Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

[Karmamatterz]

And so they did, developing new weapons that no anti-ballistic missile system can ever hope to stop.

So the cycle perpetuates. Of course they will continue this "game" of military systems, it keeps spending in place and enforces the "need" to always keep spending more and and more on new and even more sophisticated systems. None of us should be surprised by any of this. As we can easily recall, it was Dick(head) Cheney who coined the endless war phrases against terrorism. Cold, hot, imaginary or whatever, there will always be these tit for tats that won't go away.

The shock and outrage over Trump pulling out of any treaty is useless rage, but it gives those who live for rage another dopamine hit to vent.

[seemslikeadream]

Over/under on Glenn Greenwald attacking this story: 45 minutes


Here’s the translated headline: “Exclusive — the secret deal to finance the party of Matteo Salvini [the nationalist Italian Deputy PM] with Russian money”


Esclusivo - La trattativa segreta per finanziare con soldi russi la Lega di Matteo Salvini
http://espresso.repubblica.it/inchieste ... refresh_ce

The Russian Sleuth Who Outs Moscow's Elite Hackers and Assassins

Ten years ago, Roman Dobrokhotov sat down in the front row of a Kremlin auditorium, surrounded by a polite audience of journalists and dignitaries attending a speech by Russia’s then-president Dmitri Medvedev. Medvedev was only a few minutes into his address on the importance of the country's constitution—which he had just amended to allow Vladimir Putin to serve as president again—when Dobrokhotov stood up, turned around, and addressed the audience himself.

“Why listen to him? He’s broken all our human rights and freedoms,” Dobrokhotov said in a loud, clear voice. “And he tries to tell us about the constitution!”

Dobrokhotov still remembers the faces of the people around him. “They tried to pretend they couldn’t hear, but the acoustics were actually very good,” he says. In a typical scene of Kremlin doublethink, Medvedev told the crowd that the young heckler should have the right to speak, even as security guards covered Dobrokhotov's mouth and hauled him out of the room.

Today, Dobrokhotov has found a better megaphone. And the 35-year-old Muscovite is using it to broadcast something that’s much harder for the Kremlin to ignore: the secrets of one of its most aggressive and dangerous spy agencies.

Over the last two weeks, the investigative news site Dobrokhotov runs, the Insider, has published a series of exposés on the alleged third agent of the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU involved in last year’s attempted nerve-agent assassination of Russian defector Sergei Skripal. The attack resulted in one person’s death and the hospitalization of three others, including Skripal and his daughter.

The Insider's reporting, published in collaboration with researchers at the website Bellingcat, has shown that the accused man, Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev, appears to be linked to a separate attempted killing with a nerve agent poison in Bulgaria in 2015. Their stories exposed yet another alleged GRU assassin's identity, hinted at the wider extent of Russia's use of chemical weapons in assassination efforts, and established an apparent new link between Sergeev and a private mercenary company known as the Wagner Group.

"To do that work from Russia takes a remarkable amount of courage."
John Hultquist, FireEye
For the Insider and Bellingcat, they’re also just the latest in an ongoing series of revelations they’ve made about the GRU, an agency now believed to be responsible for everything from the Skripal assassination attempt to the hacking and leaking operation targeting US and French elections.

A significant portion of what the world knows about the GRU's involvement in those recent scandals comes from the work of Dobrokhotov's site and its Bellingcat partners. The Insider has revealed the GRU's role in hacking the emails of French presidential Emmanuel Macron ahead of the country's 2017 election—even naming the specific GRU unit responsible—months before an indictment by US special counsel Robert Mueller exposed that same unit's hacking efforts in the US election. Dobrokhotov has helped to identify two Russian military officers allegedly involved in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, which killed all 298 civilians on board. And most recently, it has worked with Bellingcat to investigate Skripal's would-be assassins, identifying two of the three alleged GRU killers by name last year before completing the trifecta last week.

The GRU's Gadfly

Dobrokhotov says he never exactly made a decision to target the GRU, which for decades has remained even more opaque than fellow Russian intelligence agencies like the FSB or SVR. "We just start to investigate one story and it turns out to be a GRU officer. Then we investigate a totally different story and it seems to be a GRU officer again," Dobrokhotov says in English that he has honed with hours of watching Stephen Colbert. "They're just so active, and they make so many mistakes, that they pop up in every investigation."

But while most of the international credit for that string of GRU revelations has gone to Bellingcat, Dobrokhotov and his staff have taken on higher stakes. Unlike Bellingcat's researchers, they're Russian, and live in close proximity to the very spies and assassins they're exposing. That has allowed them to run down some details of their investigations that Bellingcat never could have otherwise. It also puts them at far greater risk of arrest—or worse—than their international collaborators.

"I'm astonished by their ability. They're extraordinary investigators," says John Hultquist, a former State Department staffer and current researcher at security firm FireEye who has focused for years on GRU hacking. "To do that work from Russia takes a remarkable amount of courage."

Or as Thomas Rid, a cyberconflict-focused professor at Johns Hopkins puts it: "These stories mean more in Russian. The consequences of stepping on someone's toes in Russia can be far graver than they are here."

But when I met up with Dobrokhotov last November in a central Moscow bar—the closest thing the Insider's dozen-person staff has to an office—he told me he has no misgivings about taking on this particular adversary. "The choice is very simple. if you want to be a journalist in Russia, you either choose the real topics, the most important topics, or you’re not a real journalist," he said. "If you write about traffic jams, that’s fine in Switzerland or Sweden. But in Russia you have to work on these topics, because they can change society."

From Dissident to Detective

Long before becoming a journalist, Dobrokhotov spent his adulthood fighting the Russian government's secrecy, censorship, and corruption. He took part in his first protest as a first-year college student, after the Kremlin's takeover of the independent television station NTV in the year 2000. Later, he founded the dissident group known as "We"—created in opposition to the pro-Putin youth group Nashi, which translates to "ours." He also helped organize events like a circle of thousands of people dressed in white, holding hands around the entire center of Moscow in 2012. In a commentary on free speech, he led a group of protestors with white tape over their mouths, standing outside the Russian government building known as the White House with blank signs. Police spent 10 confused minutes trying to decide whether he was for or against Putin, Dobrokhotov recalls, and then arrested him anyway—one of more than 100 times he says he's been detained.

"If he'd been born in 1880, he'd be one of those guys throwing bombs at the czar," says Aric Toler, one of Dobrokhotov's collaborators at Bellingcat.

By 2013 Dobrokhotov had finished his PhD, and felt he had outgrown the youth movement. So he made the switch to full-time journalism. "There are many people who can organize big protests," he explains. "As an investigative journalist, I don't have that many competitors."

Before his career as an investigative journalist, Dobrokhotov was a leader in Moscow's anti-Putin youth movement, and once heckled former president Dmitri Medvedev during a public speech.
Max Avdeev
The Insider made some initial ripples with corruption exposés on Medvedev, state oil firm Gazprom, and dozens of high-ranking Kremlin officials. But its first scoop to get the attention of the West came in 2017, when Dobrokhotov started looking into the hacking of En Marche, the political party of French president Emmanuel Macron, whose emails were stolen and leaked just ahead of France's election.

France's own cybersecurity agency, ANSSI, had declared no trace of Russian hackers targeting the campaign. But one of the hacked emails contained metadata that identified a user who had at some point touched the documents: Georgy Roshka. Dobrokhotov and his staff found that same name was listed as a representative of the technology firm Eureca at a conference in 2014, but Eureca denied Roshka was an employee. So the Insider staff painstakingly contacted dozens of the conference's other participants until they obtained its attendee list from the previous year, and found Roshka plainly listed as a member of GRU Unit #26165, based at 20 Komsomolsky Prospekt in central Moscow. It would be nine more months before the same unit number and address was revealed in Mueller indictment of GRU hackers meddling in the US election.

Chasing Assassins

Dobrokhotov's collaboration with Bellingcat began last year, when he responded to a photo on Twitter posted by Bulgarian Bellingcat researcher Christo Grozev, showing what appeared to be a GRU officer in Montenegro. They began sharing information, and months later would together identify three GRU agents they believed to be involved in an attempted coup against Montenegro's pro-NATO government.

Around the same time, Ukrainian intelligence and the Dutch government publicly released intercepted radio conversations among the pro-Russian soldiers suspected of shooting down down the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. Bellingcat and the Insider believed two Russian officers might be involved based on partial names in the recordings. Dobrokhotov called them up, posing first as a friendly journalist and then as a survey taker. Bellingcat and the Insider then forensically matched the voice recordings from those calls to identify two GRU officers, Nikolai Tkachev and Oleg Ivannikov.



“We would not have been able to do this work remotely,” says Bellingcat’s Grozev, who says he now speaks with Dobrokhotov daily to brainstorm leads and investigative ideas. “And few Russian journalists have the courage to call up a top GRU colonel responsible for hundreds of deaths abroad and pose as a pollster. But this is the kind of work Roman is amazingly good at.”

Just a few months later, in September, British police released CCTV photos and pseudonyms of two Russian men believed to have poisoned GRU defector Sergei Skripal with the Novichok nerve agent in the UK town of Salisbury. Bellingcat and the Insider began combing through leaked databases of Russian passports, flight manifests, and car registrations, some of which Grozev had obtained from underground sources. They worked from a hypothesis based on a pattern they'd found in GRU cover stories: The men's last names were often fake while their names and patronymics—Russian middle names based on a father's given name—were real.

Amazingly, they say they were able to find matches for both men in their documents and learn what they believe are their full identities: Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga. (The same techniques would allow them to identify Sergeev, the alleged third agent involved in the operation, months later.) With only a night before publication, Dobrokhotov even sent an Insider staffer to Mishkin's tiny home village in Western Siberia. A family acquaintance there proudly identified Mishkin and matched him with a picture taken from Russian television, where the two killers had given an interview under their pseudonyms, claiming to be mere tourists in Salisbury.

Three alleged GRU agents the Insider and Bellingcat have accused of involvement in the attempted Skripal assassination: (from left) Anatoliy Chepiga, Denis Sergeev, and Alexander Mishkin.
Courtesy of the Insider
When Dutch authorities released the names of four more GRU agents caught attempting to hack into the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague, Bellingcat and the Insider were able to cross-reference those names against their list of leaked car registrations. The additional names confirmed that more than a thousand GRU agents appeared to have registered their real names to GRU building addresses—a massive, embarrassing leak of the agency's secrets that Dobrokhotov says has already aided their investigations and will likely serve as a powerful tool in future ones.

"It's like reading a detective story," says Dobrokhotov, who notes that he was a fan of Sherlock Holmes growing up. "With one link, you pull out the whole chain."

Russian Roulette

But as Dobrokhotov's team continues their serial GRU revelations, the question looms: Can they continue to expose the agency's alleged spies and killers without becoming a target themselves? Dobrokhotov notes that he could easily be arrested for exposing state secrets at any time, but says he's so far faced no reprisals. The Russian government has instead focused its criticisms on Bellingcat, accusing it of serving as a tool of foreign intelligence agencies. (Dobrokhotov was, however, barred from attending a press conference Putin held in December—perhaps not a surprise given his 2008 Medvedev disruption.)

“Every time he’s meeting me or anyone else in Europe, often on the day we publish a story, we try to convince him to take a few days, to not go back to Russia, to let the dust settle. He never does,” says Bellingcat’s Grozev. “On a scale from one to one hundred, he’s a hundred in terms of his bravery and willingness to risk everything to get the story out.”

Despite the steadily growing number of reporters murdered for taking on Russia's ruling class, Dobrokhotov argues that he's unlikely to be killed or arrested for his work on the GRU. It's more often the oligarchs and lower-level politicians in Putin's orbit, he says, who give the order to kill a journalist. Then again, he points out minutes later, the Insider has published investigations about those people, too. "We don't have any red lines we won't cross," Dobrokhotov says. "We haven't gotten a warning, but these people don’t warn. They just react without warning."

Dobrokhotov says he takes precautions. He encrypts his communications, talks in person whenever possible, avoids walking empty streets, and works under the assumption that his cell phone is tracked and his home is bugged. "These measures aren’t enough to stop possible killers. But it makes it impossible to do it without leaving any traces," he explains. "If you’re always in the light, society will know who did it, and that's very politically costly."

Regardless, he says he refuses to let the ever-present risk of arrest or even death change the Insider's coverage. "If I changed my job and started doing something else, then I would have lost without even having a real fight," he says.

When he considers his odds, he compares them to those of his grandfathers, both of whom served in World War II. In that war, Dobrohkotov notes, men on the front lines had a dismal chance of survival—around 40 percent of all Russian men who were 18 at the start of the war were killed. One of his grandfathers was even underage at the time, Dobrohkotov says, but volunteered to fight anyway. "I've just risked being imprisoned and a very small chance of being killed. So why would I be scared?" he asks. "It's the same question of fighting against fascism now as it was then. This is about the freedom of the country, the future of our children."
https://www.wired.com/story/roman-dobro ... nsiteshare

[seemslikeadream]

FUEL FOR THOUGHT
An Italian Expose Documents Moscow Money Allegedly Funding Italy's Far-Right Salvini
An exposé claims that Vladimir Putin is funneling $3 million to Matteo Salvini through dirty diesel to help swing European elections towards Russia-friendly candidates.

Barbie Latza Nadeau
02.22.19 12:47 PM ET

Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty
ROME — Italy’s interior minister and vice premier, Matteo Salvini, went off the grid for 12 hours during an official state visit to Moscow last October. Tales of Russian prostitutes seemed to explain the time lapse for the single statesman. But a new exposé by the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso suggests that his time may have been spent doing something far more sinister: he may have been making backroom deals with Russian operatives ahead of European Parliamentary elections.


The investigation, which the magazine says was conducted over several months, comes to the conclusion that Russian president Vladimir Putin is selling 3 million tons of diesel fuel via a Russian company to an Italian state company, Eni, that Salvini as interior minister can help manage.

L'Espresso names the first Russian company involved as Avangard Oil & Gas, which has a curiously opaque façade, and is housed on Novinsky Boulevard in Moscow next to major firms like ExxonMobil, Repsol, Shell, Glencore amd Samsung.

The Russian profits, according to L'Espresso, would then be funneled back to Italy to fund Salvini's Lega [League] party to help it engage in the dark art of manipulative online persuasion ahead of European elections in May.

The elections are key for Salvini, who has steered his once-eurosceptic Northern League party to become the Euro-friendly Lega. His hope is that if he and other like-minded political parties across Europe can infiltrate the European Union structure and control it from the inside, they can do any number of things, including lifting Russian sanctions.

“Secret meetings, travel, email, handshakes and millionaires’ contracts,” L'Espresso says, are the hallmarks of this scheme. “On one side of the table one of Salvini’s loyalists, on the other precious intermediaries of the Putin establishment. In the middle: fuel.”

The objective, the investigative team states, is "to secretly support the Salvini party.


The reporting in the exposé is part of a book due out next week called The League's Black Book which outlines the money trail linked to the seizure of more than $50 million from the League last July, public funds allegedly embezzled by the party's elder statesman, Umberto Bossi. It follows a series of allegations and suspicious business dealings with Russia that would surely intrigue U.S. President Donald Trump, who Salvini admires.

Salvini's key tie to Russia is his former spokesman, Gianluca Savoini, who is not present in the current Italian government, but who remains a trusted ally of the leader. Savoini, who is married to a Russian woman named Irina, is listed as president of the Russia-Lombardy Association based in the north of Italy and frequently tweets from Moscow, even referring to a shot he took of Red Square as the “third Rome,” and often praising Putin and his United Russia party. In a profile last March, Italian Vanity Fair referred to Savoini as Salvini's “sherpa,” who “doesn't speak a word of Russian but who is fluent in the language of politics.”

The L'Espresso exposé refers to “dozens of trips to Moscow, the Crimea and the Donbass” by Savoini, and, they claim, “he has conducted the negotiation for Russian financing from the beginning.”

Savoini is an associate of Aleksey Komov, a name often associated with Putin-connected Russian oligarch Konstanin Malofeev, who happens to have a religious media propaganda TV station in the same Novinsky Boulevard building as Avangard Oil & Gas.

Komov, who L'Espresso says works for Malofeev at his massive St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, is also tied to U.S. President Trump's former campaign chairman Steve Bannon through the Catholic group Dignitatis Humanae, which is building a university for alt-right politicians in an 800-year-old monastery outside of Rome. Komov is the Russian ambassador of the World Congress of Families, which fights abortion and same sex unions on whatever platform it can.

L'Espresso claims that the troika behind all of the dirty dealing is Komov, Savoini and Aleksandr Dugin, a political influencer who has Putin's ear and who was appointed as an honorary president of the Russia-Piedmont association, a sister organization to Savioni's Russia-Lombardy association, which gives him easy access to Italy. Dugin has, coincidentally, also been working for Malofeev's foundation with Komov, according to L'Espresso.

Dugin and Savoini were photographed in Rome on the Via del Babuino in September, where they allegedly put the finishing touches on the plan for Salvini's Oct. 17, 2018 visit to Moscow. The main event there was a 5:00 p.m. conference organized at the Lotte Hotel. Savoini was sitting front row center. After the conference, Salvini and Savoini apparently disappeared through a side door and were not heard from until the next morning. The Italian press traveling with him were baffled until it was leaked that the single Salvini had plans of an intimate nature.

But L'Espresso says those rumors came from the Salvini camp, and instead the interior minister was meeting “in secret with a prominent character of the Kremlin: Deputy Premier Dmitry Kozak, delegate for energy affairs, a man in the close circle of Putin.”

The next morning, Salvini was back and Savoini was photographed by L'Espresso reporters at a meeting with Russian oil executives at Moscow's posh Metropol Hotel where he was overheard promising Salvini's commitment to the diesel deal. “The new Europe must be close to Russia. We no longer have to depend on enlightened decisions in Brussels or the U.S.,” L'Espresso says Savoini told the Russians through a translator.

“We want to change Europe together with our allies like Heinz-Christian Strache in Austria, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, Mrs. Le Pen in France, Orbán in Hungary, Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden.”

All of these leaders happen to be part of Steve Bannon's new ‘Movement‘ coalition of right-wing leaders hoping to take Europe by storm in elections in May.


At the hotel meeting, L'Espresso journalists, who snapped and published photos of the meeting, say the four talked about the Russian oil company Rosneft rather than Avangard, which was shuttered when the investigative reporters went back to check before publishing their exposé. Rosneft is also in the Novinsky Boulevard high rise, they say.

“The Russians propose three million tons of diesel to be delivered in six months or a year,” Savoini allegedly told the group, according to L'Espresso. “The Italian lawyer says that there is no problem: he ensures that Eni has the ability to buy even more if necessary.”

Savoini reportedly then told the Russians, “The plan made by our political guys is simple. Given the four percent discount, they pay €250,000 a month, for a year. So they can support a campaign,” he says. “This is only a political issue, we want to finance the election campaign, and this is good for both parties.”

L'Espresso reports that the rest of the meeting dealt with the type of diesel order, whether it could also include airplane fuel, where and how it would be delivered. “The Russians suggested Banca Intesa Russia and the Italians reassured them it was a good choice because in the board of directors there is already ‘one of our men, Mascetti,’” referring to Andrea Mascetti, a League member who sits on that bank's board.

Salvini’s spokesman Matteo Pandini has not officially commented on behalf of the minister. Instead he says Salvini will respond “in due time.”

The exposé ends with a caveat, and perhaps an important one. “On October 18, 2018, we finished this journalistic investigation,” they write, explaining they were sure Savoini and the Russians would soon be on to them. “We do not know how the deal ended, whether the agreement was signed and under what terms.”

If it is true, it would mean that Salvini’s Lega would be financed for the European parliamentary elections by a Russian state-owned company. “In short,” the L'Espresso authors write, “The main Italian government force is supported by Putin, the number one enemy of the E.U.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/an-italia ... ht-salvini

[seemslikeadream]

from engadget

Russia is going to test an internet ‘kill switch,’ and its citizens will suffer

It’s cool -- all the creepy totalitarian countries are doing it.

Violet Blue, @violetblue
02.28.19 in Security


Russia is planning to disconnect itself from the global internet in a test sometime between now and April. The country says it is implementing an internal internet (intranet) and an internet "kill switch" to protect itself against cyberwar. The question is, would this actually work?

"This, as a single tactic, would not be sufficient," explained Bill Woodcock, executive director of Packet Clearing House, via email. "But it hugely reduces their attack surface. So in combination with many other tactics, it's a component of a reasonable strategy."

An internet "kill switch" has been in Russia's legislative plans for some time -- though it's not entirely about defense. Russia sees this drastic move as a means to solve the dual issues of defending itself from cyberwar attacks and more tightly controlling its citizens' access to information.

As news of the impending shutdown test came originally from Russian-language newswire RBK (and was sloppily reported), it was easy to get the impression that this was a complete, countrywide internet shutdown.

Rather, the country would use Runet, a sovereign, government-run internal web that would keep citizens connected, but only within the country. Runet would run during internet blackouts in the event of "targeted large-scale external influence." Access to the outside would be cut off, and vice versa, but they would still have email and other things (controlled by the government, obviously).

A national intranet is an IP-based walled garden used as a substitute for the real (global) Internet. Typically, its purpose is to control and monitor the communications of citizens while also restricting their access to outside media. Like in Iran.

After years of rumors, Iran rolled out its state-run intranet in January 2018. As the global intelligence company Stratfor explained, "To access [Iran's intranet], users and website owners must sign up with the government, an arrangement that empowers Iranian officials to coerce internet service providers to comply with their demands." This way, "Iran's government can cut access to the global internet for prolonged periods, as it did during the [pro-democracy] Green Movement protests, without taking the entire country offline."

Another country that controls its population via intranet is North Korea. Its Kwangmyong network is the oldest one we know of, believed to have been instituted in 2000.


Internet blackouts seldom go well for citizens. You may also remember when Egypt disappeared from the internet in 2011. This was during the Mubarak regime protests (including the events of Tahir Square), when citizens staged demonstrations calling out corruption, police brutality, free speech attacks, and various human rights violations. In response, Egypt's government cut off the entire country's access to the internet -- 85 million people.

Syria disconnected its population from the internet as well, in 2011. The first time was for its largest pro-democracy protest. Syria shut off the internet and opened fire, killing more than 72 people, while government forces assaulted towns seen as key to the demonstrations, killing even more.

So, generally, internet blackouts seem to be the favored tool of totalitarian governments that do bad things to people behind closed doors.

Prior to 2012, a government-forced internet blackout could happen only under certain conditions. That was the year the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) rammed through global regulations that took control of the internet's traffic and took citizen access away from orgs like ICANN and handed it to governments. At the time, Dr. Alexander Kushtuev, ITU deputy director general, worked for Russia's largest national telecommunications operator, Rostelecom.

Not surprisingly, early authors of the regulatory changes -- which the ITU attempted to keep secret -- were from a state bloc composed of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

That meetings and proposals around the agreement were withheld from public view showed that something was rotten; we only found out about it when researchers at George Mason University created the website WCITLeaks, which solicited and shared copies of leaked draft documents. In fact, one leaked doc showed that the organizers had pre-prepared a public relations strategy and hired consultants to avoid public outcry.

Despite enormous opposition, the ITU set its legally binding agreement into place, making blackouts like the ones in Syria and Egypt a maneuver not impeded by treaties, agreements or any ICANN policies on human rights.

Anyway, Russia got what it wanted. It got all the goodies packed into the 2012 ITU regulations, plus what was needed to set in motion the events we're seeing now. The country has a state-run intranet with a free pass to cut its citizens off from the global internet. And The Telegraph reminds us, "The Russian government has been tightening its grip over the internet since social media facilitated huge protests against Mr Putin in 2011–13."

The purpose of the upcoming cutoff test is to work out the kinks before Russia implements a law introduced last year in its parliament mandating that Russian internet providers use Runet when the country disconnects its citizens from the rest of the world.

Interestingly, the upcoming disconnect experiment is run by Russia's Information Security Working Group, whose member are telcos -- and is presided over by Natalya Kaspersky. Yes, that Kaspersky. She co-founded the namesake security company, and her ex-husband is ... Eugene Kaspersky. He still runs the security company they created together, which was banned by the US government in 2017 over its alleged ties to the Russian government.

The law (called "Digital Economy National Program") dictates that Russian telcos must install technical means to funnel all internet traffic "to exchange points approved or managed by Roskomnazor, Russia's telecom watchdog," according to press. "Roskomnazor will inspect the traffic to block prohibited content and make sure traffic between Russian users stays inside the country and is not re-routed uselessly through servers abroad, where it could be intercepted."

The point of all this is so Russia can enact an internet blackout. For security purposes, it claims.

But would an internet "kill switch" work in times of cyberwar?

Not really. Oracle did a deep dive on this exact scenario and concluded that countrywide internet blackouts (with intranet reliance) actually make a country harder to defend. What makes the internet strong as a system, they explain, is its decentralization. Namely, diversity in infrastructure.

If a country has only five companies with licenses to carry and monitor traffic, then sure, it's a snap for authorities to make a phone call and send the country into a near-instant internet blackout. However, Oracle explains: "This level of centralization also makes it much harder for the government to defend the nation's Internet infrastructure against a determined opponent ... They can do a lot of damage by hitting just a few targets."

Packet Clearing House's Bill Woodcock reminds us that the United States entertained the same idea, of a disconnection protocol, in the 2008–2009 era. The idea was abandoned. Mr. Woodcock told Engadget that a kill switch is "a pretty reasonable thing to test, and to prepare for, given how much the US is putting into cyber-offense, and how little regard the US has for nonproliferation efforts in this area." He added, "Of course, the Russians do offense as well, but at least they have the sense to recognize that they're also living in a glass house."

Soberingly, Woodcock tells us that Russia may be taking cues from its own cyber-attack victims:

The apt comparison to make here would be with the Russian attacks on Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008. Estonia was prepared (in much the same way that Russia is getting to be now) while Georgia was not. The Russian attack on Estonia went nearly unnoticed, from a network user's perspective, while the one on Georgia was nearly totally effective, for a period of several months. The Georgian government had to migrate, entirely, to Google free business services.
I think the thing many outlets are dancing around as they report on the blackout system implementation is Russia's intent to isolate its citizens and crack down on dissent. It's especially heartbreaking in light of new reports of a refreshed purge of LGBT men and women in Chechnya, where at least two are dead and dozens are being held. "The new wave of persecution began in late December," wrote The Guardian, "after an administrator for an online group for LGBT people on the social network VKontakte was detained. Police used the contacts in his phone to round up others."

The Guardian confirmed the reports with a Russian newspaper, which in turn confirmed in messages via VKontakte (Russia's state-run version of Facebook).

When blackouts begin in Russia, these horrors will develop further and the world may be none the wiser.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/28/rus ... rsecurity/

[seemslikeadream]

What an absolute THRILL to watch Ambassador McFaul @mcfaul dropping bombs at today's Select Committee on Intelligence today. If you enjoy watching video: here is a link. https://youtu.be/N98ePZP0Uy8?t=1842 …. I like to read, so I am going to THREAD below.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1843&v=N98ePZP0Uy8
Before I get to that. I have never seen any member of Congress stare down another like Schiff does here. And I can't ever recall someone saying "corrupt" as pointedly as this. Schiff isn't joking. https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4788840/schiff-stare …


Amb McFaul was on the US National Security Council and served as ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. Professor PoliSci, Stanford, Director of Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Massively qualified to give opinion on RU and first hand observer of Putinism.


His particular topic today: "Putin’s Playbook: The Kremlin’s Use of Oligarchs, Money and Intelligence in 2016 and Beyond." Giving this testimony in front of Nunes is about as big an FU as is imaginable among DC types in public hearing.


He starts: "for at least a decade now, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been
waging a new ideological struggle, first at home, and then against the West more generally, and the United States in particular." Putin says its conservatism v liberalism. BS, says McFaul.


McFaul: The contest is "between autocracy, corruption, state
domination of the economy, and indifference to international norms versus democracy, rule of law, free markets, and respect for international law." Putin is against everything that "conservatives" claim to be for


McFaul: "At home, Putin has eroded checks and balances on executive power, undermined the autonomy of political actors, regional governments, the media, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and strengthened state ownership throughout the Russian economy."


At home and abroad, Putin uses: "traditional media, social media, the weaponization of intelligence (doxing), financial support for allies, business deals for political aims, and even the deployment of coercive actors abroad, including soldiers, mercenaries, and assassins."


ME: Americans have never before been attacked through traditional media, social media, doxxing, RU financing opposition; and open business deals to support political aims like we have in the time of Trump. And this attack rages on right now.


McFaul: "it is important to underscore that crony capitalism, property rights provided by the state, bribery, and corruption constitute only a few of many
mechanisms used by Putin in his domestic authority and foreign policy abroad." This is EXACTLY what the GOP is for now


McFaul: When Putin first came to power, " first seized control of Russian national television networks, wrestling ownership of two national networks, ORT and NTV, from two “oligarchs” – Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky – and placing control in the hands of loyalists.


He has tightened controls since by outlawing demonstrations, arresting opposition leaders, pushing out independent media, criminalizing receipt of foreign funds, blocking websites, and making ANY criticism of the government illegal. SERIOUSLY, THIS IS WHAT THE GOP IS NOW


Putin controls the oligarchs by arresting them and suing them if they fail to support. Putin loyalists run all the largest oil and gas companies, the military industrial complex, the railroads, the largest banks. Owners and managers are solely loyal to Putin, not RU


Putin has vastly increased state control of the economy. In 2003, 30 percent of economy was in state hands, it was as high as 55% in 2015. Putin takes company assets by accusing of tax fraud, arresting CEOs, trumping charges and, where needed, murder.


Putin rewards loyalty because "Putin chooses who gets to be
rich. Those chosen, in turn, remain completely dependent on Putin and his inner circle for their fortunes. By handing out lucrative contracts, valuable companies, and opportunities for corruption" Putin ensures loyalty


Putin is now using the tools he used to gain domestic control to try to weaken his enemies in the West, including the US. Tools include: massive investment in international media and the creation of Russia Today, supposedly the most watched news on Youtube. Sputnik, as well.


Putin also sets up proxies, fake organizations, fake identities and bots. That's what Mueller's Internet Research Agency indictment was about. Those Russians posed as Americans and sowed discourse wherever possible.


Putin ALSO GIVES OUT CASH to political parties, religious groups, politicians. He cultivates relationships - like Yanukovich (who Manafort worked for), Marine Le Pen, Orban, Nigel Farage... HE DOESN'T MENTION TRUMP, BUT HE MIGHT AS WELL.


RU companies make deals to establish increased leverage and influence within these countries. The use of these economic incentives and operations can be highly cooperative and coercive, as laundering money, for example, can be lucrative for partnering entities in the West


If you dig this kind of thing ... give me a follow. If you don't, follow my band @dirkandthetruth - they're mostly harmless.


RU companies, like "Gazprom, for instance, do not seek to
maximize profits for its shareholders; its mission is to instead advance the Kremlin’s foreign policy interests throughout the world, but especially in Europe."


HE GOES THERE, NRA "before the 2016 presidential election, Putin already had devoted significant resources to courting ideological allies in the United States, be it through engagement with evangelical religious organizations, the National Rifle Association, or alt-right."


McFaul notes FIVE modes of attack on the 2016 election: (1) the theft and publication of damaging materials from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair, John Podesta; (2) active media campaigns run by RT and Sputnik in favor of Trump;


(3) social media operations, including fake accounts, and purchases of advertisements; (4) the offer of compromising materials on Clinton to the Trump campaign; and (5) penetration into the electoral infrastructure in twenty-one states.


CONTRAST TO THE BARR LETTER, which only notes 2 modes of attack: Emails and the IRA Meme campaign.


So, All of this CRAZY SHIT that is happening in the United States since 2016 ... its just all the normal Putin playbook. Trump would like to do it all, but he's incredibly lazy and distractable. The oligarchs are paying fealty and the news organizations owned


But there is fight left. We can still get to the truth. The Rule of Law holds. Oligarchs can expect to be brought to justice. We'll get this peeps. F the filthy Russians that attacked our democracy.


Apparently the Ambassador answers Twitter questions ... now I know.
Dirk Schwenk added,
Michael McFaul

I agree. Very strange. And frankly, not very pleasant. I felt like he was suggesting that I was involved in some kind of wrongdoing. That’s really insulting. (& he didn’t ask one question about the subject matter of the testimony, for which I worked hard to prepare) https://twitter.com/jmrbux2/status/1111355029095624705 …

https://twitter.com/DirkSchwenk

[RocketMan]

I don't know how much people apologize for Russia, but BBC has apologized to Poroshenko...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47719166

The BBC has apologised and agreed to pay damages to Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko.

The apology relates to an incorrect report claiming a payment was made to extend a meeting between Mr Poroshenko and US President Donald Trump.

An article, published last May but since removed from the BBC website, alleged $400,000 was paid to Mr Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen.

The allegation, relating to a meeting in June 2017, was untrue.

The BBC also featured the report in a News at Ten television bulletin in the UK.

BBC corrections and clarifications
"We apologise to Mr Poroshenko for any distress caused and have agreed to pay him damages, legal costs and have participated in a joint statement in open court," the broadcaster said.

[liminalOyster]

[seemslikeadream]

‘I don’t care how elected they were. So was the far right in Germany.’ Please watch this. Every day the hate politics of the far right is being normalised in Britain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMPiLNKM2BA

'Absolutely Controlled MP'
Documents Link AfD Parliamentarian To Moscow
Russian government emails show evidence of how Moscow is seeking to exploit the Alternative for Germany party in its propaganda war. The right-wing populists appear to be voluntary accomplices -- and a member of the federal parliament is at the center of the scandal. By DER SPIEGEL Staff

AfD parliamentarian Markus Frohnmaier and Russian President Vladimir Putin


April 12, 2019 10:48 AM
On a Thursday in April of last year, Markus Frohnmaier, a member of the German parliament representing the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, pressed a large red button together with five men in a five-star hotel in Crimea. The word "future" appeared on an LED wall, marking the beginning of the fourth Yalta International Economic Forum. The situation was reminiscent of 1980s TV show, a bit stiff, a bit artificial. You can find videos and photos of the event online.

The men who pressed the button with the German politician are faithful supporters of Russia and, seemingly, of its president, Vladimir Putin. They included an Austrian deputy mayor of the right-wing populist Austrian People's Party (FPÖ), as well as a former lawmaker in the Russian parliament, the Duma, and Sergei Aksyonov, the prime minister of Crimea installed by Putin. Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014 in violation of international law. Since then, the United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on the country. But that didn't keep Frohnmaier from traveling to Yalta.

After the opening of the forum, he gave an interview to the Russian international broadcaster RT in the lobby of the luxury hotel. Frohnmaier said that when you drive along the switchbacks in Crimea, it feels like Verona: the architecture, the wine, the seaside location. "What more could you want?" The sanctions, the member of the German parliament said, finally need to end: "It is simply fact that Crimea is now Russian Crimea. The people who view this highly critically won't be able to change that. Crimea isn't coming back, and I think people just have to accept that now."

Frohnmaier sounded like a PR agent for the Russian president. He often sounds like that on many days.

The AfD, which was founded six years ago as a euro-skeptic party, has proved to be a stroke of luck for Putin. It shares the Russian president's goal of attacking the establishment. Putin wants to break the West's power by driving a wedge through it. The AfD and the Kremlin also share a pronounced anti-American stance, as well as a disdain for modern values and marriage equality for same-sex couples.

The Russian leadership sees the biggest opposition party in the Germany parliament, the Bundestag, as an ally in the war against "degenerate Europe," as neo-fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin once described it. Their common goal is to weaken the enemy. Exclusive documents from the Moscow state apparatus show how this goal is to be attained. They also show how AfD politicians are, in this sense, turning themselves into Putin's pawns.

Worrisome Findings

Reporting conducted jointly by DER SPIEGEL, German public broadcaster ZDF, the BBC and the Italian newspaper La Repubblica has uncovered how Moscow is weakening Western European democracies and trying to enlist right-wing parties to help it do that. The leaked emails and documents provide telling insights on how these kinds of strategies for attaining influence in the West emerge, how these parties came into Putin's political sphere of influence and which instruments are being used to carry out the plans.

The Dossier Centre in London provided a large part of the material, along with its own research. The research center is financed by Russian businessman and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovski. DER SPIEGEL and its partners have analyzed the materials both in terms of content and technologically and have deemed them to be authentic.

The material is comprised of several bundles of different origins, but they contain documents that complement and correspond with each other in ways we believe confirm their authenticity.

Central documents were translated with the help of certified translators. Intelligence services also deem them to be plausible. The form and construction of some documents also resemble other documents intercepted by intelligence experts.

The new findings are worrisome, given that many in Europe are concerned Russia might try to influence the elections for the European Parliament in late May. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the head of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), recently warned on ZDF that the Russian government is "putting a lot of effort into weakening, into destabilizing the countries in the EU and its close neighbors."

The emails include, for example, a strategy paper created before the 2017 German federal election that describes several "foreign-policy activities," ranging from the "organization of meetings, vigils and other protest actions in EU countries to the successful support of resolutions in the national parliaments of the EU and to media campaigns." The goal was to promote Russian interests and enable the "discrediting" of Moscow's opponents.

Exploiting Right-Wing Populists

Who could be better suited for this than the AfD's people, who are almost all foreign-policy novices? Experts unanimously agree that, for years, Russia has been seeking to exploit right-wing populists as a megaphone for its strategy of expansion in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine, to provide legitimacy for dubious elections and as agitators in German town squares. Previously, there hasn't been any evidence that this kind of planning had been linked to the higher levels of the Russian state apparatus.

Now these activities can be documented in detail. The revelations are particularly vivid when it comes to AfD lawmaker Markus Frohnmaier. He plays a central role in the strategy paper, which was sent from the Russian Duma to the highest levels of leadership in the presidential administration. The people behind it made no secret of how they view the now 28-year-old political neophyte: as a useful idiot.

The document states, "we will have our own absolutely controlled MP in the Bundestag." An AfD member of the Bundestag willing to help fulfil Moscow's aims -- does this still represent a free, independent mandate?

DER SPIEGEL is also in possession of a draft of an English-language "action plan" for Frohnmaier's election campaign in which "material" and "media support" for Frohnmaier is requested in exchange for a promise that the candidate would diligently work to promote the issues most important to Moscow as a parliamentarian in the Bundestag.

Most of the data in the files consists of emails from former Berlin embassy attaché Daniil Bisslinger, who now works in Moscow's Foreign Ministry. He sent both professional and private mails via an email account using a Russian provider. Special forensic software did not find any evidence that they might have been manipulated.

The over 10,000 emails and 32,863 images also contain a large amount of private daily communication that DER SPIEGEL did not analyze, as well as countless verifiable facts. The second bundle of 4,436 emails from the Russian presidential administration was also checked by IT specialists. The revealing email about Frohnmaier came from this trove.

A Potential Partner for the Russians

It is hard to know when Frohnmaier's love for Russia first developed, but Bisslinger, a Russian career diplomat, played an important role in it.

On August 10, 2014, the Russian made an appearance at the Baden-Württemberg state convention of the AfD's youth wing, the Young Alternative for Germany (JA), which Frohnmaier was leading at the time. "Maintain and expand on contact," JA head Frohnmaier wrote after the meeting in Stuttgart. In an internal report, he enthused that Bisslinger's speech about the real reasons for the Ukraine crisis and about "Western expansion efforts" had been a "high-point of the event." The election of the new JA state head, he wrote, "nearly became a secondary matter to this guest appearance." Frohnmaier also forwarded his praise to the Russian, including a photo of himself and Bisslinger in front of the Russian and the German national colors.

It was to become the beginning of a wonderful friendship between the Young Alternative for Germany, their mother party and the smooth Russian representative.

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and it began getting more involved in the Syrian conflict in 2015. During this phase, Moscow also began seeking to develop closer ties with right-wing parties across Europe, including Austria's FPÖ and Italy's Lega Nord. A Russian bank even gave Marine Le Pen's Front National in France a loan of approximately 9 million euros.

The AfD was also a potential partner for the Russians. Although economist Bernd Lucke, a trans-Atlanticist focused on euro-skeptic policies, was still leading the party in 2014, his base had widespread sympathy and admiration for Russia and its president, who didn't seem to hold any punches. As early as September 2013, Lucke's fellow board member Alexander Gauland, who is now party chairman, wrote in a position paper that Germany's foreign policy should become more akin to that of the Prussians: "The relationship to Russia should always be something worth carefully tending to."

Bisslinger's emails also document a meeting between Gauland and Armin-Paulus Hampel, the then AfD state leader in Lower Saxony, at the Russian Embassy in September 2014.

AfD party leader Alexander Gauland (ledt) and Russian ideologist Alexander Dugin: The Russian leadership sees the biggest opposition party in the Germany parliament, the Bundestag, as an ally in the war against "degenerate Europe."
Illustration: Simon Prades für den Spiegel
AfD party leader Alexander Gauland (ledt) and Russian ideologist Alexander Dugin: The Russian leadership sees the biggest opposition party in the Germany parliament, the Bundestag, as an ally in the war against "degenerate Europe."
That same day, Hampel thanked the young attaché "for the good conversation today." He wrote that he would be "very pleased to maintain contact" and suggested they meet for another meal a few days later. Bisslinger had to cancel, because he was on vacation, but he did sent him a link to a briefing by the Russian Defense Ministry contradicting claims of Russian involvement in the downing of flight MH17 and instead blaming Ukraine. Bisslinger wrote that he would be "happy to meet" after his return.

And thus, the two sides grew closer. A month after the meeting, Bisslinger traveled to southern Germany on the invitation of the right-wing party, this time to the Musikhalle Ludwigsburg, an event space near Stuttgart, for a joint appearance with Frohnmaier and Gauland. The subject of the evening: "Russia - Dialogue Instead of Sanctions."

The Junge Alternative Zeitung, the JA's newspaper, argued that the Russian guest "didn't hold back in his criticism of the West," and wrote that "in his speech, Gauland, in turn, showed a great deal of understanding for the Russian position." It had been an evening of kindred spirits.

'Every Donation Is Welcome'

Bisslinger's emails often reveal how deep the AfD base's affection for Russia is. At times, an AfD candidate for the state parliament from Stuttgart asked the Russians for a donation for his campaign, because "every donation is welcome." Frohnmaier's JA colleague Reimond Hoffmann contacted the diplomat and asked him for help in his job search: "One application aims for a position as a trainee at Gazprom, the other application for a position at the embassy."

The young AfD functionary made clear which country he felt an affinity for. He wrote that he thought "at a time in which economic war is being conducted against Russia" that he "could help represent Russian interests in Germany." It is unclear from the documents how Bisslinger reacted to the request. When asked about it, Hoffmann answered that he has no recollection of the applications.

There is nothing reprehensible in and of itself about embassy employees trying to establish contacts with politicians, cultural figures or businesspeople in the country in which they are posted. On the contrary, it is part of their job. But it can be more problematic when these contacts become one-sided and have a specific aim, when emails are exchanged about donations and jobs, or when politicians are selected to become tools for a larger long-term strategy of political influence. And when these politicians are described as being "absolutely controlled" by Moscow, it far exceeds the boundaries of normal and appropriate political and diplomatic behavior.

In response to a request for comment, the Russian Embassy in Berlin argued that did not view it as "problematic when our employees cultivate contacts to different political forces and social structures in the guest country, unless these are classified as being extremist or radical." The AfD, it argued, is no exception to this rule, given that it is currently the largest opposition group in the Bundestag. "Of course, there cannot be any talk of financing of political activities in Germany, especially through donations."

Information Warfare

Information warfare, and the desire to control the media coverage of a political event, is a central element of Moscow's strategy. State channels like RT Deutsch, it's German-language website, or Sputnik have been broadcasting "alternative" news in Germany for years. AfD politicians, including members of the Bundestag, are regular guests on those media. In Russia, they are often presented to the domestic audience as high-ranking representatives of the German government, even when they are lower-ranking lawmakers, like Markus Frohnmaier.

The dissemination of propaganda through state media is just one part of the Russian attempt to gain influence. That effort also includes state-supported troll factories that flood social media around the world with pro-Russian messages. It includes hacker groups steered by the Russian intelligence services, with names like "APT 28," "Snake" and "Sandworm," that attack the computers of the Bundestag or the German government network and extract data. And it includes people who, in keeping with the Russian government's goals, incite protests in their home countries and foment unrest.

Islamophobic marches in Germany by the PEGIDA movement are useful for Moscow. So are the yellow-vest protests in France. As were the 2016 protests unleashed by the story of 13-year-old Lisa, the daughter of a Russian-German family, who claimed she had been raped by dark-skinned men. Even though it was quickly found to be a lie, the protests continued for weeks. They were led by, among others, a man who now works for an AfD member of the Bundestag with roots in Kazakhstan.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/ge ... 61509.html

Vladimir Putin signed a restrictive new law that makes it illegal to insult government officials — including him
Sinéad Baker
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a new law that can jail citizens for insulting government officials — including him.

People who show "blatant disrespect" for the state, the government, the Russian flag, or the constitution can be fined up to 100,000 rubles ($1,550) under the new law, which Putin signed on Monday, Reuters reported.

Repeat offenders can be jailed for up to 15 days under the new law.

Punishments became more severe as the bill moved through Russia's government. Earlier drafts of the law had proposed fining people 1,000 or 5,000 rubles, a fraction of the final figure.

Putin also signed that a law that mandates fine for people who spread what authorities deem to be "fake news."

Read more: Russia's next land grab could be in Europe — here's what Putin might have his eyes on

People can be fined up to 400,000 rubles ($6,100) for spreading false information online that leads to a "mass violation of public order."

Authorities can also block websites that do not remove information which the state says is not accurate, according to Reuters.

Russian lawmakers say the law is necessary to fight fake news reports and abusive online comments, Reuters reported.

But critics say the law amounts to state censorship.

Russian opposition figure Ilya Yashin in 2016.
Thompson Reuters
British human rights organization Article 19, which focuses on issues of freedom of expression, said: "Allowing public officials to decide what counts as truth is tantamount to accepting that the forces in power have a right to silence views they don't agree with, or beliefs they don't hold."

Sarah Clarke, the group's head of Europe and central Asia, said before Putin signed the bill that it will be "another tool of repression to stifle public interest reporting on government misconduct and the expression of critical opinions, including the speech of the political opposition."

Read more:What its like aboard Russia's propaganda train full of Syrian war trophies

Ilya Yashin, an opposition politician, told Reuters in January, before the bills were signed, that these are both "crazy laws."

"These are crazy bills. How can they prohibit people from criticising the authorities?" he said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/vladimi ... ent-2019-3

The Russians are screwing with the GPS system to send bogus navigation data to thousands of ships
Jim Edwards
On May 15, 2018, under a sunny sky, Russian President Vladimir Putin drove a bright orange truck in a convoy of construction vehicles for the opening of the Kerch Bridge from Russia to Crimea. At 11 miles long, it is now the longest bridge in either Europe or Russia.

As Putin drove across the bridge, something weird happened. The satellite navigation systems in the control rooms of more than 24 ships anchored nearby suddenly started displaying false information about their location. Their GPS systems told their captains they were anchored more than 65 kilometres away — on land, at the Anapa Airport.

This was not a random glitch, according to the Centre for Advanced Defense, a security think tank. It was a deliberate plan to make it difficult for anyone nearby to track or navigate around the presence of Putin, C4AD says.

Putin drives a Kamaz truck at the opening of the Kerch Bridge in 2018. Hackers partially disabled nearby ships' navigation systems during the event.
Alexander Nemenov/Pool via REUTERS
"All critical national infrastructures rely on GNSS to some extent" — and the Russians have started hacking it

The Russians have started hacking into the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) on a mass scale in order to confuse thousands of ships and airplanes about where they are, according to a study of false GNSS signals by C4AD.

GNSS comprises the constellation of international satellites that orbit the earth. The US's Global Positioning System (GPS), China's Beidou, Russia's GLONASS, and Europe's Galileo program are all part of GNSS.

Your phone, law enforcement, shipping, airlines, and power stations — anything dependent on GPS time and location synchronization — are all vulnerable to GNSS hacking. "All critical national infrastructures rely on GNSS to some extent, with Communications, Emergency Services, Finance, and Transport identified as particularly intensive users," according to a report commissioned by the UK Space Agency. An attack that disabled GNSS in Britain would cost about £1 billion every day the system was down, the report said.

The jamming, blocking, or spoofing of GNSS signals by the Russian government is "more indiscriminate and persistent, larger in scope, and more geographically diverse than previous public reporting suggested," according to the Weekly Intelligence Summary from Digital Shadows, a cyber security monitoring service.

This diagram shows GPS signals for a ship jumping around between the accurate location at sea and a false location at a nearby airport.
C4AD
Nearly 10,000 incidents of ships being sent bad location data

The C4AD study says:

1,311 civilian ships have been affected.
9,883 incidents were reported or detected.
Until the last couple of years, C4AD believed the Russians used GNSS jamming or spoofing mostly to disguise the whereabouts of President Putin.

For instance, a large area over Cape Idokopas, near Gelendzhik on the Black Sea coast of Russia, appears to be within a permanent GNSS spoofing zone. The cape is believed to be Putin's summer home, or dacha. It contains a vast and lavish private residence: "a large Italianate palace, several helicopter pads, an amphitheatre, and a small port," C4AD says. It is the only private home in Russia that enjoys the same level of airspace protection and GNSS interference as the Kremlin.

C4AD believes Putin's summer "dacha" is protected by a permanent GNSS spoofing zone.
C4AD
"Russian forces had developed mobile GNSS jamming units to provide protection for the Russian president"

"The geographical placement of the spoofing incidents closely aligns with places where Vladimir Putin was making overseas and domestic visits, suggesting that Russian forces had developed mobile GNSS jamming units to provide protection for the Russian president. The incidents also align with the locations of Russian military and government resources. Although in some areas the motive was likely to restrict access to or obstruct foreign military," according to Digital Shadows.

Ships sailing near Gelendzhik have reported receiving bogus navigation data on their satellite systems. "In June 2017, the captain of the merchant vessel Atria provided direct evidence of GNSS spoofing activities off the coast of Gelendzhik, Russia, when the vessel's on-board navigation systems indicated it was located in the middle of the Gelendzhik Airport, about 20km away. More than two dozen other vessels reported similar disruptions in the region on that day," C4AD says.

Putin addresses workers at the Kerch Bridge opening ceremony.
Alexander Nemenov/Pool via REUTERS
An $80 million superyacht was sent off-course by a device the size of a briefcase

Most of the incidents have been recorded in Crimea, the Black Sea, Syria, and Russia.

Perhaps more disturbingly, GNSS spoofing equipment is available to almost anyone, for just a few hundred dollars.

"In the summer of 2013, a research team from The University of Texas at Austin (UT) successfully hijacked the GPS navigation systems onboard an $80 million superyacht using a $2,000 device the size of a small briefcase. The experimental attack forced the ship's navigation systems to relay false positioning information to the vessel's captain, who subsequently made slight course corrections to keep the ship seemingly on track," C4AD reported.

Since then the cost of a GNSS spoofing device has fallen to about $300, C4AD says, and some people have been using them to cheat at Pokemon Go.

https://www.businessinsider.com/gnss-ha ... er=twitter

[stickdog99]

Over/under on Glenn Greenwald attacking this story: 45 minutes


Here’s the translated headline: “Exclusive — the secret deal to finance the party of Matteo Salvini [the nationalist Italian Deputy PM] with Russian money”


Esclusivo - La trattativa segreta per finanziare con soldi russi la Lega di Matteo Salvini
http://espresso.repubblica.it/inchieste ... refresh_ce

The Russian Sleuth Who Outs Moscow's Elite Hackers and Assassins

Ten years ago, Roman Dobrokhotov sat down in the front row of a Kremlin auditorium, surrounded by a polite audience of journalists and dignitaries attending a speech by Russia’s then-president Dmitri Medvedev. Medvedev was only a few minutes into his address on the importance of the country's constitution—which he had just amended to allow Vladimir Putin to serve as president again—when Dobrokhotov stood up, turned around, and addressed the audience himself.

“Why listen to him? He’s broken all our human rights and freedoms,” Dobrokhotov said in a loud, clear voice. “And he tries to tell us about the constitution!”

Dobrokhotov still remembers the faces of the people around him. “They tried to pretend they couldn’t hear, but the acoustics were actually very good,” he says. In a typical scene of Kremlin doublethink, Medvedev told the crowd that the young heckler should have the right to speak, even as security guards covered Dobrokhotov's mouth and hauled him out of the room.

Today, Dobrokhotov has found a better megaphone. And the 35-year-old Muscovite is using it to broadcast something that’s much harder for the Kremlin to ignore: the secrets of one of its most aggressive and dangerous spy agencies.

Over the last two weeks, the investigative news site Dobrokhotov runs, the Insider, has published a series of exposés on the alleged third agent of the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU involved in last year’s attempted nerve-agent assassination of Russian defector Sergei Skripal. The attack resulted in one person’s death and the hospitalization of three others, including Skripal and his daughter.

The Insider's reporting, published in collaboration with researchers at the website Bellingcat, has shown that the accused man, Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev, appears to be linked to a separate attempted killing with a nerve agent poison in Bulgaria in 2015. Their stories exposed yet another alleged GRU assassin's identity, hinted at the wider extent of Russia's use of chemical weapons in assassination efforts, and established an apparent new link between Sergeev and a private mercenary company known as the Wagner Group.

"To do that work from Russia takes a remarkable amount of courage."
John Hultquist, FireEye
For the Insider and Bellingcat, they’re also just the latest in an ongoing series of revelations they’ve made about the GRU, an agency now believed to be responsible for everything from the Skripal assassination attempt to the hacking and leaking operation targeting US and French elections.

A significant portion of what the world knows about the GRU's involvement in those recent scandals comes from the work of Dobrokhotov's site and its Bellingcat partners. The Insider has revealed the GRU's role in hacking the emails of French presidential Emmanuel Macron ahead of the country's 2017 election—even naming the specific GRU unit responsible—months before an indictment by US special counsel Robert Mueller exposed that same unit's hacking efforts in the US election. Dobrokhotov has helped to identify two Russian military officers allegedly involved in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, which killed all 298 civilians on board. And most recently, it has worked with Bellingcat to investigate Skripal's would-be assassins, identifying two of the three alleged GRU killers by name last year before completing the trifecta last week.

The GRU's Gadfly

Dobrokhotov says he never exactly made a decision to target the GRU, which for decades has remained even more opaque than fellow Russian intelligence agencies like the FSB or SVR. "We just start to investigate one story and it turns out to be a GRU officer. Then we investigate a totally different story and it seems to be a GRU officer again," Dobrokhotov says in English that he has honed with hours of watching Stephen Colbert. "They're just so active, and they make so many mistakes, that they pop up in every investigation."

But while most of the international credit for that string of GRU revelations has gone to Bellingcat, Dobrokhotov and his staff have taken on higher stakes. Unlike Bellingcat's researchers, they're Russian, and live in close proximity to the very spies and assassins they're exposing. That has allowed them to run down some details of their investigations that Bellingcat never could have otherwise. It also puts them at far greater risk of arrest—or worse—than their international collaborators.

"I'm astonished by their ability. They're extraordinary investigators," says John Hultquist, a former State Department staffer and current researcher at security firm FireEye who has focused for years on GRU hacking. "To do that work from Russia takes a remarkable amount of courage."

Or as Thomas Rid, a cyberconflict-focused professor at Johns Hopkins puts it: "These stories mean more in Russian. The consequences of stepping on someone's toes in Russia can be far graver than they are here."

But when I met up with Dobrokhotov last November in a central Moscow bar—the closest thing the Insider's dozen-person staff has to an office—he told me he has no misgivings about taking on this particular adversary. "The choice is very simple. if you want to be a journalist in Russia, you either choose the real topics, the most important topics, or you’re not a real journalist," he said. "If you write about traffic jams, that’s fine in Switzerland or Sweden. But in Russia you have to work on these topics, because they can change society."

https://www.wired.com/story/roman-dobro ... nsiteshare

Dobrokhotov sounds heroic to me. But when was the last time [i[Wired[/i] wrote an article portraying any US analogue to Dobrokhotov as heroic? And how long would any US equivalent of Dobrokhotov avoid persecution under either the Obama or the Trump administrations?

[seemslikeadream]

Russian Bitcoin Theft Suspect Sued for $100 Million by U.S.
Joel Rosenblatt


Alexander Vinnik arrives at court in Thessaloniki, Greece on Oct. 4, 2017.
Photographer: Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP via Getty Images

Digital currency exchange BTC-e and one of its owners, a Russian whose extradition the U.S. is seeking from Greece to face criminal charges, now face a civil lawsuit in California.

The U.S. is attempting to recover penalties of $100 million from the company and Alexander Vinnik for alleged violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. Federal prosecutors in San Francisco charged Vinnik in 2017 with stealing Bitcoins from other virtual exchanges. One legal expert speculated the U.S. is adding a civil suit to get at assets the criminal complaint can’t reach -- and to grab assets before they’re gone.

BTC-e is incorporated in Cyprus or the Seychelles, or both, prosecutors said in a statement. Users in various places, including northern California, used the exchange to anonymously trade Bitcoin and other digital currencies, according to the statement.

Bitcoin Suspect Could Shed Light on Russian Mueller Targets

Vinnik was detained in Greece after U.S. also charged him with supervising a digital-currency exchange that helped criminals launder billions of dollars. The exchange handled some Bitcoins traced to Fancy Bear, one of the names used by Russian military intelligence officers accused of stealing and releasing Democrats’ emails to sway voters in the 2016 elections, according to analyst firm Elliptic.

He’s been jailed since his arrest, fighting the U.S. extradition request. Russia is also seeking his extradition. The Russian news agency Tass reported on July 11 that a court council in Thessaloniki extended Vinnik’s detention by six months. He was due to be released July 25, according to Vinnik’s lawyer, Timofei Musatov, Tass said.

“The U.S. is kidnapping Russian citizens through third countries,” Vinnik said in an interview for a Bloomberg News story last year.

The case is U.S. v. BTC-e, 19-cv-04281, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).

(Updates with aim of civil suit in second paragraph.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ion-by-u-s

https://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20170726&t=2&i=1194545291&r=LYNXMPED6P1O8&w=940

#FINTECH
JULY 26, 2017 / 7:28 AM / 3 HOURS AGO
Greece arrests Russian suspected of running $4 billion bitcoin laundering ring
Karolina Tagaris , Jack Stubbs and Anna Irrera
4 MIN READ

Alexander Vinnik, a 38 year old Russian man (2nd L) suspected of running a money laundering operation, is escorted by plain-clothes police officers to a court in Thessaloniki, Greece July 26, 2017.
Alexandros Avramidis
ATHENS/MOSCOW/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Russian man suspected of being the anonymous mastermind behind one of the world's oldest crypto-currency exchanges and of laundering at least $4 billion has been arrested in Greece, police and sources said on Wednesday.

Police sources identified him as Alexander Vinnik, 38, who was arrested after a tip-off in a small beachside village in northern Greece on a U.S. warrant. Police said the United States would seek to extradite him.

Two sources close to the BTC-e virtual currency exchange, who declined to be identified while the case was open, said Vinnik was a key person behind the platform, which has been offline since reporting "technical problems" late on Tuesday.

"An internationally sought 'mastermind' of a crime organization has been arrested" Greek police said in a statement. "Since 2011 the 38-year-old has been running a criminal organization which administers one of the most important websites of electronic crime in the world."

Police said "at least" $4 billion in cash had been laundered through a bitcoin platform since 2011 - the year BTC-e was founded - with 7 million bitcoins deposited, and 5.5 million bitcoins in withdrawals.

Bitcoin was the first digital currency to successfully use cryptography to keep transactions secure and pseudonymous, making conventional financial regulation difficult.

Vinnik's arrest is the latest in a series of U.S. operations against Russian cyber criminals in Europe. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department moved to shut down the dark web marketplace AlphaBay.

Alexander Vinnik, a 38 year old Russian man (L) suspected of running a money laundering operation, is escorted by a plain-clothes police officer to a court in Thessaloniki, Greece July 26, 2017.
Alexandros Avramidis
The U.S. prosecutions coincide with intensified scrutiny of Russian hackers after U.S. intelligence officials determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election using cyber warfare methods to help Donald Trump, something Moscow denies.

There was no indication Vinnik's case was connected to the U.S. hacking charges. The U.S. Department of Justice, the Russian Foreign Ministry and BTC-e did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Founded in 2011, BTC-e is one of the oldest and most obscure virtual currency exchanges, allowing users to trade bitcoin pseudonymously against fiat currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, and other virtual currencies. Until today, the people behind it had remained unknown.

Alexander Vinnik, a 38 year old Russian man (C) suspected of running a money laundering operation, is escorted by plain-clothes police officers to a court in Thessaloniki, Greece July 26, 2017.
Alexandros Avramidis
It is known in crypto-currency markets as one with the most relaxed standards for checking the identity of its users to combat money laundering, and for not collaborating with law enforcement.

This helped make BTC-e "a favorite money-laundering location," said James Smith, chief executive of Elliptic, a company that works with law enforcement to track illicit bitcoin transactions. The exchange has been connected to recent ransomware attacks, he said.

BTC-e has been out of service for over 24 hours for what it described as "unplanned maintenance." In a tweet on Wednesday after the arrest, BTC-e said it would restore service in the next 5-10 days.

While bitcoins can be bought and spent anonymously using digital wallets with unique addresses, transactions are recorded on a public ledger called blockchain, making it possible to follow the coins.

Over the years, law enforcement agencies around the world have been able to identify users behind pseudonymous wallets connected to illegal activities by tracking bitcoin movements, often with the help of exchanges and security firms like Elliptic.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gree ... SKBN1AB1OP

Bitcoin exchange chief arrested amid new questions about Mt Gox theft
by Russell Brandom@russellbrandom Jul 26, 2017, 2:00pm EDT

Greek police have arrested one of the central figures in the Bitcoin exchange BTC-e on suspicion of money laundering. Russian citizen Alexander Vinnik was arrested in Greece at the request of US law enforcement, according to a Reuters report. The report cites two sources close to BTC-e who describe Vinnik as “a key person behind the platform.”

The BTC-e exchange has long been a favorite of criminals, as its headquarters in Russia places it outside the reach of US and European law enforcement. Recent Google research found that 95 percent of ransomware cash-outs occurred through the BTC-e exchange, although it’s unclear whether the exchange itself would be liable for those payments.

Those payments have made BTC-e one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, regularly handling more than 3 percent of total Bitcoin transactions. The exchange has been down since Tuesday evening.

“OUR CHIEF SUSPECT FOR INVOLVEMENT IN THE MT GOX THEFT”
The charges against Vinnik are still sealed, and are likely to remain sealed as prosecutors attempt to extradite him to the US. However, law enforcement officials indicated that as much as $4 billion is suspected to have been laundered through the platform.

Some analysts also believe Vinnik is connected the massive theft that brought down the Mt Gox bitcoin exchange in 2014. In a report released shortly after the arrest, the security firm Wizsec described Vinnik as “our chief suspect for involvement in the Mt Gox theft (or the laundering of the proceeds thereof).” Analyzing transactions on the blockchain, the group claims to have seen the proceeds from several high-profile Bitcoin thefts pass through wallets listed under Vinnik’s name.

Mt Gox was the most popular exchange of early Bitcoin users, until it was revealed to be catastrophically insolvent as a result of a long-running theft, which made off with as much as $400 million in bitcoin. The culprit has never been identified, and has remained a subject of intense speculation throughout the bitcoin community.

Previous analysis of the theft indicated the crucial compromise occurred as early as 2011, with subsequent withdrawals going unnoticed until years afterward. BTC-e was founded in July 2011.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/26/1603 ... ft-suspect

The first global cyber war has begun

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30523

checking to see if this is the same guy

Russian jailed for rival's murder
Sergei Yushenkov
Yushenkov was shot outside his apartment block
A Russian politician has been jailed for 20 years for ordering the murder of a rival, Russian news agencies report.
Mikhail Kodanev was convicted two weeks ago of paying for the death of Sergei Yushenkov, 52.

The murder was one of Russia's highest-profile political killings for years.

The men were part of rival factions of the Liberal Russia Party, founded by now exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky. Kodanev led a breakaway faction backed by Mr Berezovsky.

Kodanev killed Mr Yushenkov to take control of party funding, the court heard, paying $60,000 for the contract killing.

Boris Berezovsky
Berezovsky backed faction led by Kodanev
Mr Yuskenkov was gunned down outside his apartment block in Moscow in April 2003.

The gunman, Alexander Kulachinsky, was convicted of murder and jailed for 20 years.

The Liberal Russia Party, set up to rival President Vladimir Putin, was seen as having little political weight even before the murder.

Two other men convicted of helping organise the murder, Alexander Vinnik and Igor Kiselyev were sentenced to 10 and 11 years each respectively.

Mr Berezovsky, a close associate of Kodanev, accuses Russian authorities of organising the murder.

Mr Yushenkov was the second leader of Liberal Russia to be murdered in less than a year. Another co-chairman, Vladimir Golovlyov, was shot dead in August 2002.

Russia’s RT news channel fined £200,000 for impartiality breaches over Salisbury poisoning and Syria

Seven programmes found in breach include two editions of George Galloway’s Sputnik show


Lizzie Dearden Security Correspondent @lizziedearden
1 day ago

Former Respect MP’s shows failed to comply with broadcasting rules ( RT )
Russian government-owned broadcaster RT has been fined £200,000 for programmes about the Salisbury poisoning and Syrian war.

Ofcom said the channel, formerly named Russia Today, had committed “serious failures” to comply with broadcasting rules on impartiality in seven news and current and affairs programmes.

The shows, aired between 17 March and 26 April 2018, included two hosted by former Respect MP George Galloway, three current affairs shows and two news bulletins.

“Taken together, these breaches represented serious and repeated failures of compliance with our rules,” a spokesperson for Ofcom said.

“We were particularly concerned by the frequency of RT’s rule-breaking over a relatively short period of time.

“The programmes were mostly in relation to major matters of political controversy and current public policy – namely the UK government’s response to the events in Salisbury, and the Syrian conflict.”

Ofcom has fined RT £200,000 and directed it to broadcast a summary of its findings in the format and time of the watchdog’s choosing.

RT, which has not committed any further breaches, has launched a legal challenge against Ofcom’s decisions, and the sanctions will not be imposed until the outcome of legal proceedings.

A court granted RT permission for judicial review in June, and a full hearing is expected towards the end of the year.

A spokesperson for RT vowed to challenge the breach decisions and said the sanction was “very wrong” and disproportionate.

Ofcom said it would be defending its decisions in court, and added: “We consider this sanction to be appropriate and proportionate.

“It takes into account the additional steps that RT has taken to ensure its compliance since we launched our investigations.”

One episode of Mr Galloway’s Sputnik programme saw a co-presenter claim novichok was held at Britain’s Porton Down defence laboratory, while a former FSB secret service officer called the poisoning a “badly prepared provocation”.

Another saw Mr Galloway interview an “independent researcher” who presented the Salisbury poisoning as a plot to “punish Russia”.


Russian novichok suspects appear on TV to claim they were tourists visiting Salibury Cathedral
The breaches come as the UK accused Russia of proposing “contradictory and changing fantasies” to deny involvement in the attack on Sergei Skripal, amid heightened tensions over wars in Syria and Ukraine, alleged election interference and cyberattacks.

British security services identified two Russian GRU agents as the perpetrators of the attempted assassination, which caused the death of British mother Dawn Sturgess. RT broadcast an interview with the two suspects, in which they claimed to be salespeople who visited Salisbury for its “internationally famous” cathedral.


Salisbury novichok attack ‘commanded by third Russian agent in London’
In March, researchers found that RT and Russian government-owned news website Sputnik worked as “damage control” for the Kremlin during the Salisbury attack and other incidents.

A report by the Policy Institute at King’s College London found that coverage of the Skripal poisoning “had all the features of a disinformation campaign and sought to sow confusion and uncertainty” through a “vast array of contradictory narratives and unchallenged conspiracy theories”.

Three episodes of the Crosstalk current affairs programme were found to be in breach, including one that broadcast claims of a “false flag chemical attack” in Syria, and accused the US of trying to “partition” the country and funding jihadis. Another episode of Crosstalk repeated claims that gas attacks on civilians had been “staged”.

An RT news bulletin on 18 March last year was found to have broken impartiality rules after claiming that militants were “preparing to stage chemical attacks in Syria to give the US a pretext to attack the government”. On 29 April, another RT news bulletin claimed that the Ukrainian government was “promoting the glorification of Nazism”.

A spokesperson for RT said: “While we continue to contest the very legitimacy of the breach decisions themselves, we find the scale of the proposed penalty to be particularly inappropriate and disproportionate per Ofcom’s own track record.

“It is notable that cases that involved hate speech and incitement to violence have been subject to substantially lower fines. It is astonishing that, in contrast, Ofcom sees RT’s programmes – which it thought should have presented more alternative points of view – as worthy of greater sanction than programmes containing hate speech and incitement to violence. We are duly considering further legal options.”

RT has an average audience of 3,400 viewers at any given point during the day, and an average weekly reach of 1 cent of UK adults, according to Ofcom figures. Owner TV Novosti has been disciplined for 15 breaches of the broadcasting code since 2012, mostly relating to Russia’s foreign policy in programmes about the wars in Ukraine and Syria.

Ofcom’s code states that all news must be reported “with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality”, and that “undue prominence” must not be given to a particular side on matters of controversy.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 21871.html

[RocketMan]

So what, this is the general "Rigorous Intuition Russophobia" thread where one can post anything bad individual Russians do? Or is the thought process such that every Russian criminal / bad actor can eventually be traced to Kremlin, hell to Putin himself?

[seemslikeadream]

this thread is about the leader of Russia

we all are brothers and sisters with the people of Russia, the people of Puerto Rico, the people of Pakistan, the people of Hong Kong, all protesting this week

the Russian people and the American people are footing the bill for Putin's fascist little games


looks like the Russian people are getting as tired of Putin as Americans are

protest 3.jpg

Police Beat, Detain Protesters And Opposition Figures At Moscow Rally
RFE/RL
MOSCOW -- Police in Moscow have detained and beaten opposition politicians, along with protesters, in an attempt to disperse a demonstration against the refusal of election officials to register several opposition figures as candidates in municipal elections.

Moscow police said they arrested more than 1,000 demonstrators around the unsanctioned rally on July 27 amid a heavy security presence in the Russian capital.

Several opposition figures and would-be candidates were among those detained -- including Ivan Zhdanov, Ilya Yashin, and Dmitry Gudkov.

Lyubov Sobol, an opposition leader whose bid to run in the municipal election was rejected by the city's election commission, and city councilor Yulia Galyamina were detained by police on July 27 on their way to the rally in central Moscow.

Sobol, Yashin, Galyamina, and Zhdanov were released in the early evening of July 27. But Sobol, Zhdanov, and Galyamina were rearrested later the same day, along with dozens more demonstrators, near the Moscow Metro's Trubnaya station after they issued calls for protests to continue there.

Aleksandra Parushina, a Moscow city councilwoman from the opposition A Just Russia party, told the Russian-language Current Time television that she was struck in the head by riot police from Russia's OMON force who "brutally" dispersed a crowd that was attempting to form near the Moscow mayor's office on Tverskaya Street, one of of the city's main thoroughfares.

"The OMON was called with batons and they started pushing us back very brutally and, in this horrific stampede, they began hitting people on their heads," Parushina said. "I received a blow. At first I did not even feel the pain, just saw so much blood on me from somewhere."

"I was probably unconscious for a moment and when I came back to my senses I heard OMON officers offering to fetch me an ambulance," Parushina said. "I refused because I was worried about all the people here and I decided to come back to be with all of them. At the end people managed to give me first aid."

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Parushina said shortly after the incident that she had not yet decided what action she would take in response to the violence.

But she called for the resignation of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that what he is doing is "no longer leadership but destruction."

'A New Low'

The director of Amnesty International's office in Russia, Natalya Zvyagina, said Russian authorities "hit a new low by imposing military law-like security measures on the unsanctioned rally, blocking access to major Moscow streets and shutting down businesses in advance" despite the absence of credible reports of potential violence.

"Efforts to quash opposition voices reached absurd levels when protest leaders were preventively detained by police upon leaving their homes to attend the rally," Zvyagina said.

She said representatives of her nongovernmental human rights group witnessed "indiscriminate use of force by police, who beat protesters with batons and knocked them to the ground."

Zvyagina also noted that "police detained a jogger running past Moscow City Hall hours before the start of the rally; media later reported that his leg had been broken."

Mikhail Fedotov, the head of Russia's Presidential Council For Civil Society and Human Rights, said he saw people being detained for no reason at the rally but he did not see any instances of police violence. He said he would raise the issue with law enforcement officers.

"I got mixed impressions from the detentions that I saw," Fedotov told Russia's Interfax news agency. "I spoke to detained people in a van. I did not see any violent arrests, but groundless ones. I saw them with my own eyes."

Nikolai Svanidze, a member of the human rights council, said he did not see demonstrators act aggressively. He described the arrests as "random," saying men and women were "being picked and dragged into police vans."

'We Are Unarmed!'

An official from Moscow's city police department told RFE/RL that more than 3,500 people gathered near the mayor's office for the unsanctioned demonstration -- including 700 registered journalists and bloggers.

Opposition activists said the number was much higher but it was difficult to estimate accurate figures because authorities prevented a mass crowd from gathering together in any one location.​

As police moved in to disperse the demonstrators near Moscow City Hall, many in the crowd could be heard singing the Russian national anthem.

Others chanted "We are unarmed!", "Fair elections now!", and "Russia will be free!"

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Helmeted police also barged into the headquarters of Aleksei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition activist, while his aides were conducting a live YouTube broadcast of the protest and arrested program leader Vladimir Milonov.

Police also searched Dozhd, an Internet TV station that was covering the protest. Its editor-in-chief Aleksandra Perepelova was ordered to undergo questioning by Russia's Investigative Committee.

The decision to bar opposition candidates over what election officials described as insufficient signatures on nominating petitions has sparked several days of demonstrations this month.

Opposition leaders say it's an attempt to deny them the chance to challenge pro-government candidates.

The violent crackdown followed raids on the houses of some opposition politicians who tried to register for the September elections but were rejected by Moscow city election officials.​

Navalny had called for the protest, saying it would continue until the rejected candidates were allowed to run.

Navalny was jailed for 30 days on July 24 for calling an unauthorized protest.

'Completely Discredited'

In a Twitter post earlier on July 27, Moscow Mayor Sobyanin said that "order in the city will be ensured."

Sobyanin also alleged that the opposition was busing in activists from the regions for this "provocation."

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (file photo)
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (file photo)
Ivan Kulnev, a would-be Moscow City Duma candidate whose bid to register rejected, said the detentions of protesters and opposition candidates, as well as home searches, were "discrediting" the authorities in Moscow.

"What are you doing to us?" he said, referring to authorities. "Why are you inciting [passions]? They detained [Ilya] Yashin in the morning, then more of our [opposition] candidates. They are conducting searches. Why? You are simply making people mad. They have completely discredited themselves. Essentially, they have f****d themselves up with the whole world watching," Kulnev told Current Time.

The manager of a pharmacy near the Moscow mayor's office told RFE/RL that police had instructed her and managers of other nearby shops to close for the day or "face consequences."

"You know what’s worst?" the manager, Yekaterina, said. "It’s normal people like us who will suffer."

Nastya Safyeva, a 24-year-old protester, said she had turned out to defend "our right to vote."

"Today’s an important day since our candidates were not allowed to run," Safyeva told RFE/RL."

Heading into the weekend, the authorities moved against many of the protest leaders.

On July 24, law-enforcement officers searched the homes of several would-be candidates in the Moscow vote and summoned some for questioning, citing a criminal probe opened the same day by the Moscow branch of the Investigative Committee, which accused activists of hampering the work of the election officials.

Late the following day, Navalny associate and would-be Moscow City council candidate Sobol was carried out of the city election commission building on a couch.

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On July 26, members of the Investigative Committee combed the campaign headquarters of Sobol and fellow city council candidates Zhdannov and Yashin.

'Brazen And Unlawful'

Candidate Konstantin Yankauskas said police also searched the home of his parents.

"They don’t even try to hide that this criminal case is politically motivated," Yashin said on Twitter. "It is brazen and unlawful pressure on the opposition in the peak of an election campaign."

In a Twitter post on July 27, Navalny's press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, said authorities also searched her apartment as well as Ruslan Shaveddinov's, the host of Navalny's YouTube channel.

Yarmysh had tweeted on July 26 that the searches were part of an effort by police to "intimidate and frighten people so that when they read all the stories about questionings and arrests, they become too frightened to leave their homes."

The protests began earlier in July after the Moscow Election Commission excluded independent opposition candidates from the September city council election, claiming some of the required 5,500 signatures they had collected to get on the ballot were invalid.

The independent candidates have accused the committee of fraud, claiming the officials are trying to find excuses to prevent them from competing against pro-government politicians.

A July 20 opposition rally in Moscow drew an estimated crowd of 20,000 and the opposition was promising a bigger crowd for the next demonstration.

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But Moscow authorities refused to sanction the planned July 27 Moscow event, claiming there were threats of violence against members of the election commission.

The 45 members of the city council, known as the Moscow Duma, hold powerful posts, retaining the ability to propose legislation as well as inspect how the city’s $43 billion budget is spent.

The outcome of the battle between the election commission and the independent candidates could set a precedent for the rest of Russia, said Maria Snegovaya, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis who focuses on Russian domestic politics.

“All eyes are on Moscow right now," Snegovaya told RFE/RL on July 25. "If the independent candidates are allowed to run, this would serve a very important inspiration for the opposition across the country and possibly mobilize it in light of the upcoming regional elections in September."

With reporting by RFE/RL correspondent Matthew Luxmoore, Current Time, AP, Reuters, The Moscow Times, and Interfax

RFE/RL journalists report the news in 26 languages in 22 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established. We provide what many people cannot get locally: uncensored news, responsible discussion, and open debate.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-opposit ... 77701.html

Garry Kasparov

Big protest marches in Moscow today, and they are calling out Putin by name. For 20 years he has used repression, propaganda, and war to blame others for Russia's crisis.
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1 ... 9464580096

Police Detain Over 800 in Crackdown on Moscow Elections Protest
Saturday’s demonstration came after a wave of arrests of opposition candidates barred from the ballot.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/ ... lly-a66599

Russia protests: Riot police violently break up Moscow demonstration as thousands take to streets in defiance of Kremlin
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 23231.html

Hundreds arrested as Moscow rally calls for fair elections


https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2019/0727/1065522-russia/

https://twitter.com/mediazzzona/status/ ... 2323400705

protest.jpg

protest2.jpg

Ivan Nechepurenko
‏

Petrovka, one of Moscow’s most upscale streets has been blocked now with protesters chanting “Putin is a thief”



The police seem to have been caught off guard by the sheer number of protesters, who now march through Moscow city center freely.


https://twitter.com/INechepurenko/statu ... 2525224960

[Belligerent Savant]

Garry Kasparov

Big protest marches in Moscow today, and they are calling out Putin by name. For 20 years he has used repression, propaganda, and war to blame others for Russia's crisis.
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1 ... 9464580096

Police Detain Over 800 in Crackdown on Moscow Elections Protest
Saturday’s demonstration came after a wave of arrests of opposition candidates barred from the ballot.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/ ... lly-a66599

Russia protests: Riot police violently break up Moscow demonstration as thousands take to streets in defiance of Kremlin
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 23231.html

Hundreds arrested as Moscow rally calls for fair elections

Seems the Russian people have a better sense of domestic abuse of power/fraud than their counterparts in America: the Russian people recognize there's rot within their govt, whereas a sizable segment of our citizenry remain fixated on the distraction of alleged 'foreign actors' when the criminals perpetrating the greatest acts of fraud against the populace are right here within our boundaries (or otherwise bankrolled by those within our boundaries), representing BOTH parties.

[RocketMan]

Seems the Russian people have a better sense of domestic abuse of power/fraud than their counterparts in America: the Russian people recognize there's rot within their govt, whereas a sizable segment of our citizenry remain fixated on the distraction of alleged 'foreign actors' when the criminals perpetrating the greatest acts of fraud against the populace are right here within our boundaries (or otherwise bankrolled by those within our boundaries), representing BOTH parties.

EXACTLY.

The psychological soothing comfort of blaming The Other... Ugly ugly ugly.

[seemslikeadream]

Americans know a criminal when they see one, they know where the rot comes from

Alexei Navalny: Jailed Russian opposition head develops 'allergy'
Alexei Navalny at rally in Moscow, 20 JulyEPA
Alexei Navalny was arrested on Wednesday
Russia's most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, has been taken from jail to a hospital in Moscow.

Officials gave no details of his condition but Mr Navalny's spokeswoman said he had had an allergic reaction with severe facial swelling - something she said he had not experienced before.

A hospital source told Russian media his condition was satisfactory,

Mr Navalny was jailed for 30 days last week after calling for unauthorised protests, which took place on Saturday.

More than 1,000 people were detained during demonstrations against the barring of opposition candidates in forthcoming local elections.


Police marched away detainees
The European Union criticised the "disproportionate" use of force against the protesters, saying it undermined the "fundamental freedoms of expression, association and assembly".

How is Navalny being treated?

Mr Navalny's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, tweeted that the opposition leader had never experienced an allergic reaction before.

Presentational white space
He was being given the "necessary medical assistance" in a hospital ward under police protection, she said.

Mr Navalny made his name in Russia as a grassroots anti-corruption campaigner who led the country's biggest street protests against President Vladimir Putin during the winter of 2011.

He has been repeatedly jailed, usually for his involvement in unauthorised demonstrations, but also (at a retrial in 2017) for embezzlement in a case he says was farcical.

His fraud conviction barred him from standing against Mr Putin in the 2018 presidential election.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49144327

Russia's Navalny Hospitalized With 'Severe' Allergic Reaction
RFE/RL
A spokeswoman for Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who is serving a 30-day jail term, says he has been hospitalized with a severe allergy attack.

Kira Yarmysh said Navalny was taken from the Moscow detention facility to a hospital on the morning of July 28.

The opposition figure and Kremlin foe arrived at the hospital with “severe facial swelling and red rashes on the skin,” Yarmysh tweeted.

The source of the allergic reaction has not been determined yet, she wrote, adding that Navalny “never experienced an allergic reaction before.”

Infographic: All The Times Aleksei Navalny Has Been In Jail



Navalny was sentenced last week to 30 days for calling for an unsanctioned protest in Moscow on July 27, during which more than 1,300 people were detained by police, according to an independent group that monitors crackdowns on demonstrations.

He had been sentenced to jail about a dozen times in recent years and has served more than 200 days in incarceration.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-s-navaln ... 79648.html