A must read: Ben Schreckinger - How Russia Targets The U.S. Military With hacks, pro-Putin trolls and fake news, the Kremlin is ratcheting up its efforts to turn American servicemembers and veterans into a fifth column. In the fall of 2013, Veterans Today, a fringe American news site that also offers former service members help finding jobs and paying medical bills, struck up a new partnership. It began posting content from New Eastern Outlook, a geopolitical journal published by the government-chartered Russian Academy of Sciences, and running headlines like “Ukraine’s Ku Klux Klan – NATO’s New Ally.” As the United States confronted Russian ally Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against Syrian children this spring, the site trumpeted, “Proof: Turkey Did 2013 Sarin Attack and Did This One Too” and “Exclusive: Trump Apologized to Russia for Syria Attack.” In recent years, intelligence experts say, Russia has dramatically increased its “active measures” — a form of political warfare that includes disinformation, propaganda and compromising leaders with bribes and blackmail — against the United States. Thus far, congressional committees, law enforcement investigations and press scrutiny have focused on Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s successful efforts to disrupt the American political process. But a review of the available evidence and the accounts of Kremlin-watchers make clear that the Russian government is using the same playbook against other pillars of American society, foremost among them the military. Experts warn that effort, which has received far less attention, has the potential to hobble the ability of the armed forces to clearly assess Putin’s intentions and effectively counter future Russian aggression. In addition to propaganda designed to influence service members and veterans, Russian state actors are friending service members on Facebook while posing as attractive young women to gather intelligence and targeting the Twitter accounts of Defense Department employees with highly customized “phishing” attacks. The same Russian military hacking group that breached the Democratic National Committee, “Fancy Bear,” was also responsible for publicly posting stolen Army data online while posing as supporters of the Islamic State in 2015, according to the findings of one cybersecurity firm. And the hacking group’s most common target for phishing attacks in the West has been military personnel, with service members’ spouses making up another prominent target demographic, according to another cybersecurity firm. While the military and its contractors have long been the targets of cyberattacks from hostile foreign powers, the Russian campaign is noteworthy for its heightened intensity, especially since the imposition of Western economic sanctions following the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and for the novel tactics it is employing online. All of it amounts to a new kind of low-intensity or “hybrid” warfare that Western governments are still struggling to effectively counter. “We are focused on the azalea bushes at the edge of a redwood forest,” said retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, who stepped down last June after three years as supreme allied commander of NATO, where he witnessed a surge in Russian active measures against Baltic states and in efforts to spread negative disinformation about the alliance’s soldiers stationed in Europe. The active measures campaign has followed Breedlove home and into retirement. In July, emails hacked from his Gmail account were published on the Russian front site DC Leaks, and Breedlove said he was recently targeted with a series of more than a dozen sophisticated phishing emails purporting to come from his bank. Breedlove declined to name his bank but said it is used by the majority of his fellow officers, leading him to conclude the motives of the phishing attack were political rather than financial. “What Russia is doing across the gamut from our internal audiences to military audiences and others,” he said, “is quite astronomical.” *** In the 20th century, intelligence agencies looking to build ties with foreign soldiers might have gone through the trouble of sending agents out to watering holes near military bases, waiting for servicemen to show up and gaining their trust one drink at a time. Now, social media makes it cheap and easy to target soldiers and veterans in their virtual hangouts for intelligence-gathering and influence campaigns. John Bambenek, a threat intelligence manager at Fidelis Cybersecurity, whose work has included investigating the DNC breach, said that Russia is one of several foreign powers using social media lures to gather intelligence on the U.S. military. “Some are quite unsophisticated (attractive woman sending friend requests), some get more complicated,” he wrote in an email. “Spies understand that a great deal can be discerned about what militaries are up to based on the unclassified behavior of soldiers.” Forming connections on social media could help foreign states directly communicate with groups of American soldiers, a tactic employed in recent conflicts by both Russia and the U.S. During the first days of the annexation of Crimea, Ukrainian soldiers were bombarded with demoralizing text messages such as, “Soldier you are just a raw meat for your commanders.” Ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military emailed Iraqi soldiers en masse encouraging them to surrender, according to Richard Clarke’s 2010 book “Cyber War.” The Pentagon is clearly worried. Defense Department spokeswoman Linda Rojas declined to comment on specific activities, but said new technologies have made the military more vulnerable in cyber space. “The proliferation of internet-based communications and social media applications has elevated the potential for nefarious use that could affect our personnel,” she wrote in an email. Rojas also said the military was working to address the mounting threats posed by hacking and online influence operations. “We make every effort to educate and inform DoD personnel of these threats, while bolstering our network defense capabilities to protect IT infrastructure from outside intrusions,” she wrote. Becoming Facebook friends with American soldiers also gives foreign agents the ability to post propaganda that will show up their news feeds. Serena Moring, a former military contractor from a military family, said she first became concerned about pro-Russian sentiment among soldiers on social media last spring, when an unverified report purporting to relate the story of a Russian soldier who died heroically while fighting ISIS in Syria began circulating among American service members on social media. “All of the response from the military guys was like, ‘That is awesome. That’s an epic way to die,’” recounted Moring, 39. “It was a very soldier-to-soldier bond that was created through social media.” Moring said she has become further alarmed as friends of hers in the military, including military intelligence, have become avowed admirers of Putin, and that she now expends considerable effort arguing about Russia on Instagram and Facebook channels geared to military audiences. In the Wild West of social media, it is difficult to sort out pro-Russian sentiment that is organic – Putin’s approval rating has surged among U.S. Republicans since 2015 and he is often the subject of positive coverage in right-leaning outlets like Fox News—from that which is manufactured. But Breedlove said much of the sentiment is being generated by a concerted Kremlin influence campaign. “People popping up on veterans’ sites and singing the praises of Putin, you can guarantee those are trolls and part of the army that’s sitting over there attacking us every day,” he said. *** Putin has made the creation of a pro-Russian “alternative media ecosystem” to, in his words, smash “the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the information stream” a top priority of his foreign policy. A significant prong of those operations is aimed at the American military community, and the Russian activity has ramped up in recent years as tensions have increased over sanctions, the annexation of Crimea and the expansion of NATO. Veterans Today is a homegrown American site that was founded in 2003 in opposition to the invasion of Iraq and soon began publishing wild conspiracy theories. Before it partnered with Russia’s New Eastern Outlook in 2013, it had forged ties with Iran’s state-backed PressTV and counted among its editorial board of directors a former head of Pakistan’s intelligence services, publishing headlines like, “Israeli death squads involved in Sandy Hook bloodbath” and “Water Terrorism by India to Overawe Pakistan.” New Eastern Outlook “chose to work with VT after following us for a while and seeing us for the unique platform that we are,” Veterans Today managing editor Jim Dean explained in an article about the arrangement. He described it as a “marriage made in heaven.” A Veterans Today bio for Dean lists several relatives and ancestors who served in the military and describes his membership in several military-themed groups but does not indicate he himself has served. The site’s chairman, Gordon Duff, served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam and began contributing to the site in 2008. In one 2012 interview he stated, “About 30% of what’s written on Veterans Today, is patently false. About 40% of what I write, is at least purposely, partially false, because if I didn’t write false information I wouldn’t be alive.” Veterans Today is the flagship property of the “Veterans Today Network,” which includes a jobs board, a cancer foundation and a sister site, Veterans News Now, which describes itself as “an independent online journal representing the positions and providing news for members of the military and veteran community.” The network is also affiliated with the Veterans Housing & Education Foundation, which has the stated goal of raising $500 million in five years. A form on VeteransTodayCancerFoundation.org, which as of this writing was down for maintenance, invited veterans in need to request help by filling out a form that asked them to submit personal details, including the handles for their social media accounts. An administrator for the Veterans Today Network who asked that his name not be used said that the jobs board, HireVeterans.com, currently has 35,000 active resumes in its system and that it has partnered with “major companies in the U.S. in helping them find veterans for employment.” The jobs board lists dozens of featured employers – including Bank of America, Merck, Geico and Westinghouse – that according to the administrator have purchased premium annual memberships. A 2011 article by Fox Business recommends the jobs board to employers. The administrator said that though Veterans Today and the jobs board were both owned by Success Spear LLC there would be no way for foreign states to access veterans’ personal information via their partnerships with Veterans Today. The administrator said the cancer foundation had not yet fully launched. In October 2013, at the same time that Veterans Today began publishing content from New Eastern Outlook, its sister site Veterans News Now began publishing content from the Strategic Culture Foundation, a Moscow think tank run by Yuri Profokiev, a former head of Moscow’s Communist Party and member of the Soviet Politburo. In October 2015, Veterans Today also partnered with a slickly designed, anonymously authored military affairs website called South Front that had been registered in Moscow that April just as Russia was ramping up its influence operations in response to Western sanctions. Since then, the site has consistently published articles that push the Kremlin party line, both from its Russian partner and its own contributors. Now, in addition to learning about “The Coming Shift to Cosmic Fascism,” readers who cruise to Veterans Today — which has 45,000 Facebook followers and claims over 900,000 unique visitors per month — to catch up on the news or to check out the free services offered to veterans can read headlines like “Pravda: Ukraine indignant at 80% of Jews in power” and “Trump Humiliated: Syria Shoots Down 34 of 59 Cruise Missiles, Russia to Upgrade System Soon.” Recent contributions from South Front include “U.S. Suffers Reverses as Trump’s Plan to Aid Terrorists is Realized by Russia” and “The Political Uses Of Russophobia.” And recent contributions from New Eastern Outlook include, “If NATO wants peace and stability it should stay home” and “Brussels, NATO and the Globalists in Total Disarray.” In late 2014, Duff and Dean attended a counterterrorism conference in Damascus at which Duff proclaimed to delegates from Russia, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon his theory that “the U.S. government is subservient to a worldwide criminal organization.” This March, the Veterans Today chairman attended a “VT Reception” in Damascus at which attendees gave speeches flanked by over-sized portraits of Assad and Putin, according to video he published to YouTube. Duff did not respond to a question about whether any foreign entities had been involved in funding his travel to Syria. A State Department expert in Russian influence campaigns who was not authorized to speak on the record said he had taken note of Veterans Today’s partnership with New Eastern Outlook and that Southfront appears to be a Russian front that deliberately obscures its origins. The expert also described the Strategic Culture Foundation as a part of the Kremlin’s influence apparatus and noted that Russia has long sought to amplify the voices of Western conspiracy theorists. Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington who has studied the role of Veterans Today in the Russia-aligned “alternative media ecosystem,” described the website as an “active partner” in the dissemination of Russian propaganda. Despite the often far-fetched claims and clunky feel of Veterans Today and other outlets used by Russian propagandists, Starbird said she has come to consider them potentially potent vehicles for disinformation. “I used to think it, and others like it, were quite fringe,” she said. “But the intentional targeting of U.S. military, active and retired, seems to be a strategy of information war. I have anecdotes from friends, family members and now strangers who tell me about their family members who are deeply engrossed in this information ecosystem.” Joel Harding, a former Army intelligence officer who now works as independent researcher, describes Veterans Today, Veterans News Now and South Front as “Russian proxy sites.” Harding said that in combination with other components of Russian influence efforts, the sites could successfully influence the military community over the long term. “Veterans Today and Veterans News Now will not cause soldiers, marines, airmen, or seamen to defect or become pro-Russian, not by themselves,” he said. “But if someone regards them as a reliable source of truthful information, does not recognize that they are pushing Russian propaganda or information with a pro-Russian perspective, over time they will change.” In an email, representatives of South Front who did not provide their names said the site has no links to the Russian government. They suggested that identifying South Front as part of the Kremlin’s influence apparatus would run contrary to the principles of freedom of speech and be discriminatory against Russians (one common tactic of Russian influence operations is to invoke Western values in their efforts to undermine Western societies). The Strategic Culture Foundation did not respond to messages requesting comment and emails sent to the contact address provided by New Eastern Outlook were rejected by the journal’s web servers. Dean said he was not aware that researchers had identified Veterans Today as a vehicle for Russian propaganda. “We appreciate the publicity,” he wrote in an email. “Please ask them to keep up the good work.” He did not address a question about whether the site received funding from foreign entities. Debbie Menon, the Dubai-based, recently departed editor-in-chief of Veterans News Now did not respond to an email seeking comment. *** In addition to influence operations, military personnel and veterans have been the subject of a disproportionate share of hacking attempts in Russia’s active measures campaign against the United States. In fact, the Russian military hackers who breached the DNC appear to expend as much effort on current and former military personnel as on political targets. A security oversight by the hacking group, most commonly known as “Fancy Bear,” gave researchers a public window into the targets of thousands of its phishing attempts between March and September of 2015. Of the people targeted by Fancy Bear outside of the former Soviet Union, 41 percent were current or former members of the military, according to a report by cybersecurity firm SecureWorks. Authors and journalists made up 22 percent of Fancy Bear’s targets, NGOs 10 percent, political activists 4 percent and government personnel 8 percent. Of the journalists and authors targeted, more than one-fifth were spouses of military members who blog about military life. The posting of hacked data, a novel tactic used in Russia’s assault on the American political system, has also been a component of the country’s active measures against the American military. Last summer, Russian hackers leaked emails stolen from Breedlove in an effort to embarrass NATO. And in 2015, a group calling itself Cyber Caliphate hijacked the Twitter account of the United States Central Command, directing the account’s followers to a site where the group had posted data stolen from the military. Cyber Caliphate purported to be supporters of ISIS, but in fact this was a “false flag” designed to obscure the true identity of the perpetrator, which was Fancy Bear, according to a report by the Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro that said French authorities confirmed the firm’s own analysis fingering the Russian hacking group. As Washington comes to terms with the scope of Russian active measures, the hacking campaign against the military continues. Last month, Time reported that American counterintelligence officials concluded in March that Russian hackers were targeting 10,000 Department of Defense employees with highly targeted messages on Twitter designed to trick them into downloading malware that could compromise their Twitter accounts, computers and phones. *** While there is no expectation of a “Red Dawn”-style Russian invasion of the United States, the Kremlin’s active measures campaign has the potential to blunt the military’s ability and weaken its resolve to counter future Russian military aggression elsewhere. The active measures are not targeting the military and political system in isolation, but as part of a broader effort to subvert Western institutions including the news media, financial markets and intelligence agencies. Because of its multidimensional nature and use of unconventional tactics the U.S. government has struggled to effectively combat the effort. “This is obviously a really difficult challenge and a lot of people are worried that our response to date hasn’t been effective,” said one expert on active measures who recently testified on the issue before Congress. And rather than abating after the presidential election, these campaigns have only continued to get more brazen, according to Strategic Cyber Ventures CEO Tom Kellermann, who has watched them closely. In May and June of 2015, Kellermann, who was then the chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro, said the firm warned the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that Kremlin hackers had drawn up a list of 2,300 people comprising the most powerful leaders in Washington and New York along with their spouses and lovers to target with a concerted hacking campaign. Kellerman said he does not know whether the government acted on the tip, which warned that the hackers had the ability to turn on microphones and cameras on the personal devices of their targets to obtain sensitive information about their personal lives. But he believes the campaign has successfully compromised American leaders, emboldening the Kremlin. “When you wonder why certain people act certain ways,” he said, “You have to remember these people have been warned that their dirty laundry could be aired.” (Spokespeople for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI declined to comment.) Kellermann cited the activities of the Shadow Brokers, a hacking group believed to be Kremlin-backed that began publishing data stolen from the NSA last summer and most recently published a leak in April. The upticks in online attacks are harbingers of armed aggression, said Kellerman, who predicted that conflict between the United States and Russia was most likely to break out in the Baltic region. “I’m very, very concerned,” he said. “Cyberspace is always the precursor to kinetic reality,”
Shawn Musgrave and Andrew Hanna contributed to this report. LINK
Apropo de faptul ca in articolul de mai sus se vorbeste despre hacuirea contului de Gmail al generalului Philip Breedlove...
Anul trecut, la BIAS, am discutat pret de vreo douazeci de minute cu unul dintre operatorii de pe AWACS, subofiter roman (bine pregatit contrainformativ , a evitat cu eleganta sa imi satisfaca unele dintre curiozitati, chiar daca in timpul suetei ne-am descoperit doua cunostinte comune), si la intrebarea daca e adevarata afirmatia lui Breedlove din primavara lui 2014, potrivit careia Rusia a concentrat la granita cu Ucraina forte militare "very, very sizeable and very, very ready" mi-a raspuns ca afirmatia aceea e mai mult decat adevarata.
Din Disinformation Review-ul no. 73 - de azi - al European External Action Service, o dezinformare ţintind publicul din Georgia (probabil se pregăteşte şi la ăia de o CpF şi acum îi frăgezesc la neuron): "The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers introduced a position of the government's representative on gender issues, which means establishment and strengthening of the Sodomisation police. This position was initiated by the deputy PM on European and Euro-Atlantic issues."
Rusia se îndreaptă cu paşi repezi spre URSS Liza Alexandrova-Zorina - Russia On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown Translated from the Russian by Natasha Perova & Sally Foreman The triumph of inertia In Russia, the opposition will not stand in opposition. Citizens will not stand up for civic rights. The Russian people suffer from a victim complex: they believe that nothing depends on them, and by them nothing can be changed. ‘It’s always been so’, they say, signing off on their civic impotence. The economic dislocation of the nineties, the cheerless noughties, and now President Vladimir Putin’s iron rule – with its fake elections, corrupt bureaucracy, monopolization of mass media, political trials and ban on protest – have inculcated a feeling of total helplessness. People do not vote in elections: ‘They’ll choose for us anyway;’ they don’t attend public demonstrations: ‘They’ll be dispersed anyway;’ they don’t fight for their rights: ‘We’re alive, and thank god for that.’ A 140-million-strong population exists in a somnambulistic state, on the verge of losing the last trace of their survival instinct. They hate the authorities, but have a pathological fear of change. They feel injustice, but cannot tolerate activists. They hate bureaucracy, but submit to total state control over all spheres of life. They are afraid of the police, but support the expansion of police control. They know they are constantly being deceived, but believe the lies fed to them on television. * Learned helplessness was first described by the American psychologist Martin Seligman. He exposed two groups of dogs to electric shocks. Dogs in the first group could stop the shocks by pressing a panel with their nose; the second group had no control. The dogs were transferred to a new, shared environment, with a low partition wall. When they were exposed to shocks, the first group jumped the wall and escaped. The second group did nothing. The Russian people have become like that second group of dogs. My husband and I once spent eighteen months in a village 300 kilometers from Moscow, in the Kaluga province, which is relatively well supplied. The village population was noisy and querulous, they would pick up their knives at the slightest provocation. Every evening we would hear shouts – somebody’s chicken was stolen, somebody’s dog poisoned, someone’s wife seduced, somebody had been beaten and was now chasing his attackers with an axe. These were energetic, proud people. The village water system was only connected to a few lucky houses, but the majority of villagers had to carry their water in buckets from the street fountains. One cold, gray November day the fountains suddenly dried up. The nearest well was in the ravine whose slopes were slippery at this time of year. The usually boisterous and quarrelsome villagers, always ready to start a fight, trudged meekly into the ravine with their buckets. When I asked them how long the drought would last, they said: ‘Until spring.’ Assuming that the villagers knew best, we started packing our things to leave, but at the last moment I called the emergency maintenance service to check on the situation. My call was news to them. None of the villagers had informed them of the problem, even though there was a telephone in almost every house. The next day a team of workers arrived, repaired the water tower and restored the water supply. If it were not for my call, the villagers would have waited for water until spring. Something similar happened with the power supply. The outdated electricity network often went down, leaving the village immersed in darkness. The thing to do was to call the emergency service, but the villagers never would. While I was there, I played the role of a miracle-worker. If the light went out during the night, the villagers had to stay in the dark until I woke up closer to midday. Learned helplessness had engulfed the entire village. The capital city isn’t much different from that village. When the authorities started closing hospitals and medical programmes – including the national oncological programme – everybody was outraged. It was everybody’s problem, after all. Muscovites started experiencing a shortage of medicines, and quotas for surgery were reduced. ‘Free’ medical service was shrinking while state hospitals were turned into private clinics that few could afford. Over the course of one year 7,000 medical workers were made redundant and twenty-eight medical institutions were closed. The sacked doctors held a demonstration, but they found no support. My next-door neighbour sold her dacha to pay for her son’s treatment. Each time I met her in the lift she cursed the authorities and the public health reforms. When I suggested that she join the doctors’ protest against hospital closures, she shook her head: ‘What’s the point?’ It was the same reaction from everyone: ‘What’s the point? Nothing will change.’ I asked if anyone had a solution, and again the answer was always the same: ‘The only solution is to get out of the country.’ For most Russians, emigration is just wishful thinking, but many of those who can have actually left. And the first ones out were the oppositionists who participated in protest rallies over the last few years. They left not so much out of fear of persecution, but because of the unbearable feeling of hopelessness that now pervades this nation. The authorities use all of the resources at their disposal to create a submissive society. Brainwashing has become the main tool for suppressing an already weak civic will, and nipping free-thinking in the bud. Our mass media is controlled – either through indirect purchase or intimidation – by the government, and can be divided into pro-Kremlin and pseudo-independent branches. Whatever you watch, it’s the same: fake reporting, politicians contradicting one another, the personality cult of the president, disinformation campaigns, words that contradict actions, ridiculous addenda to existing laws, and insane initiatives by Duma deputies – all of this plunges people into a state of constant stress that has become our way of life. Even watching the news occasionally feels like brain trauma – watching TV every day is a voluntary lobotomy. * Russia is a country that lives in contradiction. For example, the president tells us that he is fighting the oligarchs, then awards those same oligarchs with medals ‘For Service to the Country.’ Or the government tells us that prices for consumer goods will not rise, and a month later they double. Or the church teaches us that greed is a sin and ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,’ while the Patriarch rides in a motorcade and befriends the rich and mighty. Or officials tell us that there are no Russian soldiers in Ukraine, while the media talks constantly about Russia’s military successes on the Ukrainian front. In this atmosphere, people cease to differentiate between the literal and the metaphorical, suspecting intrigue where there is none and, conversely, losing the ability to read between the lines. The acceptance of contradictions is enforced by social pressure: believers are not supposed to criticise priests, tax-payers are not supposed to criticise the government, and criticism of Putin is tantamount to treason. To offset the more glaring contradictions, a number of deputies, clergy and cultural figures regularly voice deliberately unacceptable statements and propose ridiculous initiatives to shock the public, so that they can be graciously declined by higher powers. Legislative initiatives in this form include proposals to ban abortions, to punish homosexual acts, to make military service obligatory for childless women over the age of twenty-three, to deprive people of Russian citizenship if they marry a foreigner, to sentence mothers who go to beach resorts without their husbands to ten years in prison, to limit bad news on television to ten per cent of broadcast time, to prohibit the teaching of evolution in schools, and so on. Never knowing the real intentions of the authorities, and forever expecting that one of the new insane laws will be passed, the people are left depressed and indifferent to their fate. Patriotism with a noose around your neck All that remains for those ashamed of the present and afraid of the future is pride in the past. When there’s no reason to love your country, hate your neighbours. If you are unable to improve your life, ruin someone else’s. In Russia people are alienated from the affairs of the state, while a narrow ruling class manages the country’s resources as if it were their private property. To soothe the people’s trampled dignity, the government emphasizes national pride. To distract them from the struggle for their human rights, they are offered war. Why have we so easily forgotten that Ukraine is our fraternal nation? Why do we willingly go to ‘establish order’ in another country, when we so badly need to restore order to our own? Russians are always being told who to hate: Americans, Ukrainians, Chinese, Germans. Anger switches our attention from everyday injustices to imperial aspirations. The ‘mysterious Russian soul’ has been divined by Kremlin PR-men who skillfully combine manipulation and national stereotyping. Russian foreign policy is renowned for its focus on the binaries of ‘friend against foe’: our people against the foreigners, patriots against traitors, Russia against Europe. This formula is the basis for our national ideology, and gives our political elite carte blanche to do away with independent thought. * Another of Russia’s symptoms is displacement activity. Nikolaas Tinbergen introduced the concept as any behaviour that relieves tension without solving the problem. For example, a boss shouts at his subordinate after a quarrel with his wife, and then this subordinate, afraid to talk back, quarrels with his wife at home. This is an everyday affair for Russians. When, because of our incompetent authorities, prices for consumer goods skyrocket and unemployment grows, and people cannot change the government or hold it to account, they direct their frustration at the US president, or the Ukrainian people. A resident of a small provincial town where the factory, the hospital and the school have been closed down, volunteers to fight in Donbas. Displacement activity is the only choice for a people bombarded by Kremlin propaganda, which inflames our aggression, dulls sensitivity to xenophobia, distorts reality and provokes verbal and physical violence. The general atmosphere of hysteria is sustained by the media, and presented as nationwide enthusiasm. The main tool of political propaganda is stigmatization – slander, insults, image-damage, and black PR. But after a highly biased state education, propaganda only reinforces what people already believe. People are limited in their ability to think outside the provided templates. Most take for granted any information that they receive from ‘trusted sources’. And since the Russian media has long ceased to be subject to any public controls, the falsification of news takes place freely. Television broadcasts use actors to play the parts of Ukrainian refugees; pictures of an American town destroyed by a hurricane are presented as a bombed Ukrainian village; Western politicians are quoted as saying things they never said. And while this goes on every day, people won’t admit the possibility that the news could be fake. Occasionally, lies are exposed online, but only a handful of people find out. And even those that do are confronted with propaganda undermining information received from outside sources (the internet, foreign media, political activists, etc.). All of these fit ready-made into the template of ‘friend against foe’. All facts are seen through the prism of ideological templates – colour filters on the world. Breaking news about billion-dollar fortunes and corruption among Putin’s friends is cast as the ‘insinuations of foreign agents’; appeals to shift Russia’s political orientation are branded as ‘pro-American’; calls to cease the war in Ukraine are seen as ‘anti-Russian’. Immersed as it is in a national-depressive psychosis, Russia finds an outlet in television, vodka, drugs and war. The country’s mortality rate is the highest in Europe, with only Afghanistan and sixteen African countries ahead of us worldwide. A third of Russia’s male population won’t live long enough to claim a pension, and eight per cent of people live below the poverty level. And this is a country that boasts 131 billionaires and 180,000 millionaires. But we are not going to hear about any of this on the news. Why would a doomed people want to hear about their fate? The ropes of social mobility have been torn, and a kind of negative selection pushes the scum to the top. Russia’s economy is drowning, but life-jackets have been given only to the banks, state-owned corporations and those closest to the Kremlin. Every year more towns and villages disappear from the map. Young people have no prospects, adults have no jobs and the elderly have no pensions. In the provinces millions of people live without modern conveniences, in the countryside they live in dilapidated homes with wooden outhouses for toilets as it was a hundred years ago. Instead of central heating they have wood stoves; in the ‘oil and gas empire’ many citizens only dream of a gas supply. But even the most backward regions have achieved one mark of civilization – the satellite dishes that stick out like ears on almost every house. In the evenings, residents of squalid towns and dying villages are glued to their television screens, listening to political analysts, economists and all manner of experts telling them how much the whole world hates us simply for being Russian. All that remains to these people is the patriotism they see on TV, and the hate they feel for whomever is pointed out to them as an enemy. Without this, they would go mad from despair, horror and anguish. Nationwide sadomasochism Aggressive patriotism has become the psychological foundation for a whole nation, and a compensation for the civic inferiority complex. Kremlin propaganda is not only a manipulation of public consciousness, it is psychopathy on a national scale. Unemployment, economic crisis, poverty? – But we are a great nation! Our economy collapsed under the sanctions? – But the whole world is afraid of us! We take ninety-first place in living standards between Guatemala and Laos? – But Russia has a special path of its own! Our public health system is almost dead and to pay for our children’s treatment we have to send round the beggar’s hat? – But the Russian army is the strongest! Under Putin’s regime of ‘stability’, Russia has earned 3.5 trillion petrodollars, but nobody knows in whose bank accounts that money has landed. The humiliated nation robbed by its own elite has found psychological compensation in imperial ideology and militaristic rhetoric. Richard Nixon believed that one dollar invested in propaganda works more effectively than ten dollars invested in armaments, because weapons may remain unused while propaganda works every second. Putin’s proved him right. * The few who remain aware of the state we live in are ‘depressive realists’ – a term that describes individuals who make realistic assessments and are less gullible, and therefore harder to manipulate. It is not easy to be a depressive realist – much easier to be a happy idiot. What does a depressive realist feel on seeing Putin’s friends’ pour billions into Western banks, their yachts and mansions? Helpless, hopeless indignation, surely. But such feelings only damage the mind and aggravate their suffering. Because of this, they tend towards defensive interpretations, struggling to find a rational basis for this state of affairs. Average people come to admire the ‘elite’, telling themselves that the enormous wealth possessed by politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats is due to their outstanding qualities. Even if some crook got himself a yacht for a billion dollars while you have no money to pay for surgery, and the minister’s wife rented an entire hotel in Europe while they closed the last maternity ward in your town, you can’t be angry about it all the time. There are limits to human emotion. It’s much simpler, and psychologically far more comfortable, to become reconciled to the situation, and just admit that you are a second-rate person. If the elite are clever enough to excite the enemy’s hatred, then it helps justify the shameful fact that the salary of a top manager in a state company is larger than a doctor’s lifetime earnings. If our president is so powerful that the whole world trembles before him, there’s nothing shameful in our own slavish state. This is why the modest houses of European politicians have Russians making caustic remarks about their poverty. We are pleased that our elite have bigger houses, larger yachts and younger mistresses. Our poor feel sincerely proud that a top official of their municipality can spend more than a deputy of the European Parliament. This ephemeral affiliation with the elite along national lines corroborates the myth of Russian importance, and helps stem the pain of individual humiliation. The Russian elite are ‘feasting during the plague’, to quote Pushkin. They are not ashamed to demonstrate their dubious wealth during the economic crisis. Their way of life is not compatible with their patriotic rhetoric. It’s as if they wanted to test how much ordinary people can tolerate. They take a sadistic pleasure in demonstrating their dolce vita to the impoverished masses – it’s not so much a boast as a demonstration of dominance over a caste of untouchables. But sadomasochistic relationships are enjoyed as much by the masochist partner as the sadist. In Russia, we idealize and seek sacred meaning in our suffering. Patriotic and Orthodox literature is full of such ideas: Russian people are martyrs and passion-bearers, the most patient and meek, protected by the Mother of God – but at the same time, as the Russian Orthodox Church tells us, they are enduring punishment for the sins committed during the seventy years of Soviet rule. Hence their religiosity, even ecstatic piety, and the growing influence of a clergy who preach repentance and humility. A sadomasochistic society expels dissent from within, forcing dissidents out. It breaks those caught within it, uniting them in bitterness. This is how Russia resists political unrest, in spite of constant economic and cultural crises. This is what ensures that there will be no change or political reform. The nation’s mental complexes are fertile territory for authoritarian regimes, aggressive military campaigns and nationalistic ideas of revenge.
cunoaștem fake-ul. Unul chiar slab realizat. Mă așteptam la ceva mai bun de la graficienii ruși. În stilul ăsta puteau pune poza cu Putin la bustul gol în concediu.
Nu e slab, e suficient pentru cretinii carora le e destinata. Astia nu cauta mult, le arati o poza si jura ca aia e realitatea câta vreme corespunde ideii lor intime despre ceva.
Este o chestie pentru uzul intern, pentru nărozii îmbibaţi de nostalgii sovietice şi de vodcă. E, unde ie vremurile alea când to'arăşu Hruşciov bătea cu condurul în masă la ONU?
Mark Galeotti, expert în politica Rusiei: Pe de-o parte, România e o ţară care, la fel ca altele din centrul şi sudul Europei, încă îşi dezvoltă structurile democratice. Sunt anumite probleme legate de corupţie, de dificultăţi în a urmări investiţiile străine în economia sa şi probleme legate de faptul că oamenii încă pun sub semnul întrebării structura proceselor democratice. Există, deci, puncte vulnerabile pe care ruşii pot şi chiar le exploatează. De cealaltă parte, nu vorbim despre o ţară în care să existe vreo afinitate puternică faţă de Rusia. Nu există legături culturale, istorice sau politice puternice. Ce încearcă, deci, ruşii să facă nu e să captureze statul, ci să depisteze punctele vulnerabile pe care le pot exploata pentru a exercita influenţă.
Alina Mărculescu Matiș, jurnalistă Digi24: Cum fac asta? Spuneţi că aţi văzut dovezi că ei exploatează aceste vulnerabilităţi.
Mark Galeotti: Încearcă, în mod cert, să facă asta. Trebuie spus că, în multe privinţe, România merită să fie lăudată, pentru că e, de fapt, o ţintă relativ dificilă din punctul de vedere al Rusiei. România nu doar că s-a angajat să atingă nivelul de cheltuieli pentru apărare, acel 2% din PIB care se regăseşte şi în recomandările NATO, dar, în acelaşi timp, România investeşte destul de mult în serviciile de informaţii şi de contrainformaţii. Or, acesta e un punct oarecum vulnerabil pentru multe alte ţări central-europene. Ce cred, deci, că încearcă ruşii să facă e să vadă dacă pot crea un fel de regresie. Un exemplu: încearcă să exploateze prezenţa, pe teritoriul României, a scutului antirachetă. Mesajul e „Aveţi grijă, sunteţi în vizor, dacă va fi orice fel de conflict!”. Încearcă să vadă dacă pot crea rupturi la nivelul opiniilor din România, pe care apoi să le exploateze.
Alina Mărculescu Matiș: Cercetarea dumneavoastră pune România în aceeaşi categorie cu Muntenegru şi Ungaria. E îngrijorător să faci parte din această categorie, dacă ne gândim că prima dintre aceste ţări, Muntenegru, a fost vizată de un complot de lovitură de stat, în spatele căruia se crede că s-ar afla Rusia. Pe de altă parte, Ungaria e ţara UE cu o relaţie foarte amicală cu Rusia, în ciuda sancţiunilor UE.
Mark Galeotti: Dacă ne uităm la aceste două ţări - da, în Muntenegru a fost o tentativă de lovitură de stat, dar ce e important e că a eşuat. E un semn - în ciuda complotului, Muntenegru a mers mai departe cu planurile sale de aderare la NATO. Cât despre Ungaria, da, există aici o deteriorare democratică îngrijorătoare. Viktor Orban e mai mult decât fericit - atunci când îi convine - să bată palma cu Rusia. Un exemplu e ce am văzut cu noua centrală nucleară de la Paks. Ideea pe care vreau s-o subliniez e că aceste lucruri se întâmplă pentru că Viktor Orban şi le doreşte. Cu alte cuvinte, vorbim despre ţări care au o oarecare putere instituţională. Rusia poate face progrese doar atunci când reuşeşte să-şi găsească prieteni, agenţi locali de influenţă. În Ungaria, au găsit aşa ceva în persoana lui Viktor Orban, deşi, după cum am spus, va dura câtă vreme îi va conveni şi lui Viktor Orban. În România, ruşii nu au acelaşi element, nu există un cal troian.
Alina Mărculescu Matiș: Cum putem să ne protejăm mai eficient ca ţară în faţa acestor măsuri active venite din partea Rusiei?
Mark Galeotti: Cred că cel mai important lucru e să recunoşti cât de importante sunt instituţiile puternice pentru o bună apărare în faţa acestor măsuri de subversiune politică. În acest moment, e o modă cu centrele care încearcă să demonteze ştiri false şi alte lucruri de acest fel. În ochii mei, aşa ceva e ca şi cum ai încerca să te lupţi cu o furtună dând la o parte fiecare picătură de ploaie. Nu funcţionează aşa ceva. E nevoie doar de o umbrelă bună. În cazul de faţă, o umbrelă bună în faţa acţiunilor Rusiei e dată de măsuri foarte puternice împotriva corupţiei. Banii sunt unul dintre principalele mijloace prin care Rusia poate exercita influenţă. Acesta e primul aspect. Cel de-al doilea element-cheie e să te asiguri că ai un patronat de presă transparent, astfel încât ruşii să nu poată lansa sau să nu încurajeze lansarea de site-uri locale de dezinformare. Al treilea element e, de fapt, un aspect fundamental: e vorba despre legitimitatea sistemului politic. Trebuie să te asiguri că oamenii din fiecare ţară - iar România are, din acest punct de vedere, probleme pe care le au şi alte ţări - cred cu adevărat că sistemul este corect şi răspunde nevoilor lor. Sunt lucruri cât se poate de elementare, lucruri în privinţa cărora, din punctul meu de vedere, Uniunea Europeană ar trebui să facă mai mult. Dar dacă rezolvi aceste aspecte, e surprinzător cât de puţin mai pot face ruşii.
Ce trebuie să înţelegem noi e că Putin nu e vreun mare jucător de șah - acesta e clișeul recurent în rândul ruşilor - cineva care anticipează fiecare pas cu 6-7-8 mutări înainte. Nici vorbă. Tipul de stat pe care l-a creat e, de fapt, mai degrabă unul în care Kremlinul pune la cale strategii de ansamblu. Ce dorește Putin e, în esenţă, ca Europa să fie divizată, distrasă și demoralizată, pentru a nu putea face front comun împotriva lui și, în principiu, pentru a nu putea face nimic ca să-l împiedice să-şi impună voința în ţări precum Ucraina, Georgia sau Belarus sau în orice altă ţară despre care crede că face parte din sfera sa de influență. Prin urmare, face cunoscută imaginea de ansamblu a ceea ce-şi dorește. Din acest punct de vedere, sunt foarte multe instituții și indivizi din interiorul sistemului rus - de la diplomați şi spioni, la oameni de afaceri și da, chiar persoane din interioriul Bisericii - care vor să facă lucruri astfel încât să pună în aplicare această agendă. Dacă nu funcționează, Kremlinul poate spune "noi n-am avut nicio legătură". Dacă funcționează, atunci Kremlinul spune "ne place asta, vom depune ceva mai mult efort și vă vom răsplăti". E, de fapt, un sistem foarte antreprenorial. În ochii lui Putin, toate aspectele societății ruse ar trebui să fie subordonate statului, atunci când statul o dorește.
Alina Mărculescu Matiș: Spuneţi că nu există o mare strategie, un mare plan pentru toate aceste acţiuni. În schimb, spuneţi că Rusia e foarte bună când vine vorba de exploatarea vulnerabilităţilor locale, atunci când acestea apar şi că aşa funcţionează, de fapt, acest război politic.
Mark Galeotti: Trebuie să înțelegem că Rusia e relativ slabă. E mai puternică, totuşi, decât majoritatea statelor europene, dar, cu toate acestea, dincolo de puterea sa nucleară, Rusia nu poate fi un rival economic pentru Uniunea Europeană sau pentru NATO, din punct de vedere militar. Chiar şi aşa, Rusia încearcă să forțeze aceste instituții să se retragă şi să-l lase pe Putin să facă ce vrea acasă și în imediata vecinătate. Deci, într-un fel şi adoptând un stil de gherilă, Putin încearcă să se asigure că profită de slăbiciunile noastre și de punctele lui forte. E adevărat că, uneori, rușii încearcă să acționeze în mod activ - am văzut asta în cazul alegerilor din Franța, unde au avut un rol în propagarea dezinformării, dar și în atacurile cibernetice. Dar, cel mai des, ei așteaptă să apară o criză - o criză între state europene sau în interiorul statelor europene - și apoi încearcă să vadă ce pot face pentru a înrăutăți situația.
Alina Mărculescu Matiș: Ce le răspundeţi celor care sunt sceptici şi care cred, aşa cum spune şi Kremlinul, că există o paranoia atunci când vine vorba de Rusia şi că nu e posibil ca un singur om (Vladimir Putin, n.r.) să fie în mijlocul tuturor acestor lucruri?
Mark Galeotti: La urma urmei, el e cel care se află în fruntea sistemului. A creat un sistem în care el e decidentul suprem. Desigur că cele mai multe probleme nu ajung pe biroul lui. Nu e adeptul unui stil de micromanagement. Dar, în mod cert, atunci când vine vorba de lucruri importante, cum ar fi afaceri importante sau probleme politice majore, ştim că (Vladimir Putin, n.r.) ţine să fie implicat. El a fost omul care a luat decizia finală legată de anexarea Crimeeei şi de mişcările din Donbas. El trebuie să fi fost persoana care a aprobat scurgerea de documente care a influenţat alegerile americane şi aşa mai departe. Atunci când vine vorba de probleme-cheie, ţine foarte mult ca el să fie cel care ia deciziile. În al doilea rând, nu doar noi avem un cult al lui Putin, şi ruşii fac la fel. Mă uimeşte mereu - petrec cât de mult timp pot în Moscova, deoarece, pentru cercetare, cred că trebuie să fii la faţa locului şi să vorbeşti cu oamenii faţă în faţă. Ce mă surprinde cel mai mult e măsura în care ruşii înșiși sunt cât se poate de conştienţi cu privire la Putin şi la ce-şi doreşte Putin. Asta pentru că, într-o anumită măsură, îl folosesc pe Puțin ca pe o prescurtare. Când spun "Putin", se referă la Kremlin, la administraţia prezidenţială, la Guvern. E un guvern foarte opac, netransparent. Foarte multe dintre inițiativele pe care le vedem apar în speranţa că îl vor mulţumi pe Putin. Sunt oameni care se uită în sus şi încercă să obţină atenţia şi sprijinul lui Putin. Nu e, deci, ceva care vine de sus în jos de la Kremlin, ca nişte instrucțiuni transmise oamenilor. Într-un fel, toată această campanie politică e alimentată de ce-şi imaginează oamenii că şi-ar dori Putin. Deci și rușii îl plasează pe Putin la mijloc, nu numai noi.
Nu pot sa nu am o oarecare satisfactie ''profesionala'' cand vad ca anumite puncte de vedere se dovedesc a fi corecte,iar altele se vad a nu fi.
Ce zice Galleotti(nu de ieri ,de azi) si ce se poate observa din multe alte surse(cele rusesti,in primul rand) e ca Rossia nu e dracu' gol.E un inamic relativ simplu de tinut la distanta cu un minim de masuri de precautie si descurajare.Problemele,in masura in care exista,sunt creatia Vestului modern,cu manuta proprie si indemanatica.Iar raspunsurile care tind sa accentueze aceste probleme sub pretextul luptei contra rusilor nu doar ca nu rezolva criza,ci o accentueaza.
Ma uimeste mereu lipsa de logica a unor telectuali,inclusiv a lui Galleotti acum.Putin e omul rau,ca a dat drumul documentelor care au influentat alegerile americane.Nu faptele compromitatoare ale alora de au luat o bucata peste ochi.Care,desigur,acum se plang ca rusii ie rai,domle,dar care in acelasi timp ii vad pe rusi ca pe un pretext pt apucaturile lor tiranice. Rusii,desigur,nu au chef sa preia fostul rol al presei,de caine de paza al democratiei.Si,previzibil,nu au avut mare gheseft din alegerea lui Trump.Ba ne mai si inarmam pana in dinti,partial multumita lui Donald,deci descurajam agresiunea ruseasca si mai mult. Ba,daca programele de inarmare ar fi duse macar pe jumate la capat,armata romana ar fi pt prima data din 1941,capabila sa duca actiuni pana la Sevastopol.Iar Moldova si Transnistria ar fi floare la ureche. Ce poti zice decat Heil Trump.
Ba ne mai si inarmam pana in dinti,partial multumita lui Donald,deci descurajam agresiunea ruseasca si mai mult.
E foarte corect ce spui, daca agresiunea ar fi una principalmente militara. Dar nu e, iar asta i-a facut pe unii sa se gândeasca ca razboiul trebuie privit altfel (centrul ala de la Helsinki e un exemplu recent). Si nu un pic altfel ci cu totul altfel.
Rusii nu pot fi învinovatiti ca fac ceea ce fac. Stiu si ei foarte bine ca o lume în care ei ar fi "normali" ar una unipolara în care ei n-ar avea niciun cuvânt de spus.
Forums
, a evitat cu eleganta sa imi satisfaca unele dintre curiozitati, chiar daca in timpul suetei ne-am descoperit doua cunostinte comune), si la intrebarea daca e adevarata afirmatia lui Breedlove din primavara lui 2014, potrivit careia Rusia a concentrat la granita cu Ucraina forte militare "very, very sizeable and very, very ready" mi-a raspuns ca afirmatia aceea e mai mult decat adevarata.
