Anonymous expert analysis.

Bottom line, the Russians are terrible fighters.  Russians are in charge, Russians are fighting, Russian are dying by the thousands.

Russia doesn’t seem to care, however.  Russia does not seem to care that these are Russian soldiers and civilians. Russian generals do not care.  The death rate exceeds that of World War II or the Great Patriotic War. Once again, Russia does not care about all their soldiers and civilians dying, except this time there is no victory.  Only loss.

Please notice that no Generals have been fired. No Russian leaders have lost their jobs. No public executions.  Russian lives are meaningless to Russian leaders.

I would find this deeply disturbing if I were a Russian.

</end editorial>

An update on earlier numbers, courtesy of the Chief Military Prosecutor of the AFU, Gen Matios: Shocking statistics of non-battle casualties of Ukraine’s army – uatoday.tv

• AFU Losses in total: ~3,000 “KIA”;
• AFU Non-Combat Losses: 1,294;
• AFU Combat Losses: ~2,000 KIA;
• Russian Combat Losses: ~15,000 KIA;

This yields two kill ratios:

• Aggregate Kill Ratio: ~5:1 counting all AFU losses;
• Combat Kill Ratio: ~7.3:1 counting only AFU losses due to Enemy Action;

An unknown are the claimed ~800 Ukrainian MIAs, that if counted as KIAs, push the kill ratio numbers for the AFU down.

All in all this begs a lot of questions about the Russians’ ability to sustain losses from their shrinking gene pool – they have already heavily exploited minorities such as Chechens, Ossetians, and Buryats (ethnic Mongols) in the war.

The most notable comment by Gen Matios was that the single largest cause of AFU non-combat losses was lethal medical conditions, resulting from inadequate medical screening of personnel who were being called up during the conscription campaign, that covered men of up to 45 years of age (if I recall correctly). Attached graphic from April 2016 –
Two Years of War: Human cost of Russia’s undeclared war in Ukraine’s Donbas (Infographics) – read on – uatoday.tv

Earlier media disclosures indicated kill ratios of 4.5:1 up to 20:1 for Ukraine vs. Russia through 2014 and 2015. Last week Ukraine released UA/NGU loss numbers for May, and on the weekend, loss numbers for RF Army, Donbass “volunteers” and other Russian mercenary elements, for May. Most engagements involved Russian use of large calibre weapons against UA positions, and Russian recon/sabotage groups attempting to cross the demarcation line. The UA has been using only infantry weapons.

Kill ratio for May is 4.86:1 i.e. very close to mid 2014 kill ratios, favouring Ukraine. MoD in Kiev says Russian losses included ~30 RF Army Spetsnaz.

The Russians are clearly happy to sustain 5:1 and higher loss ratios indefinitely. Remarkable.

Elimination of militants: 180 Russian invaders killed in Donbas last month | EN.Censor.net04.06.16 15:31 – 180 Russian invaders killed in Donbas last month, – Defense Ministry About 180 pro-Russian militants and Russian soldiers were eliminated, 190 injured in the Donbas during May. View news.At least 37 soldiers killed in May in Russia’s war against UkraineRussia’s ongoing war on Ukraine in the east of the country has taken the lives of 286 Ukrainian servicemen since the beginning of the year, with a further 350 being wounded. In May alone, at least 37 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in sporadic outbreaks of shelling and shooting all along the front line. It was the deadliest month for Ukraine’s troops since August 2014.

Ah, the sweet smell of desperation.

Ever face an opponent who you can plainly see is losing?  Their eyes bug out a little bit. They’re sweating profusely. They swing their arms wildly. Their kicks are telegraphed from a mile away. They look right at what they’re aiming for.  Their veins stick out on their neck and forehead. They are obsessed with their wounds, they cover them with their hands.  They open their mouths and only gasps come out.  They choke down their breath, holding on to what may well be their last.  They keep regripping their weapon, checking their backup weapons, and forget the basics.

Behold, this screenshot, below.

I do not intend to discredit or libel this person in any way, shape or fashion.

I do intend to expose her words, however.

Obviously, she used Google and looked up what trash she could find on me.  She forgot, however, to do a background check on that article and see if there was any substance to her assertions, insinuations, and an attempt at a smear.  Oh, is she libeling me?

She forgot to read this: “A Bad Journalist Targets Me“.  The article she is referring to is written by George Eliason, now known as GH Eliason.  Please, would someone care to tell me why he changed his name to his initials?

Yes, you are correct. He was a bad journalist, just as is Ms. Dianova by presenting an incomplete and already discredited report as fact – which is a complete fantasy.

Assaulting and threatening people?  Pray, do tell.  How could I possibly have done that?

I am consistently amazed at people who threaten the use of their position of authority within a prestigious Moscow law firm, as an established member of the court, and accuse others of making threats.  I beg of thee, my sweet witch, how do I threaten thee or anyone else?

Ms. Yana Dianova.  Pray tell, how am I a “confirmed Internet “troll”, liar, slanderer, harasser and perpetrator”?   I expose people like you. I post screenshots of their actual words. I use evidence, not fabrications. I cite facts, not the hallucinations of bad journalists.

In other words, I am nothing like you.

None of my friends are like you. Nobody wants to be like you. You represent what is bad and ugly about your city and your country.

Bottom line.  Nobody is “trying hard to discredit and libel [you]”. You are doing all the hard work, all we do is expose you.

Thank you, once again, for your assistance.

ps. We are not comrades. We are not communists nor ever were.  That is an insult. Pshaw.

Many years ago I saw this exhibit at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in downtown DC.  Now it is travelling and is in Los Angeles. 

My assessment: Amazing. Awesome. Necessary.

If you have even the slightest interest in propaganda, please see this. It forever changed my perspective about the simplest things in life that surround us.

I brought back a bunch of books to read. Every time I look through one I learn something new.  Words mean things. Pictures scream. The kernel of truth is key.

“PROPAGANDA IS A TRULY TERRIBLE WEAPON IN THE HANDS OF AN EXPERT.”
—Adolf Hitler, 1924

DO WORDS KILL? Learning what propaganda is and how to counter it is essential in today’s information-saturated world. The special exhibition, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, explores how the Nazis used propaganda to win broad voter support in Germany, implement radical programs, and justify war and mass murder.

The special exhibition runs through August 20.
Central Library, Getty Gallery 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles
Visit the exhibition website to learn more!

EXHIBITION TOURS
Trained docents are available to lead tours of the exhibition for groups. To schedule a tour, contact events@lapl.org. For questions, call 213.228.7555. Tours and admission are free. Join the conversation online using #StateofDeception.

This post is brought to you by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

I am sent reports from almost every country in Europe, my friends are worried that Russia is trying to undermine them. This is true, but it appears to be on a far grander scale than most of us realize.

RT, Sputnik, and a myriad of other information purveyors highlight what is wrong in Europe and the United States.  RT shows the death, the devastation, the aftermath of terrorist attacks.  They constantly show what is wrong with anyplace that has an opposition to Russia, that may stand in the way of Russia’s march to dominance.  If confronted, Russia claims they are the victim.  Russia claims Europe is trying to dominate Russia, NATO is trying to encroach and surround Russia. It is a lie. Everybody knows this but few have the guts, the audacity, the wherewithal to call Russia just what it is.  A bully, a cheat, and a liar.  Imagine calling a country that, for Russia it is true.  The Russian Culture of Corruption supported by their “Firehose of Falsehood” (all credit for this saying goes to Dr. Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews).

Through bribes, support for far right wing and pro-Russian groups, threats, fabricated provocations and propaganda, Russia is undermining the EU.  Tomáš Zdechovský is calling you out, Russia.

So am I.

</end editorial>

By Tomáš Zdechovský

The European project as it stands now is not based on the broad consensus of the European public, and that’s why populists and Russian propaganda are so successful, writes Tomáš Zdechovský .

Tomáš Zdechovský is Member of the European Parliament (Czech Republic, EPP).

The European Union is currently facing many important challenges – which include not only external attacks and problems, but also criticism from within the European Union, from the citizens themselves. It needs to deal with disputes between the member states, while its very existence is jeopardised by the possibility of losing some of the member states.

What I see in the history of the European project is that the very existence of the European Union is defined by a constant struggle. A struggle against external enemies or internal circumstances, but nevertheless a struggle.  We can look at it in two ways: either as an impossible challenge or – and this is a view that we all here share and it is also the reason why we are here today – we can view it as a mission. Because the EU was created to face challenges, fight enemies and mitigate crisis.

And the more challenges we face, the more raison d’être is given to the European Union. I would like to highlight several concrete issues, which I think are the most pressing ones and which pose the largest challenge but which – in my view – are only a confirmation for the necessity of the united Europe.

Maybe paradoxically, the biggest challenge is the loss of trust in the European project and the open resistance of European citizens against the European Union. The results of the European elections in 2014 have shown that the disillusion affects all EU countries. If we want the European Union to remain strong and keep its touch of glory, we cannot ignore or trivialise this problem.

We need to understand the depth of the resistance against the European project and instead of imposing rules and expressing threats, we must offer an alternative solution that will bring Europeans back together. This is the only way that the EU will become attractive and legitimate once again. The basis of the EU lies on democratic values and such a structure will not be able to function without a full support of its citizens.

A research conducted after the elections (in early 2015) revealed that only 51% of European citizens considered EU membership to be a positive thing. This means that the European project is not based on overall consensus of the European public. We need to understand that half of the European citizens are indifferent or negative towards the membership in the EU. Many voiced concerns across the continent call for restriction of the European integration – and I can illustrate this on the example of the United Kingdom or even my homeland the Czech Republic, two countries who are massively critical of the European Union.

Now – what solution is there? European politicians necessarily need to come closer to the citizens. Indeed, this is a phrase that we hear far too often but what does it really mean? From my own experience, the solution is communication: giving information, explaining, debating, respecting opposing opinions, giving insights – this all can be done via media and through personal contact. Helping people with their concerns and decreasing their fears is a way to go. We must not be deaf to the problems of the ordinary citizens.

Quite the contrary, we politicians need to take the responsibility for presenting the benefits of the EU membership to the public. I wish that the European citizens are able to identify themselves with the EU project and this will be possible only with politicians capable of understanding the deepest concerns within the society. And that will also lead towards legitimisation of further and much deeper integration because we can influence people to identify with the EU.

Secondly, the European Union is facing threats from the outside. Even today, 25 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we are subject to the political claims of the large and powerful actor on our eastern border. Russia still poses a threat to the peace on the old continent. The strengthening of the unity of the EU member states should be a priority of the European leaders, because unity is our most important defensive mechanism against the destructive Russian tactics. The EU and NATO must play their part in ensuring the EU security and safety of European citizens.

Russian propaganda is one the main threats to the European peace. It’s inconspicuous character spreads within the European public and Europe has not been until now well prepared to deal with it. Russian propaganda is especially aimed at post-communist countries that were once under its sphere of influence. Their democracies are still fragile because they need to fight a higher rate of domestic dissatisfaction and a lower level of trust in democracy.  Therefore, Russian propaganda is more successful with some of the newer member states.

The Russian political approach capitalises on current crises within the EU: the threat of Brexit, the migration crisis or the financial crisis and the economic situation in Greece. Russia spreads its influence through support of extremist political parties, especially in the right wing. It is now proven that, for instance, the French National Front accepted money from Russia. This is a cross-border issue that calls for a united action and that can be successfully addressed only if the member states deepen their cooperation mechanisms.

Finally, the third big issue is also an external factor, which has a massive impact on the EU policies. The migration crisis is one of the most influential phenomena shaping the current European political scene and that will have also an immense influence on the future of the EU.

Right-wing and extremist parties take advantage of the situation, thanks to the deficiencies of the migration policies so far. The chaos accompanying the refugee crisis is an evidence that more integrated European policies are needed in order to successfully address the very complex, transnational issues that are not solvable on national level.

What we need are clear, comprehensible and consistent policies that will be understandable also to the wide public. Therefore, we need an open, public debate about the issues that affect regular citizens. The absence of such a debate would be a tragedy for the future of Europe.

By Tim Hume and Zayn Nabbi, CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/12/world/euro-2016-england-russia-violence/index.html

Andrey Arkhangelskiy

03.06.2016

The new propagandists who dominated the Russian media were formed by the experience of the trauma of the 1990s and the loss of the certainties of the Soviet past. Their ideology is a fusion of Soviet and imperial Russian ideas. Its chief intellectual weakness is that it must link Russian success to the failure of the West and democracy.

For the last two years, propaganda in the Russian media has been much more aggressive and nationalistic. Yet it has failed in its primary objective—changing the outside world. In the West, with its pluralistic social culture, people regard even radical rhetoric as just one of many viewpoints. In Russia, with its state monopoly on the media, the propaganda—largely presented by a group of divided and embittered Soviet-era intellectuals—has made the public neurotic.

Russian media propaganda finally morphed into its current form in March-April 2014, at the height of the Crimea crisis. The new propaganda machine is led by a pack of 40–50 television and radio show hosts and resident experts who drift from one channel to another, constantly raising the degree of tension and promoting their values—or rather anti-values. This propaganda does more to reject “foreign values” than to affirm any of its own.

The people doing this work come from the liberal arts milieu: historians, philosophers, and artists aided by a slew of political analysts representing various organizations with the words “geopolitics,” “studies,” and “analysis” in their names. The popular misconception that they are in it for the money is simply not true. They are united by common indignation at the existing world order.

Judging by the slang-peppered language the ideologists use (“we did them in,” “we told them where to shove it”), their archaic worldview, and rejection of modernity, these people have spent the last twenty years sleeping, totally unaware of global changes. Until 2014, they were in an intellectual vacuum, a Dostoyevskian underground of sorts. This kind of closed environment fosters a utopian consensus and the most delirious worldviews.

Moreover, the Yeltsin era of the 1990s spelled destitution for most Soviet intellectuals, so they were quick to blame Western democracy for the loss of their salaries and social benefits. Even those who have seen life in the West while working, vacationing, or living there don’t accept Western values. This circle is especially intolerant of the word “tolerance.” Perhaps it was tolerance, or rather lack thereof, that prevented them from integrating into Western society.

The old Soviet ideology, which shaped the consciousness of the television experts, was grounded in Marxist-Leninist philosophy. It presented a coherent, self-sufficient, and seamless worldview. Any fact or event—even if it dated back to antiquity—could be neatly interpreted from the standpoint of the class struggle. The language that the system employed was tightly controlled and no ad-libbing was allowed.

The current ideology doesn’t even come close to its Soviet antecedent in terms of coherence, let alone philosophical underpinnings and vision of the future. Its core tenets are sketched in very general terms and concern only current events. The propaganda masters are forced to fill the conceptual void with their own ideas. Today’s propagandists piece together a concoction of disparate and contradictory Soviet and imperial myths, conspiracy theories, and ideas from both extreme right and left.

The lack of a coherent worldview makes the new ideologues emphasize words and emotions rather than meanings. This is why the language they use is so aggressive. Hate speech is the only means of filling ideological voids.

The propagandists fit only one psychological profile, inclining to authoritarianism and the use of force. Having lost the absolutes that the Soviet ideology contained, they instinctively grasped for archaic values and hit upon one reassuring and absolute value: war. But there is no purpose to their vocal saber rattling. Its disseminators have no ideology at all besides the wish to make the world simpler, go back to the past, and “stick it to everybody.”

Interestingly, the same compensatory mechanism is at play with the younger disciples of propaganda in their twenties and thirties, whose formative years were the 1990s. They lack confidence in the present, which makes them look to the past for support. They know little of Soviet reality, which makes it even more appealing. Their perceptions of the Soviet Union come from idealized depictions in movies and TV series.

This all reflects the common trauma these Russians experienced in response to Western superiority after the breakup of the Moscow-led Eastern Bloc and the emergence of the European Union. The propagandists admit that the West may have accomplished something in terms of technology, but they firmly believe that Russia is better adapted for survival and will eventually save the world yet again in the event of a global threat.

So, far from wanting to punish the West, Russia is in fact seeking to save it, thus demonstrating both its own importance to the world and the West’s failure. And in order to get this message across to the world, the propagandists have to artificially foment tensions and constantly talk of war. This will allow them to create this dangerous reality and then “save” the world from it.

In this way, the propaganda machine has gotten itself caught in an intellectual trap by directly linking Russia’s greatness to the failure of the West and of democracy. The talking heads must constantly look for evidence to demonstrate this failure. Terrorist attacks, the refugee crisis, or simply a blizzard in Virginia are labeled as “the beginning of the end of Western civilization.” Democracy is derided as juvenile, humankind’s temporary insanity, since its “weakness” also stands in our way of demonstrating our maturity, courage, and resiliency to the world.

And when they fail to find strong arguments in the present, the propagandists look to the past. History has also become a value. In the 1990s, the myth of pre-revolutionary imperial Russia was contrasted with that of Soviet Russia. More recently, the two myths have fused. Although it’s extremely difficult to combine the two ideologies, the masters of spin found a dialectical solution. They eliminated ethics as a criterion for assessing political regimes. When the regime declares the state rather than the individual to be the highest value, all the casualties are ultimately justified.

As a result, the new cult of Stalin didn’t appear out of the blue. He is the perfect figure to combine the red (Soviet) and the white (imperial) ideas. According to this new construct, Lenin destroyed the old empire, while Stalin restored it as a red empire.

Another major argument the propagandists love to fall back on is that of the “age-old confrontation” between Russia and the West. This idea is grounded in nineteenth-century conservatism and the Soviet model of the “confrontation between two systems,” which gave rise to the idea that “the West has always wanted to destroy us, and we have always been at war with the West.”

After twenty years of the Dostoyevskian underground, this circle of people has missed out on one very important component of the new world: the culture of dialogue, cooperation, and communication. The heated talk show dialogues that the propagandists engage in are mere imitations: the speakers have no intention of talking, even to one another.

Today’s propaganda looks frighteningly archaic. It does not just reject the values of the post-WWII world, but also casts aside all the values of the Renaissance era. Their propaganda can’t even be called an attack. It’s a self-defense mechanism for protection against the outside world. This behavior stems from an aggregation of unresolved ethical problems and a belief system crisis in the post-totalitarian psyche.

At present, Russia’s propagandists are passing on their phobias to us through their endless television shows, which in fact tell us less about America and the West than they reveal the dark alleys of their own consciousness.

Their rhetoric is a subconscious attempt to exorcise their own demons, and our neurotic state is mostly a consequence of their neurotic tendencies. Paradoxically, this makes them—not us—the main victims of propaganda.

Source: http://carnegie.stfi.re/commentary/2016/06/03/out-from-underground-russia-s-new-propagandists/j0ko?sf=vnydenn#ab

Marina Galperina

Vladimir Putin’s friend Alexander “The Surgeon” Zaldostanov is the leader of the Night Wolves nationalist motorcycle club, a hardcore Motherland-loving campaigner for “resistance to the global Satanism” and “all this homosexual talk.” He can also put on quite a musical! Perhaps you’d like to feast your eyes on some highlights from the Night Wolves’ first and secondannual theatrical extravaganzas, complete with acrobats, fireworks, unauthorized Nirvana covers, revisionist historical reenactments, and sick-ass bike tricks:

The first shows took place two summers in a row on a rugged Mad Max-style set at the Night Wolves’ “patriotic extreme sports center” in Sevastopol, Crimea, the annexation of which isn’t recognized by the majority of the world’s countries and councils. There, the biker gang is renting land from the Russian government at a 99% discount. The show was funded by $1 million worth of government grants for “cultural programming,” courtesy of the Ministry of Culture, and broadcast live on Russian state TV. Ah, the perks of Putin’s friendship!

The 2014 show featured good ol’ anti-Maidan propaganda: Maidan protestors were played by fascist ninjas, goose-stepping in a swastika formation, setting shit on fire as they overthrow the pro-Russian president, so orchestrated by a set of giant metal “puppeteer” hands representing Western and American moneyed influencers, yanking the ninja-fascists’ strings. There was also an Illuminati pyramid, “bloody” drum beating, terrible rock musicians doing patriotic numbers, and the Surgeon doing some spoken word readings about “traitors to Russia” and “slaves to America.” This fit the narrative of “rejoining” Crimea “back” with Russia perfectly. One hundred thousand people reportedly attended.

Last summer, with the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II coming up, the performance was “set” mostly during World War II. A replica of a fighter plane—the clubhouse’s decorative fixture—glittered with controlled explosions. Women and children in historical costumes ran around and cried. Soldiers fell and died. A metal maiden in a billowing dress rose over a sea of fallen soldiers with the help of a crane, and kept beating at the show’s big motif with her serenade: “Motherland, look at me! My open palm has become a fist.”

“Russia! Remember! Wide open arms are convenient for crucifixion,” one of the performers crooned ecstatically in front of a chorus of sailors. “Russia! Remember! You are the best on the planet. You are an eternal empire.” That’s some time before a fire-breathing steel mill worker dance number and after the Surgeon, a cartoonish giant in paramilitary gear, read poetry from a tall pedestal: “People who went through hell are holy. There are no atheists on the battlefield.” After that, bikers did jumps, donuts, and flips to some sort of Limp Bizkit scatting over hard guitar riffs while a giant cross lit up with fireworks.

The Night Wolves also terrified children on New Years in another government-funded musical production where our beloved Snegurochka (Russian Santa’s beautiful daughter) is kidnapped by “evil” people “across the ocean” including a tight-dressed Statue of Liberty trying to ruin everything forever.

Before he was a founding president of the Night Wolves, “The Surgeon” was an actual facial reconstruction surgeon. Before he came out as a government tool who would “do anything to keep any creature from getting up close to” Putin, he was a different kind of bad boy. According to the club’s self-curated history, the Night Wolves came up out of the Soviet underground in the 80s, putting on illegal rock shows and “cultivating the philosophy of personal freedom.” In the 90s, they became Russia’s first official motorcycle club. Things were never the same after the Kremlin became interested.

Putin invited the Surgeon to hang out. They had a lot in common. They both loved Russia, God and “family values,” hated liberal values and US “soft powers,” and seemed to embrace performative masculinity. Putin started joining the Night Wolves’ very photographed rides on his own three-wheeled Harley and catapulted the Surgeon’s already rising political celebrity, a celebrity blossoming with militant patriotism and rebel aesthetics all over state television. The club’s had some financial interests—owning several rock clubs, tattoo shops, and a clothing line—and now, government benefactors. The Russian opposition (and many Russians in general) considered them a bunch of leather-clad clowns, but the Night Wolves were a thing now, and their warrior posturing became real.

According to US government reports, the Night Wolves as a club are “responsible for or complicit in, or has engaged in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.” They directly aided in the annexation of Crimea by setting up roadblocks, recruiting separatists fighters, fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists, storming a natural gas facility in Strikolkove, and coordinating “the confiscation of Ukrainian weapons with the Russian forces” from a naval facility in Sevastopol. There’s a sad mini-doc on the Guardian about their base in Luhansk, a self-proclaimed state in east Ukraine (annexed along with Crimea) where members are “waiting for action,” shooting targets, drinking beer and pontificating on how they found their life’s meaning in this God-loving Harley-straddling “Motherland”-“liberating” militia.

On May 9th, a few of the Night Wolves crashed the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park, Berlin, ending their annual 3,728-mile motorcade recreation of the Red Army march to Berlin to, as the Surgeon says,“remind Europeans that it was Russia that saved them from the fascist hell.” For all their antics in Ukraine, they were sanctioned by the US and several NATO countries. The bans, especially Poland’s, made for a bumpy ride. But in Russia, they were awarded medals for “liberating Crimea.” They were invited to roll through the Red Square in the military Victory Day parade, along with the gear and equipment, brigades and airplanes. Many Russians are tired of this dick-waving army parade pageantry, but the Night Wolves definetly fit in.

They rode in with striped orange and black flags, the colors of a ribbon that traditionally held a medal commemorating the victory over Germany in 1945. As Julia Ioffe noted in her 2014 piece about Putin co-opting the country’s memory of World War II, that victory “has been used to justify the annexation of Crimea and to fight opposition to Putin at home.” The orange and black ribbons “are now a symbol of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and of Putinists in Russia.” That theater magic. It’s everywhere.

Source: http://gawker.com/the-hamilton-of-russia-is-a-metal-propaganda-musical-by-1775847548

In the paper I just finished I could not find great references to Russia using their diaspora.  Paul Goble says it just as I thought they were being used.

This article echoes my paper so nicely, but Paul Goble just seems to write everything so much better.

Bottom line in this article, it seems the Russian leadership actually believes and is acting on the crap they are spewing.  I feel bad for the Russian people, they have to endure some really bad leadership.

</end editorial>

Paul Goble

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

            Staunton, June 7 – The Moscow Council on Foreign and Defense Policy released at the end of May a document describing Russian foreign policy for the remainder of this decade. It is filled with propagandistic shibboleths heard every day on Russian TV, and the policies that it recommends flow from them rather than from analyses of the situation, Kseniya Kirillova says.

The Kremlin and its entourage thus is increasingly living in its own world, one that is detached from reality, but apparently is inclined to act on propaganda lines that recall the darkest days of the cold war and make dangerous outcomes far more likely, the US-based Russian analyst says (nr2.com.ua/blogs/Ksenija_Kirillova/Strategiya-rossiyskoy-vneshney-politiki-novaya-Holodnoy-voyny-120437.html).

An initial reading of the Moscow Council report, she continues, does not suggest there is any reason to focus on it, given that it overflows with “classical propagandistic myths of the kind which elite laughter not only among serious analysts or international journalists but even among more or less well-read ordinary people.”

But a second reading both shows why this report is dangerous and why the acceptance of propagandistic memes is so dangerous: they are being used, Kirillova suggests, to elaborate policy rather than treated as messages for the masses that the elite can safely ignore as it comes up with real policies.  She gives five examples of this:

• First, “the document calls on Moscow to rely in the first instance on military force,” something propagandists like to say but that precludes the kind of diplomatic activity that can be useful for any country.

• Second, it urges the country to rely on and make use of its nuclear arsenal as a means of blackmailing the West and advancing Russian interests. And the report specifically opposes any return to negotiations about the further limitation of nuclear weapons.

• Third, the Moscow Council report calls for a complete violation of the Minsk accords, arguing that “it is better to have a semi-independent but formally Ukrainian territory which will help Russia” and thus will in essence become “’a frozen’ conflict.”

• Fourth, despite the failure of ethnic Russians in Ukraine to rally around Moscow, the report calls for intensifying the use of Russian-speaking diasporas abroad as a form of “’soft power.’”

• And fifth, it argues that the US has decided on a new containment doctrine and that Moscow must do everything it can to reject what it calls “revolutionary democratic messianism” which presumably means suppressing any efforts to replace authoritarian rulers with democratic ones.

All the propagandistic language about better relations with the West being possible at some future time, however, remains just that – propaganda – and it is perhaps only there that the Russian elite does not believe what its own agitators are saying, Kirillova implies in conclusion.

Source: http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/russian-elite-not-only-believes-its-own.html

I found this article first but couldn’t find any corroborating reports, so I held onto it.

The interesting thing is the story mentions a decree, so wouldn’t you think it would be posted on RG.ru, Russia’s official degree and statement website?

Thank you to my new, wonderful Russian friend for the assist!

</end editorial>

Soon begins a large-scale reform of the Federal Security Service and other Russian law enforcement agencies, which will occur as a result of the expansion and consolidation of the powers of special services, reported Wednesday on the website “newspaperGAZETA.GZT.RU “.

According to a source publication, the decree on the reorganization of the FSB of the Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin signed on Friday. Wednesday will be made public part of the document that does not contain classified information. A few days ago held the FSC Board, where he will address a decree and its accompanying bills to be adopted by the State Duma.

According to the decree, the FSB will be merged with the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Federal Protection Service (FSO), and then renamed the Ministry of State Security. As the newspaper reminds, the Federal Border Service (FPS) and the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information (FAGCI) entered in the FSB in 2003.

In the newly created Ministry will take away some of the functions, the publication adds. For example, part of the crime, the investigation of which involved the FSB, will depart for another new structure with the proposed name of the Federal Investigation Service (FSS).

Now, depending on the jurisdiction the investigation by the relevant departments of the FSB, the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor General’s Office. It is expected that the SDF will be responsible for all investigations except those that are held for crimes against the state. Terrorism, extremism and espionage will be engaged in the MGB division.

As suggested by the publication, the reorganization will enhance the powers of authorities and the adjacent structures unite under one name for better handling. It is possible that soon all the FSB, SVR, and the FSO for a period of reorganization will be withdrawn from the staff.

Recall MGB abbreviation has been used to refer to the public security organs in the Soviet period from March 1945 to March 1953. After this structure briefly became part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, and since March 1954 has again withdrawn into a separate agency called the State Security Committee (KGB).

Source: https://lenta.ru/russia/2004/07/14/fsb/

Long article, well worth the read.

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) report.

</end editorial>

Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that while the Panama Papers stories published by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and its partner Novaya Gazeta are correct, they show no corruption or illegal activity on his part. Putin has called the stories a Western plot to destabilize his regime.

But additional analysis of the records by OCCRP and Novaya Gazeta show that offshore companies connected to Sergey Roldugin, one of Putin’s oldest friends, profited obscenely in building the jewel of the financial empire of Putin’s inner circle: Bank Rossiya.

And not only that, Bank Rossiya itself has profited massively at the expense of Russian taxpayers.

Bank Rossiya featured prominently in earlier OCCRP stories that showed Roldugin used offshores to conduct a series of highly suspicious transactions, many of which made no financial sense but left Roldugin much wealthier.

Documents showed that Roldugin and his associates owned a number of offshore companies registered in the notorious tax havens of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and Panama. Billions of dollars flowed through the companies, which received “donations” from Russia’s richest businessmen and controlled the activities of strategic Russian enterprises.

Bank Rossiya employees figured prominently in many of the transactions.

The bank is described by the US Treasury Department as “the personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation” whose “shareholders include members of Putin’s inner circle associated with the Ozero Dacha Cooperative, a housing community in which they live[d]”.

New records found by OCCRP show that in 2010, a company linked to Roldugin bought shares of Bank Rossiya for US$ 6.50 per share and sold them just days later to an unknown investor for 32 times more than he paid for them. Within a month, Gazprom, Russia’s largest state-owned company, paid more than 169 times what he had paid for the same shares: US$1,120 per share. Even worse, Gazprom would later sell most of them again for half that price earning large losses.

The records detailing these transaction were obtained by OCCRP from public records and the Panama Papers, a set of documents that were leaked from an offshore services provider called Mossack Fonseca to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with more than 100 media partners across the globe including Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP.

Putin, however, was adamant that the Panama files demonstrate no corruption or illegal activity on his part. “They are just trying to cause confusion, saying that some of my friends are involved in business, and suggesting that some of the money from these offshore accounts finds its way to officials, including the president,” he said.

“Putin’s Bank”

As retaliation for the annexation of Crimea and Kremlin support for pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine, authorities in both the US and European Union (EU) imposed sanctions on individuals and companies from Putin’s inner circle. One of the most important targets was Bank Rossiya.

Many of the figures involved in the bank owned houses in the Ozero Dacha Cooperative near Putin. The cooperative, founded in the mid-1990s, is a gated community of summer homes on the shores of Lake Komsomolskoe near St. Petersburg. One of his neighbors was Yuri Kovalchuk, the largest shareholder of Bank Rossiya (with about 38 percent). Kovalchuk, 64, is considered by EU authorities as Putin’s long-time acquaintance who is benefiting from his links with top Russian decision makers.

At various times, Bank Rossiya shareholders have included Nikolay Shamalov (his son, Kirill, is married to Putin’s younger daughter Katerina Tikhonova); Mikhail Shelomov, a distant relative of the president; and Roldugin, a celebrated cellist and godfather to Putin’s oldest daughter.

The bank was established in 1990 in the twilight of the Soviet era with the participation of the St. Petersburg branch of the Communist Party. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, new investors stepped in. They included Kovalchuk, former Minister of Education Andrei Fursenko and former Russian Railways head Vladimir Yakunin – all long-time friends and associates of Vladimir Putin.

In the mid-1990s, they were joined by powerful St. Petersburg criminal: Sergey Kuzmin and Gennady Petrov and companies affiliated with them controlled a significant stake in Bank Rossiya up until the end of 1990s when Putin became the head of the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency, and later the leader of the country. Last summer Petrov was indicted by Spanish prosecutors as a leader of the Tambovskaya organized crime group and accused of money laundering, fraud and other crimes.

Today Bank Rossiya is among the top 20 Russian lenders according to the Interfax rating agency, with assets of about US$ 9 billion and equity of US$ 700 million. It controls a sprawling financial empire with important strategic assets that underpin the Russian economy, including one of the country’s largest insurers and the management company for Gazprom’s pension fund.

One of Bank Rossiya’s holdings owns 25 percent stake in Channel 1, a state-controlled TV network with the largest audience in Russia.

The Panama Papers detail how a few suspicious deals involving Bank Rossiya’s shares helped a company linked to Roldugin make a fortune in just two days.

Continued at https://www.occrp.org/en/panamapapers/rossiya-putins-bank/

By Michael Cooney

Today’s honeypots and deception servers need to go further, IARPA says

Sometimes a great offense is much better than a stout defense, especially when it comes to protecting enterprise assets.

This week the advanced technology developers from the Intelligence Advance Research Projects Activity (IARPA) office put out a Request For Information about how to best develop better denial and deception technologies – such as honeypots or deception servers for example — that would bolster cyber security.

“Adapting deception to support the engagement of cyber adversaries is a concept that has been gaining momentum, although, the current state of research and practice is still immature: many techniques lack rigorous experimental measures of effectiveness, information is insufficient to determine how defensive deception changes attacker behavior or how deception increases the likeliness of early detection of a cyber attack,” IARPA said in a statement

IARPA laid out some questions it is looking to the security industry to answer:

• What are the existing methods for deception to support cyber defense? Provide specific examples (capability names and references) that implement these methods. What are the limitations of these methods? Are these methods fully automated or do they require human operation?
• What is/are the main goal(s) of deception activities for the capabilities provided in threat intelligence/observation, deterrence, delay, confuse, misinform, redirect, denial, detection, frustration, etc.)?
• What types of deception does the research/capability investigate and employ (e.g., denial through blocking/blacklisting/firewalling, detection, decoys, honey pot/traps/nets, honey tokens/fakes/misrepresentations/forgeries, etc.)?
• Where in the cyber kill chain does the research or capabilities focus and where does it have the greatest impact (reconnaissance, weaponize, deliver, exploit, install, command, act, etc.)?
• What are the primary target(s) of interest of relevant research/capabilities (e.g., network, data, user spaces, kernel, mobile/wireless, etc.)? Please describe all that apply.
• What methods or research exists for influencing cyber attackers? Do any of them leverage game theory or related concepts?
• What metrics and evaluation methods do you employ in your research or for your deception capability? How accurate are these methods? What approaches have been used to validate or assess the accuracy and/or usefulness of these methods? What are their strengths and limitations?
• What novel methods could be developed/expanded or adapted to improve or replace existing methods for deception to support cyber defense?
• What recent or underappreciated publications and technical developments are of critical relevance to the development, improvement, or evaluation of deception for cyber defense?

Source: http://www.networkworld.com/article/3081955/security/national-intelligence-office-wants-to-perfect-the-art-of-security-deception.html

BY ROMAN SHUTOV

Last year, after years of debate and lobbying on the issue, public broadcasting was established in Ukraine. In a country suffering from a serious crisis of trust in the media, it looked like a chance to regain people’s faith.

The dramatic decline in citizens’ trust in media started in 2014, when central Ukrainian TV channels first misinformed viewers about Euromaidan events, and later distorted facts about the reality on the frontline when war broke out. All of the consequences of “oligarchization” of the media landscape came to light: again and again, the media was manipulated by top oligarchs to promote their political and business interests. Citizens had no illusions regarding freedom of the media. In July 2015, 66 percent of Ukrainians were sure that media content was imposed by the media’s owners, or by the government.

The government, in turn, controlled one of the national TV channels and the network of twenty-eight regional TV stations. They were funded by the national budget and often used as propaganda tools by national and local authorities. Poor and out-of-date, these stations played some role in informing and entertaining people, but had low ratings. It was obvious that such a huge state-owned media machine was out of step, and there were many legal initiatives challenging the situation. But the government was not interested in losing this media resource.

Thankfully, things changed after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. The young, progressive-minded journalist Zurab Alasania was appointed to lead the state broadcasting company and turn it into a public broadcaster. Involving local media NGOs, think tanks, and international donors at all stages, he made the process inclusive and was assured the support of national media. In March 2015, the parliament adopted a law allowing state-owned media to enter the public broadcasting system. In April, the national old-style, state-controlled TV channel was rebranded and presented itself as a public broadcaster. In December 2015, the Supervisory Board was founded. Half of its members represent civil society: Ukrainian NGOs elected genuinely independent delegates to the body.

The national public broadcaster’s inclusion and transparency lead experts to conclude that the old state TV system finally has a new life and a human face. New formats have been introduced; taking advantage of updated technical infrastructure, they are more attractive to the audience. The channel is regularly monitored by Detector Media, a Ukrainian think tank that I represent; our reports show that, since October 2015, the channel’s news is free from manipulation, biases, and other violations of journalistic standards. The public TV channel has become a platform for experts and independent voices traditionally ignored by oligarch-owned channels. When the Panama Paperswere published, the channel ran Slidstvo.info’s investigation into President Petro Poroshenko’s affairs—something that would have been unthinkable on the old state-owned channel.

Still, the reform’s implementers have had little time to exhale. Reforming the national channel is only the first step; it’s now time to reform the local state TV broadcasters as well, and this seems to be anything but simple. Local teams understand that their future following the transformations is unclear, and that many of them will lose their jobs or be replaced by younger, more progressive people. Therefore, there is strong resistance to reforms at the local level.

Furthermore, fragments of the old state media machine still exist and are to be reformed and included in the public broadcasting system as well; among them are Ukrainian National Radio, Kultura TV channel, and UkrTeleFilm. All of these institutions are reluctant to be reformed and are lobbying to undermine the effort. But Alasania, supported by civil society and still given a green light by the government, is determined to succeed.

Nonetheless, the consequences of establishing public broadcasting are still debated. Some experts are saying that the government will never win the information war with Russia if it gets rid of its media resources. On the other hand, skeptics are sure that, being funded by the government, the public channel will remain under its influence. Based on the experience of Moldova and Poland, they say that the independence of the Supervisory Board is temporary, and the channel will eventually be state-controlled again. Besides, ensuring the independence of all local broadcasters will be impossible, and eventually local elites will take control.

Evidently, these fears have some standing. Alasania, his team, and supporters have few guarantees of success, so more efforts are needed to ensure the changes’ sustainability and the independence of reformed broadcasters. The state still suffers from political instability. That being the case, nothing can be planned for the long term.

But the price of failure is high. To remedy the deficit of trust in the media, the balanced, non-biased, modern, and audience-friendly public broadcaster can not only restore citizens’ trust in media; as a platform for real political debates and independent voices, it can contribute to a completely new foundation of political participation and democratic dialogue on both national and local levels.

It’s too early to jump to conclusions; reforms are ongoing, and audiences require more time to notice the difference in quality and gain trust. As for the reformers, their challenge is to keep this window of opportunity open as long as possible and to do everything they can to ensure the changes’ sustainability.

Roman Shutov is Program Director of Detector Media (formerly Telekritika), a Kyiv-based NGO.

Source: http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/ukraine-s-oligarchs-own-the-media-but-public-broadcasting-is-shaking-things-up

The title of this article is “VLADIMIR PUTIN’S SECRET WEAPON”, but I didn’t like it as my blog title.

According to this article, the Russian government is oriented on propping up Putin’s “reiting”, his popularity rating.

As I have written repeatedly, Russia’s primary focus is the Russian people, maintaining their loyalty – in order to avoid a colored revolution in Russia. According to this article, and I can’t disagree, the invasions of Crimea, Donbass, and Syria was for the purpose of propping up his public opinion popularity.  I can’t disagree but I believe that might be taking a leap in logic. It is, however, worth considering.

</end editorial>

VLADIMIR PUTIN’S SECRET WEAPON

Every day, the red line ticks up and down. Some weeks it trends higher, others lower. It measures the most important vital sign of Russia’s body politic: the popularity of Vladimir Putin. In the Kremlin they call it the reiting—the Russian pronunciation of rating—and the reiting rules supreme over all of the nation’s political and economic decisions.

When it stands—as it did in late May—at a comfortable 82 percent, Russia’s elite breathes easy. When it dips as low at 62 percent—as it did in 2011 when Putin announced his return for a third presidential term—every resource is scrambled to reverse the trend at any cost. In recent times, that has meant anything from staging a lavish Olympic Games to taking the country to war in Ukraine and Syria.

The reiting is compiled from many sources, including a vast new monitoring body created by the Kremlin with the aim of spotting and crushing discontent. But the one that’s most trusted is run not by Putin loyalists but by a tiny, beleaguered team of glasnost-era liberals. It’s called the Levada Center, after its late founder, Yuri Levada, and is the last independent pollster in Russia. It was launched in 1988 at the suggestion of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and the center’s job was to report the truth, however uncomfortable—amazingly, a role it still fulfills a generation later in a very different Russia.

“The Soviet government had no adequate way to understand what was happening in society—they needed to answer the question ‘What are the people thinking?’ if they were to survive,” says Natalia Zorkina, a member of Levada’s original team when the center was founded. “The study of public opinion was meant to become an institution on which a democratic society could be built.”

It didn’t work out that way. The administration of former President Boris Yeltsin that inherited the collapsing Soviet economy quickly discovered, thanks to Levada’s meticulous polling, that by the mid-1990s, what most Russians were thinking was that Yeltsin and his reformist bums should be thrown out. There was panic in the Kremlin and talk of canceling elections, but a small group of media moguls, editors and self-described “political technologists” convinced the Kremlin to take a different course: Instead of bowing to the pressure of public opinion, they offered to shape it.

“All politics is information politics,” says Gleb Pavlovsky, one of the original political technologists, who was a key architect of the alliance of pollsters and media owners that eventually brought Putin to power in 2000. “There is no difference for us between facts and perceptions.”

And so the magical thinking that blossomed into today’s Putin regime was born: Public opinion was something to be controlled and shaped, not something to be listened to. “By the mid-1990s, the Kremlin began to give up on winning any kind of political debate in a public forum,” says Zorkina. “The character of power changed. The basis of the Kremlin’s legitimacy changed…from people making a democratic choice between different political visions to getting as many people as possible to back the national leader. Public opinion began as a foundation of democracy but is now a tool of authoritarianism.”

The story of the Levada Center, then, is also the story of Russia’s transition from flawed democracy to a kind of consensual autocracy. And at the heart of the system was the methodology Yuri Levada thought would bring Russia freedom—the careful monitoring of what ordinary Russians think about everything, from the price of cheese to American imperialism, from pensions and trash collection to nuclear missiles and God.

Putin’s Magic Circle

The Levada Center occupies two suites of cluttered offices at the back of a former pre-revolutionary hotel not far from Red Square. Wilting spider plants and leaning bookcases fill the corridors, and the older employees have the earnest, scruffy look of late-Soviet-era intellectuals. On chunky computers, a 50-strong team at headquarters coordinates a nationwide network of 3,000 pollsters, who spend their days questioning ordinary Russians by phone, internet and in person. The center is registered as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and pays its way with a mix of commercial market research and political and economic surveys for universities and media organizations. About 2 percent of its revenue comes from foreign clients.

“The Levada team are ‘former people,’” says one veteran Russian TV anchor, using the term that Bolsheviks once used for aristocrats and bourgeois who had no place in Soviet society. “They believe passionately in getting the real data, not just telling the people who pay them what they want to hear. They are important for anyone who cares about seeing a real picture of Russia, not the one that appears on the television screen.” (The anchor requested anonymity because he still works for state television, which increasingly disapproves of Levada.)

Putin’s Kremlin also believes passionately in getting data on public opinion—though the methods it uses are questionable. Last December, the Kremlin appointed Irina Makiyeva, a former state bank executive, to head a massive new polling service to monitor Russia’s political temperature in minute detail. Under the direct aegis of the Federal Guard Service—Russia’s equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service that is charged with the president’s personal security—it deploys thousands of state employees to scan local press and social networks for signs of discontent.

“We conduct constant monitoring, especially in the problem cities,” Makiyeva promised the Russian Cabinet, unveiling a classification system—green, yellow and red—to warn of potential political or social unrest. The state also controls the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, or VTsIOM (the original name of the Levada Center before a Kremlin takeover in 2003 forced the core team to leave and start over), as well as the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), which attempts to do a similar job.

The problem is that such state-backed polls “have become a form of propaganda in themselves,” says Pavlovsky. “The questions are presented as: Do you agree with the norm, the majority?”

A recent example was a poll in Crimea—which Russia annexed in 2014—ordered by Putin and conducted by VTsIOM in January. Crimean Tatar activists had blown up electricity pylons, and the government of Ukraine, on which Crimea entirely relies for its energy, refused to restore service unless Russia acknowledged that the territory remained part of Ukraine. The Kremlin’s pollsters called home telephone numbers and asked people whether they preferred to sit in the dark or agreed to accede to Ukraine’s demands.

According to VTsIOM, 96 percent said they preferred to suffer in the dark—a result widely trumpeted by Russian state TV as a sign of the locals’ willingness to undergo hardship in order to stay part of Russia. But in reality, Pavlovsky says, “this is not an opinion poll, it is an invitation to prove your loyalty…. We are seeing lately that for the first time [since the fall of Communism], people are afraid to answer questions, especially in small provincial towns. They believe they will suffer consequences from giving a disloyal answer.”

Nonetheless, such government-run polling is a mainstay of the Kremlin’s decision-making process. According to Mikhail Zygar, former editor-in-chief of the opposition channel Dozhd TV and author of the best-selling All the Kremlin’s Men, a study of the Putin regime, “Every [Kremlin] action is based absolutely on this polling…. These polls confirm that everything they’re doing is right, that Putin is popular and the people love him.”

Pavlovsky knows the system well: He was one of its designers. “Today, they keep to the same arrangement that was set up in the late 1990s,” says Pavlovsky, a former dissident who spent three years in exile in Siberia for anti-Soviet activity. Every Thursday, Kremlin Deputy Chief of Staff Vyacheslav Volodin chairs a meeting that includes leaders of the official United Russia party, senior members of the administration and pollsters Valery Fyodorov and Aleksandr Olson, the directors of VTsIOM and FOM, respectively. “They report on the state of public opinion on a range of threats, everything that could potentially affect Putin’s level of popularity,” says Pavlovsky. “They decide on how to work with this challenge.”

Under Yeltsin and in the early Putin years, this weekly meeting was also attended by the heads of Russia’s TV channels. Today, the TV bosses—including Channel One General Director Konstantin Ernst and Oleg Dobrodeyev of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Co.—have a separate meeting with Volodin on Fridays, after he has presented his summary of the pollsters’ report personally to Putin and his inner Cabinet.

“The television plan for the coming week would be decided,” recalls Pavlovsky, who attended such meetings from autumn 1995 until he resigned as a senior adviser to the presidential administration in 2011. “The Kremlin gives the general direction but not the details, then Dobrodeyev and Ernst are the executors. They approach news like a TV serial—but it is very professionally produced. The stories may be exaggerated, but they are convincing.” Television news, he says, “is the new form of agitprop”—the Stalin-era system of agitation and propaganda that aimed to shape the consciousness of the proletariat.

The system is a kind of magic circle: Opinion polls shape official television coverage, which in turn shapes public opinion.

The Reiting Tsar

It was uber-oligarch Boris Berezovsky who first understood the political might of television when he took over Russia’s main TV channel, now known as Channel One, and turned its influence into money and power. But it was Putin, in the first year of his rule, who gathered that power to the Kremlin, kicking out all potential rivals (including Berezovsky) and quickly shutting down all non-state media. The result, says Levada’s Zorkina, is that the Kremlin has unprecedented control over what Russians see, hear—and think.

“Public opinion does not exist as an independent entity in Russia as it does in the West,” she says. “In Russia, people have completely decoupled themselves from the political process. They don’t believe that they can change anything. Even in the 1990s, only a tiny proportion of people, perhaps 2 or 3 percent, were politically active. Now it is even less.”

The lack of an alternative leader, or of any real political debate, helps to explain one of Levada’s strangest recent findings—that Putin’s popularity remains sky-high, even as Russians’ standard of living has plummeted. Since 2014, the ruble has lost half of its value, inflation has hit double digits, spending on health and education has been cut, and Russia has unilaterally banned the import of U.S. and European food. Yet the Kremlin has apparently succeeded in defying the laws of political gravity: Putin’s personal reiting has become decoupled from the unfolding economic disaster over which he presides.

The secret, of course, is as old as politics itself. If not quite bread and circuses—the Kremlin’s been desperately short of bread over the past two years—then certainly war and circuses. When Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 after a term as prime minister, his rating dipped as low as 62 percent, and 100,000 people came onto the streets of Moscow in protest. The Kremlin’s response was to throw $48 billion—back then, with oil at $140 a barrel, it could still afford it—at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (according to the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an NGO), making it the most expensive Olympics ever staged.

In 2014, as oil prices crumbled, Putin annexed Crimea and backed rebels in eastern Ukraine, filling TV programming with news flashes from the front and fostering a surge of national pride. According to Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, “‘Occupy Crimea’ was at least in part an impulsive response to both ‘Occupy Maidan’ and ‘Occupy Abai’”—the popular protests staged in Ukraine’s Kiev and Moscow, respectively, that deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and badly rattled the Kremlin.

“All the peaks of Putin’s popularity have been as a result of wars,” says Zorkina. “Chechnya in 2000, Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, Syria in 2015.”

Another part of the formula is also age-old: create enemies. In the early 1990s, a series of Levada surveys found that significant majorities of Russians admired America’s culture and values—and 43 percent were willing to admit that all of the USSR’s problems were homegrown. In January 2015, Levada found that 81 percent of Russians had a negative attitude toward the U.S. What’s more, 63 percent of respondents this year blamed their country’s economic woes on “outside enemies.”

Small wonder: Since 2014, Russia’s media have blamed the U.S. government for everything from backing a fascist junta in Ukraine to mounting an “information attack” on Russia by planting stories about top Putin cronies’ Panamanian offshore accounts and systemic doping of their Olympic athletes. Last November, Dmitry Kiselev, Russia’s most influential TV anchor, suggested that the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) was an American creation.

“They have re-created the Soviet siege mentality, the complex of being surrounded by enemies,” says Zorkina. “Putin has also rekindled the old Russian imperial idea, with its superiority complex and the idea that we are on some special historical path.”

The idea is that Russia is at war and that therefore its citizens must be ready to face hardship and sacrifice for the Motherland. Never was that logic clearer than when a Russian charter plane was blown out of the sky by an ISIS bomb soon after taking off from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 31, 2015. All 224 people on board, mostly Russians on vacation, were killed. It was a direct response to Russia launching an air campaign in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. For any Western leader, such an attack would be a devastating blow. Yet Levada showed that Putin’s all-important reiting actually climbed in the aftermath of the bombing—while support for the Syria campaign remained at a buoyant 60 percent (though down from 72 percent at the war’s outset).

“Frightened people want a strong leader,” says Dmitry K., one of Levada’s Moscow-based pollsters, who works the phones and conducts focus groups. (The center keeps the identity of its polling staff confidential to avoid possible corruption.) “When you are in a war situation, anyone who criticizes the leadership is a mutineer. In other words, a traitor.”

The allegation of treachery has become the Levada Center’s most pressing problem—its mission often involves reporting things the Kremlin doesn’t want to hear. For instance, one recent Levada poll found that one in four Russians with a college degree is contemplating emigration. “These are the most secure social groups, people [who have] achieved success, recognition and wealth in Russia,” the center’s current director, Lev Gudkov, wrote in an analysis of the results. “[They] understand that they will not be able to live under growing authoritarianism.”

Another unwelcome finding came last December, when Levada reported that faith in Russian television news—the central plank of Kremlin control—had fallen to just 41 percent, down from 79 percent in 2009.

No one was surprised when Russia’s prosecutor’s office began cracking down on the Levada Center. The attacks began in May 2013, when Levada’s posting of poll results and analyses was deemed to be “political activity” because they “influence public opinion.” Prosecutors demanded that the center register as a “foreign agent”—a term synonymous with spying in Russian—because of Levada’s small number of international grants and clients. Agents from the prosecutor’s office rifled through the center’s files and impounded computer hard drives—but eventually suspended the case.

“Their aim is to keep us in a state of uncertainty,” says Zorkina. “Just so we know that we are under their eye.”

Levada has been spared—for the moment—because it seems that a dwindling number of the Kremlin’s current generation of political technologists still respect reliable polling, however unwelcome the results. But the fact that Levada is under pressure is a dangerous sign that Putin is retreating into his own echo chamber. Putin “orders up all this propaganda—but he is also the main target of it,” says Pavlovsky.

“The older undemocratic regimes become, the more mistakes their leaders tend to make…. Cutting themselves off from accurate information is one of the most common—and most self-destructive,” argues UCLA professor Treisman, author of The Return: Russia’s Journey From Gorbachev to Medvedev.“Surprisingly often, authoritarian governments collapse less because of well-organized opposition than because of their own errors. Overconfident and misinformed, leaders stumble into danger and lack the skill and vision to get out.”

The Levada Center can’t predict the future. But its body of polling is the clearest insight anyone can have into how the Putin regime might end—or, as Zorkina puts it, “where the cracks run” through the foundations of Kremlin power.

“Society is full of such cracks—from poor health care to unemployment to rising prices—but there is no sense of solidarity, no interest in participation in politics. The only thing that unites Russian society is its support for Putin,” says Zorkina. “There are no forms of social unity, no political parties or social organizations or trade unions. They have all been suppressed, so there is no way people can legitimately express their protest…. The most likely scenario for Russia’s future will be a slow descent into chaotic discontent, the continued collapse of society and the strengthening of security organs.”

Already, part of her prediction is coming true. Earlier this year, Putin created a new National Guard, a super-agency directly run by the Kremlin and employing 400,000 paramilitary police and troops, as well as helicopter gunships and tanks. The new unit—a modern-day equivalent to the Roman emperors’ Praetorian Guard—is led by Putin’s former personal bodyguard Viktor Zolotov and has been specifically authorized by the Duma (the principal legislative assembly) to fire on civilians in cases of civil unrest. In February, Putin said the new unit was designed to “fight terrorism”—and in the next breath warned that Russia’s “foes abroad” were preparing to “interfere” with the parliamentary elections on September 18 by organizing mass protests, thereby labeling any opponents foreign-backed fifth columnists.

As Putin and his allies dig in to defend their hold on power, Levada is preparing to chronicle the discontent in its usual meticulous detail. “What we are doing is phenomenal, a unique experiment,” says Zorkina. “We are conducting opinion polls in a totalitarian society. Imagine if someone had been able to do that in Nazi Germany.”

Source: http://www.newsweek.com/why-russians-love-vladimir-putin-470432?rx=us

BY JARNO LIMNÉLL

As Russian hackers take center stage in the pantheon of cyber adversaries, NATO needs to step up.

Who’s the biggest cyber threat? Not long ago, China and its economic espionage were at the center of the Western narrative, but Russia has elbowed its way in.

“The Russian cyber threat is more severe than we had previously assessed,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clappertold Congress last year. More recently, Adm. Michael Rogers, who leads the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, said, “Russia has very capable cyber operators who can and do work with speed, precision and stealth.” Today’s headlines include the news that Russian hackers appear to have stolen opposition research on Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

Yet even as the narrative shifts, there are two features of Russia´s cyber activities that remain too poorly known and understood in the West.

First, Russia´s greatest cyber advantage is its wealth of the most important cyber asset:  skilled and well-educated people. The government recruits and harnesses individuals with innovation and aplomb — for example, allowing its intelligence services to offer employment to hackers convicted of cyber crimes in lieu of prison. But the more important trend is making common cause with criminal hacker groups: the government allows them safe haven in return for services on demand. In this way, the Russian government has been intentionally blurring the lines between cyber activists, criminals, and state-paid spies and hackers, adding a new layer of obfuscation to the trickly problem of attribution — that is, figuring out just who is behind a given attack. The result is a cadre of well-financed, persistent and technologically advanced “non-state groups” that can carry out various operations — and do so on a scale of a year or longer until they get what they are after. Some of the ones we know about go by the names APT28, the Dukes, Red October, Snake, and Energetic Bear.

Second, Russians acting for the government or with its approval are testing the boundaries of the cyber battlefield. Having already demonstrated its willingness to use such means in various conflicts and gray-zone confrontations, Russia is at the forefront of the global move toward a greater strategic use of cyber capabilities to persuade adversaries to change their behavior. Hackers with connections to the Kremlin have attacked, for example, a French television network, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock market, and the U.S. State Department. These activities are carried out in pursuit of Russia´s strategic objectives.

Even if the attribution to Kremlin has been pretty clearly presented, there has been very limited political response from the West. This is encouraging – from the Russian point of view – because it is a license to act even more aggressively in the cyber domain. The coordinated attack on the Ukrainian electrical grid in December was clearly an attack on critical national infrastructure. Russia showed what it can do, when it wants. This should have awoken the West. But it did not.

It is difficult to say exactly where Russia might rank among the world’s cyber forces; governments like to keep their cyber abilities secret, and such capabilities cannot be calculated in the same way as tanks or fighter planes. Still, it is known that Vladimir Putin has poured resources and manpower into the field, creating a cyber command within the Defense Ministry to conduct cyber and information operations. The Russia military also has a specialized unit for cyber attacks, while the Federal Protective Service (FSO), the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) are believed to have the lead in creating Russia´s offensive cyber capabilities. It is no stretch to assert that Russia is among the world’s top three, and when states´ level of offensive and defense capabilities are combined with their cyber dependence, Russia’s position appears to be the strongest in the world. To the Kremlin, the cyber domain offers an excellent opportunity to increase its power in world politics.

The more Russia develops its cyber capabilities, the more aggressive and confident it will become. Russia has the ability and will to conduct denial-of-service attacks, develop sophisticated malware, and exploit unknown software vulnerabilities. Unlike China, Russian cyber activities focus primarily on intelligence-gathering and military reconnaissance of critical infrastructure networks. Today’s intelligence operations enable tomorrow’s actions, and Russia is mapping networks to determine the resources necessary for future attacks.

The Russian government has stepped up its state-sponsored cyber attacks because it perceives that there is no significant “price to pay” for such activities. This trend will continue as long as the West doesn´t push back.

A political response is now needed. The West should not tolerate Russian´s behavior in cyberspace. Western nations must develop effective ways to deal with Russia’s cyber operations and have the political courage to act against it. This is one important topic to be discussed in NATO´s upcoming summit in Warsaw. Otherwise, the West will continue to send the wrong message to Kremlin.

• Jarno Limnéll, who holds a doctorate in Military Sciences, is a professor of cybersecurity at Aalto University in Finland

Source: http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/06/west-must-respond-russias-increasing-cyber-aggression/129090/

By COLIN CLARK on June 10, 2016

CAPITOL HILL: In a rare public event, the No. 2 member of the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee (HPSCI), Rep. Adam, said a cyber attack on a US satellite could be considered an act of war.

While this may sound like common sense to some, the question of whether using cyber to interfere with or disable a military or intelligence satellite would constitute an act of war has been one of those questions like the old philosophic chestnut: “If a tree falls in the forest but nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Senior military and intelligence officials have been extremely careful in answering the cyber question, in part because determining the difference between an act of espionage and one that constitutes an attack can be challenging.

“Measures taken against our strategic Indication and Warning (I&W) systems (spy satellites) would obviously be viewed as provocations, if not belligerent acts; a foreign actor also could initiate… a reversible process, like Radio Frequency (RF) jamming,” Schiff said in his prepared remarks.

The decision to react — and how to react — would be complex, Schiff made very clear in an appearance this morning before the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Space Breakfast. We would need to be able to figure out just who actually committed the attack — attribution. Then we need to decide how much we can make public about the attribution. That will depend, to some degree, on how much information can safely be made public, Schiff said. If all those conditions can be met, then the US could target one of the enemy’s satellites. Or a ground station. Or another target. All those factors must be weighed carefully.

“Of course we can better guard against such things by requiring our intelligence satellites to carry defensive mechanisms on board. But the trouble is how that move could be perceived internationally,” Schiff noted. “The addition of a defensive capability might make our overhead satellites start to seem like airborne weaponry.”

And “if you get into a tit-for-tat exchange you may end up costing yourself more than your adversaries,” Schiff said.

One of the most difficult conundrum about space warfare — beyond attribution — is just what constitutes an attack. Part of deciding that involves defining what constitutes a valid target and a lawful means of attack. Since much of what the US can actually do to deter an enemy in space is highly classified, we didn’t learn much from Schiff, but he did say this:

“In terms of our space systems, obviously, I can’t go into any detail on it here, but there are a whole host of ways of attacking a space system. They can be attacked kinetically from the ground. They can be jammed. They can be disabled. They can attacked through cyber, and they can be attacked by other bodies also in space,” Schiff said. “And so we are certainly investing in technologies to help us make our space systems more resilient and to defend the space systems up there already that may not be very resilient and guard against cyber attacks.”

So deterrence is crucial, as is making systems more resilient. More on this soon.

Source: http://breakingdefense.com/2016/06/cyber-attack-on-satellite-could-be-act-of-war-hpsci-ranking/

Another excellent article by Paul Goble!

If his logic is correct, the football (soccer) fans from Russia were ‘deployed’ to France to fight English football (soccer) fans as another tool of Russian warfare. Paul calls it Hybrid Warfare, I just call it warfare by the Russian State using everything as a tool, a weapon, as an instrument of warfare.

It is unconventional, it is new, and if true will lead to most of Europe banning Russians from visiting, working, or supporting traveling Russian sports teams. Period.  Perhaps this might cause the cessation of Russian students studying abroad.

Things were made worse by pictures showing the Russian minister of sports urging Russian fans to attack other fans.

Now there are serious calls to ban Russia from competing for years and banning Russia from this year’s olympics.

Oh, Russia, you’re making things worse for yourselves.

</end editorial>

Paul Goble

June 14, 2016

Staunton, VA, June 14, 2016 – The attack of Russian football louts against English fans in Marseilles was a well-organized action that was part and parcel of Vladimir Putin’s “hybrid war” against the West and one that has grown out of his longstanding ties with the kind of fans other countries are ashamed of but that Russian leaders celebrate, according to Ilya Milshteyn.

Americans have lost confidence in key institutions, with television news suffering significant losses–dropping 10 percent over the last decade to just 21 percent saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the institution.

The only institutions Americans have less confidence in than TV news were newspapers, big business and Congress. Only two institutions gained confidence over the same period, with the presidency gaining the most–up 3 percent.

The research was done by Gallup, which surveyed 1,027 adults in all 50 states between June 1 and June 5. The margin of error is ±4 percentage points.

“Americans clearly lack confidence in the institutions that affect their daily lives: the schools responsible for educating the nation’s children; the houses of worship that are expected to provide spiritual guidance; the banks that are supposed to protect Americans’ earnings; the U.S. Congress elected to represent the nation’s interests; and the news media that claims it exists to keep them informed,” the report’s summary says

Source: http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/americans-lose-confidence-in-tv-news/296226