Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

Britain, Defence, Military, NATO, Russia, United States

Russia flexes its military muscles

VOSTOK-2018

RUSSIA is conducting a “worrying and alarming” build-up of military power in regions across the world.

As defence sources have warned that manoeuvres by Moscow should be regarded as a “threat to western democracy”, it has been increasing its submarine activity off British shores in a bid to gather intelligence.

And in recent weeks Russia has sent numerous warships and supply chains through the English Channel en route to the eastern Mediterranean. It is feared they are amassing ahead of an air assault on the rebel-held area of Idlib in Syria, which could risk the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians.

Despite the focus often put on Russia’s cyber-warfare capabilities, this week it will conduct its largest military exercise in 37 years, involving almost 300,000 troops, in a huge demonstration of force that is causing alarm in Whitehall. Moscow has boasted that the war games – which serve as a reminder to other nations that Russia maintains a huge conventional military arsenal – will involve 1,000 warplanes, helicopters and drones, up to 80 combat and logistics ships and around 36,000 tanks, armoured personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles.

The exercises, called Vostok-2018, will be held in central and eastern Russia and will also include participants from the Mongolian and Chinese militaries.

The Kremlin says the drills are justified given the “aggressive and unfriendly” attitudes towards their country. Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said they will include “massive” mock airstrikes and tests of defences against cruise missiles.

A defence source in Britain said: “We are seeing an alarming amount of military power being brought to bear around the globe by Russia.

“We consider it a worrying build-up of conventional forces and arms. It can clearly be regarded as a threat to Western democracy. A miscalculation could very easily lead to an escalation.”

While NATO has beefed up defences in Eastern Europe, the Russians have been accused of undermining international efforts for an Afghan-led peace process by inviting the Taliban to Moscow for peace talks. And they have also been accused of indirectly arming the Taliban – something they have repeatedly denied.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has warned of the disruptive influence that the Russians were having on the peace process in Afghanistan. Mr Williamson says that we’re seeing a much greater interest from Russia in Afghanistan and Afghan affairs. There is ample evidence of Moscow meddling.

Mr Williamson said: “I would describe it as them wanting the NATO mission to fail. They do not want there to be seen to be the success of both the Afghan government and NATO. What it is very much designed to do is be a disruptor to other western nations which are trying to build stability in Afghanistan.”

The scale of the Vostok-2018 war games is equivalent to the forces deployed in one of the big Second World War battles. The exercises have been compared to Soviet manoeuvres in 1981, called Zapad-81, which involved simulated attacks on NATO.

President Vladimir Putin has made military modernisation, including new nuclear missiles, a priority.

The giant drill is an important show of strength by Putin, as a demonstration that – despite Western sanctions, including ones targeting his defence sector – his country remains defiant.

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Britain, Europe, Government, Russia, Society

The prospect of an escalating global war is terrifyingly real

THE WEST AND RUSSIA

THERESA MAY made perhaps the most momentous statement of her political career at Westminster when, in a dramatic scene in the Commons, she effectively accused the Russian state of an act of war. She said the Kremlin had instructed its military intelligence agency, the GRU, to assassinate the defector Sergei Skripal in March.

Backed up by a wealth of irrefutable evidence about the two Russian intelligence agents who carried out the assignment, which ultimately resulted in the death of a British citizen and three other serious poisoning cases, Mrs May’s assertion has huge implications, not only for Britain’s relations with the rogue Russian regime, but also for European and Western foreign policy as a whole.

The Salisbury incident is truly shocking. It is the first time that a Briton has been killed on our home soil by a chemical weapon deployed by a foreign power. Yet until it happened, Britain seemed utterly indifferent to the brutality of Vladimir Putin’s government.

 

AFTER Putin sanctioned and authorised another well publicised assault on British soil in 2006, when ex-Russian secret policeman Alexander Litvinenko was murdered with a radioactive poison in London, the initial shock and anger soon ebbed away to apathy, thanks in large part to the feebleness of our Government’s response.

Whilst it is true that the British authorities were quick to name the Russian suspects, the speed of this early announcement was not matched by resolute action from the Government.

The huffing and puffing in Whitehall produced half-measures. That can only have reassured the Russian spymasters that they could get away with assassination.

Sine then we have all become aware of the litany of charges against Russia, like its seizure of Crimea, its blood-soaked intervention in Syria in aide of President Assad’s tyranny and its shooting down of the Malaysian airliner MH17 over rebel-held Ukraine in 2014.

But all those atrocities happened abroad, it was argued. They were nothing to do with us, so a proverbial slap on the wrists would surely do.

In contrast, from the start of the Skripal case, the Prime Minister has been far tougher, imposing sanctions, expelling Russian diplomats, galvanising NATO, and even winning the support of Donald Trump’s White House and the EU for her actions.

Admittedly, this was partly because the potential consequence of the Salisbury poisoning was even more serious than the Litvinenko case, given that Novichok put hundreds of lives at risk.

Nevertheless, the British Government has, despite all its problems with Brexit, displayed a commendable spirit of resolution that has been all too absent until now.

Through her clear-sighted resolution, Theresa May has mounted a direct challenge to Putin’s regime.

And although it has taken six months to name the alleged perpetrators, it has been worth the wait. Thanks to the thoroughness of the investigation, the sheer weight of incriminating material she was able to announce in the Commons means that the Russian state cannot slide away from its responsibility for this crime.

What her Commons statement also did was to blow apart the absurd conspiracy theories about the Salisbury assault that have been circulating, many of them promoted by Putin’s regime or by Kremlin sympathisers.

The evidence, gathered by 250 detectives from 11,000 hours of CCTV footage, shows incontestably where the blame lies. This raises the question as to why the Kremlin resorted to such an act. The answer lies in Putin’s security policy, which is so important to his macho political persona and the image of his regime’s invincibility.

As a former KGB officer himself, he has made ruthlessness a central part of his strongman reputation. It thereby enhances his appeal among the Russian people.

When he first came to power in 2000 on his election as Russian president, there were profound weaknesses in the country’s security apparatus, epitomised by the defections of agents like Litvinenko and Skripal.

 

SO much information was leaked after the fall of communism that Western intelligence thought they had crippled Russia’s GRU agency, giving MI6 and the CIA a window directly into Russian policymaking which helped them to predict the Kremlin’s actions.

But Putin changed all that through a pitiless crackdown. Internal security was vastly improved and leaks closed.

The CIA has privately admitted that many of its contacts in Moscow have gone silent. Some have disappeared. Others simply do not respond to efforts to contact them.

Dealing mercilessly with the defectors became an essential part of that security crackdown.

Since March, it has often been asked why Skripal, a former double agent, should still be a target, so many years after Putin let him out of the Gulag and allowed him to retire to Britain. It appears that Putin’s intelligence services have decided that letting defectors sleep soundly at night offers too much temptation for others to follow suit.

Kill one, frighten 10,000 is an old tactic, and one that the Russians seem to have adopted. Washington certainly believes that putting the fear of God into potential double-agents was the real reason for poisoning Sergei Skripal.

The Salisbury attack may also reflect Putin’s wider, geopolitical strategy, with its focus on dividing the West through surprise, propaganda and intimidation. Years ago he decided the West, particularly America and Britain, wanted to get rid of his regime.

Instead of asking what he could do to allay Western concerns, he adopted the opposite course by using Russian wealth from the country’s energy resources, plus the long experience of Soviet spycraft, to mount campaigns of disinformation and denial.

Until Salisbury, that strategy appeared to be working. The Novichok assault, however, led to an unprecedented act of unity – due in part to the British Government’s resolve.

The West hung together and backed Britain. The question now is whether this accord will last. The Prime Minister has said that she will be trying to mobilise the EU to harden sanctions on Russia and co-ordinate counter-measures against Russian intelligence operations in Europe.

That could be easier said than done. The wall of unity is already showing signs of cracking. Apart from the awkwardness created by Brexit, Putin’s policy of divide and conquer is also having an impact, for the Russian president has been soft-talking allies in the EU.

Last month, for instance, he was a guest at the Austrian foreign minister’s wedding, and Vienna’s Right-wing government is one of the loudest voices in the EU clamouring for improving relations with Moscow.

In Italy, the new government is led by a critic of sanctions against Russia, so imposing new ones is unlikely to win Rome’s support.

Yet, Britain cannot possibly let the Salisbury attack slide away into unpunished oblivion as it did the Litvinenko case.

The need for action is all the more important because, worryingly, the balance of global power is sliding away from the West. The U.S., Britain and the EU are still economically potent, of course, but the rise of China as both an economic and military superpower adds to the challenge posed by Russia and other states.

Even Turkey, a member of NATO, is moving away from the West under President Erdogan. The fact is that the Salisbury outrage is a graphic indicator that the world is becoming a less stable place. It was a rare but disturbing episode that exposed the nature of the escalating global war between spy agencies.

In its aftermath, that war is likely to intensify.

Which makes it all the more imperative that the Government is robust and vigilant. The West needs to be resolute and united in the face of Putin’s ruthlessness.

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Britain, European Union, National Security, Russia

Putin blasted by MI5 for ‘fog of lies’ over Salisbury

BRITAIN’S INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

Head of MI5: Andrew Parker

Intro: Andrew Parker speaks out for the first time since the Salisbury nerve agent attack

THE head of MI5, Britain’s intelligence service, has launched an excoriating attack on Russia, accusing Vladimir Putin’s regime of flagrant breaches of international law.

Andrew Parker used his first public speech outside of the UK by taking aim at the Russian president and his “aggressive and pernicious” agenda.

He told European security chiefs the Salisbury poisonings were a deliberate and malign act that could turn Russia into a “more isolated pariah”. He also launched a strident attack on the “fog of lies, half-truths and obfuscation” that pours out of Mr Putin’s propaganda machine.

Mr Parker’s speech in Berlin was the first time he has spoken publicly since the attempted assassination in Salisbury of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, in March.

The attack, with the Novichok toxin, marked the first use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War.

The MI5 director-general said that with an unrelenting international terrorist threat and rising state aggression, the UK and Europe need to work together more than ever.

His words are likely to have been interpreted as a warning to Brussels to agree a post-Brexit deal on security cooperation. That has been in growing doubt amid a row over whether Britain will still be allowed to participate in the EU’s multi-billion-pound Galileo global navigation satellite project. But Mr Parker reserved his toughest language for Russia, saying that Mr Putin’s government is pursuing an agenda through aggressive actions by its intelligence services.

He accused the Kremlin of flagrant breaches of international rules, warning that the Salisbury attack was a “deliberate and targeted malign activity”.

Britain’s security agencies are still trying to identify those individuals behind the attack. It is understood there are several persons of interest who are back in Moscow and may have been in the UK at the time of the poisoning.

Mr Parker, who has been head of the security service since 2013, also condemned the unprecedented level of Russian disinformation following the attack, saying it highlights the need “to shine a light through the fog of lies, half-truths and obfuscation that pours out of their propaganda machine”.

In the wake of the attack, Theresa May said “Kremlin-inspired” accounts were posting lies as “part of a wider effort to undermine the international system”.

Mr Parker did, however, praise the international response to the incident in his speech which was hosted by Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence service.

He noted that 28 European countries agreed to support the UK in expelling scores of Russian diplomats.

In 2017, Mrs May’s national security adviser, Mark Sedwill, said the threat from Moscow was worse than ever imagined. He warned that it was intensifying and diversifying.

 

MR Parker also told EU security leaders in Berlin that Internet giants have an “ethical responsibility” to prevent hostile states spreading a “torrent of lies” online. He said that “bare-faced lying” had become the “default mode” of the Russian state.

He added that there was a “great deal more” that could be done with internet providers to stop the exploitation of the web.

MI5’s director-general said Europe faced sustained hostile activity from states including Russia who he described as the “chief protagonist”.

In his speech, he said: “Age-old attempts at covert influence and propaganda have been supercharged in online disinformation, which can be churned out on a massive scale and at little cost. The aim is to sow doubt by flat denials of the truth, to dilute truth with falsehood, divert attention to fake stories, and do all they can to divide alliances.

“Bare-faced lying seems to be the default mode, coupled with ridicule of critics.”

The Russian state’s now well-practiced doctrine of blending media manipulation, social media disinformation and distortion with new and old forms of espionage, high levels of cyber-attacks, military force and criminal thuggery is what is meant these days by the term “hybrid threats”. Russia’s state media and representatives instigated at least 30 different so-called explanations of the Salisbury poisonings in their efforts to “mislead the world and their own people,” Mr Parker said.

One recent media survey found that two-thirds of social media output at the peak of the Salisbury attack came from Russian government-controlled accounts.

Last October, MI5’s chief said he wanted internet companies to do more to stop extremists using the “safe spaces” on the web to learn illicit techniques such as bomb-making.

This week’s keynote speech was the first time he has called on web giants to do far more. “We are committed to working with them as they look to fulfil their ethical responsibility to prevent terrorist, hostile state and criminal exploitation of internet carried services: shining a light on terrorists; taking down bomb-making instructions; warning the authorities about attempts to acquire explosives precursors.

“This matters and there is much more to do,” the director-general of MI5 said.

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