Posts

How Russia’s Cyberattacks Have Affected Ukraine

/0 Comments/in , /by

Ukraine’s May 25, 2014, presidential election was a pivotal moment for the country.

A revolution that February, in which more than 100 died, had overthrown pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Two weeks prior to the election, on May 11, pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Luhansk declared their independence from Kyiv.

At the time of the vote, separatist forces, receiving weapons and financing from Moscow, were on the march, taking town after town across eastern Ukraine.

The country as a whole was still reeling from the body blow of losing the Crimean Peninsula to Russia that March. And with a war brewing in the east, Ukraine’s new pro-Western government was under pressure to cement its legitimacy and restore faith in the democratic process.

There were fears of an all-out Russian invasion or a combined offensive by pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars advancing as far as the Dnieper River, cleaving Ukraine in two.

Officials advised citizens in Kyiv to use the city’s metro in case of a Russian aerial bombardment or artillery blitz. Spray-painted signs on the sides of buildings pointing to the nearest bomb shelter became ubiquitous in cities across Ukraine.

And as Ukraine’s regular army—decimated by decades of neglect and corruption—was on its heels in the Donbas, legions of civilian volunteer soldiers banded into partisan militias and set out for the front lines.

“There was a real chance the front could have collapsed in 2014,” Denys Antipov, a Ukrainian army veteran, told The Daily Signal. “Nobody knew what was going to happen. It was a war for our independence.”

The survival of Ukraine as a sovereign, democratic nation was at stake. And the presidential election needed to go smoothly—thus making it a prime target for a Russian cyberattack.

Four days prior to the election, on May 21, 2014, a pro-Russian hacktivist group called CyberBerkut launched a cyberattack against Ukraine’s Central Election Commission computers.

According to Ukrainian news reports, the attack destroyed both hardware and software, and for 20 hours shut down programs to monitor voter turnout and tally votes.

On election day, 12 minutes before polls closed, CyberBerkut hackers posted false election results to the election commission’s website. Russia’s TV Channel One promptly aired the bogus results.

Ukrainian officials said the cyberattack didn’t affect the outcome of the election because Ukraine used paper ballots. The votes were counted by hand.

Ukrainian investigators later uncovered evidence that CyberBerkut hackers had penetrated the election commission’s computers in March, more than two months prior to the election.

“I believe that we should not underestimate the ability of hackers—especially those that enjoy state sponsorship—to disrupt the political process of a country,” wrote Nikolay Koval, who served as chief of Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team during the 2014 revolution, in a 2015 NATO report on Russia’s cyberwar in Ukraine.

No Silver Bullet

When Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008, it launched cyberattacks against Georgian government computers and media websites.

“In Georgia, cyberattacks were closely coordinated with Russian military operations,” wrote James Andrew Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in the NATO report.

“The internet has become a battleground in which information is the first victim,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement published to the group’s website in August 2008 during the Russo-Georgian War.

Cyberwarfare was not, however, a “silver bullet” for Russia in Georgia. Likewise, Russian cyberattacks in Ukraine have been, so far, mostly used to create chaos and increase the fog of war, rather to effect any militarily significant outcome.

“The most notable thing about the war in Ukraine, however, is the near-complete absence of any perceptible cyberwar,” wrote Martin Libicki, a RAND Corp. analyst, in the NATO report.

“In particular, there are two major forms of cyberattack that have not taken place in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict: attacks on critical infrastructure and attacks on defense systems,” Libicki added.

Yet, according to news reports, since 2014, Russia has maintained a low-level cyberoffensive against Ukraine, targeting banks, railroads, the mining industry, and power grid.

Military communications and secure databases have also been attacked, according to Ukrainian officials. Pro-Russian hackers have also leaked stolen, sensitive information from Ukrainian government networks and the accounts of government officials to the internet.

And according to a report by LookingGlass, a U.S. cybersecurity firm, a Russian cyber espionage campaign called “Operation Armageddon” allegedly began targeting Ukrainian government, law enforcement, and military officials in 2013.

“It is evident that Russia has fully embraced cyber espionage as part of their overall strategy to further their global interests,” the LookingGlass report said.

Yet, according to Lewis, Russia’s cyberattacks on Ukraine have achieved little.

“The incidents in Ukraine did not disrupt command and control, deny access to information, or have any noticeable military effect,” Lewis, the Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow, wrote.

He added, “Cyberattacks are a support weapon and will shape the battlefield, but by themselves they will not produce victory.”

Despite its limitations, cyberwarfare was a key component of Russia’s “hybrid warfare” playbook in Ukraine. Online disinformation campaigns helped cloud Western media reports about Russia’s direct involvement in military operations in Crimea and the Donbas.

“Information campaigning, facilitated by cyber activities, contributed powerfully to Russia’s ability to prosecute operations against Ukraine in the early stages of the conflict with little coordinated opposition from the West,” Keir Giles, associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme and director of the Conflict Studies Research Center at Chatham House, wrote about Russian hybrid warfare.

“Russia, more than any other nascent actor on the cyberstage, seems to have devised a way to integrate cyberwarfare into a grand strategy capable of achieving political objectives,” Giles added.

A ‘Part of Daily Life’

Even though Russian cyberattacks were not decisive on the battlefields of Georgia and Ukraine, Moscow has aggressively used cyber means to target foreign political processes and to spread propaganda.

Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine was accompanied by a wave of cyberattacks, chiefly comprising distributed denial of service attacks, on government and business organizations in Poland and Ukraine, as well as the European Parliament and the European Commission.

Russia has also launched cyberattacks against the governments of countries across Europe, including the Netherlands, Estonia, Germany, and Bulgaria.

“Russia considers itself to be engaged in full-scale information warfare, involving not only offensive but defensive operations—whether or not its notional adversaries have actually noticed this happening,” Giles, the Chatham House expert, wrote.

In 2007, Estonia faced a monthlong cyberattack, which targeted government computer networks, the media, and banks.

“The cyberattacks in Estonia, composed of service disruptions and denial of service incidents, could best be compared to the online equivalent of a noisy protest in front of government buildings and banks,” Lewis wrote. “They had little tangible effect, but they created uncertainty and fear among Estonian leaders as they were considered a precursor to armed Russian intervention.”

Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission was hit by a cyberattack in October this year, during local and municipal elections.

The attack was a distributed denial of service attack similar to what Russian hackers used in Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia, and Poland. It included 530,000,000 visits to the commission’s website in 10 hours. (Bulgaria has a population of 7.2 million.)

Russian hackers have also targeted Western European governments. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, BfV, said in May that Kremlin-linked hackers had targeted Germany’s parliament. And in May, Russian hackers targeted German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party.

Merkel has been a firm proponent of maintaining EU sanctions against Russia for its military interventions in Ukraine. The German chancellor is up for re-election in 2017.

A cyberattack on Deutsche Telekom, a German telecommunications company, in November spurred German officials to publicly address the Russian cyberthreat.

The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, Bruno Kahl, warned that Russian hackers might target next year’s German presidential elections.

“We have evidence that cyberattacks are taking place that have no purpose other than to elicit political uncertainty,” Kahl told the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in November.

“The perpetrators are interested in delegitimizing the democratic process as such, regardless of who that ends up helping,” Kahl said. “We have indications that [the attacks] come from the Russian region.”

And without specifically blaming Russia for the Deutsche Telekom attack, Merkel said, “Such cyberattacks, or hybrid conflicts as they are known in Russian doctrine, are now part of daily life, and we must learn to cope with them.”

According to news reports, a Russian cyber espionage campaign also targeted the Netherlands-based international investigation into the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shootdown over eastern Ukraine, as well as the World Anti-Doping Agency investigation into Russian Olympic athletes.

“Russian strategic culture focuses on war as political activity; for cyberpower to have a truly strategic effect, Russia believes that it must contribute directly to shaping political outcomes by altering the political perceptions of their opponents to better suit their interests,” James J. Wirtz, dean of the School of International Studies at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, wrote in the NATO report on Russia’s cyberwar in Ukraine.

Cold War Tradecraft

In 2014, cyberattacks linked to Russian hacking groups increased on U.S. government computer networks.

U.S. officials in Europe have also been the target of Russian cyberattacks.

In February 2014, a disparaging phone conversation between Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and Victoria Nuland, U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, was uploaded to YouTube.

The U.S. government pinned the bugging of the phone conversation and its online release on Russia.

“I would say that since the video was first noted and tweeted out by the Russian government, I think it says something about Russia’s role,” former White House press secretary Jay Carney said at the time.

“Certainly we think this is a new low in Russian tradecraft,” Jen Psaki, the State Department’s press secretary at the time, said in response to the leaked phone call.

Russia’s cyberwar strategy draws on Soviet tradecraft. The USSR conducted clandestine operations around the world to extend Soviet influence and undermine the legitimacy of, and sow chaos within, Western democracies.

These tactics included leaking false information to foreign media outlets.

“The Soviets always tried to influence both friend and foe; the Russians are doing the same,” Steven Bucci, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation who served for three decades as an Army Special Forces officer, told The Daily Signal in an earlier interview.

War, or Something Else?

The U.S. government currently has no clear definition for when a cyberattack crosses the threshold from a crime or an act of espionage to an act of war.

And, so far, Russian cyberattacks on NATO countries like Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Poland, and the U.S. have not spurred NATO’s invocation of Article V—the Western military alliance’s collective defense protocol.

The U.N. Charter is also ambiguous about when a cyberattack merits a kinetic military response.

“Skeptics rightly claim that in cyberwar, no one dies,” Kenneth Geers, ambassador of NATO’s cybersecurity center and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told The Daily Signal. “But to some degree, our concept of national security must evolve with technology.”

In a 2011 White House report, the Department of Homeland Security listed 16 “Critical Infrastructure Sectors,” which, if destroyed, would have a “debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.”

The list comprised infrastructure assets like power grids, air traffic control systems, and dams. The country’s electoral process was not listed as a critical infrastructure sector to be protected from cyberattacks.

The Democratic and Republican national committees are nonprofit organizations, which are responsible for financing and organizing their own cybersecurity.

Geers argued, however, that the government has a responsibility to secure the DNC and RNC email servers because they have national security value.

“In some way, the U.S. government will define these servers as ‘critical infrastructure’ and articulate some level of responsibility for protecting them,” Geers said. “The U.S. government is responsible for protecting our country and its citizens, and that certainly includes the security of our democracy, especially from foreign power manipulation.”

According to Bucci, the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC over the summer was espionage and falls well short of the threshold required to merit a military response.

“The U.S. government has never defined an act of war in cyber,” Bucci said. “This would not be close in anyone’s book. It’s not a crime either. It’s spying. The release of the purloined emails is for influence.”

The White House’s 2011 “International Strategy for Cyberspace” alluded to the use of military force to retaliate against a cyberattack.

According to the report: “When warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country. We reserve the right to use all necessary means—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic—as appropriate and consistent with applicable international law, in order to defend our nation, our allies, our partners, and our interests. “

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on June 22, Thomas Atkin, acting assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security, said the Pentagon has no clear-cut threshold for when a cyberattack becomes an act of war.

Cyberattacks could merit a military response if there was an “act of significant consequence,” Atkin told Congress.

“As regards an act of significant consequence, we don’t necessarily have a clear definition,” Atkin said. “But we evaluate it based on loss of life, physical property, economic impact, and our foreign policy.”

“Computer network operations, even when they are this daring, are closer to covert action than traditional warfare,” Geers said, referring to the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC.

“Only the president can decide” when a cyberattack becomes an act of war, Geers added. (For more from the author of “How Russia’s Cyberattacks Have Affected Ukraine” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Key Questions About Russia’s Alleged Hacking of the US Election

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A Central Intelligence Agency report that Russian operatives intervened in the U.S. election to help President-elect Donald Trump win has roiled Capitol Hill, producing a bipartisan call for congressional investigations.

But there is skepticism within the U.S. government, particularly at the Federal Bureau of Intelligence, that the evidence definitively proves that the Russians had the specific goal of influencing Americans to vote for Trump.

This split, amplified by Trump’s expressed disbelief in the CIA’s conclusion, sets up an early test for the next president, who will likely come into office as lawmakers—including Republicans—are investigating what happened.

At the same time, Trump, who has vowed a closer relationship with Russia, will have to deal with a range of policy challenges dealing with the Kremlin’s military interventions in wars in Syria and Ukraine.

The Daily Signal below explains the many questions of the Russian hacking controversy, and what consequences may come from it.

What Happened and When?

In early October, the Obama administration confirmed what the intelligence community had long expected, formally accusing Russia of trying to interfere in the 2016 elections, including by hacking the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations, and releasing the information to WikiLeaks.

In its announcement, the Obama administration noted Russia had previously attempted to interfere in other countries’ political processes, using other techniques to influence public opinion in Europe.

The White House, at this point, was considering potential responses, including economic sanctions, but it did not mount an offensive reply.

In the weeks before the presidential election, The New York Times reported that American spy and law enforcement agencies were united in the belief that the Russian government had deployed computer hackers to sow chaos into the campaign.

But last week, as The Washington Post first reported, the CIA produced a formal assessment to lawmakers concluding that Russia did not just intend to disrupt the election, but intervened with the primary goal of electing Trump as president.

“It doesn’t appear that there is any real uncertainty here about the origins of the attacks,” said Michael O’Hanlon, director of research for the foreign policy program at Brookings Institution, in a response to emailed questions from The Daily Signal. “I see the differences as ones of interpretation—who can really be sure of Russian motives based on observation of their actions?”

The FBI has not affirmatively concluded the Russians’ intent.

It is unclear why the CIA waited until after the election to reveal its judgment.

Intelligence officials also believe that Russia hacked the databases keeping Republican National Committee data, but chose to release only documents from the Democrats. The committee has denied that it was hacked.

How Have Politicians Reacted?

Trump dismissed the CIA’s report, referencing the agency’s faulty 2002 conclusion that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it,” Trump said on Sunday in an interview on Fox News.

Republicans in Congress have also been careful about supporting the CIA’s assertion that Russia tried to throw the election to Trump—and that the Kremlin’s influence impacted the result. But many lawmakers in Trump’s party have been forceful in calling for investigations into what happened.

“I don’t believe any member of Congress should summarily dismiss an assessment from the intelligence community with respect to Russian interference in an American election,” Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., told The Daily Signal in an interview, adding:

We must take this seriously and investigate it. I have not seen any evidence thus far that the outcome of the presidential election was impacted by Russia’s actions. But with that said, it disturbs me greatly that Russia is attempting to interfere with our democratic process, not only in the U.S., but throughout Europe as well.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Monday that he supported congressional investigations of possible Russian cyberattacks, which will be led by the Intelligence Committee and Armed Services Committee.

McConnell said the investigations would occur through the normal committee process, and he did not endorse the creation of a special select committee probe.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., seemed to suggest Monday he backs a similar investigation of Russian “state-sponsored cyberattacks.”

“Throughout this Congress, the Intelligence Committee [has] been working diligently on the cyber threats posed by foreign governments and terrorist organizations to the security and institutions of the United States,” Ryan said in a statement. “This important work will continue and has my support.”

Democrats also want a congressional probe, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign even said it supports a request by members of the Electoral College for an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election, Politico reported.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has ordered a full review into Russia’s hacking to capture “lessons learned” to be concluded before Trump’s inauguration.

Is It Normal for Intelligence Agencies to Disagree?

David Shedd, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who has worked for the CIA, said it’s normal for the FBI to take a more cautious view of intelligence assessments because of its law enforcement obligation.

“The bureau [FBI] will be more conservative,” said Shedd, who is now a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “They are evidence driven. They are about making a court case, determining what will stand up in court. The intelligence community is not about making evidentiary conclusions rising to the level of a court action, but making a judgment that falls considerably short to what the FBI would need to make a similar call.”

Despite the CIA’s lower burden of proof, Patrick Eddington, a Cato Institute policy analyst in homeland security and civil liberties and former CIA analyst, said it’s wrong to assume the agency’s conclusions are flimsy.

“The reality is the CIA does not always get it wrong, and I think because of the track record of the agency, people naturally have a level of skepticism on whether this is real,” Eddington told The Daily Signal in an interview. “That makes it all the more important for everything surrounding this judgment—all the raw intelligence it is based on—to be made public so everyone can make their own conclusions.”

How Can the US Respond?

If Obama elects not to take action, the Trump administration will have a range of options on how to respond to Russia.

These include imposing economic sanctions for “malicious cyber-enabled activities,” a new executive branch tool that Obama created last year, but hasn’t used yet.

The Justice Department could indict Russian actors for hacking. The National Security Agency may also retaliate with its own cyber tools against the Kremlin.

Shedd suggested the U.S. take broader actions to discourage Russia aggression not only in cyberspace, but in other foreign policy endeavors.

“If I were sitting again in the Situation Room, I would be making a very strong case that our response needs to be asymmetrical to the cyberattack,” Shedd said. “Why in the world would we do cyber on cyber as our only response? My advice is to look at what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s other objectives are. That could be getting him out of Syria and Ukraine—something that fits into our larger relationship with that country.”

Eddington suggested more caution, noting Putin’s unpredictability.

“You have to start with appropriate defensive measures, making sure our systems from a political and social engineering standpoint can’t be hacked,” Eddington said. “When we start talking about offensive measures, we have to be careful and calculated about what we do. At the end of the day, you need to make sure the response is such that Putin cannot afford a repeat, pays some sort short-term to medium-term cost, but at the same time, do not put Russia and the U.S. at the brink of confrontation. We are in uncharted territory in so many ways.” (For more from the author of “Key Questions About Russia’s Alleged Hacking of the US Election” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

CIA Says Russia Intervened to Help Trump Win White House

/0 Comments/in , /by

The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.

The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton’s chances of winning the election.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. “That’s the consensus view.”

The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key U.S. senators behind closed-doors last week. (Read more from “CIA Says Russia Intervened to Help Trump Win White House” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Eastern Europe Arms Itself Against Russian Military Aggression

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Countries across Eastern Europe are militarizing to defend themselves from Russia, underscoring how Kremlin brinkmanship could spark a regional conflict.

“If you’re in Estonia, or Latvia, and Russia’s sitting there on your border, it’s scary,” Jill Russell, teaching fellow in the Defense Studies Department at King’s College London, told The Daily Signal. “And those countries want a capability to defend themselves.”

And by going outside the protective umbrella of NATO and U.S. security guarantees, the military buildup in post-Soviet Europe highlights a budding rift in security priorities across the Continent.

“The states of Eastern Europe inevitably see their security focus as being the need to deter an increasingly antagonistic Russia,” said Ben Wheatley, honorary research fellow in the School of History at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. “Therefore, the Eastern European states concentrate on building up their conventional armed forces to meet this threat.”

“The closer you are to Russia, the more you don’t care about terrorism,” Russell said.

Recent media headlines have painted modern East-West tensions as a new Cold War. However, some experts say the military buildup among post-Soviet countries across what the Kremlin considers its “near abroad” (essentially the former territory of the Soviet Union) might be the early stages of a regional arms race, and a reflection of centuries-old power struggles.

“Russia’s near abroad has once again become a flashpoint,” Russell said, adding:

But there’s not an ideological component, that is what defined the Cold War. Russia wants to show it’s still a great power … This isn’t at all like the Cold War.

What we are really in is a standard power struggle over frontiers. What’s unfortunate is that the frontier countries are peopled with those not necessarily interested in being pawns in a great power struggle—and are wanting to break free from Russian dominion.

“There is no doubt the conflict in the East is a localized affair rather than a new Cold War,” Wheatley told The Daily Signal.

Ready for War

Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—NATO’s three Baltic member countries—increased their collective spending on new military equipment from $210 million in 2014 to $390 million in 2016, according to a report by IHS Jane’s, a commercial British defense analysis and intelligence firm.

By 2018, the three Baltic countries are expected to spend around $670 million a year on new military equipment. By 2020, the region’s defense budget will be $2.1 billion, up from $930 million in 2005.

Latvia and Lithuania have had the two fastest-growing military budgets in the world since 2014, according to IHS Jane’s.

“This growth is faster than any other region globally,” Craig Caffrey, principal analyst at IHS Jane’s, said in the report.

“The increase in defense spending in the Baltics is largely linked to the growing confrontation between Russia and the West, often described as the ‘new Cold War,’” said Alex Kokcharov, principal analyst at IHS Country Risk. “We have seen political confrontation between Russia and the West in the past two and a half years escalate to military assertiveness, and we don’t see this ending anytime soon.”

Poland, also a NATO member, has doubled its military spending since 2006, reaching $9.2 billion in 2016. Polish military spending has increased in eight of the past 10 years, with an 18 percent jump in 2015 alone.

For its part, the Kremlin also boosted its military spending by 28.6 percent in 2015—Russia’s largest defense budget increase since 2002.

This combination of escalating military firepower and the will to use it has some worried that a miscalculated act of brinkmanship, or nationalistic fervor run awry, could spark a broader regional conflict.

“It’s a regional war—and something more,” Tarik Cyril Amar, associate professor of history at Columbia University, told The Daily Signal. “It’s not merely a regional conflict. I think it’s connected to many larger processes.”

“They [Russia] are operating where they were always operating, in their near abroad,” Russell said. “Everything is about taking back territory that was historically Soviet.”

Breakdown

Tensions with Russia have been spiraling toward a nadir since the Kremlin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and followed up with military operations in eastern Ukraine.

Russian military brinksmanship has taken many forms across the region, including the buzzing of NATO ships and aircraft by Russian warplanes, subversive propaganda campaigns, cyberattacks, and covert efforts to stir up separatism among minority Russian populations.

Contributing, more broadly, to the breakdown in relations between Russia and the West are accusations of Russian cyberattacks to affect the U.S. presidential election, and Moscow’s financial support for far-right political parties in Western Europe.

The deployment of military hardware and troops to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and occupied Crimea (including bombers and missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons) and Russia’s scorched-earth bombing campaign in Syria also have the West on edge.

For the time being, the Baltic states and Poland haven’t given up on NATO. In fact, the alliance’s military presence in Eastern Europe is set to expand dramatically.

To reassure its eastern members and to send a message of deterrence to Moscow, NATO has announced plans to deploy military units to Eastern Europe in numbers unmatched since the Cold War.

At the NATO summit in July in Warsaw, Poland, alliance leaders formally announced the planned deployment of four combat battalions to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on a rotational basis beginning next year.

The battalions will be fielded by Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The U.K. announced last week that it was bolstering its planned force to be stationed in Estonia from 500 to 800 troops.

These deployments are in addition to a previously announced U.S. plan to deploy about 3,500 troops to Eastern Europe on a rotational basis.

The deployments are considered “tripwire forces,” presumably meant to deter Russia from an attack due to the risk of spurring a massive NATO response to defend forward units.

“They’re really just notional forces,” Russell said, referring to the NATO units. “They’re not at all capable of doing anything offensive into Russia.”

The rotational NATO units planned for the Baltics and Poland are not a realistic threat to Russian forces, Wheatley said, but they have a deterrence value.

“Their installment in reality guarantees peace in the Baltic region and Poland, as Russia would never attack NATO units in open conflict,” the U.K. research fellow said.

U.S. warplanes and land units constantly cycle through Eastern European countries in an ongoing series of exercises. The U.K. also has announced it will send Typhoon fighters to Romania as part of an air policing mission.

Grassroots Defense

Paralleling the rise in defense budgets, the ranks of civilian volunteer militias in the Baltic countries have swelled since Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in 2014. The change reflects the deadly seriousness with which politicians and populations in the region consider the possibility of war with Russia.

Conscription has been reinstated in Lithuania, where the government also recently issued a guerrilla warfare manual for the country’s 3 million citizens.

Estonia’s standing army comprises about 6,000 troops out of an overall national population of 1.3 million. Meanwhile, the country’s Defense League—a civilian paramilitary group—holds weekend partisan warfare training events for its 25,400 volunteers.

Civilians of all stripes spend their weekends tramping through forests with heavy rucksacks, training in military skills such as how to lay landmines and plant booby traps.

Like many post-Soviet countries, the legacy of World War II paramilitary units runs deep in the Baltic states and Poland, where citizens fought against both Nazi and Red Army invaders.

Tensions with Russia also have rattled longtime NATO holdouts Sweden and Finland. The two Scandinavian countries, which claimed to be neutral interlocutors between NATO and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, have forged closer ties with the Western military alliance since 2014.

“Sweden is no longer part of any buffer zone,” former Swedish Defense Minister Sten Tolgfors told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s an idea from the old days.”

Brothers at Arms

Ukraine is the epicenter of modern East-West tensions, and could be a flashpoint for future conflicts.

A war between Ukraine’s armed forces and a combined force of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars has killed 10,000 people and displaced about 1.7 million from their homes in the Donbas, Ukraine’s embattled southeastern territory on the border with Russia.

Despite a 17-month-old cease-fire, heavy artillery, rocket attacks, and tank shots still occur daily along the front lines in the Donbas. So do military and civilian casualties.

The war in Ukraine has not spilled over into a broader conflict involving NATO countries as many feared it would in 2014.

Today, NATO members such as the U.S., Canada, and Poland have military training missions ongoing in Ukraine, but NATO troops are not directly involved in combat operations in the Donbas.

“There was never any possibility of NATO combat troops being stationed in Ukraine,” Wheatley said.

The Ukrainian military was a ragtag force in the opening days of the conflict. Its soldiers were not prepared for combat, and reserves of weapons and ammunition had been depleted by decades of plundering by corrupt oligarchs and arms dealers.

In a speech at a military parade on Ukrainian Independence Day, Aug. 24, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signaled a long-term plan to build up the nation’s military to counter the Russian threat.

Even though Ukraine has a long way to go to match Russian firepower, some fear the current conflict could spark an arms race between the two former Soviet states.

Since the war in the Donbas began in 2014, Ukraine has fielded more than 300,000 soldiers, both recruits and draftees.

Ukraine increased its military budget by 23 percent in the year after the war began, and military spending is set to increase by 10 percent each year going forward.

Ukraine’s overall military strength went up by 25 percent—from 200,000 to 250,000 troops—in the two years since the war began in 2014. Ukraine currently has a reserve force of more than 80,000 men and women.

The composition of Ukraine’s armed forces also has evolved during the past two years.

About 17,000 women currently serve in the Ukrainian military, 10,000 of them in combat units. On June 3, Ukrainian women were officially allowed to serve in combat units, although many women already had served unofficially in combat roles within civilian volunteer battalions. Ukrainian women are also eligible to be drafted as officers.

Ukraine’s military now comprises 70 percent contract soldiers, a jump from 60 percent before the war began. An average of 6,000 servicemen signed contracts to join Ukraine’s armed forces each month this year. Ukrainian officials expect 65,000 new contract military personnel in 2016.

To boost recruitment, military officials bumped up the salary for active duty volunteers to about $275 a month—well above Ukraine’s monthly minimum wage of about $54.

Ukraine also reconstituted its National Guard, folding into its ranks the myriad civilian volunteer battalions that formed in the early days of the war when the regular army was caught on its back foot.

Russia’s military campaign in eastern Ukraine has hardened Ukrainians’ attitude toward their eastern neighbors.

In 2011, 84 percent of Ukrainians had a favorable opinion toward Russia. Today, 72 percent of Ukrainians have an unfavorable opinion about Russia, and 77 percent consider Russia to be a threat to its neighbors, according to the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Ukrainian think tank.

After more than two years of war, there also has been a turnaround in Ukrainians’ attitudes toward military service. In the post-Soviet period, military service was not held in high regard in Ukraine, and often was considered a life path for those with limited options.

Today, soldiers in uniform are a common sight on the streets and train stations of any Ukrainian city or town. Veterans groups have sprouted up, and a subculture of bearded war veterans wearing stylized T-shirts—much in the model of America’s post-9/11 veteran generation—has emerged.

“Soldiers and officers will feel once again not only their social responsibility, but also society’s respect and esteem to their defenders,” Poroshenko said at the Independence Day parade.

“This parade will signal to our international partners that Ukraine is capable of defending itself, but requires further support,” Poroshenko said. “Finally, our parade is a signal to our enemy as well. Ukrainians are ready to carry on the fight for their independence.” (For more from the author of “Eastern Europe Arms Itself Against Russian Military Aggression” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

No Ties Between Trump and Russia, New York Times Reports

/0 Comments/in , /by

The FBI has found no direct links between Donald Trump and the Russian government, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The report came shortly after Mother Jones cited an anonymous “former spy,” who claimed that “there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.”

Unnamed senior FBI officials quoted in the Times indicated otherwise.

What Do Comey, Russia and Harry Reid Have to Do With Each Other?

Over the weekend, Democrats hurled criticism toward FBI Director James Comey for announcing Friday the discovery of more emails related to the federal investigation of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. Amid the firestorm of condemnation came one particularly harsh letter from Sen. Harry Reid, who accused Comey of a “double standard” for going public with information related to the FBI investigation of Clinton’s emails, but not the FBI investigation of Trump’s possible connections to Russia.

Earlier this month, Comey did not sign the statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security and The Office of the Director of National Intelligence claiming Russia guided the Wikileaks hacks, because he said it was too close to the election.

A former FBI official suggested that Comey chose to break that protocol and announce the discovery of the new emails since he had already testified publicly about the matter in July, unlike the ongoing Russia investigation.

In Reid’s letter to Comey Saturday, he demanded more information:

In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government. … The public has a right to know this information.

What Was the Trump-Russia Investigation All About?

The officials cited in the Times noted that Trump himself has not been the subject of any FBI investigation.

Some of Trump’s acquaintances have been investigated, the Times reported. One was Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman. The investigation centered on his personal business ties, and “not necessarily on any Russian influence over Mr. Trump’s campaign,” the Times reported.

Others targeted by the FBI investigations have been Carter Page, an early campaign adviser, and Roger Stone, “Republican strategist and Trump confidant.” The Times reported that Page called the allegations against him a “witch hunt,” and Stone denied the implied Russia connection in a Breitbart op-ed earlier this month.

Federal investigations of people close to the Republican presidential nominee began earlier this year, with Democrats accusing Trump and his campaign of cahoots with Russia to tip Election Day results.

It didn’t help that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly praised each other. The blame intensified as Wikileaks, evidently linked to Russian hackers, continued to release batches of emails stolen from Democrats.

But a senior official at the FBI told the Times they don’t believe the Russians are attempting to get Trump elected through the Wikileaks hacks.

“It isn’t about the election,” he said, “It’s about a threat to democracy.” (For more from the author of “No Ties Between Trump and Russia, New York Times Reports” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

What the US Needs to Do About Russia’s Cyberattacks

/0 Comments/in , /by

The U.S. finally is ramping up its response to Russian cyberattacks. Good.

The bad news is our response shows how ill thought-out both our strategy toward Russia and our policies for retaliating against malicious cyber operations are.

Russia has been linked to many cyber incidents, most notably the hack of the Democratic National Committee and subsequent email leak that led to the resignation of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., as party chairman.

Vice President Joe Biden, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and other parts of the U.S. intelligence community now publicly blame Russia for these breaches.

Russia’s cyber aggression recently has been aimed at the U.S. presidential election, making many Americans concerned about Russian interference in our political system. Indeed, that’s the point: Russia long has used information and psychological warfare to attack and undermine those who oppose it.

In an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd recorded Oct. 13, Biden said an upcoming retaliatory strike “will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact.”

The vice president said he hoped it would go unnoticed by the American public. Openly hinting that a covert action soon may be underway probably wasn’t the best decision, though.

The United States has indicted hackers from China and Iran in the recent past.

In 2014, the Justice Department filed charges against five Chinese military hackers for computer hacking and economic espionage. It was the first time in American history that the government charged a state actor for that type of hacking.

In March 2016, the government charged seven Iranian hackers for conducting a coordinated campaign of cyberattacks against the U.S. financial sector.

But while indicting hackers is a step in the right direction, these limited responses from the U.S. are not effectively deterring countries such as Russia.

So it’s good to see the Obama administration seriously contemplating how to retaliate for Russian aggression in cyberspace. However, it already should have had a strategy in place for how it would respond. The U.S. has faced ever-increasing cyberespionage, breaches, and attacks over the past decade, but does not yet know what it will do.

The response from the U.S. should have been as swift as possible, using one of many tools at our disposal: cyber action of our own, legal action, sanctions, increased support to nations threatened by Russia, and so on. But better late than never.

And this should not be a one-time deal. The U.S. should make this type of retaliation a more regular occurrence.

While retaliation and providing evidence to justify it must be balanced with keeping intelligence secrets, the U.S. has done little to publicly push back against bad actors. More must be done.

Nor should the U.S. be alone in this effort. The U.S. should coordinate with allies and other partners affected by malicious cyber operations in pushing back against the nations behind that aggression. More effective responses will help deter these nations from acting so aggressively in the first place.

When foreign governments compromise our nation’s cybersecurity, the United States cannot rely on words or speeches as deterrence. A firm response sends a clear message and conveys American resolve. (For more from the author of “What the US Needs to Do About Russia’s Cyberattacks” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

CIA Prepping for Possible Cyber Strike Against Russia

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging “clandestine” cyber operation designed to harass and “embarrass” the Kremlin leadership.

The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation. Former intelligence officers told NBC News that the agency had gathered reams of documents that could expose unsavory tactics by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Vice President Joe Biden told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd on Friday that “we’re sending a message” to Putin and that “it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact” . . .

Retired Admiral James Stavridis told NBC News’ Cynthia McFadden that the U.S. should attack Russia’s ability to censor its internal internet traffic and expose the financial dealings of Putin and his associates. (Read more from “CIA Prepping for Possible Cyber Strike Against Russia” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Russia Says U.S. Actions Threaten Its National Security

/0 Comments/in , /by

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday he had detected increasing U.S. hostility towards Moscow and complained about what he said was a series of aggressive U.S. steps that threatened Russia’s national security.

In an interview with Russian state TV likely to worsen already poor relations with Washington, Lavrov made it clear he blamed the Obama administration for what he described as a sharp deterioration in U.S.-Russia ties.

“We have witnessed a fundamental change of circumstances when it comes to the aggressive Russophobia that now lies at the heart of U.S. policy towards Russia,” Lavrov told Russian state TV’s First Channel.

“It’s not just a rhetorical Russophobia, but aggressive steps that really hurt our national interests and pose a threat to our security.”

With relations between Moscow and Washington strained over issues from Syria to Ukraine, Lavrov reeled off a long list of Russian grievances against the United States which he said helped contribute to an atmosphere of mistrust that was in some ways more dangerous and unpredictable than the Cold War. (Read more from “Russia Says U.S. Actions Threaten Its National Security” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Cease-Fire in Ukraine Could Be at ‘Tipping Point’ as US, EU Spar With Russia Over Syria

/0 Comments/in , /by

The shaky cease-fire in eastern Ukraine has reached a “tipping point,” a high-level Ukrainian government official says.

The official’s comments underscore how geopolitical events—from the war in Syria to the rise of nationalist parties across Europe—have tested international resolve to maintain sanctions on Russia.

“There is no alternative” to the current cease-fire, the official said during a closed-door meeting Wednesday in Kyiv with a small group of foreign journalists, including one for The Daily Signal. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to diplomatic concerns.

“The conflict in the Donbas could be resolved very easily,” the official said, referring to Ukraine’s embattled southeastern region on the border with Russia. “It’s up to Russia … but you can’t be so naïve to think that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will relinquish control of the Donbas. He wants to show that Ukraine is a failed state.”

The conflict in Ukraine is moderated in its intensity by a cease-fire named “Minsk II,” struck in February 2015 by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany, as well as representatives from the two breakaway separatist territories in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has been a party to the cease-fire’s inception and implementation, even though the Kremlin insists Russian troops are not involved in combat operations in Ukraine.

Ukrainian diplomats and lawmakers increasingly are worried that European and American allies will prioritize Russian cooperation in Syria over resolving the conflict in Ukraine.

Kyiv also is concerned about the future of U.S. policy toward Ukraine and NATO after the presidential election, as well as the rise of nationalist parties across Europe—often funded by Moscow and having pro-Russian leanings.

“We are concerned that there is no unity inside the EU,” the Ukrainian official said of the European Union, adding that Ukraine’s partners need to show “patience and persistence” to deter Russia.

“The American side is trying to get a deal done with Russia before [President Barack] Obama leaves office,” the Ukrainian official said. “And next year there could be a completely new Europe. It’s a key issue for us to maintain the sanctions policy. Sanctions are bringing results. An aggressor country must feel the price for the brutal violation of international law.”

The prospects for Ukraine aren’t good, based on past moves by the Obama administration beginning with the U.S. policy “reset” with Russia in 2009, one expert says.

“Ukraine will be sold out in the same way Poland and the Czech Republic were sold out to Russia regarding missile defense ahead of the reset, and in the same way Gulf states were sold out ahead of the Iran [nuclear] deal,” Luke Coffey, director of The Heritage Foundation’s foreign policy center, told The Daily Signal.

“We never learn,” Coffey said.

Realism

The French presidency will be up for grabs in an election next year, as will Germany’s chancellorship. In both countries, far-right parties with pro-Russian leanings have gained ground.

Kyiv is worried that inconsistent messages from EU countries have dissuaded the Kremlin from negotiating over Ukraine.

In 2014, German Chancellor Angela Merkel united EU leaders to put sanctions on Russia after it annexed Crimea. The German leader has remained a staunch advocate of maintaining economic pressure on the Kremlin.

In June, however, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier advocated phasing out the EU sanctions.

France also has shown cracks in its Russian policy.

On July 28, a delegation of 11 French lawmakers and senators visited Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in March 2014, to take part in Russian Navy Day celebrations in Sevastopol.

Marcel Van Herpen, director of the Cicero Foundation, a Dutch think tank, said Russia is using the Ukrainian cease-fire as “a diplomatic tool to further its own revisionist goals.”

“If it’s no longer considered useful, Moscow will quit the negotiating table,” Van Herpen told The Daily Signal. “Moscow has all the trump cards in its hands and Kyiv can only try to convince the Western powers of Moscow’s bad faith.”

The EU extended and expanded the sanctions due to Russia’s ongoing efforts to destabilize Ukraine.

U.S., Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and Australia are among other countries that also put sanctions on Russia after its military actions in Ukraine.

Russia has been a party to the cease-fire’s inception and implementation, even though the Kremlin insists Russian troops are not involved in combat operations in Ukraine.

Ukrainian diplomats and lawmakers increasingly are worried that European and American allies will prioritize Russian cooperation in Syria over resolving the conflict in Ukraine.

Kyiv also is concerned about the future of U.S. policy toward Ukraine and NATO after the presidential election, as well as the rise of nationalist parties across Europe—often funded by Moscow and having pro-Russian leanings.

“We are concerned that there is no unity inside the EU,” the Ukrainian official said of the European Union, adding that Ukraine’s partners need to show “patience and persistence” to deter Russia.

“The American side is trying to get a deal done with Russia before [President Barack] Obama leaves office,” the Ukrainian official said. “And next year there could be a completely new Europe. It’s a key issue for us to maintain the sanctions policy. Sanctions are bringing results. An aggressor country must feel the price for the brutal violation of international law.”

The prospects for Ukraine aren’t good, based on past moves by the Obama administration beginning with the U.S. policy “reset” with Russia in 2009, one expert says.

“Ukraine will be sold out in the same way Poland and the Czech Republic were sold out to Russia regarding missile defense ahead of the reset, and in the same way Gulf states were sold out ahead of the Iran [nuclear] deal,” Luke Coffey, director of The Heritage Foundation’s foreign policy center, told The Daily Signal.

“We never learn,” Coffey said.

Realism

The French presidency will be up for grabs in an election next year, as will Germany’s chancellorship. In both countries, far-right parties with pro-Russian leanings have gained ground.

Kyiv is worried that inconsistent messages from EU countries have dissuaded the Kremlin from negotiating over Ukraine.

In 2014, German Chancellor Angela Merkel united EU leaders to put sanctions on Russia after it annexed Crimea. The German leader has remained a staunch advocate of maintaining economic pressure on the Kremlin.

In June, however, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier advocated phasing out the EU sanctions.

France also has shown cracks in its Russian policy.

On July 28, a delegation of 11 French lawmakers and senators visited Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in March 2014, to take part in Russian Navy Day celebrations in Sevastopol.

Marcel Van Herpen, director of the Cicero Foundation, a Dutch think tank, said Russia is using the Ukrainian cease-fire as “a diplomatic tool to further its own revisionist goals.”

“If it’s no longer considered useful, Moscow will quit the negotiating table,” Van Herpen told The Daily Signal. “Moscow has all the trump cards in its hands and Kyiv can only try to convince the Western powers of Moscow’s bad faith.”

The EU extended and expanded the sanctions due to Russia’s ongoing efforts to destabilize Ukraine.

U.S., Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and Australia are among other countries that also put sanctions on Russia after its military actions in Ukraine.

Kyiv is concerned about being excluded from some negotiations by EU and U.S. leaders with Russia—such as discussions that occurred on the sidelines of September’s G20 meeting in China—and being forced to give in on some of its red lines.

Sanctions related to Russia’s annexation of Crimea are separate from sanctions related to the ongoing conflict in the Donbas. The EU conceivably could let up pressure on Moscow over Crimea while maintaining sanctions related to the war in the Donbas.

Some experts say, however, that the collapse of U.S.-Russian negotiations over Syria have left U.S. officials with little confidence in, and appetite for, any grand bargains with Moscow.

“Russia’s breaking of the last cease-fire has depleted the last ounce of trust which still existed in the U.S.,” Van Herpen said. “New negotiations between [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov and [U.S. Secretary of State John] Kerry seem to be senseless.”

Kyiv is not under pressure “today or tomorrow” to make unfavorable concessions to Russia to secure peace in the Donbas, the Ukrainian official said. However, international unity to maintain sanctions on Russia appears to be waning.

“We are worried about EU silence about human rights violations in Crimea,” the official said.

“Sanctions related to Russia’s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea will remain in place until Russia returns the peninsula to Ukraine,” Daniel Baer, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Sept. 7.

Baer added: “We join the European Union in recalling that sanctions imposed on Russia for its aggression in eastern Ukraine will also remain in place until Russia fully implements its Minsk commitments.”

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, is the multinational body charged with monitoring the cease-fire in Ukraine.

Eastern Promises

The terms of the Minsk II cease-fire are broken down into two general categories.

First, Kyiv is supposed to implement a series of political reforms, including a constitutional amendment to decentralize federal power. Ukraine also is supposed to grant amnesty for separatist fighters, and bring the breakaway territories back into the political fold through elections.

The cease-fire’s second tranche of rules is designed to reduce the intensity of the conflict.

Some key points include withdrawal of all foreign soldiers from Ukrainian territory, re-establishing Ukrainian control over the border with Russia in the Donbas, and the unimpeded access of OSCE monitors to all of the conflict areas.

Rules also require both sides of the conflict to pull back heavy weapons a prescribed distance from the contact line.

Kyiv acknowledges it still has work to do on political components of the Minsk deal. Yet, Ukrainian officials claim they are making a good faith effort to implement the required changes.

Ukrainian government officials contrasted their efforts to accomplish the required political reforms against Russia’s continued military support for separatist forces.

The Russian Hand

U.S. and Ukrainian officials say Russia incited the outbreak of the conflict in early 2014 with subversive espionage and special operations actions.

Russia’s covert campaign exploited years of propaganda in eastern Ukraine, which deftly took advantage of memories of the Nazi invasion in World War II and conspiratorial anxieties about the CIA, which were part and parcel of Soviet propaganda during the Cold War.

When protesters in Kyiv overthrew former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was pro-Russian, in February 2014, Russian media quickly painted the revolution as a CIA-sponsored coup that put in place a neo-Nazi government.

Russian media also have portrayed pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine as mainly working-class people armed with confiscated Ukrainian military hardware. Yet, the prolific use of heavy artillery, armor, drones, signals jamming, and surface-to-air missiles suggest the overt presence of the Russian military in the conflict.

According to NATO and Ukraine, combined Russian-separatist forces in the Donbas currently possess about 700 tanks—more than Germany’s armed forces.

Numerous independent news reports and investigations have proven Russian troops have been fighting in the Donbas, and that separatist forces are supplied, trained, and commanded by Russia.

“Despite efforts by combined Russian-separatist forces to blind the SMM [OSCE Special Monitoring Mission] and disguise the flow of personnel and weapons from Russia into Ukraine, monitors continue to document clear evidence of Russia’s direct role in sustaining the conflict,” Baer said at a Sept. 8 meeting of the OSCE’s Permanent Council in Vienna.

Cease-Fire Violations

Twenty months after the February 2015 cease-fire went into effect, shelling and small arms attacks remain daily occurrences along the front lines in eastern Ukraine. So do military and civilian casualties on both sides of the conflict.

About 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have died, along with an unknown number of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars.

As of Sunday, 174 Ukrainian troops have died in combat in 2016.

On Saturday, the Ukrainian military said combined Russian-separatist forces had violated the cease-fire 38 times during the past 24 hours, including the use of 120 mm and 82 mm mortars, grenade launchers, machine guns, and small arms. Four Ukrainian soldiers were wounded. One Ukrainian soldier died during the weekend after tripping a landmine.

OSCE monitors have tallied more than 12,000 “cease-fire violations” so far this year.

Cease-fire violations typically comprise attacks with weapons banned from the front lines, including large-caliber mortars and artillery, tanks, and rockets. Small arms attacks are also considered to be violations.

The monitors can identify cease-fire violations through direct observation or by hearing the sounds of explosions or small arms fire. Each shot fired is not a distinct violation. Sometimes a single cease-fire violation comprises dozens of separate attacks.

On Aug. 4, for example, the OSCE logged one violation after hearing 100 undetermined explosions about 4 to 6 kilometers (2.5 to about 4 miles) from the Donetsk central railway station.

On Saturday, Ukrainian and separatist forces carried out a symbolic pullback of troops at two places along the front lines.

Speaking in Kyiv several days beforehand, the Ukrainian official downplayed the importance of the plan, which created a 2-kilometer-wide (1.25 miles) “disengagement area” between Ukrainian and combined Russian-separatist forces.

The official called the troop pullback a “pilot project,” and said it represented “0.05 percent” of what is required for a lasting peace.

Critics say a 2-kilometer buffer is useless. Mortars used in the conflict have ranges up to about 7.25 kilometers. And other weapons sometimes used in the conflict, such as Grad, Uragan, and Smerch rockets, have far greater ranges.

The war also has been a humanitarian disaster, displacing about 1.7 million people who are now refugees inside Ukraine, or “internally displaced persons” in U.N. parlance.

With the war’s third winter approaching, the situation for civilians trapped in the conflict zone is critical.

In rural communities in the Donbas, it is not uncommon for people to grow their own food. Consequently, as winter approaches and gardens go barren, and with normal supply chains cut off due to the conflict, food shortages are a major concern.

‘Pilot Project’

Opinions vary widely about Putin’s strategic objectives. Whether he is trying to rebuild the Soviet Union, for example, or is pushing back against NATO’s western expansion.

Some claim Putin considers himself to be a historic figure destined to reunite Kyivan Rus peoples. Others have a more cynical take on the Russian president, claiming his military adventures are simply domestic propaganda fodder to maintain his grip on power.

Whatever Putin’s ultimate aims, his vision has translated into an interconnected web of military action in Ukraine and Syria.

“Russia connects all of these things—Syria, Ukraine, Georgia—in a way we fail to,” Heritage’s Coffey said. “Russia knows it can build up political capital in one place, like Syria, to spend in another, like Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian official said Moscow’s intent is to maintain “controlled escalation” in the Donbas as part of a larger strategy to destabilize Ukraine and bring the country back into Moscow’s orbit.

“By being successful in economics and with anti-corruption [initiatives], we can deter Russia,” the official said. “We need to be successful in internal reforms. We must rely on ourselves.”

The Cicero Foundation’s Van Herpen says Ukraine must exercise patience.

“Walking away from Minsk is no option for Kyiv,” Van Herpen said. “So, the only solution for Kyiv is to wait out the conflict, manage the Western powers, strengthen its defense, and hope that a change will take place inside Russia.” (For more from the author of “Cease-Fire in Ukraine Could Be at ‘Tipping Point’ as US, EU Spar With Russia Over Syria” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

US Agencies Point Finger at Top Russian Officials for Political Cyberattacks

/0 Comments/in , /by

Cyber attacks against the Democratic National Committee were undertaken by Russian hackers working for top officials in the Russian government, American intelligence agencies said Friday.

“The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations,” said the statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said.

The statement was vague about the reason for Russia’s cyber attacks.

“These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process,” the statement said. “Such activity is not new to Moscow — the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there.”

The joint statement said that despite success in embarrassing the DNC, hackers would be unable to compromise America’s election system.

The statement did note that several states have detected attempts to hack into their election systems, and that servers operated by a Russian company were connected to the attempts.

“However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government,” the statement said.

The statement also sought to assure voters of the integrity of the election system.

“This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place. States ensure that voting machines are not connected to the Internet, and there are numerous checks and balances as well as extensive oversight at multiple levels built into our election process,” the statement said.

Putin has denied any connection to the DNC hack, which caused a political embarrassment by revealing the extent to which the DNC worked to support Hillary Clinton’s campaign at the expense of rival Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?’’ Putin said in early September. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.’’

“There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it,” Putin said. “But I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this.” (For more from the author of “US Agencies Point Finger at Top Russian Officials for Political Cyberattacks” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.