Russia in the 21st Century [Superthread]

[The Bread Guy]

Remember this?  "Turkey has just shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 near the border with Syria" (Nov 2016)?  This out today, from the Kremlin info-machine:

Vladimir Putin received a letter from President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Vladimir Putin received a letter from President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which the Turkish President expressed his desire to settle the situation concerning the downing of a Russian military aircraft.

June 27, 2016
15:55

Mr Erdogan said in his letter that Russia is Turkey’s friend and strategic partner, and the Turkish authorities do not want to ruin relations between the two countries. “We never had the desire or deliberate intention of shooting down the Russian Federation’s plane,” Mr Erdogan said.

The letter went on to say that the Turkish side “undertook much effort at great risk to retrieve the Russian pilot’s body from the Syrian opposition and bring it back to Turkey, where pre-burial procedures were carried out in accordance with religious and military procedures.

We performed this work at a level worthy of our two countries’ relations. I once again express my sympathy and profound condolences to the family of the Russian pilot who was killed and I apologise to them. I share their grief with all my heart. We look on this Russian pilot’s family as we would a Turkish family and we are ready to undertake any initiative that could lessen the pain and severity of the damage caused.”

The letter also said that a judicial investigation is underway against the Turkish citizen said to be involved in the Russian pilot’s death.

Mr Erdogan expressed his deep regret for what happened and said that he is ready to do all possible to restore the traditionally friendly ties between Turkey and Russia and also to work together to respond to crisis situations in the region and fight terrorism.

 

[CougarKing]

A friend of Putin and Steven Segal?  :facepalm:

New York Times

Surfer Republican' Russia's Unlikely Advocate in Congress

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JULY 4, 2016, 3:30 A.M. E.D.T.


WASHINGTON — When several members of Congress accused Vladimir Putin's Russia of human rights abuses and aggression toward its neighbors, a veteran California congressman stood virtually alone in urging a more cautionary stance.

For 69-year-old Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a self-described "surfer Republican," this wasn't a totally unexpected position: he's long been virtually the lone pro-Russian voice on Capitol Hill.

"Right from the beginning we've had this incredible hostility," Rohrabacher, who has defended President Vladimir Putin and urged a dialogue with the Kremlin, lamented at a recent congressional hearing. He urged both Russia and the United States at the time to "take a deep breath and a step back."


(...SNIPPED)

 

[The Bread Guy]

"Nice military you have there, Finland - SHAME if anything were to happen to it" ...

Speaking to the press Friday during his short visit, Putin said that Russia will respect Finland's possible decision on NATO membership.

According to Putin, Russia's basic approach is that Finland is a neutral country and Russia keeps its own troops well away from the common border.

"Imagine that Finland were to join NATO. That would mean that Finland's defense forces would no longer be independent, rather part of a NATO infrastructure extending up to Russia's border," he said.

Putin added that in such a situation things would change. He let it be understood that in this case Russian troops would no longer stay 1500 kilometres back from the Finnish border, as they do now.

The Russian president went on to say that even so, Russia would respect a decision by the Finns, since it is Finland's own decision to make.

"NATO would gladly fight Russia to the last Finnish soldier. Russia would not want that. But, it is not our decision, it's yours," stated Putin ...

On that bit in yellow, very Sopranos.

On that bit in orange, I guess these guys are all gone now?

A detachment of about 800 servicemen from Russia’s Northern Fleet has been stationed in the Russian town of Alakurtti, Murmansk region, just 50km from the Finnish border, part of a large-scale expansion of Russian military facilities in the country’s northwest according to a press statement issued by the unit’s commanding admiral Vladimir Korolev on Tuesday.

The rest of the fleet are expected to be stationed there “soon” according to Korolev. The base will be one of the key strongholds in Russia’s northernmost territories, designed to strengthen the country’s defence capabilities from the west, and improve their territorial claims over areas in the Arctic.

At full force, Russia’s Northern Fleet consists of about 3,000 ground troops trained for combat in Arctic conditions, along with 39 ships and 45 submarines. Its arrival in Murmansk follows Russia’s decision last year to create a united command for all of its units designated with protecting Russia’s interests in the country’s northern regions ...

More on these guys from Russia's MoD (in Russian) here - also attached in case link doesn't work.

 

[a_majoor]

At least the Russians know the Finns are not ones to go down quietly...

http://www.winterwar.com/

 

[The Bread Guy]

At least the Russians know the Finns are not ones to go down quietly...

http://www.winterwar.com/

As biggish as the Russian military is, I agree that there maaaaaaaaaaay still be a touch of institutional memory there, indeed.

 

[CougarKing]

Aside from more about the Finns and Putin mentioned below, the looming Russian shadow over Scandinavian countries reminds me of this series, currently showing on Netflix, called "Occupied" about a future Russian invasion and occupation of Norway.

Defense News

Putin Lures, Warns Finland Over Defense Ties
Gerard O’Dwyer, Defense News 10:34 a.m. EDT July 8, 2016


HELSINKI — Finland’s long-term interests would be better served by deepening its defense relationship with Russia rather than aligning itself militarily to NATO, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a heads-of-state summit meeting in Finland earlier this month.

Moscow remains opposed to the possibility of Finland joining NATO. Instead, Russia wants non-aligned Finland to develop closer links in the area of military cooperation and defense-industrial collaboration.

The July 1 summit meeting with Finnish president Sauli Niinistö, the commander-in-chief of Finland’s Armed Forces (FAF), was held at Niinistö’s summer residence at Kultaranta in south west Finland.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[The Bread Guy]

... Finland’s long-term interests would be better served by deepening its defense relationship with Russia rather than aligning itself militarily to NATO ...

 

[MilEME09]

Well Russia tried to invade Finland once before, we all know how that went

 

[larry Strong]

Well Russia tried to invade Finland once before, we all know how that went

Well......it worked well enough in 1944..........



Cheers
Larry

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Yes we do.

After brilliantly working the Soviets to a stand still the first winter, the Finns were roundly defeated by mass artillery the next year and their lines completely breached. At that point, with no one coming to their help, they surrendered and reached a peace agreement with the Soviets that gave the later that which they had originally asked of the Finns, but now with  providing anything in return.

The Finns remembered this defeat, as result of which, when the Cold War came into being, the Soviets were able to exact from them an agreement to remain (officially) neutral, but in reality a vassal of the Soviet Union, even with its own name: Finlandization. And the Soviets then used Helsinki as the location in the "free" world for all their front organizations pushing "world peace and global disarmament initiatives" on all the western nations at apparent arms length (save for those of us in the Know), in one of the worlds largest and most organized psychological warfare initiative (leading to the "Better Red than Dead" campaign in Germany - for instance).

If you are going to quote history as if we all know what you mean - you better know what you mean yourself.

 

[CougarKing]

Marshal Mannerheim and the Finns' experience with the Russians aside...

Meanwhile in the present day, a key figure within Putin's inner circle resigns and is transferred...

American Interest

From Defense Minister to Eco Envoy
The Rise and Fall of Sergey Ivanov Karina Orlova

The most puzzling and unexpected high-profile resignation happened today in the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin dismissed the Chief of his Presidential Administration, his long-time friend and closest of allies, Sergey Ivanov. Formally, Ivanov filed for resignation himself, but in fact not only did he lose his position, he was moved to another post: he was made Special Presidential Representative for Environmental Preservation, Ecology and Transport.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[Kirkhill]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/700971/Russia-ploughing-millions-into-EU-think-tanks-create-social-unrest-Europe

The Russian version of the Colour Revolutions - George Soros with a strong element of Putin's KGB influence activities.

And no, I don't need any more tin foil.

With respect to the targeting - I suggest that the effort is not just to build up Russia's image but to destabilize all others by any means possible - even if that meant backing anti-Moscow elements like radical Islamists - or moderate oppositions.

 

[Lightguns]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/700971/Russia-ploughing-millions-into-EU-think-tanks-create-social-unrest-Europe

The Russian version of the Colour Revolutions - George Soros with a strong element of Putin's KGB influence activities.

And no, I don't need any more tin foil.

With respect to the targeting - I suggest that the effort is not just to build up Russia's image but to destabilize all others by any means possible - even if that meant backing anti-Moscow elements like radical Islamists - or moderate oppositions.

Tin foil is just the excuse for people who refuse to believe they could be manipulated.  The reality is that we have been such since organized society began.  Today it is much more global, much better funded but also much harder to hide the machinations in a legal framework with the information age.  Since democracy is pretty much on the ropes, its no surprise that the EU is becoming a Russian colony.  For a Canadian prospective, see Vivian Krause's blog and her research into the tax refunds of the eco-warriors foundations in the US.  http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/

 

[CougarKing]

Aside from the former Soviet Republics like Georgia in the Caucasus, there's also Chechnya and Dagestan within Russian borders to think about...

Newsweek

Putin’s Savage War Against Russia’s ‘New Muslims’
Newsweek
Denis Sokolov
10 hrs ago

This article was first published on the Wilson Center site.

Today there are more than 2,000 fighters from Russia on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq fighting on behalf of the Islamic State.

A large number of these fighters are Muslims originating from the Northern Caucasus, a fact that feeds a narrative back in Russia that has been growing since the 1990s.

Many Russians now link the Muslim populations of the North Caucasus with extremism and terrorism. That perception is not entirely without basis: the North Caucasus region has been rent by war, terror and brutal state crackdowns for over two decades.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[CougarKing]

Living in Kiev doesn't mean you're out of Putin's reach:

Independent

Russian journalist critical of Vladimir Putin found dead on his birthday
The Independent

Rachael Pells
2 hrs ago

A well-known Russian journalist and critic of President Vladimir Putin has been found dead in his Kiev apartment with a gunshot wound to the head.

The body of Alexander Shchetinin, founder the Novy Region (New Region) press agency, was found at his flat after friends tried to visit him on his birthday.

Mr Shchetinin gave up his Russian citizenship before becoming a Ukrainian national and settling in Kiev

A police spokesperson said Kiev forces were alerted of Ms Schetinin’s death at around midnight on Saturday. He is believed to have died a few hours earlier, between 8 and 9.30pm.
Putin attacks Russian Paralympic ban as 'outside bounds of morality

(...SNIPPED)

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

So ... Death from natural causes according to the Pravda ... I mean TASS.  :nod:

 

[CougarKing]

Apparently Japan has its own share of tin foil hatters:

Washington Post

Japanese reporter thinks something strange is afoot with Putin’s schedule
The Washington Post

Adam Taylor
11 hrs ago

To all appearances, Vladimir Putin keeps a tight schedule. But perhaps that schedule isn't quite as tight as it appears.

Akiyoshi Komaki, the Moscow bureau chief for the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, recently investigated a number of photographs the Kremlin had put out of the Russian president's meetings in August. The meetings all took place in the same dark, wood-paneled room in the Russian governmental complex, though they were said to take place on different days.

The first meeting, with acting Magadan region governor Vladimir Pechyony, was said to have taken place Aug. 18. Another meeting, with Igor Anatolyevich Orlov of the Arkhangelsk region, took place Aug. 22. The next, with Sverdlovsk region governor Yevgeny Kuyvashev, was said to have taken place Aug. 23. A final meeting was said to have taken place Aug. 24 with the governor of Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyev.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[Kirkhill]

How to deal with Vladimir Putin - my advice to Theresa May as a former ambassador to Russia
ANTHONY BRENTON
FORMER UK AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA
3 SEPTEMBER 2016 • 2:27PM

Vladimir Putin will want to establish a positive relationship with Theresa May

The Prime Minister will meet Vladimir Putin for the first time at the G20 summit in China. Faced with the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency in the US, Putin will be keener than might be expected to establish a positive relationship.

He will, as ever, be formidably well briefed and direct. He will appreciate, and reciprocate, Mrs May's forensic, no nonsense style. But he will react sharply to any challenge on Russia's key concerns.

His brittleness comes from his conviction that the vastly stronger West is out to do Russia down. Even so, he probably feels that, currently, things are moving his way.

Mrs May will have no illusions about Russian ruthlessness

China, where they meet, is warming relations with Russia even while they deteriorate with the West. Russia is increasingly setting the agenda on Syria. Putin can live with what he has got in Ukraine, while awaiting the erosion of Western sanctions. Russia's economy seems to be recovering from the oil shock. He faces awkward parliamentary elections, but knows there is no real threat to his survival as president.

Putin will not expect dramatic results from this meeting. He knows that the UK has been amongst the toughest in the EU on relations with Russia, and views us as something of a US clone on international security issues (which is why he lost interest in his relationship with Tony Blair).

World leaders family photo at the G20 summit in BrisbanePlay! 01:20
He will be interested to hear about Brexit, on which his feelings are mixed (the EU is Russia's largest trading partner). A characteristic joke would be an offer of advice on becoming a proud, free-standing, nation state.

But his main aim will be to warm up the strikingly cold UK-Russia relationship left by Mrs May's predecessor.

This would include more high-level political contact and some strengthening of trade and investment links (he would no doubt like to sell us more gas if we pull out of Hinkley Point), as well as the security links cut off after the Litvinenko murder.

Mrs May too will not have exaggerated expectations. As Home Secretary during the Litvinenko inquiry she will have no illusions about Russian ruthlessness. And she will have been fully briefed on Russia's current military posturing.

She might want to break the ice with a reference to last week's anniversary of the Arctic convoys, which the Russians still deeply appreciate. But she will need to be clear on our support for NATO's increased preparedness in Europe.

On Ukraine, her message that Russia must observe the Minsk agreement would have more effect if she could undertake to say the same to the Ukrainians.

And on Syria, she should acknowledge that Russian concerns about militant Islamism closely match our own, and we should strengthen our co-operation accordingly.

But the key point for her to make is that the current escalation of Russia/NATO tensions is in nobody's long-term interests. We should be looking together for ways to reverse it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/03/how-to-deal-with-vladimir-putin---my-advice-to-theresa-may-as-a/

Related, and in my mind curious,

Putin Decries 'Shock Tactics' of Clinton, Trump Campaigns

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/videos/2016-09-02/putin-decries-shock-tactics-of-clinton-trump-campaigns

Is it possible that Putin may be starting to confront the consequences of a destabilized and unpredictable US?  I believe that Putin has always put Russia, his Russia, first and focused - perhaps to the point of tunnel vision - on that goal.  As part of that effort he has, again in my belief, used the tools at hand and sought to level the game.  If he couldn't bring Russia's conventional game up to the level of the US then he could employ the tools of craft he learnt at KGB academy.

To wit: Bleed the US of resources, bleed it of internal cohesion.

The US, whether as a result of his machinations or not,  has diminished financial capacity, diminished conventional military capacity, diminished credibility that permits free use of unconventional forces, diminished moral suasion and diminished internal cohesion.

Concurrently, Russia has moved very little.  It is still the highly centralized, secret police riven state that it has always been.  It's conventional forces are diminished from the Brezhev era but adequate for domestic consumption and foreign propaganda purposes.  The one area that has improved is the special forces, not so much in the forces themselves but in the strategy that underpins their employment.

Again, independent of any consideration of KGB/GRU machinations or not - he is also facing a disjointed, disheartened and distressed EU and, as a consequence, NATO.  And he has a working, if mutually antagonistic, relation with China.

The chess board, in my opinion, relative to 1989, has been well and truly upended. 

I wonder if that is as far as Vlad's vision extended?  What next?

 

[a_majoor]

Dezinformatsiya is an old Russian tactic, but the rise of Social Meida gives it far more reach and power. Russian Hybrid Warfare doctrine emphasizes the use of Dezinformatsiya to see confusion and reduce morale and willpower to resist Russian actions. This article is also very interesting, as well as this one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html?_r=1

A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories
By NEIL MacFARQUHARAUG. 28, 2016

STOCKHOLM — With a vigorous national debate underway on whether Sweden should enter a military partnership with NATO, officials in Stockholm suddenly encountered an unsettling problem: a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media, confusing public perceptions of the issue.

The claims were alarming: If Sweden, a non-NATO member, signed the deal, the alliance would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges.

They were all false, but the disinformation had begun spilling into the traditional news media, and as the defense minister, Peter Hultqvist, traveled the country to promote the pact in speeches and town hall meetings, he was repeatedly grilled about the bogus stories.

“People were not used to it, and they got scared, asking what can be believed, what should be believed?” said Marinette Nyh Radebo, Mr. Hultqvist’s spokeswoman.

As often happens in such cases, Swedish officials were never able to pin down the source of the false reports. But they, numerous analysts and experts in American and European intelligence point to Russia as the prime suspect, noting that preventing NATO expansion is a centerpiece of the foreign policy of President Vladimir V. Putin, who invaded Georgia in 2008 largely to forestall that possibility.

In Crimea, eastern Ukraine and now Syria, Mr. Putin has flaunted a modernized and more muscular military. But he lacks the economic strength and overall might to openly confront NATO, the European Union or the United States. Instead, he has invested heavily in a program of “weaponized” information, using a variety of means to sow doubt and division. The goal is to weaken cohesion among member states, stir discord in their domestic politics and blunt opposition to Russia.

“Moscow views world affairs as a system of special operations, and very sincerely believes that it itself is an object of Western special operations,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, who helped establish the Kremlin’s information machine before 2008. “I am sure that there are a lot of centers, some linked to the state, that are involved in inventing these kinds of fake stories.”

The planting of false stories is nothing new; the Soviet Union devoted considerable resources to that during the ideological battles of the Cold War. Now, though, disinformation is regarded as an important aspect of Russian military doctrine, and it is being directed at political debates in target countries with far greater sophistication and volume than in the past.

The flow of misleading and inaccurate stories is so strong that both NATO and the European Union have established special offices to identify and refute disinformation, particularly claims emanating from Russia.

The Kremlin’s clandestine methods have surfaced in the United States, too, American officials say, identifying Russian intelligence as the likely source of leaked Democratic National Committee emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The Kremlin uses both conventional media — Sputnik, a news agency, and RT, a television outlet — and covert channels, as in Sweden, that are almost always untraceable.

Russia exploits both approaches in a comprehensive assault, Wilhelm Unge, a spokesman for the Swedish Security Service, said this year when presenting the agency’s annual report. “We mean everything from internet trolls to propaganda and misinformation spread by media companies like RT and Sputnik,” he said.

The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation, experts said, is to undermine the official version of events — even the very idea that there is a true version of events — and foster a kind of policy paralysis.

Disinformation most famously succeeded in early 2014 with the initial obfuscation about deploying Russian forces to seize Crimea. That summer, Russia pumped out a dizzying array of theories about the destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, blaming the C.I.A. and, most outlandishly, Ukrainian fighter pilots who had mistaken the airliner for the Russian presidential aircraft.

The cloud of stories helped veil the simple truth that poorly trained insurgents had accidentally downed the plane with a missile supplied by Russia.

Moscow adamantly denies using disinformation to influence Western public opinion and tends to label accusations of either overt or covert threats as “Russophobia.”

“There is an impression that, like in a good orchestra, many Western countries every day accuse Russia of threatening someone,” Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a recent ministry briefing.

Tracing individual strands of disinformation is difficult, but in Sweden and elsewhere, experts have detected a characteristic pattern that they tie to Kremlin-generated disinformation campaigns.

“The dynamic is always the same: It originates somewhere in Russia, on Russia state media sites, or different websites or somewhere in that kind of context,” said Anders Lindberg, a Swedish journalist and lawyer.

“Then the fake document becomes the source of a news story distributed on far-left or far-right-wing websites,” he said. “Those who rely on those sites for news link to the story, and it spreads. Nobody can say where they come from, but they end up as key issues in a security policy decision.”

Although the topics may vary, the goal is the same, Mr. Lindberg and others suggested. “What the Russians are doing is building narratives; they are not building facts,” he said. “The underlying narrative is, ‘Don’t trust anyone.’”

The weaponization of information is not some project devised by a Kremlin policy expert but is an integral part of Russian military doctrine — what some senior military figures call a “decisive” battlefront.

“The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness,” Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, wrote in 2013.

A prime Kremlin target is Europe, where the rise of the populist right and declining support for the European Union create an ever more receptive audience for Russia’s conservative, nationalistic and authoritarian approach under Mr. Putin. Last year, the European Parliament accused Russia of “financing radical and extremist parties” in its member states, and in 2014 the Kremlin extended an $11.7 million loan to the National Front, the extreme-right party in France.

“The Russians are very good at courting everyone who has a grudge with liberal democracy, and that goes from extreme right to extreme left,” said Patrik Oksanen, an editorial writer for the Swedish newspaper group MittMedia. The central idea, he said, is that “liberal democracy is corrupt, inefficient, chaotic and, ultimately, not democratic.”

Another message, largely unstated, is that European governments lack the competence to deal with the crises they face, particularly immigration and terrorism, and that their officials are all American puppets.

In Germany, concerns over immigrant violence grew after a 13-year-old Russian-German girl said she had been raped by migrants. A report on Russian state television furthered the story. Even after the police debunked the claim, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, continued to chastise Germany.

In Britain, analysts said, the Kremlin’s English-language news outlets heavily favored the campaign for the country to leave the European Union, despite their claims of objectivity.

In the Czech Republic, alarming, sensational stories portraying the United States, the European Union and immigrants as villains appear daily across a cluster of about 40 pro-Russia websites.

During NATO military exercises in early June, articles on the websites suggested that Washington controlled Europe through the alliance, with Germany as its local sheriff. Echoing the disinformation that appeared in Sweden, the reports said NATO planned to store nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe and would attack Russia from there without seeking approval from local capitals.

A poll this summer by European Values, a think tank in Prague, found that 51 percent of Czechs viewed the United States’ role in Europe negatively, that only 32 percent viewed the European Union positively and that at least a quarter believed some elements of the disinformation.

“The data show how public opinion is changing thanks to the disinformation on those outlets,” said Jakub Janda, the think tank’s deputy director for public and political affairs. “They try to look like a regular media outlet even if they have a hidden agenda.”

Not all Russian disinformation efforts succeed. Sputnik news websites in various Scandinavian languages failed to attract enough readers and were closed after less than a year.

Both RT and Sputnik portray themselves as independent, alternative voices. Sputnik claims that it “tells the untold,” even if its daily report relies heavily on articles abridged from other sources. RT trumpets the slogan “Question More.”

Both depict the West as grim, divided, brutal, decadent, overrun with violent immigrants and unstable. “They want to give a picture of Europe as some sort of continent that is collapsing,” Mr. Hultqvist, the Swedish defense minister, said in an interview.

RT often seems obsessed with the United States, portraying life there as hellish. On the day President Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention, for example, it emphasized scattered demonstrations rather than the speeches. It defends the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, as an underdog maligned by the established news media.

Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor in chief, said the channel was being singled out as a threat because it offered a different narrative from “the Anglo-American media-political establishment.” RT, she said, wants to provide “a perspective otherwise missing from the mainstream media echo chamber.”

Moscow’s targeting of the West with disinformation dates to a Cold War program the Soviets called “active measures.” The effort involved leaking or even writing stories for sympathetic newspapers in India and hoping that they would be picked up in the West, said Professor Mark N. Kramer, a Cold War expert at Harvard.

The story that AIDS was a C.I.A. project run amok spread that way, and it poisons the discussion of the disease decades later. At the time, before the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse, the Kremlin was selling communism as an ideological alternative. Now, experts said, the ideological component has evaporated, but the goal of weakening adversaries remains.

In Sweden recently, that has meant a series of bizarre forged letters and news articles about NATO and linked to Russia.

One forgery, on Defense Ministry letterhead over Mr. Hultqvist’s signature, encouraged a major Swedish firm to sell artillery to Ukraine, a move that would be illegal in Sweden. Ms. Nyh Radebo, his spokeswoman, put an end to that story in Sweden, but at international conferences, Mr. Hultqvist still faced questions about the nonexistent sales.

Russia also made at least one overt attempt to influence the debate. During a seminar in the spring, Vladimir Kozin, a senior adviser to the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank linked to the Kremlin and Russian foreign intelligence, argued against any change in Sweden’s neutral status.

“Do they really need to lose their neutral status?” he said of the Swedes. “To permit fielding new U.S. military bases on their territory and to send their national troops to take part in dubious regional conflicts?”

Whatever the method or message, Russia clearly wants to win any information war, as Dmitry Kiselyev, Russia’s most famous television anchor and the director of the organization that runs Sputnik, made clear recently.

Speaking this summer on the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Information Bureau, Mr. Kiselyev said the age of neutral journalism was over. “If we do propaganda, then you do propaganda, too,” he said, directing his message to Western journalists.

“Today, it is much more costly to kill one enemy soldier than during World War II, World War I or in the Middle Ages,” he said in an interview on the state-run Rossiya 24 network. While the business of “persuasion” is more expensive now, too, he said, “if you can persuade a person, you don’t need to kill him.”

Correction: August 28, 2016
An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of a spokesman for the Swedish Security Service. He is Wilhelm Unge, not Urme.

Correction: August 31, 2016
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to RT’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention. It devoted little to the speeches on the day President Obama spoke — not throughout the entire convention.

Follow Neil MacFarquhar on Twitter @NeilMacFarquhar.

Eva Sohlman contributed reporting from Stockholm, and Lincoln Pigman from Moscow.

 

[Kirkhill]

Further to my comment above:

Putin is ‘DELIBERATELY destabilising’ the world: US defence chief issues Russia warning

RUSSIA'S Vladimir Putin is making deliberate attempts to destabilise the rest of the world, the US Defence Secretary has warned during a visit to the UK.

By TOM BATCHELOR
PUBLISHED: 11:41, Wed, Sep 7, 2016 | UPDATED: 14:51, Wed, Sep 7, 2016

Ash Carter said Russia was eroding international order

America’s defence chief warned in a highly-charged assessment of the Kremlin that Russia had clear ambitions to erode international order.

Ash Carter, speaking in Oxford, sounded a note of caution about Russia’s willingness to reach a ceasefire deal in Syria.

But he added that the US was not seeking either a hot or cold war but was merely acting to defend its allies.

His comments risk souring an already tense diplomatic standoff between the two military superpowers, who are involved in ongoing talks over the future of Syria.

Moscow and Washington back opposing sides in the five-year-long Syrian conflict, with the Russians fighting on President Bashar al-Assad's side while the Americans back opposition groups and insist Assad must go.

The two powers have been negotiating in recent days, with Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin meeting for 90 minutes on Monday on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in China, but failed to reach an agreement.

However, efforts are still going on behind the scenes and Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said in London on Tuesday that an agreement was possible within 24 hours.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/708074/US-defence-chief-Ash-Carter-Putin-deliberately-destabilising-world