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)

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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)

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Speculation about Russian interference in the upcoming U.S. presidential election is flowing fast in the U.S. media.

Russia was widely believed to be responsible for embarrassing email hacks at the Democratic National Convention. Speculation abounds in the media that the Russian government might try to throw the U.S. election this way or that with a boldness not even seen during Soviet days.

Speculation is all we have for now, yet, the Russian propagandists may feel they have accomplished quite enough. Sowing confusion in the West and presenting Russia as an innocent victim of U.S. political infighting are key elements in Russia’s information warfare.

On the international front, Russia is no less active. Having honed disinformation skills in the conflict with Ukraine, Russian media are now focused on Syria.

In a through-the-looking-glass maneuver, Russia has accused the United States of bombing Syrian government troops and aiding the Islamic State, while Russia itself that is bombed Syrian civilian targets, including a hospital. This leaves U.S. officials, like Secretary of State John Kerry and United Nations Ambassador Samantha Powers, constantly playing defense.

There is no sign of Russia’s information campaign abating. The campaign has successfully restored Russia as a global player, muscling in where the United States and Europe have faltered.

A recent paper published by Chatham House titled “Russia’s ‘New’ Tools for Confronting the West,” describes Russia as engaging in hybrid warfare, comprised of new generations of kinetic weaponry combined with a revamped information warfare strategy.

The key to understanding Russians’ strategy, writes author Keir Giles, a research fellow at Chatham House, is the consistency of Russian strategy over time. In both its use of military force and its use of disinformation, the Kremlin reveals reliance on the past as well as the ability to adapt to new tools, like the internet. And yet for all our experience in dealing with Russian propaganda in the past, we continue to be challenged by it in the present.

Two key recommendations of the report stand out:

“Russia continues to present itself as being under approaching threat from the West, and is mobilizing to address that threat. Russia’s security initiatives, even if it views or presents them as defensive measures, are likely to have severe consequences for its neighbors. Russia’s growing confidence in pursuing its objectives will make it even harder for the West to protect itself against Russian assertiveness, without the implementation of measures to resist Russian information warfare, and without the availability of significant military force to act as an immediate and present deterrent in the front-line states.”

“For Western governments and leaders, an essential first step towards more successful management of the relationship with Moscow would be to recognize that the West’s values and strategic interests and those of Russia are fundamentally incompatible.”

The underlying gap in values and goals between the United States and Russia is far too frequently underestimated by those in power in Washington. The last to fully understand it was President Ronald Reagan, who incidentally also had the best information strategy in recent history. (For more from the author of “Russia’s Information Warfare Continues” please click HERE)

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The story is depressingly familiar.

On Friday, the cease-fire in Syria, which was brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, collapsed as Russian and Syrian warplanes resumed their scorched earth airstrike campaign in Aleppo.

“Russia has no vested interest in stability in the Middle East,” Stephen Blank, senior fellow for Russia at the American Foreign Policy Council, told The Daily Signal.

“For Russia, security is only achievable if everyone else is insecure,” Blank said. “They’re not peacemakers, it’s a pretense. They want to force people to accept that Russia is important.”

The collapse of the cease-fire in Syria is the latest in a series of setbacks for U.S.-Russian relations.

Repeated attempts to cooperate in defusing conflicts in Ukraine and Syria have fallen flat. And a pattern of Russian warplane flybys of U.S. military aircraft and naval vessels in Eastern Europe, as well as allegations that the Kremlin is trying to influence the U.S. election through cyberattacks have exacerbated tensions.

Joint operations to support the International Space Station are among the last holdouts of post-Cold War cooperation between the U.S. and Russia.

Verbal sparring between Kerry and Lavrov at a United Nations Security Council meeting Wednesday highlighted how relations between Russia and the U.S. are at a post-Cold War nadir.

“Russia and the United States are in a state of conflict,” Blank said. “But it’s not a new Cold War. It’s a struggle between democracy and autocracy, not communism and capitalism.”

War of Words

The Syrian cease-fire, which went into effect Sept. 12, was dead on arrival, underscoring how far U.S.-Russia relations have deteriorated. The failed truce also highlighted intractable differences of opinion over key questions related to the war in Syria, such as the fate of the country’s ruler, Bashar al-Assad.

The 5-year-old war in Syria has displaced half of the country’s population and is estimated to have killed more than 400,000 people.

Fighting briefly ebbed last week in Syria after the cease-fire allegedly went into effect, but the war never stopped.

The cease-fire edged toward total collapse Monday night when, according to U.S. officials, Russian warplanes bombed a convoy transporting humanitarian aid to the 78,000 people trapped in the rebel-controlled city of Aleppo.

Twenty out of the convoy’s 31 trucks were destroyed, and about 20 people died, according to news reports.

The strikes were likely carried out by two Russian Su-24 warplanes, which were recorded as operating in the vicinity of the convoy, according to U.S. officials.

Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during Senate testimony on Thursday that either Russian or Syrian warplanes might have attacked the convoy.

“It was either the Russians or the regime,” Dunford said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that the Russians are responsible. I just don’t know whose aircraft actually dropped the bomb.”

At the U.N. on Wednesday, Kerry blamed Russia for the attack.

The Kremlin has subsequently suggested a series of alternative scenarios, including the possibility that a U.S. drone carried out the strike, or that the convoy was attacked from the ground by opposition forces fighting against the Assad government.

“I listened to my colleague from Russia and I sort of felt like we’re in a parallel universe here,” Kerry said in response to Lavrov’s remarks at Wednesday’s U.N. Security Council meeting.

Kerry called for a halt in Syrian and Russian airstrikes to allow the cease-fire to take hold.

Yet, as of Friday, Russian and Syrian airstrikes had resumed in Aleppo and a new offensive by Assad’s forces to take back the city had begun, according to news reports from the region.

Machinations

In a gambit to increase its importance on the world stage, Moscow has positioned itself as a key player in negotiating peace deals in conflicts it started, such as Ukraine, or elbowed its way into, as in Syria.

“I think Russia, through Putin, is the ultimate opportunist,” said Steven Bucci, visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies.

“They see U.S. weakness and exploit it,” Bucci, a former Army Special Forces commander, said. “I’m not sure if they want to be peace arbiters, but they want influence, and they need domestic control. Their growing engagements give them both. They are now seen as a serious player on the world stage, who many believe are more steady than the U.S. That turnaround is remarkable.”

Some experts claim that Russia has little genuine interest in ending the conflicts in Ukraine or Syria. The longer those conflicts last, some say, the longer Russia is able to remain relevant as a global power.

“That creaking sound you hear is Russia’s international credibility taking an additional hit,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in Washington.

Modern Russia doesn’t have the Soviet Union’s military clout to force countries in Eastern Europe to succumb to its vassalage or to shape outcomes in other regions like the Middle East.

But the metrics of state power in the post-Cold War era are not defined by the ability to invade or subjugate countries. Russia has created diplomatic leverage in Ukraine and Syria through limited military operations, which exploit the reluctance of U.S. and European leaders to become entangled in those conflicts.

In 2013, Assad used chemical weapons against rebel-controlled pockets of the Damascus suburbs. The attacks killed about 1,500 civilians, including more than 400 children, and tested President Barack Obama’s “red line” warning to Assad—that the use of chemical weapons would spur a U.S. military response.

As the U.S. prepared to attack, Russia stepped in to arbitrate a last-minute deal to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles. The U.S. never launched punitive strikes, and Assad, a Moscow ally, remains entrenched in power.

“Russia is working hard to show the U.S. is not the leader it claims to be, but Russia is,” Bucci said. “They know Obama does not want or have the stomach for difficult foreign policy situations, and that Kerry is a incompetent negotiator. They are taking full advantage of that.”

In Ukraine, the more than 2-year-old conflict is in a perpetual holding pattern, periodically spiking in violence. Russia played a hand in brokering multiple failed cease-fires while it simultaneously and covertly armed pro-Russian separatists and deployed its own troops inside Ukraine.

“Nowhere is Russia’s intervention in internal affairs more brazen and bloody than in the conflict in Ukraine, which Russia continues to fuel by arming, training, and commanding so-called ‘separatists,’” Tom Malinowski, U.S. assistant secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, said during remarks at a Sept. 19 meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Warsaw, Poland.

“The Cold War was a global struggle between two power blocks—that’s not the case today,” Blank said. “Today, it’s a multipolar world order. Russia is upset they don’t have the status they had during the Cold War. They want to be coequal to the United States, but they’re not going to get it.” (For more from the author of “Syria Cease-Fire Collapse Highlights How Far US-Russia Relations Have Fallen” please click HERE)

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