2024-12-21 03:52:42
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office has spurred a barrage of panicky essays about the future of European security. Alongside critiques of NATO members’ inadequate defense spending and promises of a swift end to the war in Ukraine, the new administration has signaled it will shift priority to the Indo-Pacific.
The White House looks set to marry economic and trade concerns with the security threat posed by China. If Europe wishes to secure strong relations with Washington — a key aim for the continent during the past eight decades — it will have to offer something in return. In a more transactional transatlantic relationship, what can Europe offer to demonstrate it is not merely a security taker but also a giver?
Intelligence could be a good area. European intelligence services need to go on the offensive against Russian and Sino-Russian strategic cooperation. They should also invest more in covert activity.
A model for a European intelligence concept might be Five Eyes, the Anglophonic alliance of the US plus the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand formed in World War II and bound by a strong trust between the US and the former British Empire, reinforced by its signals intelligence (SIGINT) and cryptological focus. Interestingly, a former head of MI6 said recently that intelligence cooperation between the US and the UK had been unaffected during Trump’s first presidency from 2016 to 2020. It’s clear that both sides see the benefits of working together.
European intelligence agencies are not in a position to exactly replicate the sheer mass and reach of Five Eyes. But they have significant capabilities for signals intelligence (SIGINT) and other technological collection efforts, and these would be the primary beneficiaries of such an alliance, with European capitals investing in programs and working with trusted allied agencies and their appropriate cleared employees.
Vetting is crucial to any intelligence project, especially a joint program with genuinely valuable material. A pan-European project would attract close interest from Russian, Chinese, and other spies. The best and first solution to this is always prudence over who receives access, its handling, and its use. The process of protecting sources and methods is as old as espionage itself, although European agencies have not always been good at this.
An immediate effect of a closer integration would also be the design of new collection methods. Agencies and cleared defense contractors working together in Europe — and across the Atlantic — could better develop their requirements and debug faulty programs and devices.
However, the collection is only part of intelligence operations. A wide-ranging and diverse effort of all-source intelligence analysis would provide a constant stream for policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic, drawing on the full range of expertise across the region.
Some European agencies have skilled staff able to contribute, and some have exceptional though little-known abilities (look at Ukraine for an example of agencies doing real harm to the much bigger Russian state.)
This is especially true of countries bordering Russia, who have taken to heart the old injunction of knowing the enemy. The Baltic states have long been acknowledged as leaders in cyberspace, for example, and Russia’s war on Ukraine has introduced many to the expertise of Estonian military intelligence analysis, which could be applied to evaluating military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing.
European intelligence agencies should broaden their scope to tackle the Sino-Russian partnership and China’s infiltration into both Europe and the continent’s interests abroad.
Foreign relations experts have reached no consensus on how to define the relationship between Beijing and Moscow. Some, like Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, have confidently labeled it the “axis of authoritarians.” Others are more reluctant to embrace a comparison to the 1940 Tripartite Treaty between Germany, Italy, and Japan.
Eugene Rumer of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace views ties between the two countries as a “pragmatic, transactional relationship with strategic consequences for both sides, but one that is motivated by complementary rather than identical interests.”
Both thinkers come from the US intelligence community — DeTrani was the CIA’s Director of Operations for East Asia, and Rumer was a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council from 2010 to 2014.
It is absolutely critical that allied intelligence communities understand this Russo-Chinese relationship. They need to gather, share, and analyze strategic intelligence on the Beijing-Moscow connection to comprehend these revanchist actors, their plans, what they think about their adversaries, and what they think about each other.
That will require penetration of their political, diplomatic, and military bureaucracies. It should be added that this doesn’t have to mean intelligence operations inside these countries, which are police states. It could mean work at home, where Russia and China run large espionage operations, or simply by hacking into their computer and data systems, Something Beijing’s spies already do to the West at an extraordinary scale.)
Greater integration between Western agencies will also help counter Chinese and Russian intelligence and covert operations. The sabotage campaign against Europe is becoming a coalition affair, as highlighted by evidence that a Chinese-flagged ship sailing to Russia intentionally severed undersea communication cables in the Baltic Sea in November, mirroring a similar attack last year.
European intelligence services shouldn’t just focus on countering Sino-Russian sabotage efforts or strategic competition but partner with prosecutors to crush campaigns to infiltrate and manipulate European affairs.
The judicial effort against Chinese spies in Europe has received attention in the last year, with the arrest of what may have been components of a PRC spy ring across the continent in April. The UK’s famed counter-intelligence service, MI5, also hasn’t minced words about the Russian threat, saying Russian agents are seeking to cause “mayhem” in Europe.
More and better should be the watchwords of allied intelligence services. Every country likes to keep a tight lid on what it discovers, but in this new age, sharing will be everything.
Michael C. DiCianna is a research fellow at the Center for Intermarium Studies at the Institute of World Politics and a research assistant at the Yorktown Institute. He has been a research consultant in the US intelligence community for several years, focusing on military affairs in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East. He is a Master of Arts Candidate at the Institute for World Politics.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Date: November 19, 2024
Time: 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. CT
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2024-12-21 01:33:41
When Harvard researchers unveiled a speculative technology blocking sunlight by dispersing reflective particles, they chose Esrange Space Center, located in Sweden’s far north, for a pioneering test. But public protests in 2021 forced them to cancel the experiment.
Solar geoengineering, also known as solar radiation modification (SRM), aims to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight into space. It proposes techniques such as stratospheric aerosol injection, cloud brightening, and space mirrors. While the US ramps up research, the EU’s scientific advisors are pressing the pause button, calling for a global agreement to halt deployment. A key unknown variable is the incoming Trump administration’s approach.
The split over solar geoengineering underlines a deep transatlantic difference towards how to deal with scientific risk. It echoes previous debates over pathbreaking technologies ranging from genetic engineering to artificial intelligence. The EU wants global governance to mitigate danger. The US prefers to go it alone.
Boosted by private sector funding, the US leads on solar engineering research. Silicon Valley executives are investing in the hope of providing a quick, cheap remedy to climate change. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook-funded Open Philanthropy, among others, offered financial support to the Harvard Solar Geoengineering Research Program, which managed the geoengineering experiment in Sweden. The University of Chicago, Colorado State, Cornell, and Princeton have all launched research projects.
Small-scale solar engineering deployment is taking off. California-based startup Make Sunsets, founded in 2022, raised $1m in venture capital and now launches balloons filled with sulfur dioxide to reflect sunlight. The company sells “cooling credits”: for $9.95, it promises to send “at least one gram of our ‘clouds’ into the stratosphere.” Initial field tests in Mexico sparked widespread criticism and angered the Mexican government, which banned the practice. Make Sunsets currently operate in the US where the balloon launches are allowed to proceed.
Across the Atlantic, the EU is pressing on the brakes. This month, the EU’s scientific advisors released a new skeptical assessment, arguing that solar geoengineering does not represent a viable solution to combating climate change. Instead, the scientists say that solar geoengineering brings deep uncertainty, making the technologies inconsistent with Europe’s precautionary principle. Risks include changes in rainfall, ecosystem disruptions, and ‘termination shock’: rapid warming that could occur if solar geoengineering deployment were to suddenly halt.
A similar split is visible with other controversial new technologies. Americans have been eating genetically modified foods for several decades, while Europe continues to fight over deploying gene editing. American companies are rushing ahead with artificial intelligence, while Europe has pushed back with a new AI Act designed to mitigate potential catastrophic risks.
Europe continues to believe in international governance of potentially dangerous new technologies. Because solar engineering will impact the entire planet, a “strong global governance framework would be needed,” the EU advisors argue. But “no such framework exists, and it is not clear how one could be created.”
In its absence, the European scientists advise policymakers to establish an EU-wide moratorium on solar geoengineering and push for a global non-deployment agreement. The scientific opinion could put “oil on the wheels” to get a UN governance process started, according to Janos Pasztor, former UN Assistant Secretary-General on climate change and a long-time proponent of regulation on solar engineering.
The US disagrees, preferring to exempt itself from international regulations to maintain freedom of maneuver. It is the only country that has failed to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity, which in 2010 de facto banned any solar engineering technologies that threaten biodiversity. The US has also repeatedly blocked efforts to open a global conversation on solar geoengineering. At a UN Environment Assembly in February 2024, the US expressed doubts about a Swiss proposal to establish a UN expert group to study the technologies. When negotiations failed to reach a consensus, Switzerland withdrew the proposal.
Many US scientists share the European concerns. More than 500 scholars – among them almost 100 US academics – have signed an open letter, launched in 2022, calling for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering.
Under a second Trump administration, support for regulation on solar geoengineering looks implausible. “It is likely that SRM will remain unregulated, paving the way for private-sector actors and venture capitalists to dominate SRM research with little to no transparency,” says Dr. Shuchi Talati, founder of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering. Influential tech billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, among others, could push the administration in a pro-solar engineering direction, she believes.
But much remains uncertain about the new administration’s stance. As Talati puts it,“we also see a chaotic counterweight in the elevation of RFK Jr., a chemtrails conspiracy theorist.” Donald Trump’s health secretary-nominee has lent support to the idea that governments are releasing chemicals in the atmosphere to control populations. In an unlikely convergence with the EU’s scientific advisors, adherents of the conspiracy theory support a ban. For instance, Tennessee lawmakers recently voted to prohibit geoengineering due to worries about chemtrails.
Without international governance, the likelihood of unilateral deployment of solar geoengineering increases. The 1977 Environmental Modification Convention bans weaponizing climate technologies – yet the concern looms large. Many recall the US Operation Popeye which sought to disrupt rainfall during the Vietnam War. The need to fight against rogue solar geoengineering deployment generates transatlantic alignment: both the US and the EU’s scientific advisors support the development of solar geoengineering detection systems.
Solar geoengineering could slow – and perhaps reverse – climate change. Time is short: 2024 set to become the warmest year on record. But political agreement on the speculative technologies remains elusive. Without it, solar geoengineering is likely to add, rather than subtract, to transatlantic disagreements and the world’s growing climate woes.
Oona Lagercrantz is a Project Assistant with the Digital Innovation Initiative at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Brussels. Oona received a first-class bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree with distinction from the University of Cambridge, specializing in the politics of emerging technologies.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Technology is defining the future of geopolitics.
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2024-12-21 01:05:27
To: Most Esteemed Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
From: Sergey Alexandrovich Karaganov, Chair, Council for Foreign and Defense Policy
Re: Winning
Our campaign to weaken the West is succeeding thanks to the myopia of most Western governments and their publics. They ignore the “mutual aid” doctrine of our zoologist, Prince Peter Kropotkin, who observed in the 19th century how herds of fallow deer stayed together to avoid being swept away when fording Siberian rivers.
Instead, most Westerners follow the parasitic logic of collective action, as expounded by the American academic Mancur Olson in 1965.
The logic starts with every man for himself and states that each junior or middle-ranking member of a group should contribute as little as possible to the collective interest because the strongest member will provide the lion’s share of resources. The total assets will not be optimal but will be sufficient, group members hope, for their needs.
The larger the group, the easier it is to pretend solidarity while getting an almost free ride. Since NATO now numbers 32 nations and the European Union 27, it grows easier for each member except the US to pretend it contributes its fair share.
Parasitism has long been the rule for most Europeans, but it becomes riskier for them as we Russians prepare to expand beyond Ukraine. Accordingly, the nations closest to the motherland are raising their defense budgets to 3% of GDP while most others barely spend 2%. Poland, seeing our rise, now spends more than 4%.
Several NATO members had promised to send advanced weapons to Ukraine but had second thoughts when they realized what decades of cost-saving have done to their own inventories.
The Americans are spending 6 or 7% of GDP on defense when you include veterans’ care, interest in war debt, outer space, R&D for nuclear weapons, and spying — especially by machines.
Aid to Ukraine adds little to these outlays but will probably be reduced in 2025 — a trend we in Russia should encourage. If we play our cards right, Trump may pull out of NATO as he withdrew from other multilateral accords, including the nuclear deal with our friends in Tehran.
His unilateralism and the slogan “America First” appeals to many voters, and US defense planners are more concerned with Asia than Europe.
The Europeans praise togetherness but continue to pursue what they see as their own national interests. We had some success in loosening the ties of the “United” Kingdom during the Scottish exit referendum in 2014 and the Catalonia independence vote in 2017, both encouraged by our operatives.
Each European car maker tries to protect its own country’s automobile industry, even if, for some, this means collaborating with China. Trump’s threats to raise US tariffs will further add to Europe’s economic chaos.
European unity is still a phantom. Since the 1950s, economic but not political ties have strengthened. The EU still permits a dissident such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to rake in huge subsidies while defying the majority on key issues. And he continues to flatter us while benefiting from NATO’s Article 5.
“Security” will be there for every NATO member so long as Uncle Sam pays most of the bills. If Poland does its part but Hungary or Slovakia does not, their parasitism goes unpunished.
Lenin posed the question Chto delat — What is to be done?” For Russia, now, the answer is “More of the same.” Even if our weapons and troops are losing their edge, we can continue to overwhelm Ukrainians with brute force. We can divide and conquer the West by frightening some leaders and the public with nuclear and Orezhnik missile blackmail, plus sabotage and diverse, active measures.
Other Westerners we can cajole with smiles and material rewards. Everything we do should set the stage for Donald Trump’s return to the White House. If he reduces US economic and military assistance to Ukraine, this will encourage other Europeans to back off and Ukrainians to stand down and give up.
We should finally get a deal in which Ukraine must cede at least one-fifth of its territory to Russia and guarantee it will never join NATO. The deal must also unburden us from any compensation to Ukraine and any obligations before the International Criminal Court. You may also judge it wise to replace our diminished stocks of weaponry so that our nation is ready for the next chapter, however, you choose to write it.
Fraternal Greetings
Sergey
Walter Clemens is an Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science, Boston University. He wrote Blood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims (2023).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Date: November 19, 2024
Time: 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. CT
The post How to Exploit Myopic Western Cost Cutting appeared first on CEPA.
2024-12-20 22:52:59
Romania avoided a bullet, but the gunman is still at large.
That’s how some analysts describe Romania’s political situation after, in less than a month, it went from a reliable and committed NATO and European Union (EU) member to a southeast European country mired in political turmoil and uncertainty. It’s a grim picture, and there’s no immediate fix in sight.
First, a radical pro-Russian outsider Călin Georgescu improbably won the first round of presidential elections on November 24, sending shockwaves through the political establishment. Then a top court canceled the vote after evidence emerged that Russian interference had aided his campaign.
In between, three nationalist parties with anti-Western views made historic gains in December 1 parliamentary elections leaving mainstream parties struggling to form a cohesive majority. The turmoil deepened on December 19, as Romania’s biggest party, the Social Democratic Party, pulled out of fraught talks for a pro-European governing coalition, leaving the remaining parties vulnerable and lacking a majority.
The formation of a new government was further complicated after parliament’s biggest nationalist party, AUR, offered to govern alongside pro-European groups as long as it gets the post of prime minister.
President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday appealed to parties to recognize the precarious situation. “Romania is in a very complicated situation with a war at its border. We have hybrid attacks on Romania which led to the annulment of presidential elections; an unprecedented situation. We have a very complicated situation in the European Union where states which were the engines of the Union are facing domestic problems. The last thing Romania needs is an extended governmental and parliamentary crisis.”
Romania’s next government will inherit a government deficit forecast to reach 8% of GDP in 2024 (according to the European Commission.) The deficit reflects very fast growth in government spending, mostly due to large increases in public sector wages, expenditure in goods and services and social transfers, including pensions.
It also reflects slightly slower revenue growth due to weaker-than-predicted economic activity.
On December 17, Fitch Ratings signaled it may cut Romania’s credit grade, citing high political uncertainty. It lowered the outlook on Romania’s BBB- rating, the lowest investment level, to negative from stable, sending a warning to pro-European parties as they struggle to form a coalition after parliamentary elections. Worsening credit ratings mean higher costs for government borrowing.
Political turmoil continues after the canceled election, with some saying the court saved democracy and others who think it has been subverted by a political mainstream parties unwilling to surrender power to independents and radicals. There is no timetable for a new government to be in place, or for presidential elections.
Iohannis, 65, has said he will stay on until a new president is elected, as per the constitution. But there have been calls for the unpopular head of state to step down in an increasingly febrile atmosphere.
In an effort to communicate why the election was canceled, Iohannis finally revealed two weeks later that the “state actor” that had been accused of meddling in the election to favor Georgescu, a pro-Russian soil scientist and conspiracist, was in fact Russia. The Romanian leader, who is known for being cautious, said diplomatic norms and lack of absolute proof in hybrid attacks made it difficult to directly point the finger at the Kremlin which acted in a “subtle and complex” way.
That didn’t stop US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who accused Russia of interfering with the Romanian elections on December 5, a day after Romania declassified intelligence reports that showed a meddling by a foreign state. Moscow has denied interference, as it did in neighboring Moldova, where the government also produced evidence of a substantial campaign against pro-Western candidates and parties. Ministers and officials said Russia spent tens of millions of dollars on a range of activities including bribes to individual voters.
Russia has been waging a covert disinformation war in Romania and Bulgaria for years. BG Elves, a group focused on combating disinformation and hybrid threats, revealed in December, that the Kremlin had spent €69m ($72m) since 2010 on a large-scale propaganda and disinformation campaign to spread Russian influence and promote far-right narratives in the two countries.
Moscow’s narratives are subtle, avoiding direct mention of the Kremlin. Instead, its disinformation in Romania focuses on discontent with mainstream political parties — an opinion poll showed dismal levels of public faith in the honesty of government spending for example. It also taps encourages the idea that the EU and NATO somehow treat Romanians as second-class citizens, and force Western cultural norms onto socially conservative societies. It operates on social media like TikTok, which are popular in impoverished rural areas and through some Romanian Orthodox Church priests who sympathize with the Russian Orthodox Church.
So covert was the ongoing disinformation campaign, that the political establishment was blindsided. Everything was turned on its head when outsider Georgescu easily won the first round and was the frontrunner for the runoff against centrist mayor Elena Lasconi.
Days later, declassified Romanian intelligence files revealed evidence of voter manipulation through social media platforms, illegal campaign financing on TikTok, and cyber-attacks orchestrated by external forces.
One document indicated that 25,000 pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts became highly active two weeks before the first-round vote. Nearly 800 of these had been created in 2016 and remained largely dormant until the election.
The investigation also revealed that Romanian influencers had been paid to promote Georgescu. This was done both explicitly and subtly, through seemingly neutral hashtags associated with the independent candidate. One example is the hashtag #echilibruşiverticalitate, meaning “balance and verticality.”
TikTok also claimed that, since September, it had removed nearly 45 million fake likes, over 27 million fake follow requests, and prevented the creation of more than 400,000 spam accounts in Romania.
Documents reveal that Romania was the target of over 85,000 cyber-attacks before and during election day. These disrupted the IT and communication infrastructure supporting the electoral process.
The Constitutional Court canceled the election after Romanian authorities received backup from its strategic partners about the interference, Iohannis said on December 18.
Some attention has focused on the French-Romanian mercenary Horatiu Potra, one of the leading figures of the private armed groups operating in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and who is a Georgescu supporter. Romanian police arrested the 54-year-old former member of the French Foreign Legion on December 7. He was found in possession of knives and other edged weapons, and around €30,000 in cash in various currencies.
Prosecutors suspect he planned, along with other mercenaries active in Africa, to incite violence during demonstrations planned for that day (December 7) to protest against the cancellation of the presidential runoff.
A former environment ministry official, Georgescu has copied Vladimir Putin, who he admires and calls a patriot. He rides a horse, bathes in icy lakes and practices black belt judo. He believes nanobots are secretly inserted in cans of Pepsi; that Covid does not exist; and the moon landings were faked. He would cut aid for Ukraine and has threatened judges with “hard years in prison” for annulling the presidential vote.
Georgescu supporters have are promising to protest on December 22, the day after Iohannis’ mandate officially expires.
It is unclear if he will compete in the re-run of the Romanian presidential elections or whether Romanian authorities will ban him over the election interference.
The future Romanian government is due to establish a timeline for a new presidential vote, which is expected to take place in the spring. The process will restart, requiring candidates to gather endorsements to run, which will take time.
But the abandoned election underscores the vulnerability of a previously solid partner. It has exposed the impact that online misinformation campaigns can have on public opinion under the radar, as well as the threat posed by the interference of foreign states to democratic elections. It also underscores the need for a stronger regulatory framework and greater oversight and transparency from major social media platforms.
Lastly, it highlights a growing disillusion with mainstream parties and politicians. Even if Georgescu doesn’t run again, that disillusion remains.
Alison Mutler is a British journalist who has been working in Romania for almost 35 years. She was the Associated Press bureau chief for 25 years and was part of a team that covered the Romanian revolution for the British TV channel ITN. For the past five years, she has worked for the Romanian-English website Universul.net and has been its director for the past three years.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Date: November 19, 2024
Time: 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. CT
The post Romania Pays the Price for Kremlin Interference appeared first on CEPA.
2024-12-19 23:06:20
Two things have become clear since the assassination of Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Forces, in a bomb attack in Moscow on December 17.
The first is that he was killed by the Ukrainian intelligence service, with unnamed insiders reportedly claiming responsibility, arguing Kirillov was a war criminal and a “legitimate target.” Russia’s invasion prompted a string of assassinations on Russian territory that have been attributed to or openly claimed by Kyiv’s agents.
The second is that the Kremlin regards this truth as an irritation and an inconvenience. As with the Crocus City concert attack by Islamist terrorists in March (blamed on “the West”) the Russian state is desperate not to waste a good propaganda opportunity. And perhaps also to deny its embarrassing vulnerabilities.
Step forward the Kremlin’s mouthpieces to exclusively reveal the dark truth behind the killing — apparently, the British did it. In unison, they blamed the omnipresent “Anglo-Saxons,” Russia’s favored code words for the intelligence masters in London.
In a video posted on his Telegram channel, State Duma deputy Andrey Gurulyov urged Russia to strike the West in response to Kirillov’s demise. He said: “In our world, there are no longer any rules. They understand only force. And we place our main hopes in force. There should be strikes on Anglo-Saxon officials. Regardless of who carried it out, it was commissioned by the Anglo-Saxons. A tough response is needed, I see no other option — only force.”
Former Russian President, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev was incensed by an editorial in the London-based Times newspaper because it described Kirillov’s killing as a legitimate act of defense.
“It is impossible to ignore The Times. The bastards in their editorial called the terrorist attack against Kirillov and his aide a ‘legitimate act of defense,’” Medvedev wrote. He claimed that Times journalists and NATO officials will now be legitimate military targets for the Russian Armed Forces.
On the day of the killing, state TV host Vladimir Solovyov failed to appear for his morning radio show, Full Contact. Kirillov’s death stung even more for Moscow’s mouthpieces because the general had been in close contact with prominent Russian propagandists, who boast of regularly hobnobbing with Russia’s military elites. So it may be that his security detail were being super-careful about Solovyov’s safety.
He is notoriously paranoid and frequently complains that his domestic opponents publicly discuss his whereabouts and the makes and models of his cars. Both he and the head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, have admitted they enjoy personal protection provided by Russia’s National Guard, something not offered to Kirillov, a three-star general.
But Solovyov did return his to his show, Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, later the same day, to reveal that he had spoken to Kirillov a day before he was blown up, and later reached out to his wife to discuss his assassination. The broadcaster praised the general’s widow for not shedding a single tear at the news of his demise.
He too blamed the Anglo-Saxons. Solovyov asserted: “It was no coincidence that the British sanctioned him. They feared him!” He continued: “I don’t believe that Ukraine carried out a terrorist act. No, of course not. Igor Anatolyevich recently called me and scoffed at being sanctioned by the British. This is a classic British assassination. You can see that this is a signature move of the British special services.”
Appearing on a state TV program 60 Minutes, military expert Igor Korotchenko argued that the UK most likely participated in the killing by spying on Kirillov through its agents based out of the British Embassy in Moscow. He blamed MI6 and British military intelligence for establishing his whereabouts and feeding this information to Kyiv. Korotchenko said: “We clearly feel the hand of the Anglo-Saxons.”
(This is a long-running Russian obsession dating back to the 18th century but is a core belief for Russian spies, who reference British intelligence action against the early Soviet Union.)
In this instance, Russia’s legendary obsession with blaming the “Anglo-Saxons” for all sorts of domestic and global events has another dimension. As Solovyov exclaimed on his evening show: “There is no war in Moscow, so no one guarded [Kirillov.]”
But the war came anyway. The same propagandists who proudly predicted that Ukraine could be easily defeated in a matter of days or even mere hours, and constantly described Ukrainians as animals, insects, and dim-witted villagers incapable of standing up to mighty Russia, can’t admit that their invasion and the savagery it unleashed have consequences for the perpetrators.
The imperial mindset of discounting Russia’s neighbors as hapless and easy-to-conquer natives obscures the fact that danger lies a lot closer to home than Great Britain.
The truth is that Ukrainians have developed a highly effective intelligence service adept at working inside Russia’s supposed ironclad security system and capable of striking at the heart of the state. No wonder Russia’s elite try to concoct a lie that is easier to swallow.
Julia Davis is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the creator of the Russian Media Monitor. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Screen Actors Guild, and Women In Film.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Date: November 19, 2024
Time: 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. CT
The post Fantasyland: Russian General ‘Assassinated by the British’ appeared first on CEPA.
2024-12-19 21:35:29
Over the past 50 years, Russia has abused Ukraine and Europe’s dependence on gas supplies and transit revenues to extort political concessions, spread corruption, and exert malign influence.
It cut off exports on numerous occasions, triggering disruption across Europe and freezing millions of consumers during exceptionally harsh winters.
Since 2022, it has waged not just a full-scale hot war against Ukraine but also sought to undermine Western support for Kyiv by weaponizing gas exports and generating an energy supply crunch of unprecedented proportions across Europe.
Furthermore, the Russian Federation has extended its long-term strategy of energy weaponization to its logical culmination in Ukraine – overt military strikes against Ukrainian civil energy infrastructure, which has exacerbated an already catastrophic humanitarian situation.
Putin’s Kremlin has also ratcheted up its sabotage against energy and critical infrastructure installations across NATO member states.
Despite reams of evidence that Russia uses gas exports to inflict harm on Europe, buyers in Moscow-friendly countries are now pressuring Ukraine to continue the transit from 2025. It is no exaggeration to describe this contaminated product as blood gas; like the African blood diamonds mined to fund wars, this gas will be funding Russia’s aggression against ordinary Ukrainians.
As Russia continues to kill, deport, and torture thousands of Ukrainians, seeking to transit Russian gas to Europe would be highly contentious and geopolitically dangerous. It would lead many, no doubt including the new US administration, to question European seriousness about aiding Ukraine.
To disguise their intentions, buyers in Hungary and Slovakia have been claiming the gas entering Ukraine from the east would be of non-Russian origin.
CEPA fellows including Benjamin L. Schmitt, Sergiy Makogon, and Aura Sabadus, have written extensively on this topic in recent months, demonstrating that gas transiting Ukraine to Europe and rebranded under any other label would be still Russian gas.
These have included analyses of the plans of blood gas consumers to untruthfully label supplies as non-Russian.
The purported benefits of continuing the export of “cheap” gas under any disguise would be far outweighed by the incalculable risks.
In Ukraine’s case, the revenue from transit would be a paltry 0.5% of the country’s annual GDP, or about $800m, but that would be dwarfed by the $6.5bn raked in by Russia annually, a flow of cash that helps replenish its war machine. Those inside Ukraine who argue for a new deal, both for the money and for peace with neighbors to their west, would be grievously mistaken.
It is meanwhile simply preposterous to argue, as some do, that the continuation of the transit would offer a security guarantee, as Russia would have a stake in preserving the flows to Europe. Russia always put itself first.
“The transit was due to stop in 2020 when Russia planned to launch its Nord Stream 2 project to Germany to replace transit through Ukraine and isolate it politically,” said CEPA Senior Fellow Sergiy Makogon.
“The negotiating team of which I was part (as CEO of the company shipping the gas), believed that maintaining the transit would protect Ukraine from a full-scale Russian war.
“We were wrong. The Ukrainian transit continued but failed to protect Ukraine from Russian aggression,” he added.
Cheerleaders argue the continuation of transit would allow access to cheap gas and restore Europe’s competitiveness.
“In fact, Europe’s soaring cost of living since the start of the war was very largely caused by Russian aggression. The severance of gas without warning in 2022 provoked an energy crisis which forced the EU to fork out €850bn ($892bn) in consumer subsidies to mitigate the impact,” said Aura Sabadus, CEPA Senior Fellow.
To put these figures in context, the value of the subsidies to deal with the Russian energy crisis was nearly seven times higher than the total financial support disbursed by the EU to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion.
“The stakes couldn’t be higher,” said Benjamin L. Schmitt, Senior Fellow at both CEPA and the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. “Continuing Russian gas transit in any form — whether through an overt contract extension with Kremlin-controlled Gazprom, or under any other name, but still de facto Russian — would be dangerous for Ukraine.”
Schmitt warned that “any extension of Russian gas transit by Ukraine would undermine the real need to send the message to (especially) Western European leaders that there cannot be a return to energy business as usual with Putin’s Russia.
“It would give a talking point that Ukraine can ill-afford — fair or not — to German and even US lobbyists calling for a resurrection of the Nord Stream pipelines, that if Ukraine won’t quit the Russian gas habit, why should they?”
As for the argument from Kremlin-friendly Slovakia that importing gas from alternative sources in Western Europe would incur an additional €220m in costs is both shortsighted and disingenuous.
For a country of 5.5 million people, this translates to an extra €3.30 per person per month — the price of a cup of coffee.
Ukraine is paying an incomparably higher price: the destruction of cities, energy infrastructure, loss of innocent lives, and a relentless battle for its sovereignty against Russian aggression.
“Is the inconvenience of slightly higher energy bills truly more burdensome than the cost of freedom and human dignity that Ukraine shoulders every single day?” Makogon said.
“Supporting Ukraine by reducing dependency on Russian gas isn’t just a financial decision; it is a moral imperative. It’s a small price to pay for standing on the right side of history.”
To watch our CEPA experts discuss the prospects of the Ukrainian gas transit, see: https://cepa.org/transcripts/ukraines-gas-transit-dilemma/
Dr. Aura Sabadus is a senior energy journalist writing for Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS), a London-based global energy and petrochemicals news and market data provider. She is also a Non-resident Senior Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Sergiy Makogon is a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.) He is a seasoned executive and energy expert with over 20 years of expertise in the Ukrainian and Central and Eastern European (CEE) gas markets, as well as European security.
Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt is a Senior Fellow at the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, a Senior Fellow for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a fellow of the Duke University “Rethinking Diplomacy” Program, and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. (Twitter: @BLSchmitt).
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