Minding Russia

January 11, 2019

Was Kremlin Propagandist Konstantin Rykov Hosting Pro-Trump Russian-Language Web Sites? Notes from 2016

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

I had meant to publish this before but set it aside when so many people discouraged me, but now that Konstantin Rykov is being discussed again for his Facebook "revelations," I'll put this out there.

There's this thread:https://www.facebook.com/konstantin.rykov/posts/10210621124674610

(THREAD) This is the most stunning revelation in the Trump/Russia investigation yet. My brother Brian @krassenstein predicted something like this was coming very soon, just days ago & here it is! Konstantin Rykov who is known as a Kremlin Propagandist with close ties to Putin (1)
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) November 25, 2017

FWIW, I don't think it's the most stunning revelation, but a problem with all the Trump/Russia stuff is that there are such masses of stuff that it is hard to get the whole picture. Of course, I trust Mueller to get this whole picture more than I do Twitter sleuths. We'll see.

These notes are from November 2, 2016. I showed this to three different techies, they all dismissed it with varying degrees of scorn as such people always do. This was done in the course of researching this four-part series of articles in which we went through all of Trump's Russia connections -- and we were hardly the only journalists to do this. The story of his connection to the Agalarovs, although some are just discovering this on Twitter now, has been known for years.

BEGIN

Look up Trump2016.ru to see what it's IP address is in numerical terms.

So here:

http://ru.whatmyip.co/info/whois/87.242.78.131/k/3679097392/website/trump2016.ru

2. That gives you 87.242.78.131

So look up 87.242.78.131 to see what else it might host.

3. Go here:

http://hostingcompass.com/

Then plug in 87.242.78.131

And you get this:

IP Address	87.242.78.131
IP Reverse	-
Websites	We found 2 websites attached to this IP address. · rykov.ru · http://hostingcompass.com/site/rykov.media

So if Rykov.ru has 87.242.78.131 AND Trump2016.ru turns out ALSO to be hosted on 87.242.78.131, they are likely related.

Why? Because he's likely to use the same hosting company.

To be sure, if there were 10 or 100 things on that same server, all kinds of shopping sites and such, you could say, oh, that may only be a coincidence since all of those sites are using the same service to mask their identities.

Except read what Hosting Compass says -- rykov.ru and rykov.media are ATTACHED to 87.242.78.131 -- exactly.

The dozen shopping sites are only in the RANGE close to that number.

So let's say Rykov has gone to the trouble to contract a web host. According to this site, he could create sub-domains on his main domain. Whether or not it's a good practice it's still something he could do.

https://www.thesitewizard.com/domain/multiple-websites-one-domain.shtml

In any event, the question to ask is whether it is possible for 87.242.78.131, the Trump site, to also be the same IP address for other completely unrelated sites.

And given that Hosting Compass tells us no, it's only two Rykov sites, that suggests they are related.

Yes, I totally realize that one server could host multiple things. For example, in Second Life, where I rent servers, this is a big annoyance. They have dynamically rotating servers. So you never know if some days you are sharing a server, say, with a furry club, with a shoutcast stream and 40 avatars lagging the server then. There were even some nerds who published this information about your "secret sharers" so that you could complain to the company if you got stuck with a club.

But in this case, if Hosting Compass repeatedly shows only 2 other sites attached to that address that we know to be the Trump2016 address, it seems likely it's Rykov.

The other site has a trail like that as well, only a bit more complicated, leading to NOD.

So the Russian-language Trump site with masked registration [link] happens to share a domain with Rykov, the Kremlin propagandist.

Probably just a coincidence [link]. Unrelated entities can share servers but needs more research.

"So another Russian-language Trump site registered the same day but with a different masking service happens to show okkupantu.ru and hooks up

to ultranationalist anti-American NOD [Russian Liberation Movement]. Even more likely a coincidence?"

It's my conviction that the 1st site ties up to Rykov as it consistently shows only his two sites attached. The 2nd site is much more of a grab bug showing hundreds of sites, and only sometimes okkupant.ru, which definitely might be a random coincidence then -- or not.

The billing may be standard in the services, they send them out in batches, people renew the same day who are unrelated. That is, I don't think that's the reason these two sites have the same payment date, I think it's a clue they are FSB or at least Rykov, but since it IS an explanation for why they could have a payment date I have to accept it.

Here's an email I sent to colleagues October 25, 2016:

Hi,

It seems Konstantin Rykov is hosting the Russian-language Trump site.

It has a masked registration:

domain: TRUMP2016.RU

nserver: ns1.goodoo.ru.

nserver: ns2.goodoo.ru.

state: REGISTERED, DELEGATED, VERIFIED

person: Private Person

registrar: REGISTRATOR-RU

admin-contact: https://cp.mastername.ru/domain_feedback/

created: 2015.08.17

paid-till: 2017.08.17

free-date: 2017.09.17

source: TCI

But the IP shows this:

http://hostingcompass.com/whois/87.242.78.131

He's one of the top Kremlin propagandists on social media.

Cathy

END

Basically, no geek wants to make these kinds of connections, because in the rigid yes/no or 0/1 world in which they think, if you can't demonstrate something 100% or if there is even 1% possibility of error, then the entire thing becomes invalid. This is why it is so hard to move forward on stories like the Alfa servers and the Trump servers. In the world of organic law, as distinct from code-as-law, there are concepts such as "probable cause" or "beyond a reasonable doubt" which allow for common sense and logic. In their world, geeks can't afford to think in terms of 1% not throwing the entire thing off; programs stop working when a single comma is out of place. They have warped their own thinking to accommodate machines, which means that even this kind of coincidence among servers can't ever convince them. Worse, they heap scorn on you for even making this connection, or worse, ridicule for not having some bigger "data dump" to their liking that is "certified". This is why we can't have nice things...

But you look at all this sort of thing over time, as I did (it may not be discoverable now, I haven't checked), you combine it with ages of watching Rykov in action (as I have done) and reading his "tell-all" FB page and all, it doesn't seem outlandish that Rykov would sponsor a Russian-language pro-Trump page to ensure the Russian emigre vote in the US, which isn't trivial. Or even that NOD would even be related, it's consistent enough with the weirdness of NOD (remember when their propagandists were killed in the Donbass with one of the top pro-Kremlin war correspondents?). I've always thought NOD was made up out of whole cloth, the way Zhirinovsky once was.

I think there could be other explanations for Rykov seemingly getting a DM from Trump. Someone among his friends could have sent it and he didn't realize it. Trump or his aide could have seen something and in fact written to him in DM but they do that routinely with everybody. And so on. It's not like you have to be a friend of someone to send them a Messenger DM.

Posted at 04:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 31, 2018

A Critique of CPJ's Hard Questions to Ukrainian Law-Enforcement or When Defenders Turn into Prosecutors

Babchenko's photo on a memorial board of slain journalists before his "resurrection" is known. Photo by CNN.

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

Before I critique this statement from the Community to Protect journalists “asking the hard questions” about the SBU sting and “resurrection” of journalist Arkady Babchenko, let me make two genuflections, without which one gets endlessly trolled.

Number one, Nina Ognianova, head of the CPJ Europe desk, is a long-time colleague in this field. She came after me (I worked at CPJ from 1996-1997) and I have interacted with her for years. She is a dedicated, smart, innovative professional in this NGO. Interestingly, she's also going to be leaving CPJ soon to go over the National Endowment for Democracy -- to which I can only say good! Because you can only stay in the grim business of documenting endless violations of press freedom -- especially the murder of journalists -- for so long. I worked on 200 cases when I was at CPJ, and I estimate that only 20% had a successful outcome, in which my intervention had some part. It's a futile and frustrating business. Critiquing this statement isn't a slam on Nina at all. What she's authored here is part of a corporate mindset in general in the human rights NGO business, and likely other hands worked this text or at least approved it. She may ardently believe it -- most people who stay working in these groups do. But it's more than fine to challenge it without undermining the good work Nina has done and will do. In the NGO world, there is what is known as “the 11^th commandment” – “Thou shalt never criticize another NGO.” I worked in these NGOs for most of my adult life and still work in some of them, and I fail to endorse “the 11^th commandment.” These groups need to get way more criticism than they do because they do not have internal processes for debate in often what are rigidly board-controlled or executive-director controlled mandates and policies.

Number two, when you criticize what an NGO like CPJ says, you challenge the "halo effect" and a common response especially on the left is to accuse you of "telling them to shut up" or "advocating that they not do their jobs" or "denying their right to free speech". This is, of course, a totally bogus line, but you'd be surprised how often people who should know better use it as "defense". Yes, CPJ gets to have First Amendment protections; yes, they get to "do their job"; and yes, they get to "hold feet to the fire" and all the rest. But who will watch the watchers? I get to have my free speech and challenge them, too. Such people confuse the *criticism* of an individual or organization as somehow a *demand to shut them up*. This is intellectually dishonest and I call it out in advance.

CPJ's stance on the case of Pavel Sheremet and other issues in Ukraine has tended toward what the pack of NGOs and journalists around the war in Ukraine and domestic issues in Ukraine espouse: that the Poroshenko Administration is corrupt and soft on corruption; that they don't do enough or even cover up attacks on journalists and don't solve murders; that they are even in collusion on this issue with the murders. I reject this take on Ukraine, which I also have followed very closely. I’m not uncritical of Ukraine, as the Ukrainians in the diaspora in particular know as they often harass me, just as much as Kremlin trolls. No matter. I know which side I’m on here, a luxury NGOs don’t feel they have, but one in which they indulge in and inevitably end up taking the wrong side as a result of the fiction of impartiality – also still so common to the press.

Illegitimate Demand for Radical Transparency

When CPJ says there were "no names" given, and makes other points about how the Ukrainian law-enforcers are not forthcoming, there is a very important counterpoint: why should law-enforcers who have JUST opened up a very high-profile and sensitive case tell YOU everything they have? This is the main point to make about so many human rights "interventions". There is no sense of limit or proportion EVER. There is always (especially with figures like Julian Assange, about whom too many journalists are uncritical) this demand for MAXIMUM transparency. PS -- names were given at the outside -- and now people are picking apart the "list of 30" or the "list of 47". No matter. Police and intelligence in a liberal democracy (that would not be Russia but it is what Ukraine aspires to be) get to have secrecy, lack of publicity, and even slowness in their work. The age of Snowden and social media forget this.

And that's just crazy. Police cannot do their jobs with a bunch of reporters and NGOs on their backs questioning their every move, not because they are devious and corrupt, but because they have to check leads, find facts, vet facts, try hypotheses, and this very important work cannot be done in a fishbowl. I shouldn't have to explain this. But every time I do. Your lack of confidence in the SBU; your hatred, even, of the Ukrainian government isn't entirely merited and wouldn't justify second-guessing Babchenko in any event.

From Defense to Prosecution

There is a deeper problem here, and that is the way in which in the last 20 years, the human rights movement, which began in the 1970s as documenters and defenders, have switched to investigators and prosecutors. This is not their job, they don't have training for it often, and more to the point, they often have no real-life experience that would enable them to perform their prosecutorial roles with skill and sensitivity.

(No, Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, clerking for Rudy Giuliani in his youth doesn’t bestow those skills on him. How do we know this is true that Ken Roth worked for Giuliani, respected after 9/11 but now much maligned? Wikipedia will tell you that in 1987, Ken worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. But who was that US Attorney in 1987? It was Rudi Giuliani, something that Ken used to tell us when I worked at Human Rights Watch (for 10 years), and it's not a secret).

The NGO involvement in the formation of the International Criminal Court – Ken was among the most ardent campaigners – has caused this shift and enormous amount of hubris: NGOs now feel they are helpers and accessories to the ICC and other international justice courts; they feel no sense of endangerment of their mission or more importantly, their clients in doing this (although they should, given such awful developments as the expulsion of all the relief NGOs from Sudan for a time over this allegation – which in fact was true, as several humanitarian NGOs *did* supply information to the ICC.)

NGOs today feel no need to have any separation of powers, if you will. This is a longer and more intricate discussion which I won't bore you with now, but it's crucial to understanding the emotional stance of constant exasperation, and the constant mission-creep and overreach of NGOs in our time -- they think they are the world's litigators and even prosecutors, and they are not particularly good at this job.

I have only to think of the recent AWFUL debacle of the coalition of NGOs who attempted to take Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash to court. It doesn't take any persuasion to understand why that job might be necessary, but you do have to make the case and find the facts. Coalitions can be unwieldy and quality control can be poor. One of the members of the coalition did research that was faulty; it was presented in the court, and easily refuted by Firtash's lawyers, and the judge dismissed the case. The moral of the story isn't that NGOs should become better prosecutors; the moral is that they should not get out of their league and attempt cases like this that verge away from human right into crime and corruption (not unrelated, but different fields both in content and methodology). They should stop undermining the criminal justice system in the US and in fledgling democracies like Ukraine – which they do not only with legitimate human rights criticism without context but their support of felonious hackers like Manning, Assange, and Snowden. Criminal justice systems work best in liberal democracies where they are elected or appointed by the people, and kept honest not only by the courts and Congress but the judicial system itself. Those conditions don't pertain in NGOs. It's ok to be undemocratic, unelected, unappointed, self-appointed and even secretive in a defense mission; in a prosecutorial mission where you deprive others of rights it is not.

By osmosis in this climate among NGOs, free press groups have become prosecutors as well. And even the nominal defense mission and "corporate solidarity" mission that CPJ rightfully has segues easily into the role of public scold. CPJ feels with great self-importance and sense of righteousness that they have "a right to know" answers to questions about prosecutions -- and they do as any civic group that has a right to form and press governments anywhere does. But we have the right also to challenge them because they begin to needlessly undermine liberal democracy itself, at home and abroad. CPJ's own defense of Snowden and their blundering off into the world of hacker ideology is part of what undermines their case now.

So to the specifics:

Why ask what evidence the SBU has when they told you in a press conference? They had a sting operation because they got news of a plot to assassinate Babchenko for money -- as was explained above in CPJ's own explainer! Furthermore, they named suspects!
CPJ wants to know how imminent and credible was the alleged threat to Babchenko's life -- as if they aren't persuaded of the merits of his case -- which no doubt they took up long before this incident. After all, this is a man who fled to Ukraine from Russia -- not easy, not guaranteed to be protective. That tremendous disruption of life and loss of roots and income and networks and all the rest has to be taken into account. A person who flees to Ukraine for asylum who cannot stay in Russia due to threats is by definition a case that you should view as legitimate, and not be second-guessing what this particular set of circumstances are about.

To be sure, figures like the dramatic Anton Gerashchenko (who is still important and worth listening to) have somewhat devalued the concept of assassination attempts by repeatedly referring to them, and referring to their resolution, with scant facts. But see point one. Law-enforcers (he is an MP and adviser to the police) aren't required to tell you everything they know to do their work; indeed, they must have protection of privacy, if you will, and classified information to succeed against overwhelmingly more powerful enemies -- the same enemies of journalists.

CPJ asks how the SBU knows that Russia is involved. While skepticism and even cynical disbelief might have its reasons, what reason would CPJ have to think the Ukrainian government is lying about Russian involvement? After all, Russia Invaded Ukraine, and still does, every week. There have been numerous assassinations in Russia -- some even of separatist leaders that some think Russian intelligence is responsible for, as a way of "population control" among people who don't always want to stay puppets. Why does CPJ have SUCH a hard time admitting the long arm of Moscow? They should not be suffering from this problem – as indeed, such NGOs didn’t suffer not only in the Cold War era but even in the Yeltsin era.
As for the "alleged mastermind," obviously the Ukrainian investigators will tell us who the mastermind is in due course -- if they get that information, and they may not. Does CPJ realize how hard that is? Can they remember the last time more "talkative" Russian investigators did that for figures like Boris Nemtsov? Let's have a little sense of context here.
The SBU indicated that they have the identity of the suspected contract killer, but why are we getting ahead of our skis here? It is day two after the announcement of a sting that took some time to set up and execute -- and journalists by nature are generally skeptical of stings by nature (i.e. the FBI's frequent stings of terrorist suspects). That doesn't mean there aren't really bad guys. And they have to make their case, it takes time in their system as it does (nobody on Twitter knew Mueller's indictments before they were announced, you know?) Why the curled lip of disbelief and cynicism on the first week of this case? If Day 60, the SBU isn't making progress or the list of 47 has been exposed as fake, it doesn't matter. Babchenko made a personal decision given the facts known at the time, as a person in the sites of an assassin, and he shouldn't be second-guessed for moral reasons but the reasons of damage to press freedom don't pass muster.

Case of Pavel Sheremet

Why the hate of the SBU? If the answer is "because they did nothing on Sheremet" I would beg to disagree strenuously (and that should also be a separate post). The fact is, the journalistic corps made allegations about Ukrainian government or para-military involvement in Sheremet's murder that didn't hold up to scrutiny even by desk researchers like me, and which was refuted with facts by the SBU and National Police.

They claimed an SBU agent who showed up in the story was somehow tethered to the right-wing or pro-Kiev forces in the country, when in fact he was more likely tethered to the pro-Moscow forces, and in any event was no longer working for the SBU. The case of a rogue Ukrainian agent allied with Poroshenko just didn't wash. It's like the allegation that this bodyguard found in the area, who was supposedly related to right-wing groups was somehow indication of government involvement in Sheremet's death -- when he had an alibi (he was there to guard somebody else in that area) that really couldn't be refuted. It's always been strange to me that the journalists so agitated to find "the hand of Kiev" in Sheremet's murder think this is about free-thinking and open-mindedness and going against the tide, when the real free-thinking would be if these moral equivocators could for a second entertain that the Kremlin is most likely to have the means and motive for Sheremet's killing, not Poroshenko -- who Sheremet covered generally positively and was about to cover again -- or the Right Sector and related groups -- which Sheremet also covered, even with some implied criticism, for which these groups were actually grateful as their concerns were aired. The troubling thing here is that now OCCPR has been given an award for doing a film with these allegations, it will be impossible for them to climb down from them or for anyone else to criticize them without being accused of either collusion with Moscow or infidelity to press freedom.

Why does it matter who was aware of this operation? Poroshenko himself was aware. Nu, i shto? The question presupposes sneering cynicism about the sting itself, as if a conspiracy of this nature should never be done and stings are totally illegitimate. That's ridiculous on the face of it. We could note Russia sets up stings like this as a journalist at Fontanka reminds us; the FBI makes them; Ukraine has used them in the past. As a number of people in the "glad" list around the Babchenko story have pointed out, what would you have Babchenko do? Sit back and let hit men for hire have their way? Not cooperate with a police effort to thwart it? This is a serious business.

Why Doesn’t the NGO Adversarial Role Include Questioning of Moscow’s Role?

As for why the authorities "publicly blame the Russian security services," they had evident proof of payments and persons from Russia and from these networks. Again, they are not required to tell you to requite your NGO heart on the "need for transparency" or "ending the climate of impunity" (another NGO buzz phrase) if they want to be effective. The question isn't why Ukraine looks to Moscow to finger when it comes to acts of violence -- because Russia Invaded Ukraine -- the question is why journalists and NGOs are so reluctant EVER to concede that Moscow is the most likely culprit -- because it has means and motive and already runs a war in the Donbass. Hello! The real adversarial role of an NGO would start with acceptance of Moscow’s nefarious and obvious role, not pretending it doesn’t exist. Always adversarial – but seldom to Moscow, guys?
Babchenko has told what he knows about what he was privy -- and maybe not everything -- nor did he know everything. And again, that's more than fine. You don't have hostile NGOs or even perfectly impartial NGOs come along with you on the police rides and raids. Law-enforcement is a legitimate activity in a democratic state. Can NGOs concede that? Can they concede that they are NOT trained prosecutors and also PS not elected to said democratic states to perform their function. That's important to note -- as far as mission creep.
The news reports already indicate that Babchenko's wife didn't know about the plot. That has caused some like Tatyana Felgenhauer or Anna Veduta to jokingly indicate that Babchenko should be thrashed by said wife. But if you told your wife and friends, you couldn't maintain the conspiracy. And conspiracies are sometimes required to fight hybrid wars. It's the failure to grasp that concept and to understand life outside the rigid and shrill world of absolutism and ideological rigidity that reigns in the NGO camp that is more troublesome. See Babchenko and others on this point. What, strict principles are good enough for the Spanish Civil or against the Iraq War but they have to prevent staying alive? No police should be allowed to operate without public control and scrutiny. But at what point does this hostile force demanding scrutiny and applauding leaking and even hacking (the CPJ attitude toward Manning and Snowden is deplorable) undermine the legitimate role of law-enforcement in a democratic society? I would submit we're in that place already.

Nina/CPJ then tell you their bottom line on this:

At the same time, this extreme action by the Ukrainian authorities has the potential to undermine public trust in journalists and to mute outrage when they are killed. CPJ takes a dim view of law enforcement impersonating the media, but the parallels in this case are not yet fully known.

What is known is that the Ukrainian government has damaged its own credibility. And given the SBU is an intelligence agency, which engages in deception, obfuscation, and propaganda, determining the truth will be very difficult.

Every bit of this needs a pushback. It's hard to accept that law-enforcement making a deceptive statement to the media is "impersonating the media." This may in fact be a garble in this statement. No "impersonation" has taken place, i.e. planted SBU operatives posing as reporters. Instead, a story has been planted that seemed credible and was later revealed -- within 24 hours! -- by the SBU and prosecutors themselves -- to have been deceptive. Extreme dangers -- an invaded country, numerous acts of violence and terrorism, and murder of journalists -- requires such an extreme action. They aren't stupid and no doubt weighed the pros and cons and argued among themselves. Can CPJ accept that this is war? In UN human rights treaties, states cannot derogate from their obligations to protect human rights -- but when you cannot protect human rights as basic as life, why is this "hybrid" method more despicable than the murder itself? Journalists should have chuckled at the wily SBU, and reminded themselves to check statements and photos when claims of assassinations are made (which is routine in any event in every singe one of these cases); their indignant and shrill second-guessing and impugning of the victim are disgraceful.

Does CPJ get it that public trust in journalists is ALREADY tremendously eroded? This is why we have Trump. Look at this thread as I pointed out -- readers are outraged at the take that this professional Channel 4 journalist has on Babchenko's case and the sting. Perhaps readers have more common sense than elites are willing to concede. As for outrage, as with school killings, each new murder is what lessens outrage as it becomes numbing and routine. Blame the murderers for that, not the police trying to catch them.

The SBU hasn't damaged its credibility -- a credibility that the journalist corps didn't share even before all this, or even four years ago. The press corps is cynical and indignant as they always are; the Ukrainian government has been flat-footed and wrong on some issues (like Myrotvorets’ exposure of contact information). There are topics like the expulsion of Russian state journalists -- which in my view is warranted given their disinformation and incitement of imminent violence! -- which the press corps is never going to concede, as it is outside the "club rules". They're wrong. They and institutions like OSCE keep applying rigid ideological rules and solutions to situations that they have no other solutions for. They haven't cured disinformation as they have pointedly shied away from ostracizing any of their number who engages in it and refuse to make rules to live by for themselves or their profession in a public and binding self-government system (like "let's not show pictures of the war in Syria to make claims about Ukraine's military in the Donbass, shall we?) Free speech absolutism is demanded for Russian propagandists, but it is denied to their enemies, and allowed to trump freedom of association (as in the US) for the parliament which wishes to control Russian disinformation. Liberals hate the anti-communist laws and the anti-Russian journalist activities but they themselves have no solution for this enduring and deep problem -- when they don't even cover the war in Ukraine anymore, and if they do, it is from a biased anti-Kiev position.

Intelligence agencies in democratic societies, and even under liberal democratic governments constantly challenged by anti-government groups and the press -- which is natural and needed in such societies -- get to have programs to obfuscate and even deceive when they have to deal with far worse disinformers and liars. There is always the cliché about "not becoming like them". Except to not act and never to use these methods assure that there is no escape from being crushed by them, either. It's a balance. It is a balance Ukraine is still finding as a society. The nasty and even malicious approach to the Kiev government that so many NGOs and journalists bring to this topic is not in keeping with their supposed mission to uphold the values of democracy and human rights. Their hostility to Ukraine -- because it is accessible, because it responds, because they *can* -- is all out of proportion to their critique and challenge to Russia and its oligarchs -- which they avoid, and fail at doing dramatically in the rare cases they attempt it. That should tell us something.

The sad thing is that as the weeks go by, answers to these CPJ questions are going to be forthcoming regardless of whether CPJ asked them in any event, as the police and public in Ukraine have a vested interest in this. CPJ will unlikely come back and say, "Oh, you answered that, thanks." Instead, we will see another round of indignation and raising of the bar of hostility. It's never enough. If the SBU nailed their man and provided ample proof of his guilt and his ties to the FSB (as the Ukrainian government has done in cases such as the captured GRU agents), there will be endless second-guessing by many on the "mad" list as I've indicated.

"We are relieved that Arkady Babchenko is alive," said Nina Ognianova, CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. "Ukrainian authorities must now disclose what necessitated the extreme measure of staging news of the Russian journalist's murder." Why? To do so could undermine this delicate mission. If you're not persuaded now that the extraordinary discovery of plans to murder a journalist was urgent enough reason for this "staging news" -- what will convince you? Likely NOTHING.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. A hugely well-funded American group with aspirations of playing the role of unelected world prosecutor can't trump the democratically-elected government of a real country. And that's a good thing, at home as well as abroad.

Posted at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 30, 2018

Lists of Journalists, Bloggers, Pundits, Officials -- Mad or Glad About Babchenko?

Arkady Babchenko, center, flanked by Vasily Hritsak, head of Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) (L) and Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukrainian Prosecutor General (R)

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

"The world is divided into two camps: those who mourned Arkady Babchenko yesterday, and those who mourned him today." -- Viktor Davydov

Journalists hate the making of lists of journalists about anything, but there are some occasions when it is interesting.

There are two lists now -- those who are mad at Arkady Babchenko for participating in a sting operation to catch a would-be assassin, or who are "troubled at the implications," or unsure if it is a good thing -- and those who are glad he is alive, think the ruse was justified, and wonder why all the attention is on criticizing the SBU and not the Kremlin, which is alleged to be behind this deed -- and others.

These two lists really fall for the most part into a pattern -- the pattern you can see on many other issues, in fact; the extent of how far people will go to criticize Putin; how much they feel they have to balance their saddlebags and then criticize Trump, too, or perhaps only Trump; how much they will support Ukraine against Russia, and so on. You could take other questions like: do you think it is likely that the Skripals were poisoned by the Russian state? Do you think the "Gerasimov Doctrine" or hybrid warfare exists? Or do you think Russia's claim of NATO expansion as a justification for its aggression holds water? Or do you think there was Western triumphalism after the collapse of the Cold War? Or do you think Russia or America is to blame for poor relations? And so on and so forth down the line. The lists will pretty much be drawn up along the same lines.

Sometimes these differences in these two lists are described as "international realist/pragmatist versus idealist/colour revolutionary" or "correct thinkers versus neocons" or "informed versus ignorant" or "liberals versus neoliberals" or "nuanced versus biased" or "dove versus hawk" or any other number of characterizations. Note that when Atlantic Council's Melinda Haring covered this issue, she featured mainly those mad at/troubled by Babchenko, and left out many prominent figures who in fact are happy for him and think the SBU was justified.

I'm on the second list, of course. Simon Ostrovsky and others are concerned that a stunt like this detracted from the fact that Pavel Sheremet's murder wasn't solved (I also knew him.) But if the Kremlin is behind it, how could it be solved? Ukrainian and Western journalists who have been absolutely sure that Pavel was murdered by pro-Ukrainian forces or at least not Russian-related forces are wrong, in my view, and I have studied the case closely. If Babchenko had really been murdered, that is, without any leads on the contract and the killer, his murder would have been unsolved like so many others. What is the plan to stop those murders? Thoughts and prayers don't work, and earnest petitions to OSCE and seminars about safety for journalists don't work, either. Not when the likely perpetrator is a state with the largest territory in the world AND significantly greater forces AND the will to do violence more than the West, even in a coalition. All of those responses have to continue, but it's good somebody is finally doing something practical, even if you didn't like their methods.

Babchenko is a complicated character -- he is a rogue. He fought in Chechnya -- in two wars -- on the Kremlin's side. He was a war reporter critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but sometimes in a complicated way. It's all good because it was all very much on the ground. He pissed people off with his acidic remarks, such as his post about the father who lost his whole family in the Kemerovo mall fire (he pointed out that the man was a government loyalist and was easily cowed to see the government's point of view, and found pictures of him with the St. George flag pin -- this made a lot of people angry). Fortunately, Babchenko will go on being Babchenko, not so clear-cut on any one's side but his own, but when it came to Russia's wars in Syria and Ukraine, a critic (tragically, he wasn't for the Chechen wars). Some people say Babchenko should cease to consider himself a journalist (and can't be one because he once fought in wars -- well, tell that to George Orwell, why don't you!) What, you only get to be a journalist if you are CPJ-dead? No thanks.

Ну выходит, что и живой Бабченко порочит Россию и мертвый тоже порочит, поэтому непонятно что с ним вообще делать, безвыходная какая-то ситуация 🤔
— водка и мельдоний (@treugolny_hui) May 30, 2018

Translation: So it turns out that a live Babchenko smears Russia and a dead one also smears it, therefore it's not clear what to do with him in general, it's a hopeless situation.

People Mad about Babchenko/Think SBU is Wrong/Consequences Will be Terrible

Committee to Protect Journalists
Reporters without Borders
David Filippov
Shaun Walker
Kevin Rothrock
Masha Gessen
Lindsey Hilsum
Leonid Ragozin
Henry Foy
Lincoln Pigman
Craig Murray
Natalia Antonova
Mark Ames
Charles Shoebridge
Ed Lucas
John Sweeney
Elana Beiser
Piers Morgan
Lucian Kim
Plushchev but calls out MK editor

Michael Bociurkiw

Vladislav Davidizon
Peter Dickinson
Sergiy Leshchenko
Vitalii Rybak
Simon Ostrovsky also ambiguous

Union of Journalists of Russia

Harlem Desir/OSCE Representative on FOM

International Federation of Journalists

Pavel Kanygin (Novaya Gazeta)

Lee Stranahan (Sputnik)

Margarita Simonyan and see this

Sergei Loiko

Alexei Kovalev

Alexander Podrabinek

People Glad About Babchenko/Think Ruse Was Justified/Progress Made

Arkady Babchenko

Molly McKew
Michael Weiss although ambiguous

Ian Bateson

Michael Carpenter - changed mind

Cathy Young
Olexander Scherba
Maxim Eristavi
Garry Kasparov
Kateryna Kruk
iAmtheWarax
Laura Rosen
Glasnost Gone
Jakub Janda
Paula Chertok
XSovietNews
Evelyn Farkas

Catherine Fitzpatrick

Ilya Lozovsky but ambiguous

Fake MIDRF

David McDuff

John Sipher

The Wall Street Journal

I'll add to this list as I come across more people and add some links.

What does Babchenko himself say in response to those who reprimand him for misleading the media?

He replied to a comment on a post about how hard it is to believe in anything any more, from a reader who expressed concern about how the media was fooled, as follows:

I wish all the high-moral inhibitors to wind up in the same situation -- let them show their adherence to the principles of high morality and die with a proudly-raised head, not leading the media astray unacceptably. Well, so that deeds and words do not diverge. Good luck and successes to you, the killer is outside the door -- I believe in you, guys, don't screw up!

Once again, there are those who take up the mindshare in Washington policy circles and in the media and New York and feel they speak for everyone, that only they have the correct line, that anyone who objects is "a neocon" or worse. But they don't speak for all of us, and they're wrong.

FAQS

Why are you characterizing people as "mad" about Babchenko's "resurrection" when many of them have said they're glad that he is alive, but...?

Because "mad" and "glad" are shorthand terms for these positions, which involve "totally mad" or "glad he's alive but..." with some critique or vexation or even anger about what he has done, which they believe has done some irreparable damage to press freedom or media crediblity. Go and read what they write. They're glad for five minutes, then they get into high dudgeon from which they never exit.
Why are you putting Margarita Simonyan in the "glad" list when she is a reprehensible human being working for a murderous state?

Because while she was utterly cynical and manipulative, she did say that she was glad he was alive, and this was in accordance with her "Christian heart" (we won't get into examining another's conscience) and didn't "start in" about what damage this was to free media and credibility and blah blah. Interestingly, officials, including Zakharova from the Foreign Ministry, have sided with Babchenko when he was "dead" and after he was "resurrected" on the grounds that "he fought on our side in Chechnya". Well, that's how they are. You don't often see people reprimand Babchenko for fighting in Chechnya and killing Chechens which would have involved Chechen civilians which many of us lobbied to protect during two wars. Unless she's said something new, I haven't seen it. So her statement can be taken at face value. Just like some who have said they were glad and left it at that without the morality lecture got in the "glad" list although they may be secretly fuming.
You put me (or some other person) in the wrong list because actually....

Well, make your case and I'll change your position. I'm just trying to keep a coherent public list here. If someone thinks they are more impartial and can make different or better lists, they are naturally free to do so.

Posted at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

April 19, 2018

The Trouble with Russianology

The chief feature of Russianology is the inability to criticize Putin directly and significantly for fear of losing access to establishment policy-makers and even visas to Russia.

I had a blog post up on Minding Russia criticizing point-by-point another post by Mark Galeotti. It was ultimately about the problem of Sovietology and Russianology - the belief that Putin has evolved in his ideology or interests; that there are interest groups within Russia that have influence over him; that the West's actions in condemnation or sanctions influence Putin; that Putin can even be persuaded by former Soviet republic leaders to change his behaviour. I view all of this as untrue, and all of it a function of establishment thinking that is predicated on the need to affirm "rational behaviour" on the Russian leader's side and concede the other superpower's "legitimate interests" and the belief that America can fix things - not just exceptionalism but efficacy.

As I indicated in the post, I think we're in for a very different ride than Galeotti indicates, that Putin is bad and will grow worse, and this is inherent and unchangeable and there is little we can do but mount a credible deterrence and work toward a better day. I view Sovietology/Russianology profoundly ill-equipped, even crippled and poisoned in its inability to debate and provide real policy options given this terrible challenge because of the exigencies I mentioned above: a) the need to appeal to the establishment which is generally pro-Kremlin or "International Relations Realist" school and pragmatic and b) the literal need to keep visa access and access to elites in Moscow to retain credibility as a Russianologist -- the Valdai invitation problem as well.

At the end of this essay, I indicated that Putin will do worse things than even having created the climate that made MH17 possible and yet the West will still concede it "needs" Putin; I then pointed out that Putin is now "worse than Hitler and Stalin" in having committed his own mass crimes against humanity (Chechnya and Ukraine) and aided Assad's mass crimes against humanity in Syria. I was thinking about the mass murders in total from all of these areas (one could likely add the 2008 Georgian war) and the massive amount of displacement and destruction. In any event, this comment about Putin's "tallies" was hardly the main point of the piece; it was just a moral coda to express how bad Putin is, not only at home but abroad.

Along comes Casey Michel then -- deliberately crossing the street to pick a bone -- and picks on a technical error in my original claim. Leaving aside that my context was obviously Russia/Eurasia/Europe (it's my Minding Russia blog) and that was really what I had in mind, he pointed out that Pol Pot had committed more murders than Assad. Therefore there was a factual error. His purpose was to ensnarl me in studying non-essentials and steer away from the main point -- WHICH IS CRITICISM OF PUTIN, AND HIS INABILITY TO CRITICIZE PUTIN DIRECTLY, BUT ONLY ENGAGE IN SLEIGHT OF HAND.
And of course, he got a windfall there because not only was there a mistake in the blog, in trying to explain it and correct it, *another* mistake was introduced, which of course could give this troll endless glee. No matter, because in the end, his inability to condemn Putin is what shines here.

The mistake happened as follows: in examining the figures for Pol Pot, I said to myself, oh, right, because Pol Pot has 1-3 million and Assad had less -- and then in making this statement, I made a mistake -- I wrote in my blog comments that Assad had "one million". What I should have written (and certainly knew about, having spent YEARS working on Sudan and Chad at the UN) was the "100,000" but surprisingly, I did mix these figures up. I can remember indeed when NGOs at the UN reported 80,000 -- and then how this rapidly increased and today more than doubled. So the "official" number is now 170,000, but others put it higher at 200,000 or more -- and today the UN is warning us that it will be reporting far more than 200,000 soon. Counting deaths isn't a science, and people wrangle over these things endlessly. But the bottom line is, sure, Pol Pot is more of a mass murderer than Assad.

Of course, by now, we're quite far away from the point of not only my essay, but the problem with Putin -- that he is himself a mass murderer and is abetting one, and the entire Putin toll of all deaths for which he is responsible were then more alarmingly close to Pol Pot, although Pol Pot still takes pride of place.

But because I made the mistake of the "one million" on *my blog comment, which is already a comment on a comment, and non-essential," Michel was able to keep hammering on this through many tweets, and keep trolling. I truly marvelled at the ability of someone to evade the demand to pronounce on Putin, and in tweet after tweet, keep focusing on non-essentials. And that's no accident, comrades.

What causes this?
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel No, I didn't say that. Assad has very much more committed mass murder than Bashir at this point.

4 YEARS AGO
And I think this will be demonstrated in due course. Certainly Assad has caused massively more internal displacement and refugees - 9 million - compared to Darfur which was more like 2-3 million, with 200,000-300,000 killed -- note the huge gap in estimates by the UN -- a whole story in itself.
Casey Michel @cjcmichel

@catfitz Here's my latest pro-Putin latest, if you hadn&apo http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/hungarys-viktor-orban-walks-in-putins-footsteps/504632.html …weS38louUc

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel Again, my corrections don't help fix YOUR pro-Putin problem. So that's why it's an unnecessary distraction.

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel Wikipedia isn't always a source. And mass crimes of humanity aren't just deaths, but displacement, destruction of livelihood, etc

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel You completely forgot abt Bashir & didn't think of it at all until I raised it as all you're concerned about is exonerating Putin

4 YEARS AGO
Casey Michel @cjcmichel

@catfitz Look - I'm not the one who made the mistake in the blog post. Would still appreciate a correction, if possible. Your readers, too.

4 YEARS AGO
Creepy, huh? "My readers are waiting breathlessly and anxiously for me to make a correction" -- er...on a comment to a comment where it says erroneously "1 million" instead of "100,000" or "170,000". They're waiting me to ADMIT -- because it's such a breach and such an oversight! -- that Pol Pot was worse than Assad and then distract from Putin. The world must stop, and this blog must be fixed from this gross error! Well, sure.
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel *The comment* in my blog post has an incorrect figure of "1 mill" when it's 170,000 "officially" and likely more. Added comment

4 YEARS AGO
This is about playing the victim, and pretending that I've grossly misunderstood Michel, and called him pro-Putin, when in fact (he's being ironic here), he's got "all these" anti-Putin pieces. But -- nonsense. Criticism of Orban, imitating Putin or meeting with Putin, is NOT the same thing as direct criticism of Putin. So, why can't Michel directly criticize Putin?
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel So you're at Crisis Group now, and you have trouble conceding that Putin is complicit in mass crimes against humanity? How so?

4 YEARS AGO
Casey Michel @cjcmichel

@catfitz Based on most available numbers - all easily referenced on Wikipedia - it seems there are still more deaths in Sudan than Syria.

4 YEARS AGO
No, because the lower number for Sudan is 200,000, and the higher number for Syria is 200,000 so they really are comparable and with displacement/refugees, Syria is the far worse mass crime. Merely looking at deaths is not enough. Why this should require arguing is beyond me -- but it's also a problem of the inability of people like this to concede Putin's monstrosity.
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel Nope. No sale. Criticizing the low-hanging fruit of Orban against whom everyone has taken a whack isn't criticizing Putin, no.

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel Criticizing him and pointing out he's pro-Putin isn't the same as a direct hit on VV himself. No doubt you've done that "cleverly

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel And the article on the separatists as "invaders" never really explains who/where from that invasion, except from idealized USSR

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel My statement abt Putin's mass crimes v humanity stands -- and your inability to admit it -- and hiding with factology - stands

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel BTW thanks for reminding me of your sorry existence now that you have a wider audience, I'll do an exegesis of your articles soon

@cjcmichel
·
4 YEARS AGO
Casey Michel @cjcmichel

@catfitz Yeah, no, you still wrote Assad's were the largest since Stalin, and that deaths were in the millions, which were both incorrect.

4 YEARS AGO
Actually, no. I was writing *about Putin* and not Assad. I was totally up all of Putin's crimes AND noting that as he aided Assad, that really boosted his own numbers because he's very much responsible for Assad, arming him and providing political cover. I said *Putin* was the worst since Hitler and Stalin because he had his own crimes added to Assad's crimes. Of course, as we know Pol Pot is worse, and Bashir is very close behind Pol Pot, so sure, Putin isn't as bad as those two world-class mass murderers. Casey Michel wants to make sure Putin is exonerated -- period. So he is trolling on this point to try to tangle me up endlessly in numbers games around mass deaths of various figures -- instead of conceding the larger point - Putin is responsible for mass crimes against humanity. Finally, I then never said any deaths were in "the millions" -- I wrote "one million" as can be seen on my blog comment, which I left standing.
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel The corrosive effect of Harriman (Shulmanism) the Peace Corps (clientism), Registan, etc. -- on young minds. Terrible!

@cjcmichel
·
4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel My blog is edited to make clear YOUR context but still shows Putin is THE WORST. That's your problem.

4 YEARS AGO
Casey Michel @cjcmichel

@catfitz I don't know what "Shulmanism" is, but hopefully I'll read more on it soon. Provided figures are correct, of course.

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel No, the reason I corrected the blog post was to remove any reason preventing you from seeing Putin as the problem Oh! didn't work

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel Incorrect figures in a world of Internet and Wikipedia are HARDLY an issue. Truly not. Incorrect thinking a LOT harder to fix.

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel It's hardly a problem to fix a zero on a number or to put some wider context than Russia.YOUR PROBLEM of Putinism much bigger

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel BTW thanks for reminding me of your sorry existence now that you have a wider audience, I'll do an exegesis of your articles soon

@cjcmichel
·
4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel Shulman was a detente-nik http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/nyregion/23shulman.html?_r=0 …

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel The corrosive effect of Harriman (Shulmanism) the Peace Corps (clientism), Registan, etc. -- on young minds. Terrible!

@cjcmichel
·
4 YEARS AGO
Casey Michel @cjcmichel

@catfitz There's a reason you corrected the blog post, which is much appreciated.

4 YEARS AGO
This insidious little trolly comment is meant to say only one thing: "I'm right, and you're wrong, and you were forced to correct something because I said so." Except...on the bigger moral question of criticizing Putin's crimes, Michel is still, well, MIA.
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel My blog was fixed yesterday. I guess you didn't pay attention because trolling is more important to you. And missing big facts.

4 YEARS AGO
P.S. His name is spelled wrong in one appearance on the comments. I'll leave it as is. We all know how his name is spelled, and that's not the issue, Putin's crimes are.
Casey Michel @cjcmichel

@catfitz I saw, which is why I said earlier that I appreciated you correcting the early mistake, as well as the spelling of my name.

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel I guess you never heard of Marshall Shulman? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_D._Shulman …

4 YEARS AGO
REPLY RETWEET FAVORITE
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel Your name wasn't mispelled. And again, you're distracting with non-essentials to keep from the bigger picture of Putin's crimes.

4 YEARS AGO
Just for the record, his name does have a typo on *one instance*. Every other instance it's correct, and of course, how could it be wrong when you can see his name right on Twitter and we all know how it's spelled!
Casey Michel @cjcmichel

.@catfitz I'm not sure how to make this any clearer. You spelled my name "Michael." It's spelled "Michel."

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel I don't it's spelled Michel. And that's how I've always spelled it. If there is a typo, it will be fixed. Distracting again.

4 YEARS AGO
Of course, the fact of his name mispelled in one instance in a comment on a comment -- that's what's important, right? Not Putin's crimes.
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel I'm busy covering Russia's invasion of Ukrainian. What are you doing? Writing about exorcisms in Moldova? Not communists?

4 YEARS AGO
CatherineFitzpatrick @catfitz

@cjcmichel Can you then concede that Russia is lying and exaggerating these numbers for political purposes?

4 YEARS AGO
And...crickets. And block. Casey Michel once again - and there have been many such interchanges -- proves to us that he can't criticize Putin. That he will get endlessly lost in non-essentials, even if factually correct, to KEEP DISTRACTING from the main point: that Putin is responsible for mass crimes against humanity, in the Caucasus at home with Chechnya and one could likely argue with Dagestn; in Ukraine, certainly, with Crimea and the Donbass, and by propping up Assad in Syria with $1 billion weapons and with political cover. Taken together, the deaths for which Putin is responsible personally mount to at least 200,000 for Chechnya, more in Dagestan, then some 3000 in Ukraine, and now over 200,000 in Syria

Posted at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Amb. McFaul: "This kind of logic is dangerous. Don't do what's right, lest Kremlin do what is wrong".

Why RT isn't media, and should register under FARA.

Michael McFaul @McFaul

Oh, I see. My point was that Putin will shut down BBC , or you, or anyone else in a heartbeat if he wants to, without provocation. https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907726952718635008 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

I know her excellent work. Im trying to understand your argument. Because they dont matter, they shouldn't be regulated? https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907726535163088896 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Not following you. I of course never adopted their cynical view of press. https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907726295722811395 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Fox is not owned/controlled by a (hostile) foreign government. https://twitter.com/Andrew_Ryvkin/status/907725497639030785 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

And lets be clear, no one is calling for RT to be removed from US. If Putin did that in response to BBC, thats COMPLETELY unjustified. https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907640870442291205 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

By this logic, we should never do anything to push back on Putin, or else he get mad and does something "consequential" (like go after BBC) https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907640870442291205 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

BBC is not. Governance structure gives independence. VOA mandate seems very different to me than BBC. (Deutsche Welle I dont know as well) https://twitter.com/RaySuarezNews/status/907696622867566592 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Again, Why does Bob Dole have to register, but RT -- representing interests of Russian govt -- should not. If you can answer, Il stand down https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907710904225103872 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

BTW, Russian state regulates foreign media. Kicked Radio Liberty and VOA off of platforms. PNG'd reporters. Wouldn't let Buzzfeed come in. https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907710904225103872 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

What is the data that supports you hypothesis that RT is a "a very poorly perceived threat."? YouTube views? Reporting quality? https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907710904225103872 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

I argued that RT is an instrument of power for the Russian state. Am I wrong about that? https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907710682694549505 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

What is the argument for treating RT as "media". Make an argument. Dont just call those who disagree as "mudslingers." (not a high road!) https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907710682694549505 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Check it out, our new Global Digital Policy Incubator @StanfordCDDRL @FSIStanford , launching in 2 weeks: http://fsi.stanford.edu/front-global-digital-policy-incubator …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

I gotta go, but thanks for great discussion on democracy & media. Watch for @StanfordCDDRL launch of major new effort on this topic soon !

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Thanks for this. Nate. https://twitter.com/persily/status/907634921228836864 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Is Trump TV "media"? Have a listen: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/trump-tv-donald-trump-quietly-10943897 … https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/907695158329614336 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Who decides then? (Maybe we need an updated new FARA law, so done in a more democratic way.) https://twitter.com/samagreene/status/907684702206734342 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

You raise important points about them. Im no expert, but dont see why we shouldnt look at them too. https://twitter.com/samagreene/status/907684971678240769 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Yes, I know that history. I consider RT to be working for a "hostile state." Help me understand why that assumption is wrong& Ill stand down https://twitter.com/dude313123123/status/907685244588974081 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

So Sam, same question, is RT "media"? On what basis do you make that judgement? (TASS used to be registered under FARA) https://twitter.com/samagreene/status/907685289392574464 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

So you consider RT "media"? That's the issue. I don't. (Or at least not yet but ready to change my mind if you make a compelling argument!) https://twitter.com/ARothWP/status/907665114756653056 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Obama signed Magnitsky law. In response Putin banned adoptions (much more consequential act). Does Putin response mean Obama made mistake?

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

I am NOT arguing for banning RT ! I just want Americans to now that it is controlled by Kremlin. Why is that such a big deal? More facts ! https://twitter.com/DTochinskiy/status/907663023485190145 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

I am NOT arguing for banning RT ! I just want Americans to now that it is controlled by Kremlin. Why is that such a big deal? More facts ! https://twitter.com/DTochinskiy/status/907663023485190145 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Final thought. I dont consider this policy issue an easy one, but we have to address. Hoping for fresh ideas besides. Please post ! https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/907663169782345728 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

& I disagree about "grandstanding." Russian government meddled in our elections. To keep dismissing RT as unimportant s not right response https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907640870442291205 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

& we go down a slippery slope if we allow Kremlin to equate RT and BBC. if they ban BBC, then UK should respond. https://twitter.com/ARothWP/status/907639611559571456 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Andrew, can you defend inaction without reference to Russian bullying response? If so, Id be more convinced. https://twitter.com/ARothWP/status/907639611559571456 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

Could say the same about Obama decision to respond to Russian interference. Led to 755 embassy officials losing jobs. So Obama was wrong? https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907640870442291205 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

But Max, this kind of logic is dangerous. Don't do what's right, lest Kremlin do what is wrong. https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/907640870442291205 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

I dont understand the Russian, but the cartoons are intense ! https://twitter.com/a_boiso_003/status/907657177980194816 …

7 MONTHS AGO
Michael McFaul @McFaul

The facts clash with your opinion. https://twitter.com/MamaTGar66/status/907658598053961728 …

7 MONTHS AGO

Posted at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When a Russian Party is Not a Party and You're Not a Member: Konstantin Rykov

Storify is going down forever, so some reprints.

Have you ever tried to create a political party in Russia? You know, like Alexey Navalny or Boris Nemtsov have. It's so hard, trying to get on the ballot when officials pick on every little thing. But it turns out, you've been doing it all wrong! Let Konstantin Rykov show you how it's done!

The trick is to treat the party not as some real party, you know, with members, a platform, registration, consistency in views, loyalty, even party discipline and mutual solidarity. No, the trick is to treat the party as a conveyor belt, you know, the way the Communist Party itself was. You don't want to really believe in your party's goals or its consistency to its charter, you just want to use it to get and keep power and keep others off balance. In fact, the best thing of all, is when you can rent a party to get into power but never actually be its member, in case you have to throw it away later and disassociate yourself from it, you know, in case its youth branch in particular gets a bad rep. Let Konstantin Rykov show you how...

Создательница твиттера @euromaidan идет на выборы в Раду по списку Порошенко http://t.co/SfkaB50aMZ pic.twitter.com/HKAqBrK38D
— Константин Рыков (@rykov) September 13, 2014

and

Here's a typical anti-Ukrainian slam from Rykov, this time on founder of the @EuroMaidan account Svetlana Zalishchuk:

Translation: The creator of the Twitter account @euromaidan is going into the election for the [Ukrainian Verkhovna] Rada on the Poroshenko list.

BTW, this account is likely run by a group of people, and I'd like a second opinion; back in April, Rykov outed this account as run by Zalishchuk, who he calls "the common-law wife of Sergei Leshchenko, editor of Ukrainska Pravda." I'm not privy to Ukrainian gossip, but Ukrainska Pravda has been the best, most accurate and responsible paper covering this war.

This is supposed to expose her as politicized and exploitative as Rykov -- who has taken the name "McRykov" this week to cynically expose the Kremlin propaganda industry's boosting of the Scottish independence movement, which they love, as it breaks up the UK and weakens the West.

Of course there's nothing wrong at all with the Euromaidan gal going into the Rada. Why not?! It's a free country -- unless Russia keeps invading it, right? Right? While I might wish some of the Ukrainian leaders of civil society would stay in civil society and make both it and the government better, it's war, and if loyal Ukrainians want to get in the government and try to keep their country alive and free, who could be opposed? It's especially unsavory for Rykov to cast stones on this woman when...he himself is in the ruling party. Watch what happens next.

Шотландская народная республика сегодня в ударе! pic.twitter.com/oHNnRcfFEY
— Константин Рыков (@rykov) September 13, 2014

First, a vulgar comment: Translation: you'd blow her? ; )

So I ask:

Read the whole thread and people's comments here:

Создательница твиттера @euromaidan идет на выборы в Раду по списку Порошенко http://t.co/SfkaB50aMZ pic.twitter.com/HKAqBrK38D
— Константин Рыков (@rykov) September 13, 2014

This is a reference to the Foundation of Effective Politics, founded by Marat Gelman and Gleb Pavlovsky, a Kremlin aide for many years before falling out of favour. Rykov, a web entrepreneur worked with Gelman on Irak.ru and Vojna.ru which were anti-American sites.

abuses
documented by Amnesty International. Perhaps there are more. But ultranationalists poll 2% in the polls. EuroMaidan Twitter people aren't in these ultranationalist parties as far as we know; if it turns out they are, they are not likely to get into parliament, given actual past records of not only polls, but recent elections where they didn't. So...how is it that Poroshenko is going to become a prison guard?! Putin is the one locking people up in large numbers, look at Bolotnaya Square cases.

[What a chore, copying these posts from Storify!]

Posted at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 03, 2018

With New Revelations on Kushner and Qatar, Revisiting Carter Page's Trip to Moscow in December 2016

Igor Sechin, CEO of Rosneft. Photo by Valery Sharifulin/TASS

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

The Intercept and Slate have reporting about Jared Kushner and his attempts to get loans from Qatar and his threats against Qatar and the question I asked the other day, "Do you know who else got money from Qatar? Rosneft" is now being linked back to the much-maligned Steele memo. The Intercept focuses on the Qatar piece only and doesn't link in Page; Jed Handelsman Shugerman links the Qatar revelations about Kushner to the Page story.

Are we there yet? I don't think so, although Mueller continues to surprise even the Twitterati again and again. My own sense is that nothing will be found to indict Page, and that the indictment of Kushner -- if it does come -- will not help indite Page.

Skip to the sections outlined in red if you want to see what there is on Page in Moscow -- not much.

I've always thought the Rosneft part of the Steele memo was one of the most odd, and garbled. Michael Weiss and I have a multi-part series coming out on the Steele memo soon.

The summary of the section on Page and Rosneft in the Steele dossier speaks of giving Trump the whole 19% stake -- which seemed absurd, as that would be way too big a gift for Trump ($11 billion!) and not necessary, given that he was already cooperating and already likely compromised by the Kremlin. To put this sale into American hands is simply counterintuitive -- America is still Russia's enemy even if they maneuvered to get Trump into office -- and they've had some (claimed) buyer's remorse. The Kremlin already got the change in the GOP platform by Manafort; it already had Page on a string; it already had Tillerson's friendship with Sechin and willingness to lift sanctions -- Moscow did not need to pay $11 billion or even the brokerage fee for $11 billion to buy the lifting of sanctions that would come either for free or a lot less -- nor would Moscow want to have this highly weird deal get the scrutiny it would if Americans benefited. None of it makes sense to Russia-watchers, if you read all the press on Rosneft for the year before the sale, which I did, and reported on.

Rosneft, the Kremlin, and state media had said for a year that this sale would not go to any Westerners; there was even a scandal where Sechin sued RBC for reporting a Kremlin warning to BP to stay off the deal. It was always said it would be "Asians," which could mean "Middle Easterners" also.

Then in the actual section of the Steele memo that contains the report from Russia, as distinct from the summary of the report, there is mention of the brokerage of the deal, not the deal itself. The discrepancy here within the dossier itself between "the stake itself" and "the brokerage of the stake" is part of what makes this section so weak (and possibly disinformation) -- but it may be a simple mistake -- the summary misreported the detail in the dossier. That makes more sense as a possible gift to Trump via Page, but is still awfully weird given Julia Ioffe's reporting.

Naturally, I've wondered for a long time given my long-time critique of Ioffe and her tendency to moral equivalency -- and at one time, a realism about Putin that most have forgotten she had -- if this entire article's purpose was to minimize Page, ridicule him, and make him seem like "not a thing" as a form of distraction. Certainly the Russian officials and state gas executives that Ioffe could reach would definitely be up to such a distraction also known as "disinformation".

To be sure, there are two independent sources in Ioffe's report which then can't be accused of Russian disinformation -- and therefore the report that Page "is a nothing" may be true: one is Bill Browder (a very prominent Kremlin critic now, owner of Hermitage Capital and campaigner for justice in the murder of his tax consultant Serige Magnitsky, while in Russian custody), who said he never heard of Page, despite being deeply involved in Russian investments in the past -- Page was an owner of Gazprom shares and claimed he helped big Gazprom deals. The other independent source for Ioffe is Sergei Aleksashenko who was formerly deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia who essentially lives in exile now in the U.S. and is part of a group of prominent emigres involved in 4FreeRussia, a Washington-based group that publishes substantive criticism of the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin and which advocates liberal democracy in their homeland. Aleksashenko sounds exasperated in Ioffe's telling at these people trying to get information about him from Page because Page was his subordinate when Aleksashenko was head of Merill Lynch in Russia:

In 2004 Page moved to Moscow, where he became an energy consultant with Merrill Lynch. As Page tells it, it was while working as an investment banker that he struck up a relationship with Gazprom. He advised Gazprom on transactions, including a deal to buy a stake in an oil and gas eld near Sakhalin, the desolate island on Russia’s Pacific coast. He bought Gazprom shares.

According to Politico, few people in Moscow’s foreign business community knew of him. Those who did were underwhelmed. “He wasn’t great and he wasn’t terrible,” his former boss, Sergei Aleksashenko, said, adding that Page was “without any special talents or accomplishments,” “in no way exceptional,” and “a gray spot.”

I've always thought that journalists were missing an opportunity by not going back and asking Aleksashenko more pertinent if larger questions, such as: "Do you think it is possible that Rosneft could have intended to sell their stake to Trump or any American, and do you think it is possible that they would have given the brokerage of this deal to Carter Page?" and I think Aleksashenko would likely explain why this would seem absurd. But he should be asked.

Reuters did quote Aleksashenko's blog:

“The main question in relation to this transaction, as ever, still sounds like this: Who is the real buyer of a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft?” Sergey Aleksashenko, a former deputy head of Russia’s central bank, wrote in a blog last week

His blog post -- very complicated -- explains basically why no privatization took place, because of the issue of Rosneft's dividends and the fact that it is a state-owned company and the price of oil fluctuating -- and the need for the Russian state to fill its coffers for social expenditure. Here he explains further for RosBalt how Sechin benefitted politically and financially from this deal. Here in this interview with a Ukrainian business publication BIN.ua he explains more starkly - there was a big show of having Sechin come to Putin in front of the cameras and announce the sale of Rosneft for the good of the Motherland -- except the sale wasn't quite made and the money wasn't quite received then...and it's still a mystery. Aleksashenko further commented on a remark made by Sechin during the affair of Ulyukayev, the former minister of economic development said to be caught in a bribe which some believe was a set-up to quiet him and punish him over what he knew about Bashneft, another mysterious oil deal.

I cite all these complexities to make the point that Aleksashenko provides you with copious and complex detail: this was a dodgy deal, and the Russians would hardly want any spotlight on it by roping in Trump or even Page. And it's dodgy all on its own even without any Page relationship, which we still haven't proven is there.

Page being discounted as a nothing -- by either official sources bent on disinformation or independent sources who actually knew he was a nothing and say so -- may or may not be it's own form of even more complex disinformation -- we don't know.

Even the way the Russian spies are quoted as ridiculing Page leads many to conclude he's "not a thing". Of course, it wouldn't be the first time that Russia used an obscure cut-out (like the professor from Monaco who has now disappeared) to perform some active measure. And Page could be a bumbling idiot AND a "nothing" and still turn out to be "a thing" -- after all, the FBI got four -- count 'em -- four FISA warrants to follow him and as we now know, their request did not hinge on Steele's memo.

But now with Qatar being actively researched by Mueller, the same Qatar of the Rosneft is being examined, as is Page all over again.

The deal was announced December 7, one day before Page arrived in Moscow, and the reporting on it later indicated how strange it was as to its financing and sources. As Alexander Aleksashenko has explained in his numerous posts and quotes on this affair, Russia essentially sold the stake to itself, to temporarily have Putin make a show of filling state coffers with the proceeds of a state asset to help social costs that came from Western sanctions. Again: the Rosneft deal has weirdness all in its own right, without any Carter Page or Trump.

Let's review what Page said in Moscow by examining the Russian media.

Interestingly, here is how Page's trip to Moscow was reported in the Russian media. RBC, which was once an independent business news service and has recently fallen under more control (its former editors were forced to leave and it is now managed by TASS editors), had this:

RBC reported Dec 12 2016 that Page spoke at a press conference in Moscow where he was introduced by Shlomo Veber, the rector of the New Economic School. He had come to Moscow December 8.

He said Russian leader German Gref, head of Sberbank, and Igor Sechin, head of Rosnef were "leaders capable of activating the Russian-American dialogue," RBC reported.

Page said he had contacts with Rosneft representatives but declined to give their names.

"Very often it is said of me that I had some sort of contacts with Sechin. Of course this would be a great honor for me, but there weren't any, it's not so," Page was quoted as saying by RBC.

He also mentioned the contribution Rex Tillerson of Exxon had made, who was named as the chief candidate for secretary of state in the Trump Administration. Page said "This is an example worthy of imitation," RBC quoted him as saying.

A Russian journalist asked him what he thought of the male friendship between Trump and Putin, and Page said he didn't believe in it, and this was an illusion. He refused to answer any concrete questions from journalists about his business interests in Russia and connections with the team of the president-election in the US, RBC said.

"Page only said this was connected to his obligations under a non-disclosure agreement, however he confirmed that he attended meetings and briefings with Trump," said RBC.

Page outlined five areas to work on for improvement of Russian-American relations: development of business ties, scientific cooperation, work with the young generation, improvement of the quality of media, and learning to react quickly to changing reality.

So: mention of Sechin -- and Gref -- invocation of secrecy and denial of his meeting with Sechin. I was able to pinpoint Sechin himself in Moscow on July 5, 2016 at the Venezuelan Embassy in Moscow for the national Venezuelan holiday -- Sechin went on to visit Caracas and signed a deal there on July 28 -- but we can't prove he was in Moscow on July 6 OR that he met with Page. And the levels issue seems incredible -- the reverse equivalent would be like Tillerson meeting with some lowly Russian gas consultant that maybe the FBI had as an asset, witting or no.

So TASS, which is the Russian state news service reported Page as actually mentioning Glencore on December 12,2017:

(This is reverse translation from the Russian, i.e. likely Page spoke in English as his Russian is apparently not that good.)

"I had the opportunity to meet with one of the top managers of the company Rosneft. The recent Rosneft deal in which the Qatar fund and Glenclore could take place is unfortunately a good example of how American private companies are limited to a large extent due to the influence of sanctions," TASS quoted him as saying.

Asked if he met with representatives of Moscow, Page replied:

"I think that in a new era of relations between Russia and the US more efforts need to be applied in support of the new US administration, from the perspective of business," said Page. In his opinion, the central element of relations between the US and Russia should become the transformation of the role of the private sector. "You know, Igor Ivanovich [Sechin -- TASS] is the chief advocate of this."

Asked if sanctions could be abolished or lessoned by the US regarding Russia in the new administration, Page replied: "it is early to speak of this still" since the main challenge is the inaccurate perceptions of each other by the two sides.

Carter Page also refuted his contacts with Russian officials and representatives of business circles, including Igor Sechin, head of Rosneft, who is in the US sanctions list, said TASS.

"The most classic examples [of fake news--TASS] are of course the claims of my contact with Igor Ivanovich [Sechin--TASS] which would be a great honor but which did not take place, said Page.

So tantalizing that he mentions Glencore -- after the deal is announced -- but not proof of anything. And tantalizing that he mentions "a top manager of Rosneft" -- without a name -- but this may be Alexander Baranov, head of investor relations with whom Page met during his July 2017 trip and evidently again in December 2017 -- which he admits in his congressional testimony, but about whom he says no "quid pro quo" of a Rosneft stake in exchange for living US sanctions on Russia was ever made.

Page also mentions Glencore in his Congressional testimony where he tries to turn the tables on members pestering him with queries about his activities in Russia, by saying that Glencore was founded by Marc Rich, who died in 2013, who was pardoned by Bill Clinton. This is cut and pasted on Imgur for the anti-anti-Trump conspirators and originated as Reddit fodder.

Rich was indeed a controversial figure, Clinton later expressed some regrets about this pardon.

Remember, Glencore's part in the RBC deal is minor -- it was only 300 million euros in a 10.2 billion euro deal but the bigger prize is its option to sell Russian oil later.

One wonders how even this minor stake was legal under sanctions but for one, Glencore is an Anglo-Swiss company, not an American company, and for two there are loopholes and maybe they were found; at least "shock" was expressed in "the City".

Glencore has now in turn sold that stake to the Chinese state oil company

The sale was seemingly at a loss, but then there's this:

On paper, after nine months he shows a small loss: Glencore retains a 0.5 percent equity stake in Rosneft, now worth around 250 million euros. But crucially, traders expect Glencore to hold on to the most valuable benefit of the deal: an agreement to let his firm sell hundreds of millions of barrels of Russian oil to global markets over five years.

The mystery around this deal is of course what enables some to go looking for Trump connections. Reuters reports again:

When that deal was reached in December, participants did not fully disclose the beneficiaries of their off-shore investment vehicle to the public, or explain which Russian banks were among those providing loans.

So this is where Slate's timeline comes in:

Dec. 8: Carter Page—as he later confirmed in his own congressional testimony—meets with Rosneft executives, and then flies to London to discuss new business opportunities in Kazakhstan with Gazprom officials.

Dec. 9: The “largest oil deal in Russia’s history” is announced.

Dec. 13: Kushner meets Sergey Gorkov, who chairs Russia’s government-owned VE Bank (VEB) and is Putin’s close confidant. Analysts have described VEB as Putin’s “private slush fund,” a source of money independent from official Russia budgeting. VEB is under strict U.S. sanctions.

Dec. 14: Gorkov reportedly immediately flies to Japan to meet with Putin.

Dec. 29: Obama orders new Russian sanctions for election hacking and interference. On the same day: Flynn calls Kislyak five times about Russian sanctions. Trump tweets about Putinthe next day, calling him “very smart” for not responding to Obama’s sanctions before Trump has had a chance to transition into office.

The Rosneft sale was right after Trump’s victory but before the inauguration. It was also right after Kushner’s push for a secret communications link to the Kremlin through the Russia embassy that U.S. intelligence couldn’t access, and right before Kushner’s meeting with Putin’s banker and confidant Gorkov.

Except one mistake - Rosneft's deal was announced on December 7, as we know from Vedomosti, Russia's (still somewhat independent) business daily. Meduza, a Russian news site now based in Riga and run by editors who fled Lenta, also reported it that day. The New York Times, which has a Moscow bureau, also reported the sale December 7, 2017. It may have not been reported in the US because of the difference in time zones until the 8th or 9th at other outlets, hence the mistake.

So Page knew about the sale, as did the Russian media, and commented on it in Moscow at a press conference.

Even so, once you see "VEB Bank" (Vneshekonombank or literally Foreign Economic Bank) mentioned in Steele and the New York Times coverage then there is more cause for "following the networks".

Of course even back in June 2017, the Times had this:

Now VEB is at the center of an international firestorm that threatens the Trump presidency because the bank’s chief [Sergei Gorkov] — a prominent graduate of Russia’s spy school — met with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, during the presidential transition. That meeting is a focus of a federal counterintelligence investigation about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

***

On that same trip, Mr. Gorkov met with Mr. Kushner. The nature of the meeting, which remains in dispute, followed a session between Mr. Kushner and the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about opening a communications channel with Russian officials during the presidential transition, according to current and former American officials

So it's not as if The Intercept is breaking this news about VEB, it's just linking new revelations about Qatar to the overall Kushner story.

Where are we on this? We are still nowhere. Page has been under investigation by the FBI for ages with 4 FISA warrants and there isn't any indictment yet -- and may never be one. As we know from the Alger Hiss story, this may not mean he is innocent.

Maybe Mueller will get something on Kushner -- this may not tie up to Glencore or Rosneft.

Let's look at one more article covering Page's trip to Moscow in December 2016, in the state-owned RIA Novosti:

What is the purpose of your visit to Moscow?

I have travelled to Moscow over the course of most of my life and worked with the Russian people. I am firmly convinced that the possibilities for cooperation with the private sector of the Russian economy have never been as great as they will be in the coming years. Despite the hostile Western policy and the inevitable logical reaction of Moscow which has restricted these opportunities in the last few decades, the opportunities of the present day are unique. I am working on several potential projects within the framework of support of that trend.

Are there any problems now with forming the Administration?

I am not directly connected with any activities in organizing the transition. However, judging from the conversations with my close acquaintances in Washington and New York which are drawn into this process the work is going exceptionally well.

Do you expect that in the near future sanctions with regard to Russia will be removed? Do American companies want to return to the Russian market? If yes, in what sectors, above all? What do you think about the Rosneft deal?

The wish of Americans and also European companies to return to the Russian market is great. The interest extends to numerous diverse sectors. Hostile attempts to punish Rosneft and its team of senior executives with the help of Western sanctions mainly harmed Western companies and not the target aimed at. The innovative deal made this week accentuates these restrictions since many potentially strategic investment partners were excluded.

Do you expect that the new US Administration will implement a policy of recognition of the Creima? What role and what place will Ukraine be given in the new Administration?

The history of events of recent years in the Ukraine [note the Russian use of "na Ukraine" instead of "v Ukraine--CAF] as a whole and Crimea in particular can be one of the most egregious examples of 'fake news' in recent times. The level of disinformation on which decisions have been built by external players and their influence on this country was catastrophic. I am convinced that there will be new opportunities to overcome these mistaken conceptions and the incorrect vector which was established for Ukraine."

Note that everything Page says here is calculated to be part of his denial of involvement in the claims of the Steele dossier.

Regardless of whether Page is ever indicted, he should be morally condemned for doing business with a government rightly under Western sanctions for its mass crimes against humanity, namely in the Ukrainian and Syrian wars but one could add also its seizure of Georgian territory and the Georgian war regardless of the clownish nature of Saakashvili. (I always explain the Georgian war as follows: "Russia is responsible, Georgia is to blame, the US is involved." I think that about sums it up: Russia began handing out Russian passports in a provocative move that international institutions could only wring their hands about years before the invasion; Russian planes buzzed Georgian air space before the invasion; Russian "peacekeepers" are self-described and represented no international institution or consensus.)

It will be interesting to see some people's heads explode as they first try to explain that Russia is poor and mismanaged and corrupt and therefore can't possibly launch nuclear weapons, and doesn't have enough money to pay its pensioners, but yes, is a great business opportunity (!) Sergei Brin once called Russia "Nigeria with snow." I've always thought that was too harsh especially given that Sergei was all too happy to hire Russia's human stock, educated computer engineers and programmers. The Russian state is responsible for much of the world's hacking, both financial and political, and malware and spam which cost billions of dollars. Under a different leadership, this shall we say "energy" might be converted to programming the world's back offices and mobile games and more. Others have summed up Russia's economy currently as that of "hunter-gatherers" -- i.e. oil, caviar, minerals. Well, that's harsh, too -- again under better leadership, this might be turned to cooperation.

It's helpful to remember what Amb. Michael McFaul said, former envoy to Russia, immensely disliked by the Kremlin (and criticized by me for his opposition to the Magnitsky Act): even during the reset, there wasn't that much business with Russia. There just isn't that much trade with Russia and the US. There are some long-term oil and gas deals -- or were -- that one could argue didn't yield big profits given the time and investments required for them; there were purchases of engines to launch space rockets, arguably cheaper for the US space program -- that's gone now. There was this and that -- caviar, cardboard, perhaps some seabuck thorn oil (although that mainly comes from Central Asia) or pine tar extract (but America has its own). Truly, there has not ever been much trade between the US and Russia for lots of reasons.

And there won't be, until there is better leadership and reform, as there were under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But we don't have better leadership, and Russia will never be part of the West or the West's friend, given everything, and that must always be kept in mind.

And now in retrospect -- Page's interview was 15 months ago -- we see the Trump Administration, for a combination of reasons, hasn't gone in the direction Page or Sechin for that matter hoped. Sanctions remain in place, the new representative on Ukraine, Kurt Volker, is quite critical of Russia as the main problem in the war in Ukraine - the fake news is all in Page's mind as a fellow traveler. America is even supposed to give and/or sell Javelin missiles to Ukraine now in the long-delayed implementation of a Congressional mandate.

This might all end this year, of course, we don't know. There are certain signs that Trump's Russian policy is better than Trump himself has let on -- and this is no thanks to Trump but whatever grown-ups do remain in the Administration or were always part of the government service.

Below find the sections of Page's testimony in Congress:

Posted at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 12, 2018

What Do We Really Have From the Navalny Deripaska Story Now? Here's a Little More But...

Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

The sensational story uncovered by accident by opposition leader Alexey Navalny has been reported, but without a lot of solid journalistic research. I see journalists arguing about the politically-correct term to call Nastya Rybka -- whore? prostitute? escort? call girl? sex worker? -- without realizing (strangely, they should know better) that the operative thing about Nastya is that she is likely an operative sent from the same outfit that sends other teams to harass Navalny - Russian domestic intelligence.

Sarah Hurst has tried to make sense of the reporting on this blog post but I think she misses a certain amount and makes connections that might be valid in a sort of literary and political way but then don't help the actual Russia Investigation or prove anything as "trial truth". She's claiming her purpose is only to "chronicle Navalny" impartially in ways she believes others don't but then she implies there's "something" to the Prikhodko connection which lets us know she isn't merely chronicling Navalny but making a larger insinuation.

That is, there is much that could be valid about this hypothesis:

Prikhodko himself is a figure who deserves far more scrutiny than he usually receives. He has managed to maintain a very low profile, but is considered the Kremlin’s “grey cardinal” and was referred to in Rybka’s book as “Papa”. He has worked in Russian government and alongside Putin since the era of Boris Yeltsin. He writes speeches for Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, himself the target of one of Navalny’s biggest corruption investigations. He may have had more of a role in Russia’s efforts to help Trump get elected than more well-known officials such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. His association with Deripaska could be another important link in the Trump/Russia investigation.

If that's "merely chronicling Navalny," I'll eat my hat -- obviously it's a tie to Trump that Navalny himself doesn't hazzard to make -- but one of the typically bloggy/unfactchecked ones that plague the Steele memo dossier coverage and many other topics in our time. I'm for trying to pin down facts.

If we advance Prikhodko as "the new even more secret grey cardinal" or "yet another gray cardinal, this time with more seniority," writers have to show how Surkov lost his grey cardinal title (he didn't, he still does grey cardinal stuff around the DNR/LNR/Ukraine, met regularly with John Kerry and now with Trump's special representative on Ukraine and has other portfolios beyond his formal responsibilities of CIS/Abkhazia/South Ossetia.

OR they have to find Prikhodko doing various other things that just being in a "follow the networks" chart that proves he's "the real" or "the new" or "an additional" "grey cardinal." Him being called "Papa" by a 20-something escort is not "a thing" unless he is shown to be called "Papa" by others who call him this in a mafia sort of way. Anybody who survives through Yeltsin/Medvedev/Putin -- as BTW Dvorkovich has and others -- is a survivable kind of guy and there may be more there -- or not.

We live in a time when not just bloggers but journalists don't do their jobs always, especially if they are in the dangerous constraints of Moscow, and where we can't be sure that the CIA or FBI do their jobs -- we hope they do. We live in a context here (which people in Russia, whether Russians or expats need to understand) where no simple due diligence is being done as journalists on fact-finding (that's why Michael Weiss and I have prepared a very long fact-checking piece on the Steele memo which I hope will come out this week).

That is, sure, there's a lot of good reporting and blogging on Steele and the hack/influence operation but it is not collated, it has contending schools of thought and the simplest fact-checking on it hasn't been done much of the time.

Stories like the Deripaska scandal, followed by sites such as the Committee on the Russian Investigation (which is actually quite good, despite the ridicule journalists subjected it to after its launch) immediately get thrown in the ringer of "but how do they relate to FISA courts, FBI investigations, congressional investigations, leading media investigations (Washington Post) etc.

You have to find facts.

So here is my response to where this story is at the moment:

1. We don't know that Rybka is really Deripaska's mistress -- she said so, but she could be lying (she could be a call girl with some other beef, jealous of him if he scorned her, mad at him if he didn't pay enough -- we don't know). OR she could be sent by the FSB to harass Navalny *and even* Deripaska. That this group of call girls "comes from somewhere" has to be part of the story. Navalny immediately figured out they were "like" the Cossacks and Anti-maidan activists that dog, harass, beat and even throw acidic disinfectant on him and injure his eye.

This particular group of women are recorded as staging provocative demonstrations in support of Harvey Weinstein, which could be either a spontaneous people's uprising cough or merely harassment scripted and deployed by the FSB -- I think it's likely the latter. To be sure, we don't have a leaked email proving the FSB did this, and we know Russia doesn't always work "like that" as it did in the Soviet era.

So sure, there could be "some force in society" shy of the actual institutional FSB that the FSB encourages, or lets alone, say, Afghan veterans or Cossacks or even ladies of the night who love Putin, hate Navalny and want to stage "an action". But I think it's a KGB-style hand print, and it's like all the other pro-Kremlin NTV or REN-TV attacks going on lately and the Cossacks from central casting, not people's spontaneity.

Let me suggest that claiming you are gang-raped, then saying it was all a joke journalists should have been smart enough to "get" doesn't exactly establish you as a font of credibility.

2. So Deripaska may or may not be in on this sting -- or it might not be a sting from Russian intelligence, but only a call girl's sting who works for RIS but isn't "on assignment. Are you still following me? Therefore if this has blown up in Deripaska's face, you have to figure in that the Kremlin may want to get HIM, too, for any reason or no reason.

3. Someone who has a billion dollar payday on the UK stock market isn't someone who is bringing that billion to Russia -- or maybe he is -- maybe there are "talks" being had about this. The UK couldn't stop it. Russia couldn't stop it, or was behind it, or will benefit from it. Tracking these things is above my pay grade. But Panama Papers style journalism has to be done on it in part to figure out whether it has Putin's consent. It's important now for context to realize that there have been a flurry of meetings and incomplete news reports about the presidential candidate Titov from the Party of Growth going to talk to oligarchs in exile about how to bring them back to Russia -- with their loot. And disagreements about whether Titov has the mandate to lead this group, and has a list of oligarchs really seeking re-patriation or not. And the election campaigning of both Titov and of course Putin himself as the context to see this as not necessarily a civic deed but self interest. We don't know if Deripaska is on or off that list; whether he is in or out with Putin (remember when Putin yelled at him for not paying his factory workers?) -- we just don't know, so let's not pretend to know.

4. Now we come to whether this is relevant to the Russia Investigation -- it may or may not be. We now have in this Tinker-to-Chase-to-Chance scenario Manafort's oligarch, Deripaska, to whom he is indebted in a bad deal, and to whom he is beholden, and to whom he has written an email that is available now in the Russia Investigation which indicates he promised Deripaska briefings on Trump that would be useful to him in a debt relief program. Deripaska, quite apart from any Putin or Prikhodko collusion, might simply like to know who is president such as to plan his IPO better.

5. We don't have Manafort in Navalny's YouTube, but let's credit the previous outside information as "related". But now we have to show that Deripaska meeting with Prikhodko is "a thing". Given that Prikhodko is foreign affairs

6. Prikhodko is not in the Steele memo -- but maybe that's because the Steele memo has garbage in it and disinformation along with truths and he is the "real guy" and in fact didn't show up there for good reason to hide his tracks.

7. So what have we got?. Here I think it's helpful to point out as I have on Twitter threads that Sechin's ex-wife Marina (wives are often made ex wives to hide assets) is placeable in the same fancy apartment building as Prikhodko, it's like the Ozero dacha only an apartment building with some of the cast of characters that would presumably show collusion with Putin, relationship to Putin's corruption or interference with US elections, or whatever. But which did not in and of themselves show that yet, because you know, journalism.

7. So for indictments or even good journalism, you have to tie Prikhodko to some other player in either the Steele memo or in some other outside reporting or findings of the Russia Investigation. And that has not been done yet. Remember the FBI has spent a year with FOUR FISA warrants (which I believe are justified but are controversial among conservatives) on Carter Page, Carter Page has red flags all over him but there is no indictment of Carter Page yet, unlike Manafort or George Papadopoulos

7. Navalny has geolocated the yacht, Prikhodko on it, and Deripaska on it with him and even talking about that Russian bugbear Victoria Nuland. Great, but that's not enough to add to Manafort's indictment or anybody's. We haven't proven Prikhodko discussed the hack, influencing the elections or anything but Victoria Nuland, which only lets us know once again that this hack of Nuland's phone was likely Russian intelligence, not Ukrainian intelligence which is widely reported and believed despite common sense (and sometimes credulous purveyors of that origin claim that it's because Ukrainian intelligence is corrupted with Russian agents, but there's a simpler explanation: the FSB or GRU bugs phones, and leaks their contents, not the SBU).

8. In this Twitter thread, you can see how Sechin's ex-wife Marina links to Prikhodko as they both own apartments in the swank Swedish Dead End building. Oligarchs often hide assets by divorcing wives; we don't know what is going on here but the Swedish Dead End has been studied, and Prikhodko and others are in it, may be a clue, at least you show that two figures in the Steele memo may do their subbotniks together or walk dogs or something...

Important: Follow "namesakes" to tie Rosneft Igor Sechin, Sechin's ex-wife Marina Prikhodko to Sergei Prikhodko in same apt bld https://t.co/78NiOWobit But then, remember, you didn't tie Sechin to Carter Page - Sechin proven in Moscow only July 5. Bld name is "Swedish Dead End"
— CAFitzpatrick (@catfitz) February 8, 2018

9. Navalny can call all he wants for Putin to fire Prikhodko like he did Skuratov, but we don't know that Prikhodko had sex with Rybka. Being on a yacht with Deripaska's call girl/girlfriend/whatever isn't proof you've had sex with her, even allowing for "Russian reality.' She didn't actually testify that, either, you know? And now she's a woman who first claimed a gang rape, then said it was a joke. Can we get credible testimony out of Rybka? Something tells me we will not see Prikhodko fired soon, anyway!

9. Deripaska has acted predictably with wrath, suing everyone, and ensuring that Roskomnadzor has now not only blocked this article and YouTube, but Navalny's whole web site. Nota bene -- the RESULTS of a thing like this are important as the innuendo and tantalizing connections you see along the way and the RESULTS we have so far are: 1) Navalny worse off 2) nothing for the Russian investigation 3) lawsuits from Deripaska silencing media.

10. So what have we got now:

A. Navalny having bit hard on some chum that may or may not be true and may or may not be relevant to our own Russian Investigation in the US. Result: his site, which previously wasn't banned as a whole formally, but only in parts, has a new escalation of action against him: his site navalny.com now is officially blocked by Roskomnadzor at the request of the court due to Deripaska's suit. That may change, if an appeal is successful, and in one sense doesn't matter, as people use circumvention to get to Navalny's site, but it's an escalation.

B. A story about Deripaska's antics that may or may not true, Rybka may invent new serials or disappear from site but she isn't an ordinary call girl.

C. Deripaska succeeding in silencing the main Kremlin critic and scaring away media East and West. Last week Deripaska took a very big payday from the London stock market with an IPO -- one billion -- something that MI6 questioned -- I was trying to call attention to this for days, and nobody but the Telegraph cared, and it didn't even get put in reporting on the Navalny expose.

D. We have nothing of use for the Russian Investigation. That is, maybe the FBI/CIA/Congress will research this more but hey, what is there? You have blogging inuendo, and I'm all for that I'm a blogger, but you don't have trial truth.

E. Massive work is still needed journalistically (with open sources) or through law-enforcement (clandestine sources) and it is not done yet. You always have to wonder if a story like this is designed to obliterate what ever trail there may have been.

F. I've tied one Steele figure (Sechin) to Prikhodko (Swedish Dead End)-- but then my own research (to which never come came out in the Daily Beast soon which spiked it, and instead came out at Coda Story) shows the Rosneft pieces of the memo are the weakest and hard to explain and may be the disinformation. Then there's the Sosna Dacha Collective with Volodin and Prikhodko but Volodin could always say they never garden or walk dogs together much less have tea to plot election interference.

G. Let's not pretend that everyone had Prikhodko on their radar and "already knew" he had "grey cardinal" status. They didn't. I did a lot of Russian and English googling of him and the cast of Steele characters. Nothing (but Sechin's wife). You go ahead and try. Russia-watchers knew who Prikhodko was, but they had never tied him to the US hack because Lavrov/the Foreign Ministry was dismissed from consideration as "a thing" when the Steele memo said the interference no longer went through FM but went through the PA. Maybe that dismissal was premature...

So...You don't need to tie Manafort to Prikhodko, Deripaska is the "cutaway" there, that's established with materials in the Russia Investigation, emails obtained by congressional oversight committees. But you do need to hook Deripaska up to something besides a hooker.

H. To be sure, connecting Prikhodko of the FM to the PA is trivial: Volodin (Putin's former chief of staff in the PA now moved to the Duma) isn't mentioned in Steele per se but his people in the PA are: Igor Diveykin, his chief of security and later domestic policy person and Oleg Govorun (with Surkov in the CIS/South Ossetia/Abkhazia department).

In a bid to dispel Navalny's exposes of another era -- 2015 --as RFE/RL reported, Volodin did this:

Volodin gave an apparent nod to Navalny while leading journalists on a recent tour of his property in the so-called Sosna (Pine) dacha cooperative that he belongs to, together with Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko and the deputy speaker of Russia's State Duma, Sergei Neverov.

Do tell.

So now we have Swedish Dead End, Sosna, like Ozero Dacha collective (Putin and his mafiosi/oligarch pals in St. Petersburg), connecting to Prikhodko (not in Steele) and Sechin (in Steele) and that's fascinating but you still haven't proved that they got together to hack the US election and spin.

It's a lot closer to the sourcing on Steele and outside Steele than "Prikhodko told Putin something" which we can't prove.

Yes, it's my own theory that Putin told Volodin to take the same machine he used to throw the Russian elections and turn it on the US. That "machine" was Volodin's very sophisticated Internet empire in the PA that measured -- and shaped -- public opinion.

That may be unorthodox -- the FSB should do that sort of operation -- but I think Putin didn't trust the FSB. Putin's personal security retinue, if you will, the FSO, was also involved (Diveykin is FSO). I will write a longer post on this after our other piece comes out (where I couldn't really develop it) but that's the story I think.

If we can show Manafort-Deripaska-Prikhodko-Volodin easily, it's not hard to understand how the presidential administration, claimed to have perpetrated the US election interference, could function.

But we still don't have proof of this.

Posted at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 07, 2018

What's Down on The Kremlin Troll Farm These Days

The Flying Monkeys were the foot soldiers of the Wicked Witch of the East in Wizard of Oz

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

I've been thinking in a conceptual way about how the Moscow influence operations worked in the 1960s-1980s, and how they work today -- similar, of course, but with many new affordances from the invention of social media and also the reformation and deformation of Russia itself.

Skip down to the list at the end of this post if you like and think about it more directly and quickly -- or read the back story as you wish.

We've been under attack lately by the usual low-grade trolls, more sophisticated operatives, opportunistic actors, and so on. It's not that "it's getting harder to tell them apart" -- and they encourage brand confusion -- but that maybe it doesn't matter, that function and not form should be followed. In any event, food for thought, but remember when it was more like this?

Moscow Center - the actual employee of the KGB or GRU or state media, such as Vladimir Posner
Agent of Influence - the emigre figure or Western journalist or UN officials they had coopted -- Victor Louis was a character like that;
Active Measure - the operation that Moscow Agent performed in tandem with AoI to influence media or harass you as a journalist or human rights worker
Fellow Traveler - the socialist parties, the leftist academics who followed the Moscow line, sometimes slavishly, sometimes less so but mainly travelling along -- the word in Russian is "sputnik" as in the satellite and news agency by that name.
Pragmatic Industrialist - this would be Armand Hammer or somebody who would sell wheat or oil or Coca Cola to the Soviets in the belief this would bring world peace dynamically on its own
Double Agent - the person working for both sides
Defector - a KGB agent or ballet star who defected to the U.S. or another country from the Soviet Union
Emigre - first wave (tsarists, Whites), second wave (DPs, World War II), third wave (Jews, Baptists, Volga Germans, etc.)
Peaceniks -- these might be already Fellow Travelers or already turned to Agents of Influence but they also included many sincere marchers for peace in Birkenstock sandals who drank green tea and sang John Lennon songs
Exchange Students -- this was an inapt name for people like me, who studied at LGU in 1978-179 because we had no "counterparts" -- there was no "exchange" of students allowed to study as we were -- there were only officials and operatives, people like Georgy Arbatov.
Soviet Friendship Society, Soviet Peace Committee - fake state agencies staffed by real KGB to interact with foreigners
Kremlinologists - this was a high caste of people with visas valid to the Soviet Union who did not criticize the Soviet Union or they would ose their visas
NGOs - human rights groups, ethnic groups like Ukrainian Self-Help groups, veterans' groups etc that might or might not take a critical role regarding the USSR - not to be confused with GONGOs, which are "government organized" entities like the Soviet Friendship Society

In other words, the roles were pretty clearly defined. There weren't some roles that were so capacious that almost anything could be meant by them. In part this is caused by the institutions themselves in Russia and even the West breaking down; in part it is due to the Internet; maybe it was the drive of inertia but there it is, it's just not so defined. That is, when was the last time you heard of a defector? It would be good if there were still defectors who would say "I have defected from this evil regime, here is my story" and people would either help with literary jobs or put them in federal protection programs or what have you.

Today, you have these phenomen:

Fourth wave -- which includes Google engineers who come to live for years on H1 visas but are still allied with Moscow and are fine with the VPK (military-industrial complex) that maybe just didn't pay them enough but might some day; students who can now study abroad and return; relatives of people who can live abroad and return after 3 or 6 months; even businessmen who don't have to have big-picture pragmatism and money to waste on Soviet reality, but who might merely sell toner refill cartridges or something
Rossotrudnichestvo -- the state's "cooperation" agency which is little more than the Soviet Peace Committee under Arbatov, really, but now has a way bigger budget and the ability to form or cooperate with think-tanks, committees, projects, trips, conferences, etc. Endless.
Faux Friends -- these are people who have an institute that sounds like a Western one, like "Comparative Agricultures" or "Policy Studies" or even have a name like "Carnegie" or "an IBM sponsorship" in their set-up -- but are NOT the same as a free, independent, untrammeled institution in the West.
Russianology or area studies or thematic studies (health) with a regional component -- now more actual research can be done in-country; now more of a range of views and theories are tolerated, but still, this field is visa-dependent and also constantly ducks to avoid being called "neo-con" or some other political career killer that might affect their university's government grants or even private grants
Social media -- and here where the field is enormous, on steroids, a fire hose, and really, only to be controlled by Moscow Center, which has the will and the manpower and the grudges -- Westerners just don't have those things in enough amounts at any level.
Kremlin Troll Farm -- semi-state operations by shadowy figures in Russia that do influence partly as a business, partly as a political favor that helps them in their more lucrative businesses (like Prigozhin's Defense Ministry contracts for catering, etc.)

There's probably more I could add to the complexities of the forces and entities at play here -- "metasticizing Russian mafia inside the health benefits system of America" is the kind of thing I mean -- that is partly about fourth wave, which doesn't really leave Mother Russia even if it does physically by bringing its worst features and embedding them in Western life; "Londongrad" is another one of these entities of criminality. So I won't get into all that now but let me just sketch out the list of "roles" that I see played out mainly on Twitter or Facebook which make the whole Moscow Center game now so much more effective (for them) and tiring and frenetic (for us).

In the old days, a KGB agent, perhaps with the help of an Agent of Influence, could infiltrate an emigre group, get them fighting with each other, pressure somebody facing a divorce or who was an alcoholic and turn them, smear people in the newspapers with their AoI journos, and mission accomplished. They could recruit spies or pen a podval (the so-called "basement" on the bottom of the page of Pravda or Izvestiya which either denounced a certain figure or institution in the West, or carried their recantation with titles like "How My Eyes Were Opened") -- so that if you saw a name in the podval you'd know they'd be arrested or expelled or fired -- or worse. What the KGB could not do was get into your Kiwanis Club or bowling nights on Tuesdays. Now it can.

Basically, in the old model, Moscow Center couldn't really leverage the concept that there were supposed non-agents that could be decent and have those pro-Moscow views on their own -- because they didn't exist, or there were far less.

That is, either somebody was an out-and-out agent, or they were bought, like some UN official or businessman, with bribes or merely drinks or girls or whatever, blackmailed perhaps, or actually put on the payroll, or the "influence" agents were in short supply -- even if you were a peacenik or a socialist, you wouldn't want to go ride on a Volga Boat Trip in the Soviet era unless...well, wait, Bernie Sanders did that, AND actually spent his honeymoon going up the Volga with such a Ship of Fools...

But what I mean is...people didn't have the ability or capacity or couldn't get the visas (the Soviets didn't grant them) such as to go backpacking around Buryatia and get roped into a mafia/intelligence scheme by stupidity or ominously, wind up dead in the taiga -- the opportunity wasn't there. There wouldn't be someone who worked in a Citibank or a Pizza Hut in Moscow the way they would in Vienna or Tokyo who might become a witting or unwitting agent -- they didn't exist as positions. There wasn't that vast field of activity of ordinariness possible -- and there wasn't that vast ability to get into the interstices like bed bugs and stay forever and wreck havoc.

If you ran the Moscow line in the 1980s, you were an actual agent, or paid in cash or kind, or in a very lonely place in your sectarian magazine that no one found credible -- if you were honest, and few believed you were. And here I'll say there were always arguments (like about Alger Hiss) and I personally found I.F. Stone (in the 1980s before his death) to be honest and decent; I worked with him in fact-checking a number of articles, we would speak on the phone now and then, and didn't believe him ever to have been a committed Moscow agent, although the arguments that rang in Alcove 1 and Alcove 2 in the old days about this still ring in the virtual equivalents of those Alcoves today.

That is re: Stone, I'd say even if you present proof that he worked for Moscow in 1936-1938 (and you might be able to do that -- and that's terrible!) he would have atoned for his sins in the 1980s by exposing the decided incompleteness of Gorbachev's glasnost in the 1980s and by really getting it about Moscow in general.

After all, Wikipedia is accurate about the critical position he took on the Moscow purges, for example, although I think he was wrong about the Korean War. I.F. Stone's Weekly was the first blog, and a good thing for the country, in my view. The problem is that the many, many sources on what Stone really did in the 1930s when he met with Soviet press attaches and ran front groups against the Nazis aren't clear - like this accusatory one or this exculpatory one. That is, I just never see anybody going frame by frame what the activities and positions were -- how Moscow's agenda was advanced, if they didn't pay for lunch.

To me, to have lunch with the Soviets in the 1930s, especially if you condemned the Moscow trials, was just bad judgment and maybe arrogance that you could remain above it all and unstained by this. The stricter categories for these roles are gone now -- the case for or against Izzy hinges on a defector being able to say he was a paid agent or an unpaid agent -- and that's it. It's like Alger Hiss. That is you can draw in all kinds of other evidence like "what was his position on the Moscow trials or Korea" -- but the bottom line is, it's about a former Moscow agent's word against you, take it or leave it. Today, there are no defectors whose ruling on an American figure can paralyze entire intelligence agencies for year.

Instead, there's Twitter.

The arguments about what Izzy was or wasn't will never be solved.

But here's the thing: now everybody -- EVERYBODY -- is Izzy Stone at lunch with the Soviet press attache because EVERYBODY could accidentally retweet a Russian bot, or be influenced by a Russian operative, or get themselves tangled up in knots with some smear or Twit fight and end up with dozens of "new friends" they will never shake.

(BTW, the thrashing given to Altman here is spot on, and exactly the problem with these apologists for the KGB, and exactly the problem we still see today in dramaticizing the role of foundations or think-tanks or grants and the unwillingness to allow civil society to be -- with freedom of association and freedom of speech. That is, I can think generally Stone's legacy can stand without calling his life's work "a KGB operation" -- ridiculous -- but I can sure condemn Altman for his smear of the people who merely tried to find facts as well they should about the vast lying machinations of the Soviets.)

SO at any event, you have to think in a more sophisticated fashion about what the job is here -- if the job in the 1960s and 1980s might be plausibly to show "who takes Moscow gold" (the Communist Party, that front socialist group) or "who was really an agent of influence" (they lunched with the Soviet press attache even if they picked up their own tab) or "who is an objective agent of Moscow" (remember that whole "objective" debate that really Lenin started), today, your job is to bypass the argumentations of that quagmire of people trying to goad you into calling them "agents of Moscow" -- when they readily can show they take no pay, have no institutional affiliation, and "came by their views honestly".

Your job is always and everywhere to show that their views are aligned with Moscow's, and Moscow's views are wrong, cruel, brutal, etc. -- let's say on the war in Syria, the war in Ukraine, and so on.

Your job is to keep saying that if they were honest, independent, socially-conscious and right-thinking their views would not align with Moscow by definition.

Your job is to keep saying, "but if you are that independent thing, why are your views aligned with Moscow's? Because they are. Why would you support bombing Syrian villages where there's no ISIS?" "Why do you think Right Sector and NATO is fighting in Ukraine when it's the regular Ukrainian army fighting Russia's GRU battalions plus "volunteers" who are really contractors in the army at best and at worst operatives of ultraright groups" and so on.

Some people think they establish their credibility by saying "yes, those are my views, but I oppose Putin's position on gays or women". Or they say, "Yes, Russia bears the brunt of blame for Syria but the US is wrong and we should work on our own government's policies -- MISTIA is right around the corner here."

Well, your job is to show them that you don't have credibility when you can weep for Chechen gays but not weep for Boris Nemtsov killed by Chechen soldiers run by the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. They are all part of the same phenomenon.

So I don't pretend this is easy, or that I have even found a good working method to try to address the moral equivalency squad, especially among the Cypsters but I think the first thing is just study the types and characters and realize the complexities of the situation. And to keep saying things like this -- that if you tendentiously supported Chelsea Manning in the process of feigning to report on her "objectively", you are working for WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is an agent of influence of Moscow. So why are you defending WikiLeaks?

So here's a chart of the roles of yesteryear, during the Cold War:

Moscow Center - this is the same old thing, Same As It Ever Was, it didn't change -- the KGB is the FSB and SVR; the GRU, it doesn't matter, it's the secret police
Vanya or Masha at IRA - these people aren't exactly KGB agents (or FSB agents) today but something different -- they are cadres for the semi-state entities like the Internet Research Agency. They might be enthusiastic VPK types; they might be moonlighting grad students; they might be single moms with toddlers who need a job -- it's a range. Some of them defect like the old KGB defectors, but only defect to the Internet and then they get either a similar job or they fade into obscurity - there's lots more of these people than there used to be. Some of them work like an American English major might work reluctantly at an ad agency -- just wanting a job, a resume builder, hoping to get out of that creepy business; others work at the IRA with zealous, ideological enthusiasm as if they were not only a VP in an ad agency but a political campaign director.
Active Measures- the thing they do is still the same -- lie, spread disinformation that is 90% true, distract, disrupt, denigrate, sabotage etc.
Flying Monkeys - this is my collective term for all of them but the first wave sent out in a big operation to distract, discredit, paralyze, disrupt
Flunkies -- these are people who work in state institutions, or even private business who feel they have to support the Kremlin for survival reasons or authentic reasons who will not fight for any space of freedom for others -- the people in this video, for example -- that is, there may be some very nice nurses or decent school teachers or skilled plumbers among the flunkies -- which is only their job by day, as by night, they may be "sobels" -- but from the perspective of the social project of how you oppose the malice and murder of the Kremlin, they are "part of the problem, not part of the solution". Still, normal relations with them building on thematic or single-interest or human commonality ties work to a point to mitigate the more awful aspects of the regime.
Scribes -- These are people who work for the state press, or fake independent press (an oligarch who has a license because he is Putin's crony). Rule 1: never sit on a panel with them and never go on their media entities believing you are "helping to get the word out" about freedom or facts or anything outside their world. The only way to avoid losing the game with Scribes is never to play.
Bots -- these are scripted entities that either tie to spam kings who just do political jobs like they would do a bank robbery or a credit card theft, or ideologically-driven types who make or buy or sell bots to perform operations to serve their own interest group -- for example, a group of Afghan veterans who support the People's Republic in Donbass and maybe work as policemen -- they're not Moscow Center at the FSB, they're just a force aligned with it that may be even more malevolent and capable of greater damage to targets precisely because they have no institutional constraints -- like Anti-Maidan. Keep in mind that you can't always tell a bot from a real person, and they play on that. So your work here is not to identify "bots" but to oppose their malevolent ideas, whether authentic or real.
AoI - this is the Agent of Influence who is now 2.0 -- an Internet commodity, perhaps available for rent by groups even with opposite agendas, a "work for hire" type - these people are more flexible now, and have entire web sites and think tanks which I call Open Source Active Measures -- available to be used by just about anybody (like Registan or Storify) but which become suborned quickly by those with means and mind for mayhem, like RT.com journalists or Uzbek security goons.
Cypsters - this is my contraction for Cynical Hipster especially because they "sip" a lot of alcohol in bars -- and are willing to drink with Alexander Boroday of the DNR and MH17 infamy, for example, and tweet nasties about Navalny. These are generally young men in their 20s or 30s with their first grad school or media or business or travel in Russia -- but they can occasionally be young women who work in a Soros AIDS project and then sometimes they stay five years and write for obscure lefty magazines and do fixing for real journalists for a lot of money and then maybe marry a Russian woman or man. The Cypsters believe they are Above it All and Russia and America are morally equivalent, and they have just the fact-filled nuanced 140-character version of why this true, with a meme photo ready at the hand -- that maybe actually Konstantin Rykov gave them or sent them, and from which they may not even wipe off the electronic identifiers. In their middle age, Cypsters may upgrade at best to AoIs or perhaps be revealed finally as Scribes. There is no redemption here.
Contrarian Authoritarians - these people are more skilled, established, invested in careers but their entire world, which started with Opposing the Man, is now about providing the Critical (Marxist otherwise) stance about [fill in topic] -- always being contrarian to what they few as the stampede, the pack journalism, the benighted people who think their own country, America is superior to Russia because despite the Trump horrors it is still under the rule of law -- and that matters.. Steve Cohen is a good example of this type of character. I say "Authoritarian" about some of them because their recipe is usually to shut down free speech, accuse others of having called them "agents of Moscow" or even write their bosses and tell them they should fire people for what they said on Twitter.
Listless Liberals -- this should be self-explanatory, and why these other characters succeed -- not enough spine, too much fear, wary of losing a visa to Moscow or being called a "neo-con" etc.
Adjuncts -- these are people who have those low-level jobs in academe that they think should be paid more -- except then people like the semi-drug addicted unemployable, the failed businessman with a drinking problem who can at least teach business writing to feed his family, the former gentry family scion rich fallen on hard times, the new immigrant -- they have no place they can get jobs, and they should. Bloomberg is harsh on these people and tells then to get a real job. Sarah Kendzior who matches the description of a number of roles here is a big champion of adjunct rights past the point of sanity. This job exists and is low paid so that those who should be low paid can at least get that -- and really, the solution isn't "publish or perish" or "get tenure" -- which can be hard now for all kinds of reasons -- but to be willing to be a paralegal, and then either becoming a lawyer, run for office, or become a business executive or even a New York City school teacher. The need is greater there. In the Kremlin Troll battle context, the adjuncts are horrible because they are underemployed, feel no pressure to write real articles when they can tweet all day, have all the time in the world to sit at conferences and junket around at least with couch-surfing and so they never really work for a living even as they whine that they are underpaid -- they won't even paint houses. Moscow doesn't have to pay them -- New School for Social Research does.
Granolas - these are like Peaceniks, but with better health and while they home-school or sell Amway, they might be on Twitter all day with a vengeance and they may decide the Russian bot line du jour -- hate Musk, release the memos, cheer the underdog Russian Olympians are all viable Apple Pie positions. Don't misjudge them.
MISTIA "More In Sorrow Than in Anger" -- people who share your views, but they begin to think you are Counterproductive if you are Too Harsh in your criticism; they call for nuanced discourse; they urge dialogue; they say maybe there's another way to look at this, they view themselves as ABOVE like the Cypsters, but they may drink less, and actually be more grown-up in their fields of employment or the ability to Affect Change. The MISTIAS can include just weepy girls who think Russian cats are cute but really, it's about established professionals who think really, it's going too far to say things like "Putin should go to the Hague" and we Need to Be More Temperate In Our Language.
Clueless Gits - these are people who wander into Twitter wars about facts and realities with no idea of where Russia is on a map, or even the next state over from the one they live in, in America. They have all kinds of totally random ideas -- did they see that thing about Russia on the Discovery Channel? No, they saw "The Americans" or somebody had a video on Facebook. They can go stampeding after the actual agents, and you can't count on them to know American civics or world history well enough to have some natural checks and balances, as you could in the 1960s.
Pugilists - these are people who actually fight Russian trolls or try to oppose the mayhem, from amateur civic positions, from professional positions in NGOs or institutes, from whatever, but they become so wrapped up on it that it is easy for Moscow Center to play on their egos, vanities, insecurities, and narcissisms and just "play" them by ensuring they themselves do the splitting of groups; they themselves undermine solidarity with stubborn suspicions and so on
PlayCops -- these are people who maybe actually worked in law-enforcement or intelligence but don't anymore. Now they play on Twitter. Or they wish to be cops someday, and play one on Twitter. At one level, Preet Bharara is a very, very good and skillful version of PlayCop that is actually a very needed thing in civil society -- a former federal prosecutor fired by Trump who takes outstanding civic positions and tries to be helpful and knowledge -- but since Obama could have fired him just as well (they are all fired when a new president comes in) it has to be seen in context. Try to grasp that this isn't an insult -- I'd vote Bharara for mayor of New York City. Yes, PlayCops when they really have a robust cop history and really know their field (Schindler) are generally vital to the Twitter discourse. The problem is that they are NOT the real thing -- and the real thing does not function. You also can't tell, if you just have a bunch of kids at John Jay School of Criminal Justice, or Moscow agents pretending to be intelligence, or prison guards in Columbus, OH when you have some nit saying he is in "law-enforcement" and begins to talk with that gabble of long, official words and colloquialisms that make up the average cop patoir.

Well, I've sketched it out. Lots more to think about...

Posted at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 28, 2017

Krebs on the Russian Hacker Arrests and My Thoughts and Response

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

Brian Krebs, a respected cybersecurity specialist whose blog I've read for years, has an interesting post up about the Russian hackers.

The problem I have with it is the claim that Russian media is saying these hackers leaked to American cybersecurity expects.

The Russian media hasn't said that. They've maybe quoted some people who have speculated on it but it's more of a social media thing. Like you'll see this kind of tweet:

Арестован майор ФСБ(ОУ ЦИБ) Дмитрий Докучаев, теперь на его группу повесят все вторжения в системы в США. Отмена санкций в обмен на хакеров

— Vladimir Garnachuk (@volgaport) January 27, 2017

Translation: FSB Major (OU TsIB) Dmitry Dokuchayev has been arrested, now all the hacking into the US systems will be hung on his group. Cancellation of the sanctions in exchange for the hackers.

This is just a tweet, guys. It's not a found fact. It is not in a charging sheet or indictment or even in an investigator's statement leaked to the press. It's just someone rushing to the pessimistic conspiracy-theory conclusions that everybody rushes to in Russia because it's in Russia.

I think all such talk has to be expressed and debated and looked at. I'm not a net-nanny who says people shouldn't "rush to conclusions" and publish the names of suspects they've heard on police radio chat during the hunt for the Boston bombers ahem. I think the only way you get to the truth with a black box like Russia and a black sack like these hacker arrests is you talk, theorize, see if things fit, see if it sticks.

But you do have to point out that there is no CONNECTION. There is nothing to TIE these people to the US.

What's interesting about Krebs is the solid information based on his professional expertise that he HAS brought to this case, for example, although he's putting it himself in the form of speculation -- and later as you see, some interesting facts he has brought about ALLEGATIONS OF an American connection:

The arrests may very well be tied to a long-running grudge held by Pavel Vrublevsky, a Russian businessman who for years paid most of the world’s top spammers and virus writers to pump malware and hundreds of billions of junk emails into U.S. inboxes.

But we don't know that Vrublyovsky - arrested and given a relatively light sentence which he served -- is going to turn around and now talk to American security researchers sympathetically about how the DNC was hacked. We don't know that he OR his hired guns at the FSB hack shop are going to do that. We just don't. The fact that Vrublyovsky has blown in Mikhailov with these accusations for his own personal reasons -- he thinks he's part of the mob that got him in jail -- can't be accepted as facts on the ground because he's not a trustworthy interlocutor as an ex-con in a mafia world with a grudge.

The first thing I thought of when I learned Vrublyovsky (I'm translating it the way it is pronounced in Russian) was a spam king -- hmm, you mean like those marketing people -- spam for some people -- that were said to be on Trump's server talking to Alfa's server? Any relation?

Krebs then goes on to tell you about King Servers, which we already knew about from the New York Times:

That report was based in part on an August 2016 alert from the FBI (PDF), and noted that most of the Internet addresses were assigned to a Russian hosting firm called King-Servers[dot]com.

But then you'd have to tie the King Servers affair to the material we have from the FSB leaks to see if it "fits".

Krebs then tells you about a statement on Chronopay's website (I had alluded to his counter-argument in one of my stories):

“The analysis of the internal data allows King Servers to confidently refute any conclusions about the involvement of the Russian special services in this attack,” Fomenko said in his statement, which credits ChronoPay for the translation. “The company also reported that the attackers still owe the company $US290 for rental services and King Servers send an invoice for the payment to Donald Trump & Vladimir Putin, as well as the company reserves the right to send it to any other person who will be accused by mass media of this attack.”

Let me put my translation:

The company King Servers, which owns the servers from which hacker attacks were made on the servers of the Democratic Party in Illinoise, have declared the absence of any "Russian trail" in the organization of this cybercrime. This company also says that the miscreants owend $290 to the company for the rental of the servers and are retaining the right to send a bill for payment to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and any other people who are accused by the media in this attack.

Krebs then writes some more interesting detail:

I mentioned Vrublevsky in that story because I knew Fomenko (a.k.a. “Die$el“) and he were longtime associates; both were prominent members of Crutop[dot]nu, a cybercrime forum that Vrublevsky (a.k.a. “Redeye“) owned and operated for years. In addition, I recognized Vrublevsky’s voice and dark humor in the statement, and thought it was interesting that Vrublevsky was inserting himself into all the alleged election-hacking drama.

That story also noted how common it was for Russian intelligence services to recruit Russian hackers who were already in prison — by commuting their sentences in exchange for helping the government hack foreign adversaries. In 2013, Vrublevsky was convicted of hiring his most-trusted spammer and malware writer to attack one of ChronoPay’s chief competitors, but he was inexplicably released a year earlier than his two-and-a-half year sentence required.

All of this is interesting and useful, but the claim that “many Russian media outlets now report the men are suspected of leaking information to Western investigators about Russian cyber intelligence operations.” They haven't said that (read everything I've done this); if there is one English-language source saying it, it's speculative.

Well, sure. Except we need to dig deeper here. Why was Vrublyovsky trying to hack and mess up a competitor? Who put him up to that? What is Asset (the rival) all about? Who is behind it? Does Aeroflot itself have any preference or payout or thing that would lead us to suspect they had a preferred payments processor? And so on.

This story can't be looked at SOLELY from the perspective of the field of cybersecurity -- although it may turn out to be about that. Hackers are not just powers in society themselves; they are hired guns for other people, maybe more than they are in the US so this might be hard to contemplate for some.

Sure, the FSB needs hackers, and so does the NSA, which is why they make poor hiring choices involving ex-cons or people like Snowden.

But really, a spam king hired by X Big Gun in Russia is hired by the FSB just because they need hackers? This is only true if the people who put him up to attacking Asset were utterly aligned with the FSB or WERE the FSB, because THEY had a business interest in having one payment system over another. SUCH an interest that they'd be willing to cause poor Aeroflot, which is now private and has had a shit-ton of its own internal problems, to lose more than a million dollars over loss of ticketing services for days. Truly, guys, that bit has to be researched because it explains MOTIVE.

The "inexplicable release" can't be ONLY explained by the FSB's need for hackers. After all, Russia is a vast country of nerds and educated programmers, and not all were fortunate enough to escape to get a job for Google or Facebook in California. Sure, they may need some very sophisticated ones. And the issue here isn't the Vrublyovsky himself sits and bangs the keyboard, what this may be about is an understanding that he comes "with" a team or at least a very clever hacker that is his gunman, and that's what the FSB wanted. We don't know. But just looking at it all from my perspective, I'm thinking the early release comes from some business interest with connections that wanted Aeroflot or Asset harmed, and had the assets in the Investigative Committee or the Federal Corrections System to spring Vrublyovsky, likely using the UDO "time off for good behavior" system. Many an "asset" has been sprung in this way; we have only to recall the former minister of defense's mistress when they were all caught in an apartment sale scam.

This bit from Krebs is interesting, just like the original story by Andrew Kramer which is VERY INTERESTING, but I need to see the guy:

Meanwhile, the malware author that Vrublevsky hired to launch the attack which later landed them both in jail told The New York Times last month that he’d also been approached while in prison by someone offering to commute his sentence if he agreed to hack for the Russian government, but that he’d refused and was forced to serve out his entire sentence.

That is, forgive me for being a tad skeptical of weepy stories that suddenly appear in the NYT at a time when we need to imagine that there are some people who might turn to helping us prove the Trump dossier is totally real.

That is, I voted for Hillary and I'm quite prepared to believe all these bad things, but I have spent a lot of time myself trying to research the Russian connection to Trump. And I don't find the smoking gun. There are many promising angles that maybe some journalist will push through to such a smoker -- and in my view, the Alfa-Trump servers story is very likely, and I utterly disbelieve Glenn Greenwald and Snopes on this -- I think Franklin Foer got it right and I'm glad he persisted to his second story.

PS just as an aside, guys. How come all the same hackers and lefty geeks and Anon script kiddies and crypto kids, as well as the lefty and liberal blog sites and media who feed off them who were blasting us all for months on end saying the Russians couldn't POSSIBLY be behind the DNC and other hacks and there was "no proof" are instantly finding a million angles to show the Trump dossier is real because an ex-con spam king says so, or because the fact of arrests of Russian hackers at/around the FSB tells us this?

Seriously, it is awfully damn strange. What are the explanations for this?

1) Russia is now working overtime through its networks of influence to get people to believe in the authenticity of the Trump dossier, because they know if they do that, they can endlessly keep busy chewing and arguing about whether Michael Cohen was really in Prague, or whether the Russian in the cybersecurity firm is in Kaspersky Lab or King Servers or WHERE, and never focus on the fact that this is a decoy, and the FBI has OTHER information, but maybe they can't close in on the suspect.

2) These people had a change of heart when Trump was really elected and the veil fell from their eyes and they now have gotten religion about Russia.

Well, alright.

The most important thing Krebs has is information we couldn't have known as it was his private knowledge he didn't relate until now:

In that conversation, Vrublevsky said he was convinced that Mikhaylov was taking information gathered by Russian government cybercrime investigators and feeding it to U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies and to Zenz. Vrublevsky told me then that if ever he could prove for certain Mikhaylov was involved in leaking incriminating data on ChronoPay, he would have someone “tear him a new asshole.”

But we already know from the Russian media (leaks from the FSB and whatever) that Vrublyovsky has been trying to wriggle out of the charges against him -- which we don't know are true or not given that he is a spam king and the sort of person to hire creepy cyber thugs for his work -- that Vrublyovsky was crying the blues about how these nasty FSB men were ganging up on him.

I'm afraid to go look for who really owns Chronopay and Assets because this is likely above my pay grade as a blogger. I do recall that on railroad ticket processing apps operating on the Internet, Navalny was able to uncover a big scam from by Putin's friend Vladimir Yakovlev, former CEO of Russian Railways. So, I figure both the air ticket systems are of that nature -- big oligarchs behind them because they involve lots of cash payments that perhaps are easily not recorded and turned into slush funds or diverted offshore.

Let's do back up here, however. Why would this good, trained, solidly employed FSB agent Mikhailov, who, unlike the other people arrested didn't previously work for an FSB rival (Department K a the police) like Stoyanov, and weren't hackers forced to become FSB agents, like Dokuchayev and Anikeyev, decide he needed to blow things into the Americans. Why?

Would any pay that our probably not terribly competent spy people could offer him, or any operational cover they could offer him (obviously blown now if they were really in it), be worth it?

Obama promised the Russians that he would respond to the Russian hack of the DNC and the other bad things "in kind". Is this the blow-up of that thing? That equal things would be done to the Russians. Were they done? Did they work? Or? I remember when I read that I was worried, because I don't think intelligence under Obama is capable of that. Forgive me, but it's not just the lack of leadership and the waning of skills for 8 years, but it's just a general sense that Russian specialists don't exist in these places anymore capable of this kind of job, and these agencies are hopelessly penetrated by moles, which is why we have Snowden. I have absolutely no reason to think that other than a hunch, so maybe -- I hope -- I'm wrong. Perhaps the arrest of Mikhailov is a failed CIA operation. But for me, it's more plausible scenario to believe it's a failed operation by German Gref.

It's hard for me to believe that anybody in Eugene Kaspersky's shop would be helping American intelligence, for lots of reasons.

This theory Krebs puts forth, based on the ex-con Vrublyovsky's variant is that Mikhailov is crooked and helping the Americans. About Ruslan Stoyanov, Vrublyovsky said he is a former agent of the Interior Ministry's BSTM, which we knew, but he adds that he was "fired for who the hell knows why" and that he "took direct part in the operation with the British police on the DDoS attacks on the British casino by the group from Saratov.

Well, we need British intelligence/journalists/somebody to corroborate that there was this thing.

He says Stoyanov organized a mini-company called Indrik that had no website and it's not clear if it is even a registered company which is supposed to be involved in DDoS protection. "Kiryushen, in the last attack on Aeroflot, recommended them. Likely not without Sergei's help," i.e. Mikhailov.

You see, if these things were true, they happened on Kaspersky's clock, and then Eugene is either in on them or not. Perhaps the reason he is absolutely silent about this man's arrest is that he has nothing to do with this (or everything to do with it, but likely the former) and just will let him burn. Obviously it wouldnt' be good for his business, which relies on the FSB's good graces, to have such a hobby thing like this going on.

I still want to know how Department K's guy at Kaspersky got to hob-nob and do ops with the FSB's Mikhailov. Were they in Komsomol together? No, too young. Karate class? These are not natural allies so that means this is either a very weak place in this story or there's "a thing" we haven't seen, i.e. "another Russian". That is, Kaspersky's finally-public collaboration with the FSB on fighting cyber-crime announced in 2013 when Stoyanov was said to be hired does not explain it. It might even have been hard for the FSB to accept that Kaspersky's guy, from their rival, Department K, was someone they now had to play nice with for the sake of crime-fighting for the Motherland. I just don't know the dynamics. We need more here. The theory of the case asks us to believe these two colluded AND they had an American angle, and I'm not buying either completely.

Obviously, as much as we think of Russia as a monolith with companies and government and intelligence all intertwined, in fact it is more complicated and a harried Aeroflot official has to find some hacker-helper for his site ticketing problems like any executive in the world, and hires a private company not knowing what he gets, or even hires them but doesn't realize that even unknown to them, some guy is working some other angle.

Cyber-anarchists are the people who really run things in the world as I explained in my book three years ago. Krebs quotes Vrublyovsky's email -- my translation:

Stoyanov has an employee whom nobody knows about -- Dmitry Levashov. Levashov lived for a long time with a certain Kimberly Zenz. She in turn is the main official specialist on Russian issues for the company iDefense. Almost all negative documents about Russia (DDoS attacks on Estonia, Georgia, the mythical RBN) are signed by her.

Well, here I'd interpret Vrublyovsky as being pro-Putin, pro-FSB largely speaking and therefore not a friend to the cause of finding out who hacked the US. So I'd be careful.

What he's doing here is burning Mikhailov with the things he think he can best burn him -- contact and leaking to the Americans. He continues:

Sergei Mikhailov's main asset is the ability to look at data in wallets in the Webmoney system using the cooperation with the FSB TsIB of the latter. And they in turn in secret from the user collect an enormous collection of data on system users, and accordingly know the wallets of any ill-doer; to find him out exactly is next to elementary. It looks like Ruslan and Sergei found various "marks" who were easily turned or on whom there was a large base of evidence and through Kimberly, leaked to iDefense, so that the later turned now already for their own profit an even or a crime into one with a global international hue, and officially through US intelligence dumped to Russia, where it landed on Sergei's desk and thus often made a mountain out of a molehill; the later would defend itself elegently, and iDefense would receive incredible grants from the USA in the struggle with the Russian threat.

Well, the acidic tone of this piece, which Krebs also remarks on, and the cynical and anti-American feeling shining through, let's me know that this testimony itself is not trustworthy. Maybe Mikhailov did these things; maybe not.

I personally don't buy the theory of "large grants from the US government" as a reason for the motivation of cybersecurity companies because I think a) this isn't true for all of them at least b) things don't work here as they do as in Russia and c) it's a very primitive explanation for the motivation of professionals who aren't required to get government contracts (as they are in Russia) but can go to private companies and likely earn more.

But hey, now that we know that "the system works this way," according to Vrublyovsky, we'd have to wonder if the entire story of "brave Russian hackers leak the truth about Putin's hack of the DNC to US intelligence to save the world from Trump" in fact works this way, i.e. is fake. I guess I don't buy that narrative for a 100 reasons which I can put in another post if you don't get it.

Krebs then quotes the lady in question, Kimberly Zenz:

“It is hard for me imagine how Vrublevsky would be so powerful as to go after the people that investigated him on his own,” Zenz told KrebsOnSecurity. “Perhaps the infighting going on right now among the security forces already weakened Mikhaylov enough that Vrublevsky was able to go after him. Leaking communications or information to the US is a very extreme thing to have done. However, if it really did happen, then Mikhaylov would be very weak, which could explain how Vrublevsky would be able to go after him.”

Bingo. There is some oligarch, person, thing behind all this -- go back to that huge loss Aeroflot suffered. Aeroflot is a government company but as an "asset" it must belong to a certain clan/mafia group. More research is needed. I agree that on his own, this low-level guy who may have gotten an FSB friend to moonlight for him, wouldn't do all these other things.

Since Zenz and all the others in this story are really basically interested in the success of their commercial field, which relies on trust, this comes next:

Nevertheless, Zenz said, the Russian government’s treason case against Mikhaylov and Stoyanov is likely to have a chilling effect on the sharing of cyber threat information among researchers and security companies, and will almost certainly create problems for Kaspersky’s image abroad.

“This really weakens the relationship between Kaspersky and the FSB,” Zenz said. “It pushes Kaspersky to formalize relations and avoid the informal cooperation upon which cybercrime investigations often rely, in Russia and globally. It is also likely to have a chilling effect on such cooperation in Russia. This makes people ask, “If I share information on an attack or malware, can I be charged with treason?’”

Andrei Soldatov said the same thing to the Guardian; others have said that the main lesson learned from this story is that all these relations between Russian/international cybersecurity firms with the FSB and their set of recruited or hired hackers are going to have to be re-negotiated.

Forgive me if I'm not staying up late worrying about their problem, and wondering if it is a good idea to date Russians if your job is to deal with security related to Russia. The reality is, this world is impossibly interbred now. The main hope of our proof for the DNC hack (or least a major source of the proof) is a Russian emigre (Dmitry Alperovsky) that you have to hope to God doesn't have a grandmother in Russia having her pension removed now, or some other form of pressure.

No one is going to listen to my thoughts on this because I'm a crazy cat lady and not a geek but I think some may accept the premise that not every Russian citizen or emigre will be trustworthy and in that kind of situation, you have only one hope: triangulate, triangulate, triangulate with other Russians to try to get the story.

My answer to Krebs:

There isn’t any Russian media actually saying that point; I’ve covered this story pretty extensively, translating the main articles. Perhaps there’s one story in the English-language Moscow Times or something, but be specific.

I think there has been speculation on Russian social media, and comments sometimes reported by media that maybe there is some “leak to Westerners” angle on this. I was the first to report this in English and I explained the complicated way in which one *might* extract how this *might* be a swoop down by counter-intelligence to burn people who exposed Russian officials in the Trump dossier or something related to the US. That’s extrapolation from known facts, which is like lost-wax casting.

That’s because it’s Russia. We don’t know. There is no indictment, no lawyer, no weeping relatives, no human rights groups with a shred of info from other prisoners, no co-workers leaking, no neighbours talking about strange men in masks — NOTHING. ALL we have are two or three FSB agents leaking a story told from THEIR perspective.

I urge you to read through everything we’ve published to see if you can put together any other hypotheses, which are always useful.

Fourth Arrest Comes to Light in Russian Hackers’ Case
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-update-january-28-2017/#16023

‘Hybrid Cyberwars’: Are the Russian Hackers’ Arrests About American or Internal Russian issues?
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-up … 017/#16021

Novaya Gazeta Learns of 3rd Arrest in Hackers’ Treason Case: Is FSB Agent Major Forb the Head of Shaltai-Boltai?
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-up … 017/#16021

Russian Hackers and FSB Agents Arrested in Moscow for ‘Treason’ on Suspicion of Leaking to US Intelligence
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-up … 017/#16007

Top Manager of Kaspersky Laboratory and FSB Officer Arrested in ‘Treason Case,’ Kommersant Reports
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-up … 017/#15997

Kaspersky Lab Denies Arrested Russian Cybersecurity Expert Was ‘Top Manager’; Case Related to His Previous Work
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-up … 017/#15999

PS I should add in fairness that now we have the news Krebs has brought about Vrublyovsky's emails. But we already knew Vrublyovsky was fuming and busy trying to find a way to "get" the FSB people he thought had burned him. So it's just not enough until we find out more who is behind the companies, German Gref, etc.

Posted at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Lists of Journalists, Bloggers, Pundits, Officials -- Mad or Glad About Babchenko?

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The Trouble with Russianology

The Trouble with Russianology

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Amb. McFaul: "This kind of logic is dangerous. Don't do what's right, lest Kremlin do what is wrong".

When a Russian Party is Not a Party and You're Not a Member: Konstantin Rykov

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With New Revelations on Kushner and Qatar, Revisiting Carter Page's Trip to Moscow in December 2016

February 12, 2018

What Do We Really Have From the Navalny Deripaska Story Now? Here's a Little More But...

February 07, 2018

What's Down on The Kremlin Troll Farm These Days

January 28, 2017

Krebs on the Russian Hacker Arrests and My Thoughts and Response

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