Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Come on, man.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

When we show up, we win.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

The words do not have to be perfect.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Peak wingnut was a lie.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

T R E 4 5 O N

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 727: It’s Called Subversion

War for Ukraine Day 727: It’s Called Subversion

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With the news that broke today with the release of the detention memo for Alexander Smirnov, I’m going to do something a bit different. Once we get past the jump I’m going to walk you through the heart of Russia’s political warfare campaign against the US, the EU, NATO, and other of their allies and partners.

First, however, today is Heavenly Hundred Heroes Day in Ukraine:

Today, Ukraine marks the Day of Remembrance of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred.

10 years since we learnt that freedom is not free.
10 years of our struggle for freedom and the right to self-determination.
But we stood firm 10 years ago and continue to do so today.

We will never forget the feat of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred.
We will win in this war for our independence.

It is also the anniversary of Russia’s infiltration of its Little Green Men into Crimea to subvert Ukrainian sovereignty and control over Crimea.

10 years ago, russia’s aggression against Ukraine began.
On February 20, 2014, russian troops started an operation to seize Crimea. “Little green men” appeared on our land.

Our struggle has been going on for 10 years.
We know that Ukraine will win and aggressor will pay for their crimes.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

Address by the President of Ukraine on the Heavenly Hundred Heroes Day

20 February 2024 – 10:44

The youngest of them, Nazariy Voitovych, was 17. The oldest, Ivan Nakonechnyi, was 82. All of them together are a symbol of how different people from different regions of Ukraine selflessly and courageously defend common values. They all gave their lives for independence. All of them together are the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred.

Today, Ukraine honors the memory of their feat. The memory of how Ukrainians can fight for their freedom. In the squares, on the barricades, and today – at the front. The memory that in the most difficult moments of history we never give up. We stand for each other, for the sake of each other. The memory that the unity of Ukrainians has no enemy capable of defeating it. That the selflessness of Ukrainians knows no bounds and makes history. The memory that ten years ago Ukrainians decided once and for all that we want and will live only in a European state. The memory we cherish and will preserve. The memory we honor today not just in words, the courage we multiply today on the battlefield, in the ongoing struggle, in the war that continues today, in the unity we have not lost and which shows us the way now. The path of common values. Equality. Dignity. Respect. The path of our country to the European family. And, of course, the most important value – Ukraine’s independence. All this was an incentive for the people to fight ten years ago.

All this is an incentive for us today. To defend our land. To defend our freedom. To defend our tomorrow. To defend our Ukraine.

Glory to all those who are now fighting for it!

May the memory of all those who gave their lives for it be blessed!

Eternal honor to the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred!

Glory to Ukraine!

Sweden:

Sweden announced the largest military aid package for Ukraine, worth 7,1 billion SEK (~$683 mln).
The 15th package includes:
◾️Artillery ammunition
◾️10 CB 90 combat boats
◾️RBS70 air defense systems
◾️Anti-tank missiles (TOW)
◾️20 group boats
◾️Underwater weapons
◾️Hand grenades
◾️Carl Gustaf grenade launchers

This aid package will add ~1 billion SEK to the Swedish-Danish joint procurement of CV 90s to Ukraine, as well as medical supplies and economic aid to funds for the procurement of more weapons to Ukraine.

Sweden also joined the maritime coalition within the #UDCG.

We are grateful to our Swedish partners for their unwavering support. We appreciate your vital contribution to the security of the free world.

War is “the continuation of policy with other means” (mit anderen Mitteln).

— James R. Holmes, “Everything You Know About Clausewitz Is Wrong,” The Diplomat, 12 NOV 2014

Earlier today the detention memo for Alexander Smirnov was released and it contained some very important details.

First tweet from the thread, the rest from the Thread Reader App:

Smirnov also reported to the feds having contacts w/some pretty shady Russians including one connected to what seems like an assassination crew and an intel guy.Image
This detention memo for Alexander Smirnov is pretty wild
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Prosecutors seek to detain Smirnov saying:

The “misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”Image

Smirnov told his FBI handler that the Russians had intercepted several phone calls from “prominent US persons” that could be used as “kompromat” in the 2024 election.Image
It’s remarkable that prosecutors quote what appear to be FD-1023s in their detention memo. Those docs, detailing interviews w/informants, are highly sensitive govt investigative records.
The fact that they’re in this public filing means that USG is burning Smirnov to the ground. 
As @emptywheel notes here, this Smirnov detention memo reveals investigative details WAAAAY beyond what is necessary to keep him in custody.
It has the feeling of a scorched earth incineration of this guy and his contacts.

Here’s the missing bits of Marcy Wheeler’s tweet that got eaten by the Thread Reader App:

You’ll recall that I extensively covered the attempt of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s impeachment defense counsel, Senator Johnson (R-WI), and Senator Grassley (R-IA) to use Trump’s first impeachment defense in the US Senate to launder Russian disinfo, misinfo, and agitprop into the Senate record and thereby wash it, making it clean to use by conservative media and pundits. Because it couldn’t be fake or made up or altered if it was in the Senate record, right? This is also why Giuliani tried to give the FBI agents that seized his electronic devices pursuant to a warrant the alleged Hunter Biden hard drives. This was Giuliani’s attempt to further launder these into evidence and to provide a reason to challenge the warrant, which didn’t cover these two hard drives. I also covered how I think the entire Hunter Biden laptop scheme and scam went down. From how they got access to emails they could doctor and mingle with completely false information and just how amateurishly bad all of the material that Eugene Mile Guo posted on his “news” site. In last Sunday night’s update I also covered the extent of Russia’s political and information warfare against the US, EU member states, and NATO members. From The Washington Post:

When news first emerged last month that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was preparing to fire his top military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, officials in Moscow seemed jubilant. They had been trying to orchestrate just such a split for many months, documents show.

“We need to strengthen the conflict between Zaluzhny and Zelensky, along the lines of ‘he intends to fire him,’” one Kremlin political strategist wrote a year ago, after a meeting of senior Russian officials and Moscow spin doctors, according to internal Kremlin documents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration ordered a group of Russian political strategists to use social media and fake news articles to push the theme that Zelensky “is hysterical and weak. … He fears that he will be pushed aside, therefore he is getting rid of the dangerous ones.”

The Kremlin instruction resulted in thousands of social media posts and hundreds of fabricated articles, created by troll farms and circulated in Ukraine and across Europe, that tried to exploit what were then rumored tensions between the two Ukrainian leaders, according to a trove of Kremlin documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post. The files, numbering more than 100 documents, were shared with The Post to expose for the first time the scale of Kremlin propaganda targeting Zelensky with the aim of dividing and destabilizing Ukrainian society — efforts that Moscow dubbed “information psychological operations.”

At a Jan. 16, 2023, meeting, Kiriyenko laid out four key objectives for the Ukraine propaganda team: discrediting Kyiv’s military and political leadership, splitting the Ukrainian elite, demoralizing Ukrainian troops and disorienting the Ukrainian population, the documents show.

The team’s success was to be measured according to key indicators: They were to “lower the ratings of key personnel in Zelensky’s office, the Ukrainian government, and the command of Ukraine’s armed forces,” and increase the belief among the Ukrainian population that the country’s elite was working only for itself. “A growth in the number of government dismissals and public conflicts” would also be a sign of achievement. To increase fear and anxiety, Ukrainian war losses were to be exaggerated, the documents state.

The strategists advised developing “a network of Telegram channels in combination with Twitter and Facebook/Instagram” as the most effective way of penetrating Ukraine’s media space, noting that the Telegram audience in Ukraine had grown 600 percent over the previous year. After the invasion, Zelensky’s government had created a single source of television news, but Ukrainians had drifted away from the programming, saying Ukraine’s military struggles were not sufficiently reported or discussed.

“Telegram became the most important source of news, even more important than mainstream media,” the senior European security official said. “It’s impossible to block it.”

The Moscow strategists emphasized the need to avoid blatant pro-Russian propaganda to build trust with the audience. “It’s clear that we can’t fly with our old resources,” one of the strategists wrote on April 5 after a Kremlin meeting.

One of the strategists’ aims, European security officials said, was to ensure that the themes placed in European social media filtered back into Ukraine, through reposts and amplification,or by being picked up by Ukrainian politicians keen to boost their profiles with provocative posts.

“They look for weak spots. … They use what they create themselves and whatever is lying under their feet,” a secondEuropean security officials said. “Everything is aimed at demoralizing people.”

You all have seen me refer to my professional forebear, Bernard Fall, before. Specifically his The Theory and Practice of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency. This 1965 essay started as a keynote address at the Naval War College (NWC) in 1964. In it Fall explains what subversion is and how it is undertaken: (emphasis mine)

Let me state this definition: RW = G + P, or, “revolutionary warfare equals guerrilla warfare plus political action.” This formula for revolutionary warfare is the result of the application of guerrilla methods to the furtherance of an ideology or a political system. This is the real difference between partisan warfare, guerrilla warfare, and everything else. “Guerrilla” simply means “small war,” to which the correct Army answer is (and that applies to all Western armies) that everybody knows how to fight small wars; no second lieutenant of the infantry ever learns anything else but how to fight small wars. Political action, however, is the difference. The communists, or shall we say, any sound revolutionary warfare operator (the French underground, the Norwegian underground, or any other European anti-Nazi underground) most of the time used smallwar tactics—not to destroy the German army, of which they were thoroughly incapable, but to establish a competitive system of control over the population. Of course, in order to do this, here and there they had to kill some of the occupying forces and attack some of the military targets. But above all they had to kill their own people who collaborated with the enemy.

But the “kill” aspect, the military aspect, definitely always remained the minor aspect. The political, administrative, ideological aspect is the primary aspect.Everybody, of course, by definition, will seek a military solution to the insurgency problem, whereas by its very nature, the insurgency problem is military only in a secondary sense, and political, ideological, and administrative in a primary sense. Once we understand this, we will understand more of what is actually going on in Vietnam or in some of the other places affected by RW.

I have emphasized that the straight military aspects, or the conventional military aspects of insurgency, are not the most important. Tax collections have nothing to do with helicopters. Village chiefs have nothing to do with M-113s [armored personnel carriers] except in the most remote sense, nor with the aerial bombardment of North Vietnam. What we are faced with precisely is a communist, military-backed operation to take over a country under our feet. I would like to put it in even a simpler way: When a country is being subverted it is not beingoutfought; it is being out-administered. Subversion is literally administration with a minus sign in front. This is what I feel has to be clearly understood. Whether it is the Congo, Vietnam, or Venezuela is totally irrelevant. Whether we have the “body count,” the “kill count,” the “structure count,” or the “weapons count”— these are almost meaningless considerations in an insurgency situation. We can lose weapons and still win the insurgency. On the other hand, we can win the war and lose the country.

Putin and Russia’s major lines of effort against Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, the EU member states, Britain with Brexit, the US, other NATO members like Canada has primarily the non-lethal political warfare intended to subvert state, society, economy, and religion. It is only when the political warfare has failed that Putin has gone kinetic: Georgia in 2008, Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk, Ukraine in 2014 through 2022 and then all of Ukraine beginning in FEB 2022. The infiltration of Little Green Men is just one of those lines of effort. The others were supporting Yanukovych, leveraging Ukrainian military and security leaders who’d come up through the Soviet and Russian professional military education system, and leveraging the oligarchs to control the economy.

Subversion or out administering with the targeted state means to identify the elites, notables, and key governmental, security, military, economic, and cultural institutions to target in or to identify potential allies that can provide access. Once that is done their is a four part process, which each portion reinforcing the others. First, target within the information domain to positively affect attitudes towards the allies/client while driving down the attitudes towards enemies and opponents. Second, secure access to High Value Individuals, and different key sectors of the economy. Third, gain control of the military and security services, usually through train, advise, and assist agreements. Fourth, promote cultural initiatives. This is actually what Prigozhin was doing for Putin via GRU contracts in Syria, Libya, and other parts of Africa. 

What we see in the Smirnov detention memo are pieces of the Russian subversion process. The receipt of the misinformation and agitprop about Hunter Biden, which is intended to negatively affect attitudes towards President Biden. The attempt to launder it through elites and notables, specifically US Senators and more recently Congressmen Comer and Jordan to wash it clean and make it legit and usable by the news media to further drive down attitudes towards President Biden. You’ve also got the collection of compromising material – kompromat – on key political actors in order to use it as necessary in the 2024 campaign.

But what, you ask, about gaining control of the military and security services? That was where Mike Flynn and his paid trip to the RT anniversary, as well as his being the first Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency to visit the GRU comes in. It obviously failed, but he was all gung ho for setting up more engagements and exchanges between US intelligence and Russian intelligence. It is also the idea Putin pitched to Trump at their bilateral summit about setting up a joint US-Russia cyber command. Fortunately none of this happened, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

All the Russian disinfo, misinfo, and agitprop, both overt and covert, on social media is an attempt to establish the conditions to subvert the US. The courting of Musk, who is already in a semi-controlled relationship in regard to Putin given his Tesla business interests in Russia, are also part of the subversion campaign. It is exceedingly coincidental that Musk once again went on a freak out about the need for Ukraine to capitulate to Russia at the same time that Congressman Turner, the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee leaked that we had information collected via section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Russia was going to do something that threatened the US. And that something turns out to be fielding a space based anti-satellite weapons platform, which could be used to bring down Musk’s Starlink satellites. This amount of coincidence takes a lot of planning.

I think that’s enough deep thoughts for tonight.

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Open thread!

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  3. 3.

    hrprogressive

    I like to think that a lot of these actors are ripe for “subversion” because, again, I think pretty clearly this is what they (US Republican Politicians, for example) want. This isn’t a case of some shady and/or stupid people getting caught up in a proverbial spy thriller or whatever.

    People like Ron Johnson and Mike Johnson, et. al, are essentially aligned with Putin, all that’s missing is a hammer and sickle on their lapel.

    It’s one thing to build “troll farms” but it’s quite another to have what I believe to be willing participants in the undermining of the very nation you’re trying to bring down.

  4. 4.

    Gin & Tonic

    Thanks for highlighting the 10-year “anniversary” (I lack a better word in English) of russia’s war on Ukraine.

    Thanks also for spelling out in detail how this info op stuff goes down. I know you’ve done it before, and I know you know I know how it works, but it’s useful to remind the more casual observers.

  5. 5.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Thank you Adam for the thorough post!

    As w/ every government that end up losing to the revolutionaries, they have to muck up the governance part 1st (& continue to muck up the governance part) for the insurgent to take advantage, who then make it all the more challenging for the governing establishment to restore/improve its governance. All too often, the governing establish make the mistake of overreact to provocations by the revolutionary insurgents that end up bolstering the latter’s support & lending it legitimacy. The last point does not currently apply to Russia or the reactionary right wing in the US, as they represent clear & present dangers that have already caused enormous damage, but something to keep in mind in other circumstances.

  7. 7.

    rekoob

    The subversion is worrying. Thank you for the reminder and excerpt from Bernard Fall.

    At the same time, Patron scurrying to “Take Five”! Dave Brubeck like to talk about his unusual time signatures: 5/4, 11/4, to which Paul Desmond asked, “What for?”.

  12. 12.

    Adam L Silverman

    @YY_Sima Qian: Yep. And while it was outside the scope of this post, the PRC has their own version of doing this. It tends to be more subtle than what Russia does.

  14. 14.

    Torrey

    For those in the Washington D.C. area, there’s a Rally for Ukraine this Saturday (2/24) at the Lincoln Memorial at 2:00 p.m.; at 3:30 the participants will march from the Lincoln Memorial to the russian ambassador’s residence.

  15. 15.

    Tony G

    Now I wonder whether there are any national figures of the Republican Party that are NOT working for Putin.

  16. 16.

    Urza

    Obviously these disinfo campaigns are known about somewhere.  Why do the nations never announce directly that some line of thinking is coming straight from or being amplified by the Kremlin as a way to reduce its influence?

  17. 17.

    japa21

    WG’s post earlier today pointed out something that, IMHO, is very important. Biden’s messaging about the importance of Ukraine to our national security appears to be taking hold. And the more the GOP tries to hold up aid, the more people appear to want to see that aid provided. Hope is not a strategy, but hope is important. My hope is that more Republicans in Congress realize putting up roadblocks actually hurts them more than helps. If that happens, and that is a big IF, we may see some action soon.

    And hanks, Adam.

  18. 18.

    Urza

    Also why is it we’ve been in a world war for years now using social media and hackers and there doesn’t seem to be any response whatsoever from the nations affected?

  20. 20.

    japa21

    @Urza: Because people wouldn’t believe them.  War means shooting and KIA and MIA and people coming home in body bags.

    There are none so blind as those who do not see, even with good eyes.  This country is full of those people.

  23. 23.

    AlaskaReader

    @Urza: It was attempted to expose the specific Russian influence in the 2016 election but the Republicans, along with the press, saw to it that the attempt to expose it was was countered and deemed to be ‘fake news’.

    It was pretty much effectively stymied by the benefactors of that Russian influence, Trump and the Republicans.

    The evidence is all around us, but those who see that traitorous influence as a positive, Republicans all, do their best to deny and quash the evidence as it is revealed.

    There have been many people calling attention to the evidence for some quite some time, Adam is one example, there are many more.

  24. 24.

    Urza

    @Spanky: Its obvious many of these are coming out of the troll farms.  That’s not really burning an asset.  And letting people know they’re being manipulated could have some inoculating effect.

  26. 26.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Adam L Silverman: & I think the US’ response to the PRC’s attempt to modify the international order toward one that is more amenable to its interests has been confused, prone to overreaction, & failing to address the dissatisfaction of the non-Western parts of the world w/ the existing order or why they might find the PRC’s (or Russia’s, Brazil’s, India’s) message more appealing, all the while damaging the global cooperation needed to address global challenges.

    There are a lot of cynical, damaging, aggressive & hypocritical actions that the PRC has taken around the world, that would serve as fodder for the US & the West to challenge the PRC’s position in the the Global South (bullying the Philippines in the South China Sea, aggressive overfishing all across the world, aggressive hacking of IT networks, lack of transparency of BRI loan negotiations/terms that disadvantage the PRC’s counterparties, sometimes unwilling to offer relief to debt distressed countries, i.e. Kenya). Instead, the DC “Blob” wants to chase shadows to slay dragons.

    I don’t want to derail the discussion, but I know you have raised the topic PRC’s “debt trap diplomacy” as part of its effort to modify the current international order (such as it is). This narrative has been debunked by a wealth of Western scholarship ever since it was first raised by Brahma Chellaney nearly 15 years ago, & US talking points on this through 4 administrations have not had any purchase in the Global South. For the Biden Administration & Congress to continue to harp on this is one example of misunderstanding the PRC challenge, “chasing shadows & slaying dragons”.

  28. 28.

    Jay

    @Urza:

    NAFO does this, Governments, no.

    Did you know that you can on Shitter and Telegram buy bots for as little as $0.79.

    NAFO found a poll a couple of days ago, where the poll poster spent $1k to rent bots to pump up support for the idea that “most people don’t support Ukraine”.

    NAFO first flooded the poll, then their Infellahgence Agency exposed the bought Bots and the poster as IRA.

    It’s a “whack a mole” game. NAFO is over 60,000 strong, all volenteers.

    If a Western Agency were to try to do the same thing, they would need 120,000+ paid people at the least, to do the same thing, just in their country.

  29. 29.

    wjca

    @japa21: Because people wouldn’t believe them.  War means shooting and KIA and MIA and people coming home in body bags.

    Just as, once, war meant set piece battles between formations of army units.  Occasional run-ins with guerrillas weren’t counted was wars, not least because they didn’t “follow the rules.”  Eventually, people, in particular military people, learned better. But it took quite a while.

    And there are still some who haven’t gotten the word.  See the initial Russian invasion plan.  If the Ukrainians had depended on the kind of battle the Russians were expecting, the invasion might have succeeded.  But there was no provision in the Russian battle plan for a couple of guys in the woods, beside the road which the tanks couldn’t leave (muddy fields on either side), with shoulder fired missiles taking out the occasional lead tank.

    We are in similar case with Russian cyber warfare and political subversion.  Not that subversion behind the lines is novel.  It’s subversion without visible lines that’s confused the expectations.

  30. 30.

    Yutsano

    @wjca: ​

    But there was no provision in the Russian battle plan for a couple of guys in the woods, beside the road which the tanks couldn’t leave (muddy fields on either side), with shoulder fired missiles taking out the occasional lead tank.

    They basically forgot the painful lessons from the Winter War I see.​
    EDIT: Then again, who knows what if anything Soviet and later Russian students even learned about how tiny Finland held the mighty Soviet Army to a standstill for over a year. Then generals were replaced with competent officers and the Soviet Navy took a shellacking to Helsinki and the Finns surrendered*.

    *I am way oversimplifiling for brevity.

  31. 31.

    Gvg

    @Urza: maybe it is too easy to say that when things are going wrong and some government figures are actually incompetently to blame. The population grows cynical.

    We have a lot of cynical red scares in our past and drug freak outs by authorities for example. People are not automatically going to believe their government. Putin has also encouraged conspiracy thinking against our government before so now, a certain segment of our population is not able to believe us. Demonizing liberals and democrats for decades didn’t help either. I think it’s the same in other countries with slightly different details. I do recall France and others have warned of this. So have we. It hasn’t taken for some of our population.

  32. 32.

    Jay

    @wjca:

    But there was no provision in the Russian battle plan for a couple of guys in the woods, beside the road which the tanks couldn’t leave (muddy fields on either side), with shoulder fired missiles taking out the occasional lead tank.

    It wasn’t just that. It was Farmers stealing truck loads of ammo and weapons from the Orc’s and distributing them to volenteers that showed up from all around, willing to fight. Farmers and heavy equiptment operator stealing armour that had been abandoned for lack of fuel. People taking to the streets and suburbs of Kyiv and the TDF distributing weapons and giving a few moments of training.

    Slava was on the first plane back and was within 24 hours, in the hull of a T-62 tank and in battle the same day

  33. 33.

    wjca

    @Yutsano: Then generals were replaced with competent officers and the Soviet Navy took a shellacking to Helsinki

    Judging from the Black Sea fleet’s performance, the Russian navy ain’t what it once was.  Comparative ship sinkings bear that out.  Or would if Ukraine had any navy in the first place.  Granted, it’s hard to sink ships that don’t exist.  But how embarrassing to keep having you ships sunk anyway.

  34. 34.

    wjca

    @Jay: Farmers and heavy equiptment operator stealing armour that had been abandoned for lack of fuel.

    The Russian logistics, especially with respect to fuel, would have had to improve dramatically to reach piss poor.

  35. 35.

    AlaskaReader

    @Urza: Biden has been openly calling out both the Russians and the Chinese for their subversive cyberattacks, hacking and disinformation campaigns.  As have many Democrats.

    I have little doubt that Biden will make mention during his next State of the Union speech.  And I have no doubt the Republicans will boo and hiss, thus exposing themselves as the willing collaborators they are.

  36. 36.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Terrible news about the retreat from Avdiivka:

    Hundreds of Ukrainian Troops Feared Captured or Missing in Chaotic Retreat
    The fall of Avdiivka to Russia may be more significant than it initially seemed as Ukraine struggles with morale and recruitment.
    By Julian E. Barnes, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Eric Schmitt
    Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington. Thomas Gibbons-Neff reported from Sumy, Ukraine.
    Feb. 20, 2024

    It seems like the Ukrainian Army withdrew too late, waiting until after the last remaining line of communication was under direct Russia fire. Given the manpower shortage, the Ukrainian Army cannot afford the capture of hundreds of experienced soldiers & officer, something they avoided at Bakhmut & Severodonetsk, IIRC.

    I do think it is irresponsible for the NYT to mentioned the high end estimates of the number trapped if they are from 2 “soldiers”, the average foot soldier or low echelon officers would not have the visibility to make an informed estimate. It is also irresponsible to mentioned unverified video footage in the article. They can serve as background to inform the reporting, but should not be in the article if they are unverified.

  39. 39.

    YY_Sima Qian

    From the WarZone:

    North Korean Missile Used In Ukraine Was Packed Full Of U.S. Parts
    A full 75 percent of components documented from the wreckage of a North Korean missile fired by Russia appear to have come from U.S. firms.
    BY THOMAS NEWDICK| PUBLISHED FEB 20, 2024 3:41 PM EST

    As I said before, commoditized electronic components, including chips, are probably impossible to regulate. In addition, by far the world’s largest producer & consumer of commoditized electronic components (will be soon for commodity chips, too) is right across the border in the PRC, there are mature smuggling routes across the land border & in the surrounding seas, & the PRC government is probably not all that diligent these days in enforcing UN sanctions on NK when the Great Power Competition w/ the US is the the central focus.

    South Korea has been developing modern ballistic missiles, too. Perhaps Ukraine should look to purchase some from them, or go through another middle man such as the UK.

  40. 40.

    Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    ruZZian Telegram bloggers on the ground, say that the Ukrainian’s got away, scot free for the most part. There was no way to chase the retreat or shell the retreat, as there are no roads and everything for the past month has had to be man carried.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    United States prosecutors say a Montreal woman has pleaded guilty to being part of a scheme to illegally export electronic components to Russia for military use.

    Federal prosecutors in New York City say Kristina Puzyreva pleaded guilty on Monday to money laundering conspiracy.

    Article content
    U.S. authorities say Puzyreva and two alleged co-conspirators purchased electronic components that have both civilian and military uses and cannot be legally exported to Russia.

    They say those components were routed through a series of front companies in order to get around U.S. sanctions against Russia for that country’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Court filings say some of those electronic components have been found in drones, missiles and signal intelligence equipment captured on the battlefield in Ukraine.

    https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-woman-pleads-guilty-in-u-s-to-helping-export-weapon-components-to-russia#:~:text=

  42. 42.

    Windpond

    Tristan Snell posted on Twitter what I consider to be a genius idea: Take the $388 billion of Russian money sitting in western banks. Create a fund to pay for Ukraine’s defense and reconstruction. Call it the Navalny Fund.

  43. 43.

    YY_Sima Qian

    More sad news:

    Russian Pilot Who Defected to Ukraine Is Believed Dead in Spain
    The apparent death in Spain of Maksim Kuzminov is likely to fuel speculation that it was the work of Russia’s intelligence services.
    By Michael Schwirtz and Constant Méheut
    Feb. 20, 2024

    Understandable why he did not want to stay in Ukraine after receiving the US$ 500K award, but moving to a locale w/ a lot of Russian visitors & emigrés is dangerous.

  48. 48.

    West of the Rockies

    Can Putin please develop hyper-aggressive stage IV anal cancer and be gone?  Is that too much to ass for?

  49. 49.

    Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Yeah, he could have had a wonderful life in Western Ukraine, mostly free from the war. $500k is a lot of money in Ukraine, quite a bit less in Spain. And it’s not like he should not have known that the FSB, GRU, etc wouldn’t be monitoring every ex, friend and relative he had in ruZZia, 24/7.

  51. 51.

    Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    plus, in any retreat, or withdrawl, units and soldiers get mixed up, so it takes a while to figure out who is where. That whole “fog of war” stuff.

  52. 52.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    One huge problem on the right is that nobody will be willing to admit that they were taken in. Especially if it could lead to a public that is sympathetic to the fellow Americans that they view as their real enemy. As far as they are concerned Russia hasn’t done anything to them or America, so why the hate? Democrats are the real enemy of America so who cares if some country is putting up fake information about them?

    Thanks, Adam. I really wish there was no reason for you to have to write this. The blind hatred Republicans have for Democrats have blinded them to their real enemy, Russia. That and I really do believe that Russia has the goods on some of our politicians on the right.

    Fuck the Russian-loving, Putin leg-humping Republican party, they’re traitors to our nation.

  53. 53.

    ColoradoGuy

    Fantastic posting, Adam! Great to rip off the cover and see the KGB/FSB/GRU machinery at work.

    I guess it’s not surprising the True Blue Cold Warriors turned out to be Truman Democrats. Nobody hates fascists and communists more than Social Democrats  and classical liberals, and the feeling has always been mutual.

    By contrast, the GOP turned out to be PR-driven performance artists, going back to the early days of Joe McCarthy and Nixon, and always for sale to the highest bidder. And not at all an accident that Reagan and Trump were former professional actors, in a party driven by PR and focus-group testing. All of the “issues” so beloved by their culture warriors were created in GOP focus groups. For more than a half-century, the GOP has been more of a marketing campaign than an actual political party.

  54. 54.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @ColoradoGuy: OTOH, waging the Cold War (or at least the way it was waged) was deeply damaging to the causes of liberalism, economic equality, racial justices, social justice, etc., as these causes were often accused of being “useful idiots” (& some times treated as) for the USSR.

  55. 55.

    ColoradoGuy

    The GOP got decades of PR out of “Who Lost China?” as a hammer against Democrats. I doubt there would have a Vietnam War if it hadn’t been for the steady drumbeat of Henry Luce propaganda through Time/Life and the Washington DC punditocracy.

    LBJ’s “Great Society” ran aground on the rocks of the Vietnam War. If the Great Society had continued, the USA would have been transformed into FDR’s Four Freedoms vision, a modern Social Democratic nation. My father worked for the “War on Hunger” program, and it would have transformed the nation. Instead, we got Nixon, the ultimate cynic, and all that followed.

  57. 57.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @ColoradoGuy: Demagogues are going to demagogue, but the Dems never found an effective counter, so ended up repeatedly being dragged/pulled along by the GOP.

  58. 58.

    wjca

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: One huge problem on the right is that nobody will be willing to admit that they were taken in. Especially if it could lead to a public that is sympathetic to the fellow Americans that they view as their real enemy.

    A reluctance compounded by the tendency, highly visible here, to be utterly unforgiving of anyone who was wrong in the past.  Even if they are willing to admit they were conned, they will be looking at “How could you be so stupid?  Or maybe you knew, but went along for your own benefit…?”   The con is so obvious to us that it can be hard to accept a convert was sincere and is real.

  60. 60.

    Chris

    @ColoradoGuy:

    You would never know this from the way it’s been propagandized all the way to hell and back, but the entire Cold War (or at least the U.S. stance that would define it for as long as it ran) was set up in the late 1940s by liberal Democrats, and the staunchest opposition to the whole thing came from conservative Republicans (the Taft wing).  Eisenhower literally chose to run as a Republican because he wanted to squash the isolationist wing of the party and buff up the internationalist one as much as possible, lest the Cold War be turned into a partisan football.

    Conservative Republicans only started caring about the Cold War when Joe McCarthy showed them how “anticommunism” could be such a useful proxy for attacking labor unions, civil rights movements, and general reformers and liberals at home.

  63. 63.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Chris: How George Kennan conceived of the containment strategy against the USSR was very different from how the Cold War evolved to become. However, it is also inevitable to a large degree. Make a population fearful of external enemies (especially one that can be characterized as “inscrutable aliens”), many people will fall prey paranoid warning of domestic traitors allied to the external enemies, & look to figures who promise to alleviate their fears & anxiety, & focus the anger induced by said fear & anxiety at the designated “Others”.

    That is why the US should not be looking to engage in a new Cold War. We are already seeing some of this play out again.

  64. 64.

    planetjanet

    Adam, I am so in your debt for your work here.  I had to go back this morning and reread this post to better digest it, including some of the reference links.  I had no idea of the hacked email of AG Lynch that influenced Comey.  It is just stunning.  It also feels as though threats are everywhere.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  66. 66.

    Chris

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    At a certain point, you have a conflict on your hands whether you want it or not, is the thing.  The sheer amount of effort that Russia’s put into breaking up the Western alliance system and influencing American politics makes it an immediate danger like few foreign regimes since 1945 have been.

    The paranoia and domestic fallout that comes with this, unfortunately, doesn’t lessen that.

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