes and new, daring ideas, and at his party he surrounded himself with independent journalists, liberal politicians, and artists.
“In the last two years of economic crises and increasing tensions with the West, Mikhail Sergeevich [Gorbachev] has been growing more concerned about Russia’s future,” says Pavel Palazhchenko, who has worked as Gorbachev’s aide and interpreter for 31 years. “That is why his critical statements are heard more and more often. He says publicly that the only way for Russia to recover is to restore true democracy.”
Gorbachev proudly considers himself the leader of Russian anti-Stalinists.

In his interview with The Daily Beast, Gorbachev talked about the arrest of his own grandfather during the tyranny of Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Party from 1922 to 1952, and about the thousands of innocent victims executed in those times.

“To understand why we should not allow the return of Stalinism, we need to look back at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party,” said Gorbachev. At that crucial meeting in 1956, four years after Stalin’s death, then First Secretary Nikita Kruschev denounced his predecessor’s cult of personality.

“In my life I happened to stand on the peak of the system and once again revive the work of that congress,” said Gorbachev. “Freedom of speech was the most important aspect. When we began working on our Perestroika policies we needed Glasnost very much, we needed democratic elections, the removal of [absolute] power from the government.”
Sadly, few believe that Gorbachev’s words of wisdom today can stop Russia’s slide back toward its Stalinist past. The Kremlin once again is promoting loyal-to-power journalism, putting pressure on the last few independent media outlets, persecuting political critics, and condemning them as enemies ruled from the West.

Not only is history repeating itself, the Stalinist cult, which Gorbachev’s Perestroika worked so hard to destroy, is creeping back into view all over the country: Stalin’s busts, Stalin memorials, and Stain museums have popped up in provincial towns one after another.
On Saturday, the anniversary of Stalin’s death, Muscovites covered the dictator’s grave with flowers. Last month, Stalinists in the town of Pskov installed a monument to the Soviet dictator not far from the Latvian border; and in spite of criticism by historians and dissidents who said the memorial is built on “the bones of millions of victims,” the bust stayed on its pedestal.

Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinskiy recently opened an exhibit of paintings by Stalin’s favorite artist, Alexander Gerasimov.

“Nobody in the Kremlin takes Gorbachev’s criticism seriously, since he cannot bring thousands to the streets,” Svetova told The Daily Beast. “The murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov could,” she added.

Perhaps he can’t lead mass rallies, but Gorbachev, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, remains the wisdom of Russia.

He cannot walk much these days, but his voice remains strong, his mind is clear as ever, and his heart is wide open to people. As Echo of Moscow radio pointed out in a morning show on Thursday, the day after the birthday party, if Gorbachev had had a dictator’s heart, and not the heart of a liberal, Russia could very well have the 85-year-old Gorbachev for its president today.

One of the show’s hosts, Olga Bychkova was a guest at the birthday festivities—and, when we talked, we came back to the music. “Even after knowing the president of the USSR for decades, I was shocked,” she said. “I had no idea he could sing! Or that he had such deep baritone full of love for life, of pure and sincere human feelings, something we do not hear much from officials these days.”

Gorbachev wants the Kremlin to make people feel that they are the masters of Russia.
“I hope that we will stick to our original Perestroika ideas and not invent some dubious projects that look more like somebody’s artificial plot, created by passionate desire to grab and possess,” said Gorbachev. “Only then we can say that we work together with our people, for our people.”

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/07/mikhail-gorbachev-s-hotfire-mix-tape.html?via=desktop&source=twitter

I am not a Russophobe, I am actually a Russophile.

When I was in the University, I studied Russian history and the Russian language. I was in ROTC at the time and I wanted to study our ‘enemy’, although I never told that to my professors.  I learned to appreciate, even like Russia, admire their architecture and was amazed at their wealth of natural resources – many of which were hidden beneath their frozen tundra.

When I studied the period in Russia after 1900 I began to become confused and had to work extra hard to wrap my head around everything that happened. I kept returning to one simple question: why?

Later, as a US Army officer stationed in West Germany, I had a defensive position very close to the East German border. There was no indoctrination to hate East Germans or Soviets, they were just our opposing force, until they might attack, then they were the enemy. There were no plans to attack into East Germany or the Soviet Union. I had the opportunity, six times, to visit East Berlin and drove the long corridor from Helmstedt to Berlin.  Our paperwork was double checked before leaving our American compound. The Soviet Russians seemingly gave our documents close scrutiny, although they were behind glass covered with paint (guard outside and a guard behind the glass). I heard that the Soviets weren’t paid much and appreciated gifts of cigarette packs, Playboy magazines and such, I always gave them something.  One time I returned from West Berlin and was so sick that my wife had to submit the documents. She got out and snapped off a spiffy salute to the Soviet guard, with her left hand!   Her bright, shining smile must have disarmed the Soviet guard, he let us pass.

I even had the opportunity to spend some one-on-one time in the Soviet War Memorial in East Berlin (shhhh, I broke the rules and dropped off my family at a restaurant).  When I walked into the museum there were no brochures in English. I walked in and a Soviet guard attached himself to me.  He couldn’t speak a word of English and my Russian was laughable. We tried German, French and Italian, nothing seemed to work, so we settled on grunting.  I recognized quite a few of the Soviet leaders, he would say their names. I especially loved seeing the Soviet equipment and weapons, I had trained on many of them during my Special Forces days.  Lo and behold, when I was leaving the Soviet War Memorial museum, there were a stack of brochures – in English!  I left, picked up my family and paid the $3 plus a $2 tip for a sumptuous feast. The hostess couldn’t curtsey enough in thanks!  This was in the late 1980s, the wall would come down only a few years later.

I traveled to Moscow, Russia in 2010, to give a speech on cyberwarfare at Lomonosov Moscow State University.  Our room at Moscow State University was right out of a Cold War thriller. The shower water was black when we first turned it on. The heater was stuck on “blast furnace”, we had to use the windows to cool it down. Every day I was consumed with work, we toured after the dinners were over. We saw Red Square, the Kremlin, GUM department store, the kiosks outside Red Square (which I understand are now torn down), Gorky Park, the Moscow Subway, the list goes on and on. We actually had to hunt to find a Russian restaurant, but I was bound and determined to try borscht – which was delicious.

Russian friends, I have a few. One was the CEO of a Russian company who spent time in prison for financial crimes. One worked for the Red Cross. One is a software engineer living outside Russia. One works at the Russian Foreign Ministry. Shortly after Russia consumed Crimea, the Red Cross friend became indignant at me for spreading lies about Russia. The software engineer and I competed in a Ukrainian discussion board on LinkedIn, we respected each other and because Facebook friends. The friend in Foreign Ministry ceased corresponding with me, I was never quite sure why. The former CEO and I remain friends.  His command of English is quite good and he’s always been straight-forward with me.  I have only two friends who have ever been in prison, he’s one. Collectively, my Russian friends are good people. I like every one of them, even though at least two accuse me of hating Russia.

Then I have my other ‘Russian’ friends.  One of my best friends is married to a Russian woman.  Another trust friend and colleague was born in Russia and lives in Scandinavia now, she’s truly an interesting person – to the max!  Lots more, these two are really worth mentioning.

…and then I have my Ukrainian friends. Too many to even start to mention but darn, do their perspectives vary!  I appreciate every word they type, believe me…

Bottom line, I really like Russia. Love? No way, Russia was colder than my first wife. Get that, my Russian friends, that’s a joke!

While I am not a Russophobe, I submit to you that most Americans are. Most Americans simply fear anyone and anyplace outside the US. They’re so, so, so…  different!  Frankly, the US and Europe make enough news that mundane Russian news doesn’t break into the top 100 very often. Putin, Crimea, Ukraine and Syria are they only things that seem to break onto the front page now and then, and it’s never good.

So.  From an American perspective, Russophobia is normal in the US only because Russia is different.  If Putin, Lavrov and gang just wouldn’t take so darn much delight in pissing off the rest of the world, Russia just might become likeable again.

</end lengthy editorial>

If Russian officials are to be believed, the reason people worry about what Russia might do next is because they suffer from Russophobia, an irrational fear of all things Russian.

In February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov assailed the “fashion of Russophobia in certain capitals” during a visit to Germany. Then Russia’s defense ministry accused General Philip Breedlove of Russophobia. The commander of U.S. forces in Europe had testified that the United States and its allies were “deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary” following the Kremlin’s military adventures in Ukraine and Syria.

“Russophobe” has become a convenient label for anyone who disagrees with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive behavior at home and abroad. You are not criticizing an authoritarian leader and his erratic policies; you are instead attacking the Russian nation.

Russia’s state media churns out reports on how enemies are tirelessly seeking to isolate the country — when in fact it is Putin’s own actions that are closing off Russia.

When I first visited Moscow as a college student 25 years ago, the Soviet Union was in its last year of existence. Kremlin reformer Mikhail Gorbachev was opening up the country after more than seven decades of communism, and Russians were hungry to rejoin the world. Goodwill, curiosity and hope were the overriding feelings among Russians and Americans alike. My host parents in Moscow even displayed a picture of then-President George H.W. Bush in their living room.

The Cold War was finally over. I was fascinated by the parallel world that had existed behind the Iron Curtain and shocked by the deprivations that people endured. Later, as a journalist based in Moscow, I would encounter dozens of Russians who welcomed me into their homes and hearts. It helped, of course, that I tried my damnedest to speak Russian. But it never hurt to be American. Often it was an advantage.

My initial interest in Russia led me to explore other countries that had belonged to the Soviet empire: Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states, the Central Asian republics. Although anti-Russian rhetoric has cheapened the political discourse in those places, the Russian language is still widely understood, if not actively used. Given their difficult history with Russia, eastern European countries viewed membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a prudent defensive measure. Putin’s surprise attack on Ukraine proved them right.

To me, the folly of Russophobia became most obvious in Ukraine. Most of my Ukrainian friends speak Russian as their first language, and many have parents or grandparents from Russia. They aren’t afraid of Russia but of its revanchist, autocratic government.

The crux of the problem between Russia and its former satellites is that nationalism was the driving force behind the independence movements that split apart the Soviet Union. Estonians, Lithuanians and Georgians knew who they were and what they wanted: their own countries.

But from Russians’ perspective, it looked like their neighbors were abandoning them. Russians never had to liberate themselves from the Soviet Union: They just woke up one day in its ideological ruins. Not surprisingly, Russian nationalism today ties together a jumble of monarchist, Orthodox Christian and communist strands.

The appeal of Russophobia isn’t just based on resentment about the breakup of an empire. It’s also rooted in the frustration that the Western model of governance proved a more attractive way of running a country.

Putin, now in his 17th year of ruling Russia, is preoccupied with regime survival. That’s one reason the Kremlin is working so hard to discredit liberal democracy as a system of government. Telling Russians to fear the West because the West hates Russia is a way of distracting the population from the deficiencies of one-man rule.

Ever since my first visit to Russia in 1991, Russians have asked me why I decided to learn their language and travel to their country. People were incredulous that an American without any Russian roots could be so interested in their country.

My answer was simple: the mellifluous Russian language, the richness of Russian literature, the vastness of the country’s geography and the diversity of its peoples. It was all about what Russians themselves call the “Russian soul” — a generosity of spirit and a knack for improvisation amid adversity.

In their bluster about a brave new Russky Mir (“Russian world”) to redeem the perceived humiliations of the past, Russia’s current rulers are putting their own insecurities on full display. In the process, they have squandered the country’s greatest resource, which isn’t oil and gas but Russia’s enormous soft power.

Ironically, the biggest Russophobes inhabit Russia’s highest political offices. They are the people who believe the essentialist argument that the Russian people are too immature for real democracy and can only be ruled by a strong leader.

Russophobia isn’t an international problem. It’s a domestic one.

Source: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2016/03/07/do-you-suffer-from-russophobia-the-kremlin-thinks-you-might/

The below article and the accompanying video are compelling evidence that China seeks to not only protect their image in China, but China also seeks to suppress evidence diminishing China’s reputation in any way.

Every nation has the right to promote its image. No nation, however, has the right to suppress negative articles, no matter how truthful, extreme or far-fetched.

This video makes it clear that China is guilty of suppressing negative publicity, in this case, to declare a Canadian activist access to the Miss World contest.  Miss World Canada Anastasia Lin has committed no crimes, is not accused of any crimes, she has simply expressed her opinion after discovering how much was hidden from her by the government of China, as she grew up in China.

This event actually occurred in November 2015, here is an article from that time.  I did not hear of this event previously, but read of this event in John Brown’s Public Diplomacy and Blog Review, here.  So I began reading, watching, listening and learning…  apologies if I’m late.

When I was in China, a close and trusted friend shared information about Tiananmen Square with me while we toured it, but he whispered the entire time. We toured the square, he showed me where events happened and explained the background.  Police were everywhere, this was the only time I actually saw a high concentration of Law Enforcement and military during my entire time in China.   With Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, Communist Party Headquarters, Mao’s Mausoleum, the Monument to the People’s Hero (like our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier), all in close proximity, this made sense.  From all the whispering, however, it felt like the truth being suppressed.  Felt, mind you, I have no proof and I certainly didn’t speak loudly and ask a policeman.  My first night in China, I attended a dissident book club, openly attended by US Embassy personnel.  While there I was told that the Chinese government tolerated meeting and talking about anything, they only began caring if there was active planning or action for revolutionary – or would that be anti-revolutionary – action.  To me, this indicates that Anastasia Lin was effective, her words had an effect.

The video:  

When Soft Power Turns Hard: Miss World, Coercion and China’s Cultural Diplomacy

CAYLAN FORD, MAR 3 2016, 451 VIEWS

Russian suppression of bad domestic news is supposedly preferred by the Russian people, but paints an overly rosy and untrue picture.

Such Russian manipulations of public opinion may be more or less successful, but they add to the general trend of declining domestic self-confidence and growing pessimism.

There is growing dissent in Russia, despite growing suppression of news to that end.

</end editorial>

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 45

March 7, 2016 04:40 PM Age: 8 min

By: Pavel K. Baev

This urge to escape from the apparent dead end of the present by reliving the “glorious” past translates into a desire to ignore the disasters that mark Russia’s current decline. On February 25, an explosion in the Severnaya coal mine, in Vorkuta, left four people dead and 26 stranded some 800 meters below the surface; another explosion, three days later, killed six rescue workers and condemned to death the miners in the inaccessible shaft (Novaya Gazeta, February 28). Putin held a business-like meeting with the head of the Industrial Supervision Service and dispatched Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich to meet with the aggrieved relatives, who knew all too well about the orders to keep working despite the dangerously high concentration of methane in the mine (Moscow Echo, March 4). Putin expressed no public condolences, and the official media barely covered the tragedy, focusing instead on the Syrian ceasefire and the migrant riots on the Greek-Macedonian border (Forbes.ru, March 2).

This propaganda trick of not reporting bad domestic news answers the preference of many Russians not to hear them. The crash of a Sukhoi Su-25 bomber a week ago was barely mentioned in the media and did not invite any questions about the long series of deadly accidents in the Air Force (Kommersant, February 29). Explosions in the oil drilling rigs are also routinely bracketed out, as are most urban fires. Illustratively, a gas explosion that destroyed a house in Yaroslavl in mid-February made it into the news cycle only because the supplier charged the affected inhabitants the full monthly price for deliveries (Rbc.ru, March 4). Most recently, the horrible crime perpetrated by a 38-year-old Uzbekistani nanny (who turned out to be mentally unstable), who killed and beheaded a four-year-old girl and went to a Moscow metro station with the child’s decapitated head in order to protest against the intervention in Syria, shocked Russians in the capital city. Yet this news was not covered by any of the main national TV channels (Kommersant, March 1; Moskovsky Komsomolets, March 3). It was certainly not the macabre nature of the murder that discomfited the state-controlled media into silence. After all Russian TV stayed for weeks on the fictitious story about the kidnapping and rape of a Russian girl in Berlin, pushing German authorities to open an official investigation into this “black propaganda” coming out of Moscow (Novaya Gazeta, February 9).

Such Russian manipulations of public opinion may be more or less successful, but they add to the general trend of declining domestic self-confidence and growing pessimism. Presumably, Russians do not need a signal from Moody’s about the further downgrading of Russia’s credit rating to see the unfolding economic crisis (Polit.ru, March 5). Most families have had to cut their expenses and dip into their savings, and they still cannot balance their budgets (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 3). Every visit to a supermarket brings new irritation: the quality of food deteriorates due to the contraction of imports by more than a third, while prices keep growing because domestic agricultural production is stagnant (Moscow Echo, March 5). Individual survival strategies now have a time horizon of only about a year. But even for the majority of those who have recently fallen out of the middle class, protests are perceived not only as useless but also too risky (Open Russia, March 3).

Little hope remains that the government will come up with a meaningful anti-crisis policy, while anger is deepening against bureaucratic predation and corruption, which effectively cancels out the residual “patriotic” mobilization within society directed against Russia’s ostensible external enemies (Gazeta.ru, March 4). The liberal opposition has tried to harness this anger. The anti-regime movement gained new energy from the march in Moscow in memory of Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered a year ago (Novaya Gazeta, February 29). The attention of like-minded Russians has now been focused on the staged trial of Ukrainian soldier and politician Nadezhda Savchenko, who is accused of war crimes based on blatantly fabricated evidence (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, March 4). She was denied the opportunity to make a closing statement in this phony trial. So instead, she published it online, rejecting the Russian totalitarian regime’s right to judge her fight for Ukrainian independence and expressing sympathy to all “honest, kind and decent people” in Russia (New Times, March 4).

Every word uttered by the defiant Savchenko and every flower laid along the bridge where Nemtsov took his last breath of chilly Moscow air chip away at Putin’s monolithic police state and public support. He has no way of knowing when these cracks in the façade will suddenly connect and cause his system to collapse. But his courtiers realize there is growing disappointment among those who wistfully remember the “firmness” of the Soviet past as well as a growing disillusionment among those who gained a modicum of success in the post-Communist years of petro-prosperity. Support for the regime stems primarily from the worries in most social groups that any alternative would be worse. This fear of change in the situation of progressive deterioration amounts to giving up on the attempts to pull Russia out of the violent quagmire it is sinking into. Opposition leaders—like Alexei Navalny or Mikhail Kasyanov—who try to convince Russians to shoulder the responsibility for their country, have to fight not only under severe duress but also against apathy and resignation. Putin encourages these feelings, but as a result, he is presiding over a protracted disaster, which accelerates with his every attempt to assert control.

Source: http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=45175&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=54ed99a207b82dce30d6f6f29cedbd48#.Vt4VN5MrIo-

The author brings up some very valid arguments but misses one major point.

Russia is the world’s leading advocate and perpetrator of Information Warfare.  For the past 2+ years, the world has been deluged with Russian propaganda. Russia has controlled information flowing internally to its citizens, supporting Russian actions and denigrating anything Western. Russia controlled the media’s access to Crimea and again in Donbass. Russia controlled inspector’s access to the contested areas. Negative reports regarding Russia were obfuscated, undermined, denied, and attacked. Russia leads the world in the use of trolls, overwhelming opposing opinions and building a false sense of support for Russian positions.  Outright lies are brashly pronounced at the highest levels of government, with corrections months later. Russia invests billions in creating and supporting state-sponsored media, which often control the information available to the world in relation to denied areas. Russian intelligence actively engages in Active Measures, creating newspapers, websites, and stories ostensibly from non-Russian sources, intended to disrupt, divide, and undermine foreign countries and alliances.  Russia actively denies foreign access to Russian media, NGOs and Russia citizens with discriminatory laws.

Yet nothing is mentioned about this dirge in our information environment.

There are no courses at any university or college. Information Warfare is not taught in the military, yielding to a kinder, gentler Information Operations.  Mass communications, communications, marketing, journalism, computer studies, and many other university courses and programs do not teach the insidious nature inherent to Russian Information Warfare. Nothing is taught as to how to counter Russian IW and little is invested by the West to initiate such programs. Worse yet, the West does not have strategies under which to operate, causing uncoordinated, unsynchronized and ineffective messaging at the national level. No academic studies with quantitative or qualitative studies have been conducted. No recommendations, other than gut feelings or experience in unrelated fields, have been provided.  The leaders of what efforts are being conducted have backgrounds in journalism, not political warfare, not psychological operations, not information operations, and certainly not information warfare. Yes, they have tons of experience in journalism but it often takes years to reprogram the wiring in their heads.

I studied Russian and Russian history in my university days, so I might better understand our adversary – this during the Cold War. I later became an expert in US military Information Operations. This did not help me more than one iota when faced with overwhelming Russian Information Warfare except to recognize how badly we were being thumped.

We need to teach Russian Information Warfare. Where? Colleges, universities, in our military, to our Congressional leaders, to our public. Not only must we teach our citizens to protect themselves with knowledge, we must establish a foundation on which we might build countermeasures to Russian Information Warfare. We need to accompany this with a National Information or Communications Strategy.

I would feel negligent if I did not point out to Agnia Grigas that I am alarmed that this recommendation was not included in her excellent article.  We have senior leaders in the US government calling for action to counter Russian propaganda. We have already had at least two instances of Russian propaganda directly influencing Congressional testimony.

Russian propaganda, misinformation, disinformation and active measures are at a fever pitch, some reports say it is increasing. We are doing little, if anything, to discourage such activities. I strongly recommend we take action now to preclude further and future damage.

</end editorial>

March 08, 2016, 10:00 am

By Agnia Grigas, contributor

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/272163-growing-the-next-generation-of-russia-experts

The Pentagon’s newest reassessment that Russia is a top national security threat comes on the heels of recent public discussions on the shortage of Russia experts in the U.S. government and the decline in funding for Russian studies. As a scholar approaching middle age who often finds herself as the youngest face on Russia and Eurasia-focused panels, I have not been surprised by either revelation, which unfortunately have only been brought to attention by the current crisis of relations between Moscow and the West. The dwindling interest in Russia has long been in the making and will not be resolved in the short-term, as it takes decades, not years, to prepare regional experts.

The decline in ranks and funding for regionally focused scholarship spells a deeper problem because the academic and think-tank community is a supplier of human capital to Washington’s foreign policy and national security apparatus. Thus any decline in scholarship reinforces a decline in policy expertise and will constrain Washington’s future capacity to formulate and lead a long-term strategy vis-a-vis Russia, Europe, Eurasia, NATO and beyond.

The reasons for the current state are multiple. The end of the Cold War and the perceived triumph of democracy and capitalism marked a decline of interest in Russia both in Washington and the scholarly community. NATO and EU expansion to Eastern Europe since the 1990s seemed to reinforce optimism, while 9/11 and the subsequent global war on terror focused attentions on the Middle East.

As a result, funding from government and private foundations for language training and regional scholarship sharply declined. For instance, since the late 1990s, RAND Corp., the Rockefeller Foundation, and most recently the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation all ended their programs for building post-Soviet and Russian expertise. The numbers of graduates in Russian language or literature declined by more than half in the U.S. from 1971 to 2011. Similarly, in the United Kingdom on the other side of the Atlantic, although the government provided grants for area studies in the 2000s when I was completing my doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, this funding was not renewed as of late.

As a result, the growth of a new Western generation of Russia experts was stunted while former Sovietologists of the Cold War era were increasingly entering retirement. This inhibited the development of studies on the newly emerged independent states of the former Soviet Union and particularly their relations Moscow.

The current predicament is also related to broader trends in the American school of political science and international relations. Since the 1960s, American academia began to shift its attention to more “scientific” analyses of inter-state relations. This approach favored theoretical debates, statistical modeling and quantification of different variables rather than qualitative analysis based on regional expertise that necessitates language skills and in-depth cultural and historical knowledge of specific countries.

As a result, the system was more conducive to producing international relations generalists who, at least in theory, should have been equally adept at analyzing Russia, Afghanistan or China. And though a number of excellent scholars of Russia emerged over the last 25 years, overall, the academic trends thinned the ranks of regional experts. This was equally felt both in relation to the Middle East after 9/11 and to Russia following its annexation of Crimea.

Remedying the thinning ranks of Russia experts will require reassessment in both the ivory towers of academia and in the policy chambers of Washington. From the perspective of the scholar, the expertise required to inform national security or foreign policy is not gained over the course of years, but rather over the course of decades, and depends on a number of prerequisites.

Scholarships for graduate and Ph.D. studies are imperative as the academic field is increasingly underpaid and posts of tenured professorship are ever more rare. Support for research support, language training (in not just Russian, but also the other languages of Eurasia) and a deep immersion in the region’s culture and history are necessary to grow regional experts. Experience in government institutions is also invaluable as I found from my service as an adviser to the Lithuanian foreign minister and even as an undergraduate at Columbia University through a summer fellowship in the Georgian president’s office.

Today, however, the study of Russia poses additional problems. There are increasing barriers for foreigners to work or do research in the country as the Kremlin constrains the work of nongovernmental organizations and academic programs, sometimes even calling them “foreign agents.” Scholars often have little choice but to attend Kremlin-sponsored events such as the Valdai Club so they can at least have some dialogue and contact with their Russian counterparts. In light of these circumstances, additional support from government and private foundations for the study of Russia and the post-Soviet states, rather than funding cuts, are necessary.

Without long-term investment in building and maintaining expertise in countries like Russia, the United States’ foreign policy risks becoming reactive to external events. Already, Crimea’s annexation and the rising pressure on the Baltic States have largely taken Washington and the European capitals by surprise. The rapid development of global affairs makes it difficult to sustain even reactive policies over extended periods of time. This gap in long-term strategic thinking and vision could be filled by the academic and think-tank community, but only if they are likewise nurtured and supported long-term.

Grigas is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Truman National Security Fellow and author of “Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire” (Yale University Press, 2016). A discussion of the book will be held tomorrow, March 9, at the Atlantic Council in Washington. Details are available here.

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/272163-growing-the-next-generation-of-russia-experts

I refer to this article as another tool in the Russian Information Warfare toolbox.

Information Warfare in support of Russian “Hybrid Warfare”, or maybe better said, an integral part of Russian Hybrid Warfare. I use the term Hybrid Warfare begrudgingly, don’t forget.  But if we are referring to what appears to be the most popular form of Russian warfare outside conventional war, I almost have to use the term. Hybrid Warfare is too commonly used for me to avoid it.

During the Crimean incursion, Russian media made a point of broadcasting that 300 Blackwater contractors had occupied an airfield. Of course, at the time, everybody should have known this was, quite literally, a smokescreen, a way to obfuscate the reality of Russian Naval Infantry troops occupying Ukrainian and Crimean government facilities.  Private Military Contractors (PMC) such as Blackwater left quite an impression on Russians observing US operations in Iraq.  Their quasi-legal status was optimal for Russian operations, as a possible part of Hybrid Warfare.  Blackwater, don’t forget, had changed names to Xe, then to Academi. Blackwater is well-known, so this is what Russia splashed across the internet. By the way, when clicking on the link you’ll see it was published on a website called “Before It’s News”, which is either a Russian proxy site or an Active Measures site (established by either Russia’s IW directorate or an Intelligence operation).  This allowed more mainstream Russian media to have a link to use to offer the appearance of an independent ‘credible’ source.  A quick scan of the site reveals a ton of BS articles and the occasional anti-Western article.  Here’s the latest “piece of work”: Putin and Russian General Warns of US Collapse In 28 May 2016 – America Could Be Taken Over – unsubstantiated, not credible and sensational.

Now we are reading the below report, where it is publicly confirmed that Russia used a PMC in Syria, allowing Russia to truthfully proclaim that there were no Russian soldiers in Syria. Lawyerly, yes, and provides Russia with plausible deniability. This allows Lavrov, Putin, and the Russian media to straight-faced lie to the world, while being technically truthful.

When I had just left Special Forces I was approached by all kinds of what were then called mercenary outfits, I chose to decline. Now known as PMCs, they’re sure to be around for quite a long time into the future.

</end editorial>

On Jan. 28, the Duma began discussing the possibility of legalizing private military companies in Russia. The law, which counts influential vice prime minister Dmitry Rogozin as a supporter, has one major goal — to ensure that Iraqi oil fields where Russian firms Rosneft and Gazprom operate no longer come under the protection of British or American security companies.

Back in April 2012, Russian president Vladimir Putin pointed out the need for Russia to pass contractor-friendly legislation. Putin praised private military companies as “instruments to further national interests without the direct involvement of the government.”

The right-wing A Just Russia Party proposed a draft of the PMC bill in November 2014, but the Duma defense committee rejected it. Members of parliament returned with a revised text in December 2014, which the committee again turned down, deeming it “inarticulate,” “useless” and “irrelevant.” The FSB security agency and the Ministry of Defense both voiced [Ed: the] concern of one day seeing “tens of thousands of uncontrollable Rambos turning their weapons against the government.”

It seemed Russian authorities had not forgotten the chaotic 1990s, a time when countless unpaid military officers sold their services to the highest bidder.

http://warisboring.com/articles/believe-it-or-not-russia-dislikes-relying-on-military-contractors/

Nadiya Savchenko challenged the Russian court to issue her sentence in one week.

To outsiders, this appears presumptuous, even arrogant. From Savchenko’s perspective, however, it makes perfect sense. Russia invented the charges against her. Russia fabricated the evidence against her. Russia supplied witnesses who are obviously lying. Why can’t Russia give her a “time served” sentence and declare victory?  Sorry, that won’t happen.  She’ll receive at a minimum of 30 years for a crime she did not commit. As long as Russia does not control all of Ukraine, Savchenko will remain in prison. Why? To deny Ukraine Savchenko as a propaganda icon of Russian oppression, aggression and ruthlessness.

The following words are not mine, but they echo my sentiments exactly:

“The last word of kidnapped Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko in Russian kangaroo court. I admire the courage and spirit of this woman. Nadiya has been on a dry hunger strike for 6 days and is set to hold it if Russia does not release her. The chances of her death are increasing every minute, but Nadiya is determined to return home – to Ukraine – either dead or alive. I’m feeling so helpless because I don’t know what I can do to bring this innocent girl back home. But she will die without our help. God damn you, Terrorussia!
‪#‎FreeSavchenko‬
‪#‎LetMyPeopleGo‬“

Terrorism. Russia. Terrorussia. This is an appropriate new word for Russia and they so deserve the widespread use of that word and more.

“The court has stolen my week of life, and now you only have a week to a decision, and maybe I have lived,” – said the arrested Ukrainian pilot, MP Hope Savchenko.

Russia has stolen the past 18+ months of Nadiya Savchenko’s life and now they want to deny her even the slightest chance of hope. Her hunger struck will kill her before Russia passes sentence, she has sworn.

Terrorussia, indeed.

If Russian soldiers and mercenaries are being killed at a ratio of 5:1 vs. Ukraine, I wonder if Putin knows how pathetically bad the Russian leaders they have in Donbass are?

This mirrors, almost exactly the Soviet loss ratio against the Nazis.  Then, the Soviets threw soldiers at the Nazis until the Germans ran out of ammo. Soviets held Stalingrad “at all costs”, “you may not retreat one inch”.  Now, when Russia loses more soldiers in two years than the US did in ten, I wonder if this is a direct reflection of the sad state of Russian military leadership.

3 choices for Russia in Ukraine.  Russia will launch a full-scale offensive against Ukraine, Russia will maintain a status quo and hold Ukraine hostage or Russia will cut its losses and get out of Ukraine.  Leaving would be a defeat akin to Afghanistan, this will not happen. Russia could attack to form a land bridge between Mariupol and Odessa or attack to the shore of the Dnieper River, but that would be costly beyond belief. Russia has conducted live-fire exercises, now, to test their latest weaponry in Syria against an extremely low-tech enemy.

Of course, any and all options will be accompanied by massive special operations actions all over Ukraine, with distractions in even more places.

One must ask why Russia wants to spend so much money and resources to maintain Donbass as a sucking money pit. All Russia receives in return is Cargo 200 trucks and the continued loathing from the rest of the world for Russian aggression.

Won’t somebody, anybody, put Putin across their knee and spank him?

</end editorial>

Article by: A. N.

Recently the intelligence department of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense published the true identities of several top Russian commanders in charge of the so-called “separatist” troops in the occupied territories of the Donbas. They also stated that an evidential base is being collected documenting war crimes of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (AF RF) in Ukraine for further prosecution in the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Russian regular military personnel sent by Putin’s government to fight in Ukraine is rotated every nine months to a year. The ministry’s statement lists the following top AF RF commanders currently in Ukraine:

• Major-General Ihor Borysovych Tymofeyev (Russian: Игорь Борисович Тимофеев), using cover surname “Sokolov” for his assignment in Ukraine, is the commander of the 3rd separate motorized rifle brigade (stationed in Horlivka, Ukraine) of the 1st Army Corps (AC) of the Center of the Territorial Forces of the Southern Military District of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Before his arrival to Ukraine, he was the commander of the 33rd separate motorized rifle brigade (Maikop, Adyheya Republic, Russian Federation) of the 49th Army of the Southern Military District of AF RF.
• Major General Valeriy Hryhorovych Asapov (Russian: Валерий Григорьевич Асапов), the commander of the 1st AC of Putin’s hybrid force in Ukraine.
• Colonel Yevhen Volodymyrovych Chyrkov (Russian: Евгений Владимирович Чирков), the 1st AC deputy commander for personnel.
• Colonel Andrii Yuriyovych Ruzynskyi (Russian: Андрей Юрьевич Рузинский), the commander of the 2nd separate motorized rifle brigade (Luhansk, Ukraine) of the 2nd AС of Putin’s hybrid military in Ukraine.
• Colonel Dmytro Yevhenovych Bondarev (Russian: Дмитрий Евгеньевич Бондарев), the commander of the 9th separate motorized rifle regiment of the Marine Corps (Novoazovsk, Ukraine) of the 1st AC of Putin’s occupation force in Ukraine.

Source: http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/03/09/90084/