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US Agencies Point Finger at Top Russian Officials for Political Cyberattacks

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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)

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Russia’s Information Warfare Continues

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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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Report Confirms Russia’s Responsibility for Shooting Down Malaysian Airliner

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In interim findings, a team of investigators says Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from an area controlled by Russian-backed fighters in eastern Ukraine.

The team, comprised of investigators from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Ukraine, is conducting a criminal investigation into the downing of MH17 on July 17, 2014, which killed all 298 people on board.

The report says “the investigation also shows that the BUK-TELAR [surface-to-air missile system] was brought in from the territory of the Russian Federation and subsequently, after having shot down flight MH-17, was taken back to the Russian Federation.”

The report confirmed what has been known for some time. The day after the downing of the airliner, President Barack Obama said evidence indicated “the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine.”

Obama also said Russia had supplied weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons, to Russian-backed forces in Ukraine. In October 2015, a report from the Dutch Safety Board concluded the plane was brought down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile.

The tragic loss of nearly 300 innocent lives over the skies of Ukraine over two years ago is emblematic of the cavalier and naked aggression Russia has undertaken against Ukraine.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2014, annexed Crimea a few weeks later, and continues to fight a war in the Donbas region against Ukrainian government forces. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has cost more than 9,600 lives and resulted in over 22,000 injuries since April 2014.

The shooting down of the civilian airliner in 2014 threatened to turn worldwide public opinion further against Russia. As a result, Russian propaganda conjured up a flurry of alternative absurd conspiracy theories mostly blaming Ukraine for the shoot-down.

Russia’s disinformation campaign and trolls have targeted investigators looking into MH17, and Russia is also believed to be behind a 2015 cyberattack of the Dutch Safety Board.

The interim report findings should serve as a reminder to Americans that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not a friend that can be bargained with, rather it is a brutal regime that has brought war back to Europe, a war which continues to this day and has cost thousands of innocent lives.

Furthermore, Russia’s reaction to the shooting down of MH17 and subsequent investigations into the tragedy are clear examples of how Russia uses propaganda, cyberattacks, and obfuscation to advance its narrative of events, even when irrefutable evidence exists to prove Russian disinformation incorrect.

Whoever takes over the White House in 2017 will face an aggressive, revanchist Russia that is a threat to the United States and our allies. No amount of wishful thinking can obscure this fact.

The U.S. must approach relations with Russia from a position of strength, reassure our allies, and implement a comprehensive strategy for dealing with Russia as it currently is. The U.S. should also continue to support Ukraine as it defends itself and continues to institute necessary political and economic reforms.

MH17 was a tragic incident brought about by Russia. American leaders must not view Putin and his regime through rose-colored glasses.

Let us hope that these latest findings help clarify any misunderstandings about the nature of the Russian regime and the deadly consequences of its actions. (For more from the author of “Report Confirms Russia’s Responsibility for Shooting Down Malaysian Airliner” please click HERE)

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Syria Cease-Fire Collapse Highlights How Far US-Russia Relations Have Fallen

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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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Past Is Prologue: America Is More Like Soviet Russia Than You Might Expect

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Could America have its own version of a Russian Revolution? With Vladimir Putin’s modern-day authoritarian intelligence state inserting itself into the 2016 American presidential election, the question is more timely than you might think. More unsettling — putting aside Russia’s meddling in American affairs — is the argument that such an ideological revolution is already well underway.

A recent essay in The New Criterion by Gary Saul Morson illuminates this chilling thesis. As a professor of (among other weighty subjects) Russian literature and the history of ideas at Northwestern University, Morson is uniquely qualified to comment on the parallels between the two nations that previously represented opposing poles of political philosophy. In his piece titled “The house is on fire!” Morson explains how the Soviet Union’s bloody communist past has great bearing on America’s present and future.

Morson, that perhaps rare, intellectually honest professor at a major American university, surveys communism’s past and reasonably suggests — with its millions of victims from the Soviet Union, China, and Ethiopia — that communism ought to be considered on par with Nazism in terms of its barbarism and our revulsion to it.

Yet curiously, Prof. Morson writes, likely alluding to his peers in the academy,

In intellectual circles … such comparisons taint not Communists, but the person who makes them.

This in spite of the ghoulish revelations from the Soviet archives – from Mitrokhin to Stalin – hiding in plain sight. Morson gives an example:

Our knowledge of Bolshevik horrors expanded dramatically when, after the fall of the Soviet Union, its archives were opened. Jonathan Brent and Yale University Press brought out volume after volume of chilling documents, but public opinion did not noticeably change. How many readers of The New York Times know about its role in covering up the worst of Stalin’s crimes and earning a Pulitzer Prize (still unreturned) for doing so?

I understand being so carried away by Communist ideals that one denies or justifies millions of deaths. What amazes me is that people and publications who have done so still feel entitled to criticize others from a position of moral superiority.

More on that Pulitzer story here and here.

The refusal to acknowledge communism’s history of genocide — and for the “lucky” ones starvation, misery, and the constant need to look over one’s shoulder — in particular among the nation’s progressive elite, has real consequences. As does the inability of said progressives to acknowledge a link between collectivist ideology and its dire consequences. To many such people, it is the intent of the ideas — using the state to “help others” and thus create a utopia — that matters, even if the ends prove cataclysmic.

Look no further than the viability of a Bernie Sanders presidency in the same country that several decades ago had supposedly vanquished communism for the corrosive effect of such an ethos. No, Bernie is not a communist in the sense of being a Bolshevik or Menshevik. But his ideas are based on the same socialist principles underlying those movements, and they are geared toward similarly disastrous ends. His ideological and political differences with the communists of yesteryear are a matter of degree, not kind.

The idea that wealth redistribution is moral, and that the provision of goods and services by the state is a legitimate function have tremendous sway in America.

And the pervasiveness of political correctness powerfully attests to the idea that the roots of communist ideology have insinuated themselves in the American mind, manifesting themselves in every aspect of our culture.

If there is an underlying subtext to Prof. Morson’s piece, that is the harrowing reality.

Consider several of the communist bigwigs that Prof. Morson quotes, and the relevance of their positions to our nation at present:

Delivering a toast on the twentieth anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power, Stalin declared: “We will destroy each and every enemy, even if he was an old Bolshevik; we will destroy all his kin, his family. We will mercilessly destroy anyone who, by his deeds or his thoughts — yes, his thoughts! — threatens the unity of the socialist state. To the complete destruction of all enemies, themselves and their kin!” … Georgy Arbatov, adviser to five general secretaries of the Soviet Communist Party, observed that “the main code of behavior” was “to be afraid of your own thoughts.”

In America we do not destroy political enemies by sending them to the gulag or grave by way of mysterious “accidents,” but we do so in more subtle, nuanced ways: Think of the IRS Scandal, selective enforcement of laws, harassment at the hands of federal agencies, etc.

But thought control — a.k.a., political correctness — is a much more powerful tool. It calls to mind a certain former secretary of state’s comment in front of the Organization of Islamic Conference on “combatting religious intolerance.” Then-Secretary Clinton spoke to a group of Sharia supremacists about the need for Western nations to use “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to counter language offensive to Muslims.

A direct government threat may be happily distant for most Americans, but fear of social ostracism for holding beliefs conflicting with the prevailing progressive orthodoxy is ever-present. Who needs a formal, state-controlled cultural police force when people will self-censor lest they draw the ire of friends and colleagues?

Prof. Morson quotes Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, a secret police force and precursor to the KGB used to purge (read: assassinate thousands of people) Russia of “enemies of the state” during the so-called Red Terror.

Dzerzhinsky wrote in a journal aptly titled, “Red Terror”:

We are not waging war against individual persons. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. During the investigation, do not look for evidence that the accused acted in deed or word against Soviet power. The first questions that you ought to put are: To what class does he belong? What is his origin? What is his education or profession? And it is these questions that ought to determine the fate of the accused.

True, the scale of violence in American class warfare is incomparable to that of the Soviet Union and China — rooted though it may be in the same Marxian philosophy and ethics and geared toward consolidating all manner of power in the hands of the state. Different cultures are different. But Dzerzhinsky’s questions are telling.

From railing against “millionaires and billionaires” of America’s most prominent political figures to the pervasive social justice warrior rhetoric on white privilege and the patriarchy, Dzerzhinsky’s premises are more apparent in American society than anyone might care to admit. And perhaps most stunning of all, we as a nation cannot see it and do not know it. This blindness, ignorance, or combination of both speaks to the effectiveness of a communism that we may have “vanquished” in a conventional sense – the Soviet Union fell, albeit without its murderous leaders ever being put on trial and punished for their crimes – but the ideas of which are powerful as ever.

Prof. Morson quotes Lenin, who said “Morality is entirely subordinated to the class struggle of the proletariat.” The means are what matters. Ends are irrelevant. The struggle is inherently moral. Get on the “right side of history.” This is how you get the Affordable Care Act the effects of which are diametrically opposed to its name.

Prof. Morson quotes Trotsky on the Communist Party:

Comrades, none of us wishes or is able to be right against his Party. The Party in the last analysis is always right, because the Party is the sole historical instrument given the proletariat for the solution of its basic problems … I know that one cannot be right against the party. It is only possible to be right with the Party and through the Party for history has not created other ways for the realization of what is right.

The progressivism that pervades our government, our media, and our schools — as well as the consequence of not adhering to such an ideology — testify to the power of The Party.

Prof. Morson continues:

Is it any wonder that those who reject human rights, treat people in terms of friendly or enemy groups, place no moral limit on action, and are certain that whatever they do is right should wind up committing colossal evil?

Although the Left in America would take issue with the idea that the violation of individual liberty represents a rejection of human rights, does any statement better describe the party of class warfare, Clintonian notions of right and wrong, and all manner of disasters from Obamacare to open borders and suicidal “Countering Violent Extremism”?

Prof. Morson concludes his piece on a sobering but well-taken note:

Perhaps my training as a Russian specialist distorts my judgment, but as I contemplate the ideas spreading from the academy through society, I fear, a century after the Russian Revolution, a tyranny greater than Stalin’s. Comrades, the house is on fire.

Bad ideas have bad consequences. (For more from the author of “Past Is Prologue: America Is More Like Soviet Russia Than You Might Expect” please click HERE)

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Journalists Caught in the Crossfire of the Ukraine-Russia Conflict

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There is a memorial to murdered Ukrainian journalists on Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s central boulevard.

It’s a simple, nondescript metal plaque flanked by flowers on the side of a building. Some of the names are faded now, worn down by the years and the elements.

The names date from 1992, the first year after Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union, underscoring how the fall of communism 25 years ago did not portend a new era of vibrant democratic culture in Ukraine.

Ukraine has spent much of the past quarter century under oligarchic thug rule, in which free and objective journalism was often seen as a nuisance to be controlled and manipulated—and sometimes a threat worth eliminating—by those in power.

And this summer, more than two years after Ukrainians took to the streets to overthrow the regime of former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, a string of violent incidents against journalists and media outlets has rocked Ukraine’s capital.

Journalists are caught in the crossfire of those wishing to control the country (both in Kyiv and in Moscow), as well as targets of simmering anti-Russian sentiments due to the ongoing war in the east.

Journalists of all leanings have been targeted this summer, including government corruption watchdogs and those accused of maintaining a pro-Russian bias.

On July 20, Pavlo Sheremet, a well-known journalist in Ukraine for the news agency Ukrainska Pravda, was killed in a brazen car bomb attack in central Kyiv. Ukrainian officials requested the assistance of U.S. FBI investigators, but a motive has not yet been determined and officials have not named any suspects.

“I think the final aim was to scare or to intimidate Ukrainian journalists apart from or simultaneously trying to further destabilize the situation in the country,” said Andriy Kulykov, chairman of Hromadske Radio, during a broadcast interview for the independent Ukrainian radio news outlet.

“I don’t see that Ukrainian investigative journalists are limited in their duties or became scared and abandoned their jobs after Sheremet’s murder,” said Viktor Kovalenko, a Ukrainian journalist and former journalism professor.

“On the contrary, I see that now they are turning their eyes inside media society to find out how deeply Kremlin’s manipulators infiltrated and rule it according to their infowar against Ukraine,” Kovalenko added. “This attention to ourselves will help in cleaning, rethinking of journalism standards, and with actual rebirth of Ukrainian journalism.”

On the same day as Sheremet’s assassination, a knife-wielding man attacked Maria Rydvan, 25, an editor for Forbes Ukraine, as she was walking in a central Kyiv park.

“In park for no apparent reason a man ran to me and stabbed me three times… It’s all very strange,” Rydvan wrote on her Facebook page.

On Aug. 28, Russian journalist Alexander Shchetinin was found dead on the balcony of his Kyiv apartment. He died due to what police said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, according to Ukrainian news reports, and was discovered by friends who had come to celebrate his birthday.

Shchetinin renounced his Russian citizenship to be a Ukrainian citizen and founded the Kyiv-based New Region news agency.

Ukrainian officials are investigating Shchetinin’s death as a suicide. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, is pushing for his death to be “swiftly and thoroughly investigated.”

Without directly alleging that Shchetinin’s death was the result of foul play, Dunja Mijatovic, OSCE representative on freedom of the media, said Ukrainian officials should “improve the fragile situation regarding the safety of journalists and fully and effectively address the issue of impunity.”

Information Wars

On Sunday, the Kyiv offices of the TV news station Inter were set ablaze in an arson attack. Protesters had gathered outside the building to rally against the channel’s alleged pro-Russian bias, setting tires on fire and spray painting graffiti on the side of the building and on a fence hastily put up to keep them back.

One message read: “Inter—get out!” Another said: “Inter agents of Moscow.”

There were reports of minor injuries, but no deaths. Protesters barricaded Inter’s offices until Tuesday, when a deal was allegedly reached with the news agency, in which unspecified changes to Inter’s editorial policy were agreed upon.

“If the channel fails to observe the deal, the blockade will be resumed in a more radical way,” said Oleksiy Serdiuk, a protest leader, according to the Ukrainian news site Ukraine Today.

Many Ukrainians took to social media for a polarizing debate about the Inter incident.

Inter is commonly known among Ukrainians to harbor a pro-Russian bias, and after more than two years of war against pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars in eastern Ukraine, and the murder of more than 100 protesters by the Yanukovych regime during the 2014 revolution, there is no love lost in Ukraine for those who promote Russian propaganda.

The arson attack against Inter on Sept. 4 was preceded by a Facebook post on Aug. 31 by Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, in which he pushed for the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council and the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU (Ukraine’s equivalent of the FBI), to investigate Inter for “anti-Ukrainian” and “anti-state” propaganda.

Most Ukrainian officials condemned the Inter incident. Some also expressed concern about the perceived damage to Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to showcase the country’s progress toward a stable democracy worthy of deeper ties to the European Union and NATO.

“It’s clear that those who want to show a turbulent Ukraine suffering from destabilization and alike benefit from this,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman told Ukrainian media. “But it is important that the law enforcement system gives an adequate answer: who has done this, what was the aim, and, most important, those people should be punished.”

Kovalenko noted that the Kremlin exploits incidents like the Inter arson attack as part of an ongoing effort to destabilize Ukraine to undercut support from the U.S. and the EU.

“I treat an attack on Inter TV as another element of Kremlin’s infowar … and at the same time damage the reputation of the Ukrainian government abroad to force the West to weaken support in times of military aggression,” Kovalenko said. “Freedom of the press is a very sensitive value for Europe and the U.S., therefore, Moscow propagandists love to speculate on this to get the maximal level of media noise.”

The patience and resolve of the EU to maintain punitive economic sanctions on Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine will likely wear thin if Ukraine is perceived as slipping back into old authoritarian habits. And U.S. support for Ukraine—including military training programs and the delivery of limited nonlethal military hardware—could also dry up if Kyiv fails to show adequate progress in shoring up its democratic institutions.

“The whole world is watching you. That’s a fact,” U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in an address to Ukraine’s parliament on Dec. 9. “They’re watching you because their hopes for your success as you fight both the unrelenting aggression of the Kremlin and the cancer of corruption will impact on them.”

Biden continued:

Ukraine’s moment. It may be your last moment. Please for the sake of the rest of us, selfishly on my part, don’t waste it. Seize the opportunity. Build a better future for the people of Ukraine.

(For more from the author of “Journalists Caught in the Crossfire of the Ukraine-Russia Conflict” please click HERE)

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Threats of a Russian Election Hack a Mere Smoke Screen by Democrats for Power Grab

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The Democrats are now playing the Russia card. As Donald Trump rises in the polls against an increasingly unpopular Hillary Clinton, Democrats are raising the specter of the nefarious Vladimir Putin. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s famous Russian relations reset was a bust, but we are supposed to trust her to handle Putin in the future. More important, the Democrats are sowing grounds to challenge the election, relying on their unnatural ability to squeeze, as if by magic, extra votes from the courtroom.

There may be an even more insidious objective, Outgoing Nevada Sen. Harry Reid — never a fan of election fair play — warned of Russian tampering and called for an FBI investigation. This followed warnings by Jeh Johnson, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, of potential cyber-attacks come November. He indicated he was considering designating the election system “critical infrastructure.”

Why is that significant? This would be followed by a Washington campaign to “assist” and “protect” balloting, which inevitably would turn into control. The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky warned that Johnson’s action “may be a way for the administration to get Justice Department lawyers, the FBI and DHS staff into polling places they would otherwise have no legal right to access, which would enable them to interfere with election administration procedures around the country.” That would dramatically, and permanently, transform the constitutional balance between the national and state governments.

Despite scare-mongering by Reid and Johnson, there is no evidence of any impending cyber-attack on the American electoral system. Even Johnson apparently admitted that he could point to no indications of such a threat. A far greater danger to the integrity of U.S. democracy is voter fraud, yet the courts seem determined to block any effort to even require identification to cast a ballot. This undermines the great strength of America’s elections, state control.

As von Spakovsky pointed out, “we have the most decentralized election system of any Western democracy.” This approach protects America from having Russia (or China or anyone else) manipulate electoral outcomes. Nationalizing the process actually would make U.S. elections far more vulnerable to outside attack.

Which demonstrates the continuing wisdom of the nation’s Founders in creating a system that kept most important public policies and activities at the state level. The national government was established to deal with national problems, not to elevate to the national level controversies which belonged closer to the people.

The Founders’ idea, called “federalism,” naturally grew out of Americans’ commitment to self-government. The people, not a king or emperor, were sovereign. They were to solve their own problems and chart their own futures. That required decision-makers to be close to each other and the challenges facing them.

In this way federalism had a lot in common with the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity. Whenever possible, higher, more distant institutions should leave undisturbed authorities below. Each government had a specific role and should not encroach upon the responsibilities of others.

Early Americans well understood the meaning of federalism: creating two distinct levels (local authorities being subsumed within states) of government with separate and defined duties. Unfortunately, however, the founding generations allowed ambiguity to creep in by calling the national government the “federal” government.

The very concept of federalism requires protecting the vibrancy of state (and local) institutions. The federal system meant dual authority rather than the unitary system prevalent in Europe, including in Great Britain. Although the Civil War established the ultimate supremacy of the national government, the conflict did not wipe out state sovereignty. The so-called federal government remained small, without much day-to-day impact on most people’s lives. Even enthusiastic nationalists at the time could not have imagined the wholesale federal takeover of education, health care, and welfare.

Of course, to speak of “federal” action now means to nationalize an issue. Thus, supporting the founding principle of “federalism” risks communicating the opposite of the truth to people, suggesting that the Constitution turned most problems over to the “federal,” that is, national government. And that continuing islands of state authority, such as running elections, are anomalies which should be wiped out.

Federalism in the original sense of the word always set American democracy apart from that of other nations. Power was separated and balanced; responsibility was accorded to institutions best able to confront problems. The people retained ultimate sovereignty and remained close enough to their officials to hold the latter accountable.

Unfortunately, these principles are under sustained attack. Attempts to tie Trump to Russia are just another attempt to expand federal, as in national, authority. With so many of their leaders AWOL, only the American people are left to stand up for their country’s founding principles. Only We the People. (For more from the author of “Threats of a Russian Election Hack a Mere Smoke Screen by Democrats for Power Grab” please click HERE)

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Russia Will Deploy a Division of Troops About 50 Miles From the US

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At a recent event, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that a division of troops would be stationed in Chukotka, Russia’s far-east region, just slightly more than 50 miles from Alaska.

“There are plans to form a coastal defense division in 2018 on the Chukotka operational direction,” said Shoigu.

He said that the deployment was “to ensure control of the closed sea zones of the Kuril Islands and the Bering Strait, cover the routes of Pacific Fleet forces’ deployment in the Far Eastern and Northern sea zones, and increase the combat viability of naval strategic nuclear forces.”

Japan and Russia dispute ownership of the northern Kuril Islands, where Russia plans to deploy missile-defense batteries. The Bering Strait is the narrow waterway that separates Alaska from Russia. (Read more from “Russia Will Deploy a Division of Troops About 50 Miles From the US” HERE)

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Russia’s Military Exercises Fuel Fears of Continued Aggression

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As the late summer weather begins to cool, Russian military exercises have kept the tensions hot in Ukraine and across Eastern Europe.

Periodic flare-ups in the ongoing war in Ukraine’s embattled Donbas region this summer have renewed fears of a full-on Russian invasion and spurred an unprecedented post-Cold War redeployment of NATO military forces toward the alliance’s eastern flank to deter further Russian aggression in the region.

The latest headache for Kyiv and NATO: Russian military exercises scheduled for Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region in September in addition to Russian snap military exercises launched Aug. 25 in military districts near Ukraine and the Baltic countries.

“If there is an interest in Moscow in stability and predictability, then these exercises are not the way to go,” NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow said Monday.

Russia has staged about a dozen snap military exercises in the past two years, while NATO member countries have not held any since the end of the Cold War, according to news reports.

In September, Russia has plans for a large-scale strategic military exercise called Kavkaz-2016. The exercise, which is an annual event, will include units deployed near the borders of Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan—including two Russian military districts in the Southern and Northern Caucasus, the Russian Black Sea Fleet (headquartered in occupied Crimea), and the Caspian Flotilla.

It is not immediately clear the exact size of this year’s exercise, but last year it comprised 95,000 troops, 7,000 vehicles, and 150 aircraft, according to a report by IHS Markit, a U.K.-based intelligence and analysis firm.

“It is important to assess our capabilities for protecting national interests in the southwestern strategic direction amid the uneasy international military and political situation,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in January while commenting on plans for Kavkaz-2016, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Some military experts say the combination of snap military drills with the planned Kavkaz-2016 exercise have the hallmarks of Russian military maneuvers that served as smoke screens for the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the hybrid warfare invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Yet, others argue Russia’s strategic military objectives have more to do with diplomatic leverage than military outcomes.

Alex Kokcharov, IHS Markit’s principal analyst for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, said the Kremlin is probably maneuvering to destabilize the post-revolution government in Kyiv, and consequently gain leverage for negotiating sanctions relief at the G20 summit to be held in Hangzhou, China, from Sept. 4 to 5.

“War is a continuation of policy,” Kokcharov told The Daily Signal. “And the Kremlin’s policy is to keep Ukraine sufficiently destabilized to stall the implementation of its reform agenda and economic recovery, and thus to engineer a fall of the current pro-Western government in Kiev.”

Fighting Seasons

A combined force of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars has been fighting a limited war against Ukraine’s military in the southeastern Donbas region of the country since spring 2014.

One year ago, the war’s intensity dropped precipitously as both sides to the conflict renewed their commitment to the terms of the ineffectual second cease-fire, called Minsk II.

In theory, the war in Ukraine was supposed to end in September 2015. But it didn’t.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian military announced that during the previous 24 hours combined Russian-separatist forces had attacked Ukrainian positions with more than 690 mortars and 250 artillery shells, including a Grad rocket attack near the southern port city of Mariupol.

One Ukrainian soldier was killed, Ukrainian military spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko told reporters Tuesday in Kyiv.

Attacks on Ukrainian forces have spiked several times this summer, most notably around the time of the NATO summit in Warsaw (during which NATO members proclaimed their support for Ukraine), and after the Aug. 10 skirmish on the border of Russian-occupied Crimea and Ukraine.

The Crimean border incident was serious enough to prompt Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to place Ukraine’s military on its “highest level of alert,” and for Western media outlets to momentarily divert their attention back to the only ongoing land war in Europe.

In an Aug. 24 interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Poroshenko compared Russia’s support for separatists in eastern Ukraine with the Russian bombing campaign on Aleppo, Syria.

Poroshenko claimed Russia’s overall objective was to “destabilize the global security situation” and for Ukraine to be “part of the Russian empire.”

Status Quo

The war’s escalations this summer have not resulted so far in any significant change in territory or military offensives. The war in Ukraine remains locked in a static artillery back-and-forth fought from within trenches and the artillery-blasted ruins of towns scattered along the front lines.

And domestic troubles inside Ukraine, such as the July 20 car bomb assassination of a journalist in downtown Kyiv, also highlight the steep road ahead for Ukraine’s ongoing transition to a democratic society free of the vestiges of communism and the follow-on decades of corrupt oligarchic thug rule.

The next potential inflection point for the Ukraine war is September’s G20 summit in China. Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely use the sidelines of the summit to discuss the Ukraine crisis with other world leaders and press for the lifting of sanctions put on Russia for its 2014 Crimean land grab.

“Russia certainly has the military capability to invade Ukraine but the benefits of grabbing new land in Ukraine would be much smaller than the costs, both direct, and indirect, such as potential new economic sanctions,” Kokcharov said.

He added:

I still continue to hold the view that Putin aims to use intimidation to raise the stakes in the diplomatic game in order to push for negotiations on Donbas settlement that excludes Ukrainian government from the negotiating table, by branding them illegitimate and terrorists.

(For more from the author of “Russia’s Military Exercises Fuel Fears of Continued Aggression” please click HERE)

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The Trump-Russia Link: Notable. The Hillary-Russia Web: Huge.

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Obama’s Justice Department is investigating both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Donald Trump campaign for possible ties to corrupt funding traceable back to Russian Vladimir Putin’s regime. While Trump’s alleged involvement through his campaign manager has been extensively covered by the media, forcing that campaign manager to resign, far less ink has been spilled over Clinton’s extensive connections.

Skolkovo, a research facility known as Russia’s version of Silicon Valley and partially funded by the Russian government, contributed tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. The Obama administration’s plan was to help Russia create its own version of Silicon Valley. Obama claimed he wanted to “reset” U.S. relations with Russia. Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer revealed that Clinton was behind it, asserting that “no cabinet official in the Obama Administration was more intimately and directly involved in the Russian reset than Hillary Clinton.”

Schweizer published a report in June with the details, entitled From Russia With Money. He found that 17 of the 28 American, European and Russian companies that participated in the Skolkovo initiative were Clinton Foundation donors such as Google and Intel, or sponsored speeches for former President Bill Clinton. Some on the Russian side of the Skolkovo initiative also contributed to the Clinton Foundation.

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Clinton’s Campaign Manager, John Podesta, Also Did Quite Well With Russian Money

The FBI warned technology companies to avoid the Skolkovo initiative due to concerns that Russian companies backed by Putin’s government wanted to gain access to “classified, sensitive, and emerging technology” from U.S. tech companies. But undeterred by the warning, Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, went ahead and served on the Skolkovo board representing Joule Energy, a solar company based in the Netherlands.

Two months after Podesta joined the foreign firm (which included senior Russian officials), a $35 million transfer came in from Rusnano, an investment firm founded by Putin. One of the investors in Joule was Hans-Jorg Wyss, a major Clinton Foundation donor. Podesta consulted for a foundation run by him.

Podesta, who formerly served as chief of staff to Bill Clinton, failed to disclose his position on the board of this offshore company in federal financial reports, as appears to be clearly required by law, prompting the FBI investigation. Additionally, while serving in that position he headed the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress, which wrote favorably about the Russian government, apparently in exchange for money secretly funneled to the organization by Russians, according to Schweizer. The organizations in the trail of money have ties to Russian oil and gas companies, which opposed U.S. efforts to explore fracking and natural gas.

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How Many Pay-to-Play Schemes are Connected to the Clinton Foundation and the Putin Government?

Schweizer’s report alludes to numerous apparent quid pro quos like this one. “The other senior State Department official involved in the Skolkovo process was Lorraine Hariton,” he writes, “the State Department’s Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs. (Hariton served on Hillary Clinton’s National Finance Committee during the 2008 campaign.)”

I have previously covered other similar pay-to-play operations involving Clinton’s revolving door between the state department and the Clinton Foundation. Congressional members are now demanding an investigation into a large transfer of money to the Clinton Foundation made by the Russian owner of Uranium One, which was timed when Clinton gave authorization as secretary of state for him to buy the company.

Trump’s Campaign Manager was Demoted and Resigned After His Russian Ties Were Exposed

Trump has also been criticized for hiring a presidential campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who has ties to funding from the Russian government, specifically, by way of his connection to a former pro-Russian Ukrainian regime. However, Manafort was only in that position for four months, and resigned Friday from the campaign due to the controversy.

In 2012, Manafort and one of his associates helped the Ukrainian organization European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, which included members of then-president Viktor Yanukovych’s ruling party, direct money to Washington firms to lobby Congress for the benefit of Yanukovych. (Yanukovych was eventually forced out due to corruption and fled to Russia.) Like Podesta, Manafort was criticized for failing to notify the Department of Justice as a lobbyist about ties to foreign parties and leaders. Regardless, the FBI has said Manafort is not the target of their investigation.

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Podesta Blames the Client

The Podesta Group also represented Centre for a Modern Ukraine. The lobbying firm is now threatening to turn on its own client, issuing this statement,

The firm has retained Caplin & Drysdale as independent, outside legal counsel to determine if we were misled by the Centre for a Modern Ukraine or any other individuals with regard to the Centre’s potential ties to foreign governments or political parties. When the Centre became a client, it certified in writing that “none of the activities of the Centre are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party.” We relied on that certification and advice from counsel in registering and reporting under the Lobbying Disclosure Act rather than the Foreign Agents Registration Act. We will take whatever measures are necessary to address this situation based on Caplin & Drysdale’s review, including possible legal action against the Centre.

It remains to be seen whether Podesta will resign as Clinton’s campaign chair. Unlike Trump, Clinton doesn’t seem to have a problem with her campaign manager’s deals, perhaps because she was heavily involved with the same type of activity herself. Tellingly, Trump replaced Manafort with Breitbart News chief Steve Bannon, who made Schweizer’s Clinton Cash into a documentary. It sends a strong message as to how Trump will treat covert funding from Putin’s government. (For more from the author of “The Trump-Russia Link: Notable. The Hillary-Russia Web: Huge.” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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