Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

No one could have predicted…

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Cillizza, who will never be asked to bring the noodle salad to the mensa picnic…

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Battle won, war still ongoing.

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Militantly superior in their own minds…

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You are here: Home / Archives for Foreign Affairs / Countries / Russia

Russia

Late Night Open Thread: Dreams of A Failed Global Tyrant

by | 33 Comments

This post is in: , ,

While his American puppet rants about revolution from his Miami dacha, Vladimir Putin nurses his own dreams of vengeance…

It seems like a bad satire to my American ears, but there’s a certain logic to Lyuba as the Russian version of Toby Keith’s We’ll put a boot in yer ass, it’s the American way...

Late Night Open Thread: Dreams of A Failed Global TyrantPost + Comments (33)

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Whirled News

by | 146 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , ,

… [I]t’s possible that the US waited to arrest him until they were done with their investigation, but these past interactions with western spooks suggest something else was behind the timing of his arrest. Similarly, the explanation offered by the Swiss lawyer — that the US only learned of Klyushin’s trip to Switzerland by an auspiciously timed hack of his phone — makes no sense, given the access to travel records the US would routinely have even without having someone targeted under Section 702, as Klyushin easily could have been.

The story leaves big questions about whether Klyushin wanted to be turned over or not. In addition to the open question about whether Klyushin told Russian authorities about the recruitment attempts, Bloomberg describes that Klyushin’s Swiss lawyer mailed his appeal of the extradition to the European Court of Human Rights rather than faxing it, with the result that the appeal arrived only after he had already been transferred to US custody.

But it’s hard to believe that Klyushin wanted to be extradited when he was arrested last March. That’s because his family returned to Russia at the end of their 10-day luxury vacation, which they wouldn’t have done if Klyushin had been planning to defect to the US (if one can start using the term again). So if Klyushin came to decide he wanted to be extradited over the nine months while he was held in Switzerland, he may have only come to that conclusion upon receiving more details about the charges against him, possibly including details that might expose him to the ire of the Kremlin…

There may be a better explanation for the timing than an auspicious hack, though. As described, Klyushin’s trip to Switzerland was likely his first trip to a US extradition partner after Merrick Garland was sworn in as Attorney General on March 11, 2021, eight days before FBI obtained the arrest warrant for Klyushin.

And while the US has documentary evidence that GRU did the hack, what they hadn’t yet obtained when DOJ obtained the indictment against Yermakov and other GRU officers in 2018 was something far more important: what Russia did with two sets of data — the campaign strategy and polling information turned over from Paul Manafort and the analytics stolen from Hillary through the entire month of September. There’s certainly reason to believe DOJ knows more now than they did in 2018. Last April (so shortly after the arrest warrant for Kluyshin), Treasury stated as fact that the information Konstantin Kilimnik obtained from Manafort did get shared with Russian intelligence, even while asserting that Kilimnik was himself a spook. But how that information was shared and what happened with it has not been made public.

And those are the kinds of questions you might not raise aggressively until after Trump was gone.

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Whirled NewsPost + Comments (146)

Late Night Open Thread: The ‘Mad’ Monk Moth

by | 39 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Russian immigrant Slava Malamud:

Another Russian immigrant, journalist Julia Ioffe, at Puck, on “Putin’s Post-Trump Tantrum”:

Several readers have written in to ask, in so many words, whether Russia will invade Ukraine. The short answer is that we still don’t know. And we don’t know if Vladimir Putin knows…

… Meduza, an independent Russian publication, polled several Russian military and foreign policy experts, most of whom said that they don’t think Putin will end up invading Ukraine. Their logic is that, unlike in 2014, Russia’s troop movements are not happening in secret, which is indicative less of an imminent invasion than of Putin’s classic negotiating tactics, known in Washington as “escalate to de-escalate.” In short, the strategy is to create a crisis that the West then has to scramble to solve. This can only be done, of course, by talking to the man who created the crisis in the first place, and he always has something he wants—usually respect, but in this case, a guarantee to stop the expansion of NATO, which had stopped expanding anyway…

Or maybe not, and we’ll wake up one morning to news that Russian troops are pouring across the Ukrainian border. We just don’t know. And the fact that we don’t know is also part of Putin’s strategy, as I’ve written before. There’s a lot of power in being the unpredictable actor, in making everyone think about you and try to guess your motives and next steps. And Putin loves being the center of attention….

show full post on front page

Late Night Open Thread: The ‘Mad’ <del>Monk</del> MothPost + Comments (39)

Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Biggest Fan (& Vice Versa)

by | 33 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,


Gary Kasparov, *not* a fan:

… Even after the Trump years, when sometimes you weren’t sure if you were watching Fox News or Russia Today, it’s still a shock to hear American commentators of influence recite talking points straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook. Carlson did his best to twist them into MAGA-friendly soundbites, but it’s an impossible task. If there’s anything Putin wants for America, it’s for it never to be great again…

If the rule of international law is to matter at all, Putin’s mafia gang should be sanctioned into oblivion until every inch of Ukrainian territory is returned. Kick his oligarchs and their families out of their posh properties in the free world, where they enjoy luxuries that few Russians can dream of—like freedom of speech. Seize their looted assets, treat them like the criminals they are. All this leverage is available, but the will to use it has been absent.

This makes Carlson’s blather about being too tough on Putin even more laughable. Putin is a hostile actor, an enemy who has repeatedly attacked American interests abroad and in the homeland. Russian hackers and disinformation campaigns target everything from racial strife to vaccine effectiveness to US elections. Why would a flag-wrapped nationalist like Tucker Carlson take Putin’s side? Because Putin took Trump’s? Because he’s admiring of Putin’s authoritarian powers?

Or perhaps it’s that Trumpists, much like Putin, don’t see democracy as anything but trouble despite their claims of being freedom-loving patriots. Praising a dictator is to praise dictatorship, and what could be more un-American than that?

In Putin’s case, it really was about economic anxiety…

Speaking of Trump / Putin fanbois — remember this guy?

show full post on front page

Late Night Open Thread: Trump’s Biggest Fan (& Vice Versa)Post + Comments (33)

We Are Already Right of Boom! Russian Irredentism Towards Ukraine, the US’s & NATO’s Response, & Ukraine’s Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity

by | 55 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw. — attributed to VI Lenin

As I type this, the Russian military is continuing a mobilization, movement of forces, and military build up along its border with Ukraine. Analysts are all over the map on whether this means an invasion is imminent or whether it is all a ploy by Putin to rattle everyone. According to the reporting US intelligence seems to be convinced that Putin is planning to invade sometime in January 2022.

As tensions mount between Washington and Moscow over a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence has found the Kremlin is planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops, according to U.S. officials and an intelligence document obtained by The Washington Post.

The Kremlin has been moving troops toward the border with Ukraine while demanding Washington guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO and that the alliance will refrain from certain military activities in and around Ukrainian territory. The crisis has provoked fears of a renewed war on European soil and comes ahead of a planned virtual meeting next week between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Russian plans call for a military offensive against Ukraine as soon as early 2022 with a scale of forces twice what we saw this past spring during Russia’s snap exercise near Ukraine’s borders,” said an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. “The plans involve extensive movement of 100 battalion tactical groups with an estimated 175,000 personnel, along with armor, artillery and equipment.”

The unclassified U.S. intelligence document obtained by The Post, which includes satellite photos, shows Russian forces massing in four locations. Currently, 50 battlefield tactical groups are deployed, along with “newly arrived” tanks and artillery, according to the document.

Go back and reread the first sentence in that last paragraph again: “The unclassified U.S. intelligence document obtained by The Post, which includes satellite photos, shows Russian forces massing in four locations.”

Really, WaPo, you obtained an unclassified US intelligence document with all that and you didn’t think: “why was this unclassified?” I have questions here about what The Washington Post is basing their reporting on, however, we do know that Russia is massing forces because it is both visible and because everyone is reporting on it. Also, just as a quick aside, I have found that open source intelligence is often as good and sometimes better than the stuff that is highly compartmented and classified, so please don’t take this as me crapping on unclassified material. Rather, I just find it hard to believe that this wouldn’t be classified if it was coming from the US Intel Community.

Ukrainian officials, including President Zelensky, have insinuated that Putin is both planning military action against Ukraine and that he has also been trying to orchestrate a coup to bring down Ukraine’s government and replace it with one more to Putin’s liking. Specifically, one that Putin can control and that brings Ukraine back within Russia’s orbit.

Ukraine has uncovered a plot for an attempted coup with the involvement of Russians, due to have taken place next week, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday at a press conference.

Zelensky did not give full details of the coup plot and did not accuse the Russian state of involvement, though he also spoke at length at the press conference of a threat of Russian military escalation, and said Ukraine would be ready for it.

The Kremlin swiftly denied any role in any coup plot, saying it had no plans to take part in such acts.

Russia has been building up forces near its border with Ukraine. Kyiv, the United States and NATO have voiced concerns in recent days about a possible Russian attack — a suggestion the Kremlin has dismissed as false and alarmist.

“We have challenges not only from the Russian Federation and possible escalation – we have big internal challenges. I received information that a coup d’etat will take place in our country on Dec. 1-2,” Zelensky said.

Here’s what we know. First, the Russian military is involved in a significant mobilization of their forces and is moving them into position along their border with Ukraine. Most, but not all, analysts are interpreting this as a prelude to an invasion into eastern Ukraine. And the Ukrainians are obviously concerned about not only that possibility, but also a coup attempt similar to what Putin tried to orchestrate in Montenegro.

This Twitter thread by a Marine who is now doing a PhD in the War Studies Department at King’s College London lays out the interesting argument why this buildup is all for demonstration purposes. I highly suggest you give it a read. This analysis by a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations largely takes the other option and grapples with what happens should Russia indeed invade Ukraine and why it would do choose to do so.

However, the issue here is how Ukraine should respond. As well as how the US, its allies, and partners in NATO should respond. There have been a couple of high profile analysts arguing that Ukraine should just give Putin what he wants, which is to accede to his interpretation of the Minsk Accords. This is the argument of a senior political scientist at RAND who specializes in Russia and eastern Europe. He’s both written an op-ed for Politico and a long Twitter thread under the theory that when digging a deep hole for oneself, one should keep going rather than stop, arguing that since no one wants a war with Russia, Ukraine should just give Putin at least some of what he wants as that is the only thing that might avert a major war in Europe. A professor of international security at Northwestern has made a similar argument, also on Twitter.

The problem with these suggestions is, as John Sipher, the former CIA chief at Moscow Station, reminds us, Ukraine already made that type of deal with Russia. Specifically, Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons that the Soviet Union had placed in Ukraine and Russia would respect Ukraine’s sovereignty forever. Something that Putin has already violated, repeatedly. Believing that if you give Putin what he wants, again, that he’ll then live up to his promises and Russia’s obligations is just naive. Actually doing it would also be strategic malpractice.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us already right of boom. We simply do not have the forces, specifically the ground forces, on the continent to deter Putin from invading Ukraine again provided this is not simply a diversion of sorts. And we certainly don’t have enough to dig him out and liberate Ukraine if he chooses to actually do so. V Corps has been reestablished. It is headquartered at Ft. Knox. While the Army has recently reestablished the 56th Artillery Command – full disclosure: I’ve served with its commanding general – US Army Europe does not have the capabilities to respond even with the 56th’s reactivation. US ArmY Europe’s subordinate elements in Europe are focused on training and sustainment. This means that forces would have to be brought from the US. And in order to be in place to deter an invasion, the sea lift of troops and equipment would have needed to start about three to four weeks ago. So if we have to mount a military response, we’re way behind the curve.

And this brings us to the strategic problem of what to do and when to do it. In order to deter Putin, the time to begin doing something militarily – the movement of personnel and material – is a month behind us. So if we’re going to do something, now would be a good time to start! Like right now. Because the strategic problem is that Putin looks for weakness, he probes for mush. When he detects it he continues to advance his interests. I was at US Army Europe headquarters in January 2014 when Putin was clearly building up to do something to Ukraine. The timelines then were different because he had to wait for the winter olympics in Sochi to finish and then for everyone to stop paying attention to him and Russia as the host. And also because his plans were to take action in case the Maidan movement toppled his puppet Yanukovych. Once the Maidan movement pushed Yanukovych out, Putin executed his strategy. He scarfed up Crimea, destabilized and then effectively seized the Donbas in eastern Ukraine using his little green men –  a combination of Russian special forces and Wagner mercenaries.

In 2014 President Obama decided that it was not worth risking a war with another state with a major stockpile of nuclear weapons. Especially as Russia’s military doctrine asserts that it will use nuclear weapons tactically in a conventional war if its conventional forces are overmatched and losing to its adversaries. This Russian doctrinal assertion has long frozen American and NATO decision making about how to respond to Putin’s aggression. This is exactly what Russia, Putin, and his senior military advisors want. It leaves them free to maneuver and everyone else constrained because of a doctrinal assertion. Obama’s considered and measured decision not to engage militarily, which to mark one’s beliefs to market, I agreed with in 2014, were then followed by four years of Trump’s sucking up to and siding with Putin whenever he thought he could get away with it. Which was both the objective of Putin’s low intensity war targeting the US during and since the 2016 election – to insure that America would not have a president (Hilary Clinton) who would push back against him – and only further encouraged Putin.

It is now 2021. In the past seven years Putin has been waging a low intensity war against the US, the EU, NATO, and several other countries. He continually probes and finds mush. As a result he keeps advancing his strategy to achieve his objectives. In the case of Ukraine, as well as the Baltics, it is to bring them back within Russia’s orbit and influence, which is where he believes they belong and need to be in order for Russia to be whole. I suggest that this time, the US and NATO need to meet his probing with steel. We know what happens when we fail to do so.

I was wrong in 2014. Putin needed to be given a bloody nose and knocked on his ass to deter future aggression. Our failure to risk going to war over Crimea only emboldened him. It would be strategic malpractice to make the same mistake again. Especially as Putin isn’t the only one probing for mush!

Open thread!

We Are Already Right of Boom! Russian Irredentism Towards Ukraine, the US’s & NATO’s Response, & Ukraine’s Sovereignty and Territorial IntegrityPost + Comments (55)

The Durham Investigation, the Steele Dossier, & Misusing the Department of Justice For Partisan Political Purposes

by | 92 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , , ,

Cole asked me to do a post on the Durham investigation and how the usual suspects – Greenwald, Taibbi, the Fox News/OAN/NewsMax/Breitbart/Shapiro/other conservative news and digital news sites, and other Trump world axis of shitbirds – and now CNN with their coverage of it yesterday, are using Durham’s indictments. Specifically, that they are using it to scream and yell that 1) Putin was meddling in US politics in the 2016 election, 2) that the initial meddling eventually became focused on harming HRC and helping Trump, and 3) that Trump, his family members, his senior employees (I know family members and employees are the same category), and his campaign people – senior and junior – were all trying to figure out how to leverage Russia’s ops for Trump’s gain was all completely made up oppo. That this then demonstrates a real conspiracy between the law firm HRC’s campaign and the DNC used. And which is now being used to further try to discredit Marc Elias, the FBI, the Obama administration, especially his DCI and DNI, John McCain, and the mainstream news media to try to prevent a Trump presidency and then destroy it once Trump was elected. NONE OF THAT IS TRUE OR FACTUALLY ACCURATE!!!

The reality is really much simpler. What Durham is doing is exactly what Barr intended him to do when he appointed Durham as a special counsel in addition to his regular duties as a US Attorney. Barr intended Durham and his investigation to discredit every connection that has been made between Trump, his family, his business, his campaign, his administration, and his impeachment defenses with Putin, Russian intelligence, and the Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs working for Putin to achieve his objectives regarding the US. Barr, for all intents and purposes, established Durham as a special counsel so that Durham could run his own active measures campaign of disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop against the US from within the DOJ. Specifically:

  1. Use the investigation to continue to launder the disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop that the entire investigation into and that all the allegations of Trump’s business and financial connections to Russia, Russian oligarchs, and other post-Soviet oligarchs aligned with Russia
  2. Putin’s operation to interfere in the 2016 elections and American politics beyond 2016 first to hurt the chances of anyone who might take a hard line against him as president, then to damage Clinton’s chances, and finally to boost Trump’s
  3. Trump’s, his family member’s, his campaigns, and a number of outside supporters attempts to actually get help from Putin’s assets – both inside and outside of the Russian government
  4. To promote the idea that the real conspiracy against American in the 2016 election – to falsely allege and implicate the Trump-Putin connection – was that of the Democratic Party, the large white shoe law firms that work for them, MI6 via Steele, the Clinton campaign, the Obama administration, and senior appointed and career officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, the DOJ, the FBI, select Republican senators like John McCain, and the Ukrainian government

Again; NONE OF THIS IS TRUE OR FACTUALLY ACCURATE!!!!

To do this, Durham has produced three indictments. The first is sort of a throw away. He caught a junior attorney at the FBI who prepared one of the FISA warrants for one of the lower level Trump campaign stooges. The FBI attorney had embellished some of the information included to get the warrant. He ultimately attorney pled out. Everyone reasonably thought that this was a face saver for Durham because he didn’t have anything because there was no way to actually accomplish what he was tasked with doing because what he was tasked with doing was in direct opposition to well documented facts and events. Durham, however, has other ideas.

He has now indicted a very senior attorney – Michael Sussman – who brought the Steele dossier to the attention of senior FBI and DOJ officials. The indictment is for lying to the FBI for not explicitly telling them that the large white shoe law firm he works for was also, through other attorneys, representing the Clinton campaign with the implication that he concealed who else his firm represented – Clinton – in an attempt to induce the FBI to investigate Trump. The indictment is considered to be weak. It is clear from the interview notes that the senior FBI official, James Baker, did not ask him where he worked because he knew where he worked. Here’s Ken White’s, better known as Popehat, take:

/8 However, there are distinctly odd things about this indictment that take it outside the norm. First: it’s based on a face-to-face oral statement with one government witness, Baker. I don’t recall seeing another 1001 case like that.

/9 FBI agents travel in pairs, like Jedi or geese. Baker wasn’t an agent, but it’s super-unusual in my experience for an executive-level law enforcement like this to have a meeting like this with no witnesses for their support and protection. Weirder to hang a charge on it.

/10 On the one hand, Baker has expressed uncertainty about the details of the conversation, on the other hand, there is some corroboration about the conversation. But just the fact of a 1001 based on that scenario isn’t anything I recall seeing before.

/11 Next: the 27-page indictment is, to my reading, performative and seemingly focused on delivering a narrative of Trump-as-victim rather than a necessary exposition about Sussman’s alleged crime. It’s a one-count 1001; that usually doesn’t require so much verbiage.

/12 In evaluating whether my take is reasonable or partisan or a mixture, you could compare it to the indictment of Trump ally and indie cartoon character Roger Stone, 24 pages for obstruction and 5 1001 counts. justice.gov/file/1124706/d

/13 To my read Stone’s is more focused on providing context for his statements and Sussman’s seems more political narrative driven, but that’s why you should read primary documents — to decide for yourself.

/14 If Sussman did what he’s accused of, I think it’s a clear 1001 violation. Whether it would “normally” be charged, whether it’s charged in a way designed to promote a political narrative, and whether it’s politically motived are vastly more complicated questions.

His third indictment is of the researcher – Igor Danchenko – that Steele hired to act as his investigator with a variety of Russian, post Soviet, and Russian aligned actors to get the opposition research for him. Here, again, is Ken White’s take:

A few comments on the Danchenko indictment. /1 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco

/2 First, it’s on firmer footing than Durham’s Sussman indictment, which relies on a single person-to-person conversation. It lacks the questionable evidentiary issues of that charge.

/3 second, to an even greater extent than the Sussman indictment, it reads like a justification for Durham’s investigation. 39 pages of exposition for five simple 1001 counts is not normal. It reads like a vehicle for a narrative.

4 Third, like the Sussman indictment, this indictment is about distorting or withholding information that might have helped the FBI assess the credibility of the claims being made. But that’s enough to meet the materiality standard, which is extremely lax.

The key take aways are point 11 in the first set of tweets and point 3 in the second. Durham is using these indictments to launder the Black PSYOP that we covered from October 2019 through the spring of 2020. It is entirely possible that Durham will be able to make his cases against Sussman, Danchenko, or both. Marcy Wheeler has a full breakdown and deep textual dives of exactly what Durham is doing and how it is being laundered in both the conservative news, digital, and social media and what is called the mainstream media like CNN did yesterday.

The question is whether reality will intrude on what Durham is doing regardless of whether he can get convictions or plea agreements from Sussman and/or Danchenko. We know from both the Mueller investigative report sent to Congress, as well as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) report on the 2016 campaign, election, and allegations of Putin interfering on behalf of Trump that the reason Mueller never brought charges of a direct conspiracy between Trump, his family members, his employees, his campaign officials, select outside campaign advisors and actors like Roger Stone and the Russian governmental and non-governmental actors carrying out Putin’s operation is because Trump, his family members, his employees, his campaign officials, select outside campaign advisors and actors were obstructing the Mueller investigation. The section on obstruction in the Mueller Report starts on p. 191 of the linked pdf and on p. 14 of the fifth volume of the linked SSCI report. In some cases these folks were obstructing the investigation in more than one way. For instance, Rudy Giuliani who was an outside advisor and surrogate for Trump during the campaign worked hard to ensure he’d be Trump’s pro-bono outside legal advisor and counsel during the Mueller investigation.

What the Durham investigation and indictments are doing is what former AG Barr intended them to do: use the DOJ to launder misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop about how Christopher Steele collected his opposition information, the actual information he collected, and how that information was used once it got brought to the attention of elected officials like the late Senator McCain and counterintelligence and law enforcement officials at the DOJ and FBI. Barr started trying to discredit Mueller and his investigation before he was ever appointed attorney general. In fact the lengthy memo he sent Trump delineating why Mueller’s investigation wasn’t properly predicated served as his application for becoming attorney general. Durham is the last part, that we know of, of Barr’s attempts to cover up what happened in 2016.

The usual suspects, such as Greenwald, who are now using what Durham is producing to push their own agendas are largely covering their own asses. Wikileaks has now been fully exposed as what we always knew it to be. Not a truth telling, stalwart, information must be free group seeking to hold governments and the powerful accountable, but an asset of the Russian intelligence services run by a paranoid, megalomaniacal authoritarian with delusions of grandeur. What Greenwald, and Greenwald’s partners in these endeavors – Taibbi, Tracey, Mate, and others – are hoping t0o obscure is just how tightly connected to Assange and Wikileaks Greenwald is. Promoting what Durham is alleging as the real, actual truth is necessary for Greenwald to cover his own ass. Not for being involved in Wikileaks 2016 operations against the US, but in regard to his work with Wikileaks prior to that.

This is different than what the Breitbrats, Ben Shapiro, dim Jim Hoft, OANN, NewsMax, the evening talking heads at Fox, and others on the pro-Trump/MAGA right are promoting. They are promoting it because it is part of their grift.

Bannon and Stone are sort of in the middle. They have connections to Wikileaks from the 2016 campaign, but they also want to promote their grifts.

CNN just wants people to tune in so they have better ratings and can sell more advertising.

Durham’s investigation is using the Department of Justice to provide them with the disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop to provide all of them with what they need.

Open thread!

The Durham Investigation, the Steele Dossier, & Misusing the Department of Justice For Partisan Political PurposesPost + Comments (92)

The Wilderness of Mirrors & The Guardian’s Scoop Regarding Putin’s & Russia’s Planning To Make Trump President: It Is Almost Certainly Disinformation & Agitprop, But It May Still Be True

by | 122 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , ,

Several of you asked in comments yesterday morning what I thought about The Guardian‘s big scoop based on purported leaked Kremlin documents from January 2016 that supposedly reveal the formal planning by Putin and his intelligence and nat-sec leadership to make Trump president. As I was typing this up last night, Cheryl was doing her post and we agreed that I’d just finish drafting mine and save it for later as we are in almost complete agreement about The Guardian‘s reporting.

Since it’s now later, I figured I’d freshen it a wee bit and hit publish. Everything up to the Updated on 16 July at 2:00 PM EDT was written yesterday.

My initial response as a comment yesterday was:

This is certainly disinformation agitprop, in that what leaked is accurate in its contents, but not the real thing. Which allows Putin to both finally take credit for the op he’s been running informally since 2014 and formally since 2016 and also further that operations objectives of sowing socio-political discord in the US.

To clarify and be more specific, this is almost certainly disinformation and agitprop. While it is also most likely accurate in the contents in terms of the underlying facts of 2016 – as in Putin did have a preference for Trump and was utilizing his resources to elevate his candidacy and his chances – there is no way that this leaked Kremlin document is legitimately documenting whatever planning was going on in 2016.

The reporting in The Guardian Luke Harding, Julian Borger, and Dan Sabbagh is interesting, but… The report that the document:

“No 32-04 \ vd” – is classified as secret.

I have a lot of trouble believing that it wasn’t classified, according to the classification that the Kremlin uses, at the equivalent of what we would refer to as a fully compartmented classification at the highest level of classification.

Another issue I have is they don’t post the entire document, only two screen grabs extracts. Nor do they indicate the chain of transmission to them. They sort of intimate or suggest they got it from a western intelligence source, but the way they write the article, it could also be inferred it came from a Kremlin source.

One thing that is clear, is that if a western intelligence agency, one of our Five Eyes partners or one of our other intelligence partners, has had this for a while, they certainly did not share it with the US prior to, at least, late 2019. As both Matt Tait aka Pwn All The Things and Marcy Wheeler note.

I would also like to know which, if any, other major news organizations were offered this and refused to run it because they couldn’t vet it to their satisfaction.

Finally, Ivan Tchakev, who is the economics editor at RBC and writes as an expert at Riddle, is asserting that language errors indicate this is most certainly a forgery.

Since I don’t speak Russian other than the names of some foods, some place names, several curses, and the names of hockey players and some authors, composers, and dancers, I asked our own in house Russian language and Russian studies subject matter expert about Tchakev’s analysis and got this reply:

I don’t think you can really draw conclusions based on a linguistic analysis. Bureaucratic language is terrible everywhere, including in Russia.

Based on the language, it kind of looks fake to me but I could not swear to that in court! I’m not all that familiar with these kinds of documents. I just get a whiff of somebody playacting.

So hopefully everything is now clear as mud!

Updated at 2:00 PM EDT on 16 July 2021:

Marcy Wheeler makes the excellent, and if you’ve been following along as Cheryl and I have covered this stuff here and as Wheeler and others have covered it on their sites and feeds, obvious point that Putin’s active measures and low intensity political warfare operation precedes January 2016.

Click across and read the whole thread.

As we’ve discussed here numerous times, we can actually see the disinformation and agitprop operation begin in the spring of 2014. It was at this point in May of 2014 that the first story intended to dirty up potential presidential candidates was placed in Russian state news RIA Novosti. That disinformation and agitprop drop was targeted at President Biden, Ambassador Kerry, and Vice President Cheney by targeting their children as engaged in unethical and potentially illegal activities in Ukraine and other places. All three of them were being touted in 2014 as potential presidential candidates for 2016, though none of them ultimately ran.

The Jade Helm conspiracy theory of 2015, intended to stir up discontent among Texas against both the Obama administration and US Special Operations Forces, was also part of Russia’s active measures campaign. It was tied to Russia’s promotion of the Texas secessionist movement during President Obama’s second term, as well as support for a variety of American neo-NAZI and white supremacist groups. The plot to infiltrate and influence the National Rifle Association actually begins even father back. Torshin attended his first NRA national convention in 2012 and by 2014 he had Maria Butina in place and active in the US. Similarly, Russia has targeted the National Prayer Breakfast for years as a line of entry into the Republican Party and conservative organizations. Russia has also targeted a number of American evangelical groups. One of the key players in this is Jay Sekulow, who just happened to be Trump’s personal attorney for the Mueller investigation and both impeachments. This much coincidence takes a lot of work. The idea that suddenly, in January 2016, Putin convenes the equivalent of a National Security Council Principal’s meeting to plan and coordinate efforts in his active measures and low intensity political war against the US just doesn’t line up.

As I wrote yesterday, what I want to know now is where the document came from, which, if any of our ally’s intelligence services had it and provided it to The Guardian‘s reporting team. Or, if it wasn’t provided, what’s the chain of transmission in it leaking to them. And I want to see the whole document, with the appropriate redactions that would be necessary to protect anyone who leaked it out. Without all of that, this is interesting. It rings true. But it is clearly disinformation and agitprop intended to further wreak havoc on American society and politics.

Open thread!

The Wilderness of Mirrors & The Guardian’s Scoop Regarding Putin’s & Russia’s Planning To Make Trump President: It Is Almost Certainly Disinformation & Agitprop, But It May Still Be TruePost + Comments (122)