Tag: Newslinks
NEWSLINK: “Here Are The Issues Russian Trolls Are Using To Divide Americans Ahead Of The Midterm Elections; Russian-run social media accounts are still attempting to sow discord in the US, according to federal prosecutors, and they’re spending millions a year on the effort” – Buzzfeednews/Salvador Hernandez
NEWSLINK: “The Trolls Within: How Russian Information Operations Infiltrated Online Communities in 2016” – MediumCom/ Kate Starbird
NEWSLINK: “Whether Russia meddles in the U.S. midterms or not, the damage to democracy has already been done; The key Russian objective is not to aid the Republicans but to undermine American faith in democratic government and its institutions. So far, they’re doing quite a good job” – The Independent/Will Gore
NEWSLINK: “How Russia cyber attacks helped Trump to the U.S. presidency; It’s clearer than ever: the theft and leaking of Democratic emails were key to Clinton’s election defeat” – The Guardian/Kathleen Hall Jamieson
RUSSIALINK TRANSCRIPT: “Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with RT France, Paris Match and Le Figaro” – Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
“Question: Western countries, the media and various organisations, including the World Anti-Doping Agency and the OPCW, have been constantly accusing Russia of meddling in elections and staging cyberattacks. Just recently, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands simultaneously voiced similar accusations and submitted six-month-old information to the media. What is this? Is this part of a planned […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Cold War and the Academy: An Oral History on Russian and Eurasian Studies [Interview Transcripts Hub]” – The Harriman Institute at Columbia University
“… the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, in collaboration with the Columbia Center for Oral History Research, and the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE), embarked on an oral history project that would document the Institute’s substantive role in area studies and academia and its influence on the making of U.S. foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, Russia, […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “Russian Autumn Fun: The Word’s Worth” – Moscow Times/ Michele A. Berdy
“Осень: autumn There are, I’ve heard, places on earth where weather is not a topic of conversation. I’ve heard that in some places a few degrees up or a few degrees down is pretty much the entire range of weather events. That is not Moscow. Погода (weather) can run your life, determine when and if you go outside, raise or […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Voronezh and the re-branding of post-Soviet Russia; The writer returns to the university she studied at in the 1970s to find a city transformed” – Mary Dejevsky
“… Voronezh is, in many ways, unrecognisable from its Soviet self. Even its layout has been altered to restore the 19th-century plan. A vast new church rises from what was once a scruffy park. The skyline boasts a dozen gleaming domes and crosses. Old vistas have been reopened. Voronezh is, once again, a river town. … But the history told […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Short digest of the roots of Ukrainian crisis from 1654 to present” – Washington Times/ Edward Lozansky
NEWSLINK: “Russian Studies in the Era of Trump” – Ohio State University Slavic and East European Journal
“… Russian Studies in the Era of Trump: A SEEB Series Organized by Ani Kokobobo: Researching Russian Conspiracy Theories in the Age of Trump by Eliot Borenstein … Making Russian Great Again: Language, Dissent, and Critical Pedagogy by Thomas Jesús Garza … Teaching Chekhov in the Time of Trump by Anne Lounsbery … Redefining the Russian Civilization and Culture Survey […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Russia is trying to influence the 2018 U.S. election. But this time the U.S. is prepared” – Washington Post/ Alla Baranovsky-Dewey
“… With the 2018 midterm elections approaching, how likely is it that Russia will do it again? Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, said in August that a Russia-orchestrated disinformation campaign continues on social media. Two 2018 candidates … have already reported that Russian hackers have targeted their computers. But while Russia is clearly trying to influence the 2018 […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “A GOP spin on the Russia probe reads like a noir thriller – but doesn’t add up; All of the Steele dossier can’t be discredited just because the contacts between private investigators and government officials were sometimes incestuous” – Washington Post/ David Ignatius
“…The GOP’s evidence does reveal some puzzling interconnections among major players in the Russia probe. The FBI and the Justice Department were sometimes conducting negotiations with the same people they were also investigating for possible wrongdoing. The contacts between private investigators and government officials were occasionally incestuous. The most intriguing example of overlapping relationships involves three key players who were […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “Why Russia and China Are Strengthening Security Ties; Is the U.S. Driving Them Closer Together?” – Foreign Affairs/ Alexander Gabuev/ Carnegie Moscow
“Early last week, Russia concluded Vostok-2018, its largest military exercise since the fall of the Soviet Union. It wasn’t just their size, however, that made the recent war games so groundbreaking. For the first time in history, 3,200 Chinese troops trained alongside some 300,000 Russians in eastern Siberia. Previously, the Kremlin had issued invitations to take part in such exercises […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “What next for Russian-Israeli relations? Russia’s decision to install the S-300 in Syria increases the risk of unintended confrontation with Israel” – AlJazeera/ Yury Barmin/ Russian International Affairs Council
“… The Israeli government rejected the accusations and even sent a defence delegation to Russia to provide clarification. Its efforts, however, do not seem to have pacified the Russian defence ministry, which on September 24 announced that it was going to deploy a modern S-300 system to Syria. This could curb Israel’s ability to launch air operations in Syria and […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Only You Can Defeat Vladimir Putin; Russian Interference With America Is Profound and Systematic, So the Best Self-Defense Is We, the People” – ZocaloPublicSquare/ Reed Johnson
“… By tampering with elections, hijacking social media platforms, and cranking out reams of bogus conspiracy theories and divisive propaganda, the Russian president and his intelligence operatives have been working overtime to destabilize rival governments and rile up their citizens against one another. With the midterm elections fast approaching, and the American public seething with partisan anger, a Zócalo/Japanese American […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “A Timeline Showing the Full Scale of Russia’s Unprecedented Interference in the 2016 Election, and Its Aftermath” – New York Times/KAREN YOURISH, LARRY BUCHANAN, DEREK WATKINS
NEWSLINK: “The Plot to Subvert an Election; Unraveling the Russia Story So Far” – New York Times/SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI
“For two years, Americans have tried to absorb the details of the 2016 attack -hacked emails, social media fraud, suspected spies – and President Trump’s claims that it’s all a hoax. The Times explores what we know and what it means.”
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Britain may have MISSED real Novichok ‘assassins’ with CCTV suspects acting as ‘watchers’, ex-spy claims” – The Mirror (UK)/Will Stewart, Abigail O’Leary
“The retired agent has doubted that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Bochirov are plausible as killers after they were spotted numerous times on CCTV … The pair, who are suspected of poisoning the Skripals, were spotted numerous times on CCTV and entered the country on Russian passports. Choosing to remain anonymous, the ex-spy said the two men, who claimed to be […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Memorial Service for Professor Richard Pipes” – Harvard University, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Friday, September 21, 2018 – 3:00pm to 5:00pm Memorial Church, Harvard Yard Please join us for a memorial service celebrating the life of Professor Richard E. Pipes (1923-2018). RSVPs to daviscenter@fas.harvard.edu or 617-495-4037 are welcome. Co-sponsored by the Pipes family, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Harvard University Department of History. For more information, please call […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Grave Robbers, Nazi Collaborators and Official Apathy: How Ukraine Is Erasing the Holocaust” – Haaretz/Shmuel Herzfeld
“At Janovska, the Auschwitz of Ukraine, I saw skulls, hypodermic needles and tons of trash. Looters desecrate mass graves of Jews, searching for gold; the sites’ histories are ‘revised’, overwritten by Christian and nationalist symbolism. This is why we should still care”
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Russia is advancing on Ukraine again – and Ukraine isn’t going quietly; President Petro Poroshenko tells the Post how he wants the war to end” – Washington Post/ Lally Weymouth
“When Ukrainians took to the streets in the 2014 Maidan revolution, they ousted President Viktor Yanukovych and selected Petro Poroshenko as his successor to begin a period of reform. Poroshenko is up for reelection next spring, and polls show that Ukrainians are disappointed with him, particularly for what they see as his failure to clean up corruption. In a rare […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “U.S. Spies Rush to Protect Defectors After Skripal Poisoning” – New York Times/ Adam Goldman/ Julian E. Barnes/ Michael S. Schmidt/ Matt Apuzzo
“When a suspected hit man for Russian intelligence arrived in Florida about four years ago, F.B.I. surveillance teams were alarmed. The man approached the home of one of the C.I.A.’s most important informants, a fellow Russian, who had been secretly resettled along the sunny coast. The suspected hit man also traveled to another city where one of the informant’s relatives […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “‘THE AMERICANS’ TRUE GIFT? LOOKING INSIDE THE MIND OF VLADIMIR PUTIN” – Wired/Emily Dreyfuss
“Before he was president of Russia, Vladimir Putin was an intelligence officer in Dresden, East Germany. His job there was to recruit ‘illegals,’ USSR spies who would embed in everyday life and report back to the KGB. If you’ve ever watched the FX show The Americans, then you’re familiar with how this all worked: The focal characters of that show […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “The Mueller Investigation Is Sending People to Jail – but Not for Collusion; The belief that George Papadopoulos, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort would turn over evidence of collusion with Russia got ahead of reality” – The Nation/Aaron Maté
“… Last week, Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI about the timing of his contacts with a Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud. According to Papadopoulos, Mifsud claimed to have connections to Russia and information that the Kremlin had obtained Hillary Clinton’s stolen e-mails. In May 2016, Papadopoulos relayed vague details about his conversation with […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “New survey from state pollster says Russians’ fears of terrorism are at a record low” – Meduza
“… VTsIOM says … about 45 percent of Russians say they believe they or their loved ones could be hurt in a terrorist attack. Another 11 percent of respondents say they are extremely worried about this. … asked to list the top terrorist threats facing Russians, an equal number of respondents (17 percent) named the United States and the terrorist […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “Moscow Courts the Taliban” – Carnegie Moscow/Arkady Dubnov
“… Despite all this, Russian diplomats considered the Taliban’s agreement to come to Moscow to be a success. Unofficial information from inside the Foreign Ministry indicates the great importance it attached to the Taliban leaders’ first official visit to Moscow. To guarantee their presence, the Russian government was willing to remove it from the list of organizations that are prohibited […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “Why Putin Is Losing Popular Support” – Carnegie Moscow/ Denis Volkov/ Levada Center
“The approval ratings of Russia’s leaders and its institutions have been declining for more than three years. The erosion of popular support has been accelerated, rather than caused, by the unveiling of the government’s pension reform plan, and Russians are increasingly concerned by the state of not only their pensions but also their country’s foreign policy and its economy. …”
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Russia heading for the apocalypse? I think not” – Mark Galeotti/In Moscow’s Shadow
“Everyone who is serious about Russian studies knows about the indispensable Johnson’s Russia List, a daily mailshot of a collection of the day’s relevant English-language stories, good, bad, and sometimes ugly. I may sometimes cavil at David Johnson’s determination to include a – to me – disproportionate selection of determinedly ‘counter-mainstream’ bloggers determined to find anti-Kremlin conspiracy at every turn, […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “A look at what to expect in Sunday’s regional elections, and what the results mean – Interview with Dr. Ben Noble” – Bear Market Brief
“With elections across Russia set for this Sunday, September 9th, we wanted to bring you some deeper insight on what is happening and what the vote means for Russia. Dr. Ben Noble is an expert on the law-making process during the legislative stage of policy-making in authoritarian regimes. He is a Lecturer in Russian Politics at the School of Slavonic […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Kissinger on Russia: Insights and Recommendations” – Russia Matters
Originally published March 8, 2017. Periodically updated. Latest additions marked accordingly. This evolving compilation of observations and policy ideas about Russia by eminent U.S. statesman Henry Kissinger was the first in Russia Matters’ “Competing Views” series, where we share prominent American thinkers’ alternative takes on U.S.-Russian relations, Russia itself and America’s policies toward the country. Mr. Kissinger served as assistant […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire; Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton” – Politico/Kenneth P. Vogel, David Stern
“… Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “China – Not Russia – Elected Trump; China’s economic attack on America caused U.S. voters to turn to Trump” – The National Interest/James Walker
“… attention should be sharply focused instead on the role of China in electing Trump. It is that concern that should inform American action today. China’s long-standing predatory trading policies have eaten America’s lunch, impacting most severely those who carry lunch buckets to work in America’s heartland. …”
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Putin’s wedding trip seals marriage of convenience with Merkel; Meeting in Berlin could signal a switch in strategy for Germany when it comes to the US dollar and energy security” – Asia Times/Pepe Escobar
NEWSLINK: “Russia trolls ‘spreading vaccination misinformation’ to create discord” – BBC
“Troll accounts that had attempted to influence the US election had also been tweeting about vaccines, a study says. Many posted both pro- and anti-vaccination messages to create “false equivalency”, the study found. …”
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Russia’s got the gas and is ready to set fire to our system of democracy” – Miami Herald/Markos Kounalakis
“… even a currency crunch won’t stop Russia’s foreign interventions because, despite punitive sanctions, the price of oil, ultimately, pays for its troublemaking. High energy prices are the cost of power transferred from Europe and the United States to Russia and other petrostates. The higher the Brent crude price and the market for natural gas, the greater Russia’s domestic tranquility […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Ukraine should create Mossad-type unit to kidnap Yanukovych from Russia – prosecutor” – UNIAN
“Law enforcers should do their utmost to make sure the disgraced president is brought to responsibility if the court convicts him, the official said. Prosecutor of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office, Ruslan Kravchenko, who represents state prosecution in the treason trial of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, has offered to set up a special unit to kidnap the ex-leader from […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Russians Get a Revisionist View of Soviet Union’s End; A new narrative paints from a former vice president paints Yeltsin as a tool of the U.S. in thwarting 1991 coup by hardliners” – Bloomberg/Leonid Bershidsky
“Only 27 years after the failure of a coup meant to keep the Soviet Union alive, some of the people who helped crush the revolt are doing their best to blacken their own victory. It’s been many years since Russia celebrated an anniversary of those three days, Aug. 19-21, 1991. Resolute action by Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, and by […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “The CIA funded a culture war against communism. It should do so again” = Washington Post/Sunny Bunch
“… Set aside the vaguely totalitarian suggestion that art must, by its nature, exist either in support of or opposition to the political establishment. Today, I’d like to focus on the CIA’s involvement in the Cold War’s culture war and think back to a better time, when ideas were taken seriously and art was considered transformative — and keep in […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “How Bill Browder Became Russia’s Most Wanted Man; The hedge-fund manager has offered a fable for why the West should confront Putin” – The New Yorker/Joshua Yaffa
“… In 2009, Browder’s tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky testified that the Russian police and tax authorities had attempted to steal two hundred and thirty million dollars in Russian taxes paid by Browder’s Moscow-based investment firm, Hermitage Capital. Magnitsky was arrested, and died in a pretrial detention center in Moscow. In the years that followed, Browder strenuously lobbied for a law […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Factbox: U.S. Companies With Exposure to Russia” – Reuters
“… But new developments have raised the possibility of fresh challenges for U.S. companies in Russia. The United States on Wednesday announced it would impose fresh sanctions on Russia after Washington determined Moscow had used a nerve agent against a former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Britain. Russia on Thursday condemned the new round of […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “This Russian Spy Agency is in the Middle of Everything; Only a few years ago, the GRU looked like it might be dissolved. But Putin found new uses for it: covert war in Ukraine and ‘active measures’ that helped Trump get elected” – The Daily Beast/Amy Knight
“… Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, is getting blamed for all sorts of things …. Robert Mueller indicted 12 GRU officers for hacking into computers of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The GRU allegedly was behind the recent poisonings of four people in Britain, including former GRU officer Sergei Skripal, who survived, and a woman […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: Mikheil Saakashvili: “When Russia Invaded Georgia; It happened in 2008 and foretold a decade of Putin’s adventurism” – Wall Street Journal
“Like many other heads of state, I had planned to attend the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. I canceled my trip after Russian-backed separatists began firing on Georgian positions in the breakaway territory of South Ossetia. … Long before its conventional assault on Georgia, Russia openly backed separatist militants, launched cyberattacks, and used disinformation to meddle in the internal affairs […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Believe it or not, Trump’s following a familiar script on Russia; The West has spent a decade playing into Putin’s hands” – Washington Post/Robert Kagan
“… Ten years ago this week … Putin struck one of the first major blows when he sent Russian forces into South Ossetia in neighboring Georgia in support of Russian-backed separatists. The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, fearing a full-blown invasion, ordered his troops to attack, thus springing Putin’s trap. Using the Georgian attack as a pretext, Putin launched that full-blown […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “How the GRU spy agency targets the west, from cyberspace to Salisbury” – The Guardian (UK)/Andrew Roth
“… A British security source … [said] the nerve agent attack on the former double agent Sergei Skripal was also ordered by the [GRU] intelligence agency. The British government is poised to submit an extradition request to Moscow for two Russians suspected of carrying out the Salisbury attack that left one person dead and three injured, including Skripal and his […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “The Elite Fixation With Russiagate; Does a broader public share this sense of crisis?” – The Nation/Aaron Maté
“… But does the American public at large share the prevailing elite assessment [of Trump and U.S.-Russian relations and the Helsinki Summit]? Save for a White House vigil led by two longtime Hillary Clinton staffers and a few scattered rallies-and in stark contrast to mass protests over Trump’s misogyny, Muslim ban, and zero-tolerance immigration policy-Americans have not poured into the […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Henry Kissinger Pushed Trump to Work With Russia to Box In China; The former secretary of state pushed one president to use China to isolate the Soviet Union. These days, he’s counseling almost the reverse-and officials are listening” – Daily Beast/ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, ANDREW DESIDERIO, SAM STEIN, BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN
“Henry Kissinger suggested to President Donald Trump that the United States should work with Russia to contain a rising China. The former secretary of state – who famously engineered the tactic of establishing diplomatic relations with China in order to isolate the Soviet Union – pitched almost the inverse of that idea to Trump during a series of private meetings […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Putin wanted to interrogate me. Trump called it ‘an incredible offer.’ Why? When foreign affairs are, literally, personal.” – Washington Post/Michael McFaul
“I thought I was done worrying about Vladimir Putin. … his proxies falsely argued that I had been sent by President Barack Obama to fund the opposition and foment revolution; that I hoped Putin would end up like Serbian autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, dislodged and imprisoned; and that I was a pedophile. …. But this month, at the Helsinki summit between […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “Western Sanctions on Russia’s Oil and Gas Sector: a Damage Assessment” – Carnegie Moscow/Tatiana Mitrova
“Don’t be misled by Western sanctions’ limited impact on Russia. In reality, they operate with an accumulating effect: the more time passes, the greater the potential technological backlog, financing gap, and negative consequences will be. In the long run, sanctions may jeopardize Russia’s oil and gas production volumes and the development of pipeline infrastructure, gradually squeezing the country out of […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Putin’s Russia becomes Trump’s America” – Brookings/Elaine Kamarck
“I was nearing the end of Timothy Snyder’s new book, ‘Road to Unfreedom,’ when the headline came across my iPhone announcing that someone named Maria Butina had been arrested for being a Russian spy. I had to go back to page 250 and check the spelling. Sure enough, it was the same Maria Butina who appears in Snyder’s book in […]
» Read more