https://www.humantruth.info/eu_russia.html
By Vexen Crabtree 2018
#estonia #EU #europe #france #georgia #germany #politics #russia #UK #ukraine
NATO has been warning for some time that Russia has been conducting long-term information warfare operations in Europe1,2, on a scale and sophistication that dwarves anything that NATO or Europe is doing in response3. "Senior Russian political figures have long cultivated relationships with nationalist and often anti-EU parties in Europe"4 (e.g. in the UK, France, Germany)2. They also fund and encourage mainstream parties (such as the UK's Conservatives5), if they are doing enough damage to the EU.6. On top of this, cyber-attacks and military operations have been used to subdue and intimidate several Baltic and Eastern-European countries (Estonia, Ukraine, Georgia)6,7,8.
In a time when the EU needs to adopt a co-ordinated economic and political response9, the western world's reactions have instead 'been nervy and sporadic'6, giving further advantage to Russia6,10. The UK's decision to leave the EU has made this worse11.
The most effective long-term political strategy to cool Russian fire is to encourage solidified EU foreign policy. Economically, to stop industrial dependence on Russian pipelines we need to (continue) to deploy distributed renewable energy sources, reduce car and travel use by funding wider and cheaper public transport and encourage electric vehicles. Individually, we need to reject hyper-nationalist political parties and those who are attempting to weaken European togetherness, and, check news sources before sharing divisive material on social media. In this war, information-hygiene, influence and economics is more important than military strength.
#democracy_challenges #disinformation #Elon_Musk #EU #Europe #facebook #information_warfare #informnation_warfare #NATO #russia #tiktok #twitter #ukraine
Information warfare is an explicit part of Russian doctrine, deemed suitable for peace-time12,2. Aside from direct and easily recognizable propaganda found in Russia Today and Sputnik2, the internet has seen 'web brigades' of Russian-paid actors trawling for content on selected topics, who then make destructive, abusive, aggressive, untrue and confusing comments, for the purpose of spreading doubt and disrupting conversations. This occurs on news sites' comments sections and on social media, in particular, on poorly-moderated platforms such as TikTok, Twitter and Facebook. Twitter in particular has become a swamp of such lies and misinformation since Elon Musk dismissed its content moderation teams. They often spread popularist and divisive content and as such, tend to be reposted by far-right activists; Donald Trump himself sometimes shares misinformation invented by Russian troll accounts.
The actors are often paid per comment, and specifically, for the amount of replies they generate, which means they often say things that are untrue and contentious; the quantity of replies boost the trolls' comments to the top of the list below the article. Because it is paid, those who participate are from around the world, not just from inside Russia. One of the first well-known troll farms was the "Internet Research Agency" owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who also ran the mercenary Wagner Group for Russia. Another is Operation Doppleganger which saw two companies, Structura National Technology and Social Design Agency, produce a range of slick websites that mimicked other news sites, but with fake news13. Operation Overload seeks to overwhelm news and fact-checkers with false material14,15. There is almost no counter to these trolls; they successfully disrupt conversations especially when several of them act together against a particular outlet, and, concerted campaigns can, and have, increase instability in Western countries6 and influenced elections2,16.
NATO has been warning for some time that Russia has been conducting long-term information warfare operations, on a scale and sophistication that dwarves anything that NATO or Europe is doing in response3. Russia has pumped funding into political parties within western countries that are divisive, that oppose the EU and western alliances, and that would destabilize their countries6,1. The build-up to the 2014 Russia's invasion of Crimea, the southern peninsula of Ukraine, saw the beginning of the current surge in Russian disinformation targeting Europe and the Americas since 20132.
For more, see:
#austria #france #germany #hungary #NATO #russia #slovakia #spain #UK #UKIP
Russian intelligence since the 2010s has put renewed efforts into identifying western political parties, politicians or extremist movements that would disrupt, divide and destabilize their countries and "using social media, disseminating propaganda, and sponsoring corrupt leaders and organisations"1. It funds them directly, or, indirectly if there are legal constraints. They also use large quantities of fake and bot social media accounts to boost the narratives of divisive movements, creating a fake sense of solidarity or popularity, and. boosts feelings of injustice, anger or distrust that those groups need in order to grow. Russian disinformation campaigns push fake news stories and fake outrage at immigration and other hot-topics, to the extent that general populations perceive much greater problems in their countries than there really are. Mostly, this means supporting right-wing, anti-EU and extremist politicians such as in the UK, France, Germany, but, in the occasional country such as Spain, it supports some far-left parties. The effect is to make governments inwards-looking and retract from the world, having to concentrate on domestic issues and damaging alliances and interest in the world.2,6,1,4,17,18
For more, see:
“[Russia] has also been trying to undermine ... Western solidarity and alliances. [... with] classic cold-war means: financing political parties that oppose their country's membership of the EU; pushing propaganda through its overseas broadcaster, Russia Today (now renamed RT), to sow doubt in the West about the versions of events conveyed by Western governments and media; and using cyber-attacks to intimidate vulnerable countries.”
"The Fate of the West" by Bill Emmott (2017)6
"Senior Russian political figures have long cultivated relationships with nationalist and often anti-EU parties in Europe", including France's Front National, Germany's Alternative for Germany, Austria's Freedom Party (which signed a 'co-operation agreement with Mr Putin's United Russia party'4), Hungary's Jobbik and Slovakia's LSNS.2,4:
“At the EU and NATO level, it tries to use pro-Kremlin attitudes of selected politicians to undermine collective efforts. Within the EU, it aims to widen the already existing gaps between the South and the East, or new and old member states on the West versus the East. [It supports] pro-Kremlin politicians and parties in the likes of Alternative For Germany, the Front National in France, Jobbik in Hungary, Marian Kotleba´s LSNS in Slovakia, or UKIP in the UK [with] aims at a policy change in the case of sanctions, the Dutch referendum on EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, or the Brexit debate.”
"Full-Scale Democratic Response to Hostile Disinformation Operations"
European Values (2016)2
“... the Tories [UK Conservative Party] have received more than £820,000 from Russia-linked donors since Mrs May became prime minister in July 2016. Mrs Litvinenko, whose husband was murdered in London with polonium in 2006 [said] 'These donations are not just from the heart and for charitable reasons. They are all calculated.' More than £3million has reportedly been donated to the Tory party by Russian billionaires and lobbyists since 2010.”
"Litvinenko's widow: Stop taking cash from Russia"
Metro Newspaper (2018)5
The scale of Russia's programmes in Europe can only be met at an organized EU level. But, the EU does not have a proper, stable, joined-up approach on such topics - in fact, Foreign Affairs analysis in 2016 found that Europe's internal politics is moving further away from coherence, which works in Russia's favour10. The EU has stood up a 14-person External Action Task Force focused on battling misinformation campaigns in Eastern Europe19, but, such schemes are tiny compared to Russia's effort, and need to be expanded and duplicated.
#estonia #georgia #politics #russia #syria #UK #ukraine
Revanchism is the desire to retake land. Under Putin, this (alongside political assassinations) has come to define the current era of Russian politics.
“High oil prices not only repaired Russia's finances but gave it the wherewithal and the confidence to ramp up its military spending and improve the training and morale of its forces, which it deployed in Georgia in 2008, then Ukraine in 2014 in support of pro-Russian rebels there and subsequently in Syria. [...] Russia's military bullying of Georgia and then Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea as a fait accompli, its cyber-attacks on the Baltic states, its cyber-based efforts to interfere in the US presidential election to weaken Hillary Clinton and boost Donald Trump, have all focused attention on the country and made President Putin look strong and aggressive.”
"The Fate of the West" by Bill Emmott (2017)8
“Russian assertiveness is a direct threat to the security of Europe. Russian action in Georgia, the takeover of Crimea and the threat it poses to Ukraine has led the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, to pronounce that, `what Russia has done in Ukraine is not defensive; to annex [Crimea] ... that is an act of aggression´.”
"Britain: Leading, Not Leaving: The Patriotic Case for Remaining in Europe" by Gordon Brown (2016)7
“Russia's military intervention in Syria, in support of President Bashar al-Assad, has sought thereby to preserve the country's military bases on the Mediterranean, to turn Assad into (or keep him) a Russian client more than an Iranian one. [...] The fact that Syria's civil war has sent millions of refugees heading across and around the Mediterranean to the EU, causing division within it, has no doubt counted for Russia as a bonus. It confirms how much Russia stands to gain from Western disunity.”
"The Fate of the West" by Bill Emmott (2017)6
Sergei Skripal, now lays in hospital in the UK after being poisoned by a tightly-controlled Russian nerve agent. He is but one of a long-stream of victims, and the renewed interested has prompted some journalists to list some previous Russian political assassinations on UK soil. The list can only ever include those cases where the link was apparent (or implied), and if they are to be believed, it shows one successful assassination every year since 200320,21. However there are some cases listed that it is difficult to accept without clearer evidence. But if you were feeling skeptical and discounted half of the cases listed, that would still leave one assassination every two years. And this is just in the UK, not even an Eastern-European country where political conflict with Russia is hottest. At the time of writing, the UK's Prime Minister Theresa May is requesting a United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss the latest event, but, with Russia as a veto-empowered member, it is hard to imagine that anything substantial can be done other than raising awareness. It seems that as politics continues to fail, it is up to citizens themselves to speak out.