…when tomorrow comes [DOT 24/2/22]

…in the words of someone at the BBC

Let’s cut right to the chase here: are we witnessing the prelude to World War 3?

Because let’s face it, that is what a lot of people are understandably asking and thinking in the light of the Kremlin’s recent actions over Ukraine – actions and statements that have triggered a deluge of denouncements and sanctions from the West.

No. As bad as the situation on the Russia-Ukraine border is right now, it does not currently involve a direct military confrontation between Nato and Russia.
[…]
Under Nato’s Article 5 the entire western military alliance is obliged to come to the defence of any member state that comes under attack.
[…]
Eastern European countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland – once part of Moscow’s orbit in Soviet times – are all now Nato members.

They are feeling distinctly nervous that Russian forces might not stop at Ukraine and instead use some pretext to “come to the aid” of the ethnic Russian minorities in the Baltics and invade.

Hence Nato has recently sent reinforcements to bolster its Eastern European members as a deterrent.
[…]
Let’s not forget that Russia and America have, between them, over 8,000 deployable nuclear warheads so the stakes here are stratospherically high. The old Cold War maxim of “MAD” – Mutually Assured Destruction – still applies.

“Putin,” said a senior British military source on Tuesday, “is not about to attack Nato. He just wants to turn Ukraine into a vassal state like Belarus.”

But the wild card here is the state of Putin’s mind. Often described as coldly calculating, like the chess player and judo fighter that he is, his speech on Monday resembled more that of an angry dictator than a shrewd strategist.

Russia-Ukraine crisis: How likely is it to escalate into broader war? [BBC]

…except…things are moving faster than anyone sane likely feels comfortable with…because in the 24hrs or so since that “No” was published

The price of oil jumped above $100 a barrel for the first time since 2014, European natural gas futures jumped 31 percent, and Asian stocks fell on Thursday as Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, extending market turmoil in the United States and Europe that had been driven by fears of a full-scale attack.

Wall Street was poised for a slide when trading begins, with futures pointing to a 2 percent drop in the S&P 500.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 was off just over 2.1 percent by early afternoon. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index fell by 3.1 percent, while the Kospi composite index in South Korea was down 2.7 percent.

The price of Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, rose more than 6 percent to nearly $103 a barrel.
[…]
Moscow’s stock exchange halted trading, and the ruble fell to a record low against major currencies.

A full-scale invasion could have broad effects on commodities, including oil, natural gas, wheat and metals. Europe is hugely reliant on Russia for energy, and parts of the Middle East and Africa receive most of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Even if supply chains remain intact and Russia’s exports are not affected by sanctions, there are concerns that Mr. Putin could punitively cut off supplies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/business/economy/stock-market-today.html

…well

I should say right off the bat that I have no idea whether Putin has or hasn’t gone mad – however unfashionable not knowing things may be these days. As Russian tanks roll into Ukraine and the western powers debate whether it technically is or isn’t an invasion, you have to say this phoney war really does boast an unbelievable headcount of phoneys.

Russia experts now seem to outnumber even Russian army personnel. Column inches and airwaves and social media channels are truly awash with those blessed with the confidence to begin “here’s how Putin thinks…” or “watch what happens next”. Who knew the potential advent of war would feel like being the girl in the nightclub meme, with some PPE bore bellowing his take in your ear as you wonder if 21st-century geopolitics has an Ask for Angela option. That said, it’s great to see Britain boasting such an adaptable and highly reactive workforce, able to retrain at enviable speed. The people who became trade experts in 2016, then became epidemiology experts in 2020, have now become Russian politics experts.

My sole area of expertise – and it’s not even that, if we’re honest – is “the type of people who become newspaper columnists”. So take it from one who knows: Boris Johnson looks like he knows enough about the entire Russia-Ukraine subject to write two newspaper columns on it. Three, tops, if you count a rehash of his referendum campaign speech when he blamed the EU for Putin being forced to invade Ukraine last time round. I see Johnson has this morning “unveiled” some sanctions on five Russian banks and a grand total of three high net worth individuals. If Putin makes further incursions, he can expect a fixed penalty notice (overturned on appeal).

[…] To this untrained observer, with only her memories to go on, it does feel rather as if Vlad has been ardently pursuing diplomatic resolution with Ukraine somewhat in the way Dubya Bush was ardently pursing diplomatic resolution with Iraq in early 2003. Which is to say, there seems a rather unconvincing theatre to it all. And, indeed, a law of unintended consequences. Four years after the Iraq invasion, one V Putin delivered a conference speech in Munich in which he fumed about US actions in Iraq, lamenting that now “no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them”. Which has arguably turned out to be some more rather unconvincing theatre in itself.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/22/putin-tanks-ukraine-russian-leader

…back to the beeb

Russian forces have launched a military assault on neighbouring Ukraine, crossing its borders and bombing military targets near big cities.

In a pre-dawn TV statement Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia did not plan to occupy Ukraine and demanded that its military lay down their arms.

Moments later, attacks were reported on Ukrainian military targets.

Ukraine said that “Putin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.

Russian military vehicles were said to have breached the border in a number of places, in the north, south and east, including from Belarus. At least seven people are known to have been killed in Russian attacks, police say. Another 19 are missing.

President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that martial law was now being imposed across all of Ukraine.
[…]
Russia first launched strikes on Ukraine’s military infrastructure and border guard units, according to Mr Zelensky. Then Ukrainian forces said Russian military vehicles had crossed the border at Kharkiv in the north, Luhansk in the east, Russian-annexed Crimea in the south and from Belarus too.

Ukraine’s army said Kyiv’s Boryspil international airport was among a number of airfields that had been bombed, along with military headquarters and warehouses in the big cities of Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Mariupol.
[…]
The Russian leader launched the “special military operation” repeating a number of unfounded claims he has made this week, alleging that Ukraine’s democratically elected government had been responsible for eight years of genocide.

He said the goal was demilitarisation and “denazification” of Ukraine. Hours earlier Ukraine’s president had asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis support Nazism. “How could I be a Nazi?” said Mr Zelensky, who is himself Jewish.

Ukraine conflict: Russian forces invade after Putin TV declaration [BBC]

…so…yeah…there’s every chance this is going to be out of date by the time I manage to post it

With his incursion into Donetsk and Luhansk, Vladimir Putin has broken international law and destroyed the best negotiating track, the Minsk agreement. That is clear. What is also clear is why he did it.
[…]
The Russian president is a rational man with his own analysis of recent European history. Coming from a former Communist, his blaming of Lenin for giving excessive scope to local nationalism in drawing up the Soviet constitution is remarkable. Similarly, his criticism of the way national elites destroyed the Soviet Union in its final years is sharp.

Does he want to turn the clock back? People often quote his statement “the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. But it bears pointing out that he enlarged on it later, saying: “Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.”

It is crucially important for those who might seek to end or ameliorate this crisis to first understand his mindset. What happened this week is that Putin lost his patience, and his temper. He is furious with the Ukraine government. He feels it repeatedly rejected the Minsk agreement, which would give the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk substantial autonomy. He is angry with France and Germany, the co-signatories, and the United States, for not pressing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to implement them. He is equally angry with the Americans for not taking on board Russia’s security concerns about Nato’s expansion and the deployment of offensive missiles close to Russia’s borders.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/23/putin-narrative-ukraine-master-key-crisis-nato-expansionism-frozen-conflict

…but all the same

Mr. Putin’s revisionist and absurd assertion that Ukraine was “entirely created by Russia” and effectively robbed from the Russian empire is fully in keeping with his warped worldview. Most disturbing to me: It was his attempt to establish the pretext for a full-scale invasion.
[…]
In the 20-odd years since we met, Mr. Putin has charted his course by ditching democratic development for Stalin’s playbook. He has collected political and economic power for himself — co-opting or crushing potential competition — while pushing to re-establish a sphere of Russian dominance through parts of the former Soviet Union. Like other authoritarians, he equates his own well-being with that of the nation and opposition with treason. He is sure that Americans mirror both his cynicism and his lust for power and that in a world where everyone lies, he is under no obligation to tell the truth. Because he believes that the United States dominates its own region by force, he thinks Russia has the same right.
[…]
Mr. Putin’s actions have triggered massive sanctions, with more to come if he launches a full-scale assault and attempts to seize the entire country. These would devastate not just his country’s economy but also his tight circle of corrupt cronies — who in turn could challenge his leadership. What is sure to be a bloody and catastrophic war will drain Russian resources and cost Russian lives — while creating an urgent incentive for Europe to slash its dangerous reliance on Russian energy. (That has already begun with Germany’s move to halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.)

[…] But even if the West is somehow able to deter Mr. Putin from all-out war — which is far from assured right now — it’s important to remember that his competition of choice is not chess, as some assume, but rather judo. We can expect him to persist in looking for a chance to increase his leverage and strike in the future. It will be up to the United States and its friends to deny him that opportunity by sustaining forceful diplomatic pushback and increasing economic and military support for Ukraine.
[…]
Mr. Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, like to claim that we now live in a multipolar world. While that is self-evident, it does not mean that the major powers have a right to chop the globe into spheres of influence as colonial empires did centuries ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/opinion/putin-ukraine.html

…it’s a lot to get your head around even after all the speculation surrounding the whole mess that’s been just about everywhere you look for a while now

Remember: US intel officials had it right on Dec 3rd. To much eye-rolling, they warned @washingtonpost that Russia would gather 100 BTGs & 1750,000 personnel. They were right (in fact numbers are higher). They also predicted a "a multi-front offensive". https://t.co/LcpROkxBZa

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) February 23, 2022

President Vladimir Putin authorised “a special military operation” against Ukraine on Thursday morning to eliminate what he called a serious threat, saying his aim was to demilitarise Russia’s southern neighbour.

In an early morning address on state television, Putin said he had been left with no choice but to launch the operation, the scope of which was not immediately clear but appeared to go well beyond helping Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
[…]
Ukraine dismisses as invented Russian accusations of genocide against people living in parts of its east seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014. Kyiv has said Putin was looking for an artificial pretext to attack it. read more
[…]
“Russia cannot feel safe, develop, and exist with a constant threat emanating from the territory of modern Ukraine,” Putin said.

Russia would respond instantly if any external force tried to interfere with its actions, he added.

“Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more so, to create threats to our country, to our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate. And it will lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history.

“We are ready for any development of events. All the necessary decisions have been made in this regard. I hope that I will be heard.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-putin-authorises-military-operations-donbass-domestic-media-2022-02-24/

Biden said in a statement that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.”

He called the military operation, which Putin announced in a televised speech just before dawn on Thursday in Moscow, an “unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces.”

“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way,” he said. “The world will hold Russia accountable.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-chosen-premeditated-war-military-operation-ukraine-biden-says

…& sure…it’s a complicated mess of a situation that’s arguably part of a bigger mess on a grander scale

The miracle of modern China was built on global connections, a belief that sending young people, companies and future leaders to soak up the outside world was the route from impoverishment to power. Now, emboldened by its transformation, the country is shunning the influences and ideas that nourished its rise.

The country’s most dominant leader in decades, Xi Jinping, seems intent on redefining China’s relationship with the world, recasting the meeting of minds and cultures as a zero-sum clash.
[…]
There is little chance of returning to the isolationism of the Mao era, when the nation was sealed off from the world financially as well as culturally. The pandemic has made clear how much the global economy relies upon China, and how much China has benefited. Mr. Xi says he has no intention of decoupling from other economies.
[…]
But if the government values the economic benefits of globalization, the same does not seem true of less tangible ones: artistic, intellectual, interpersonal. Those ties — which made China not just a fixture of the world economy, but a member of the global community — are being scrutinized, restricted or rejected.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-world.html

…but in the broader, more immediate strokes it maybe isn’t?

As Moscow massed tens of thousands of troops this winter, threatening a conflict that could embroil Ukraine’s NATO supporters — including the U.S. — Putin’s ego, nationalism and chauvinism has been exposed for all the world to see. This is, after all, a president who has previously claimed that Ukraine “is not a country” and that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people — a single whole.”

Some of the more blinkered Western responses to the Kremlin’s aggression pre-invasion claimed the current crisis is about Ukraine, and nothing more. Characterized by conservatives like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, these neo-isolationists claim that the U.S. should refrain from “provoking” Russia. Indeed in an interview published Tuesday, former President Donald Trump went so far as to call Putin a “genius.”

These voices, however, missed the forests for the trees. Moscow’s demands were always about more than the security arrangements in Ukraine — instead aiming directly at the trans-Atlantic relationship and the post-Cold War order more broadly.
[…]
All the while, the Kremlin’s moves have created tension with key American partners in places like Germany, with Berlin and Washington at loggerheads about how to respond to Moscow’s aggression. Toss in new questions about how much countries like France or Hungary will support a unified opposition to Russia, and the trans-Atlantic alliance feels shakier than it’s been in decades.
[…]
As Putin would have it, this roiling calamity of his own making is about reordering the post-Cold War consensus in Europe — and perhaps evicting the U.S. from Europe entirely, unwinding the gains the West made in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin, as it were, appears ready to snatch victory from the shadow of post-Cold War defeat.

Nor should this be much of a surprise. For years, Putin has railed against the West’s supposed perfidy in expanding NATO following the Soviet collapse. Rather than watching independent countries make decisions about their own security arrangements, Putin and his inner circle envision one broad, U.S.-led conspiracy to supposedly encircle Moscow. Along the way, the Russian dictator has grown to see himself as not another middling, kleptocratic dictator, but as a figure of historic import, dedicated to restoring Russian greatness — and to unwinding the gains the West made when Russia was at its weakest following the Soviet collapse.

Those who understand the Kremlin best have issued repeated warnings to this effect. Earlier in February, Fiona Hill — co-author of the best Putin biography to date, and a key former American official focused on Russia — affirmed Moscow’s broadening focus. “If Russia presses hard enough, Mr. Putin hopes he can strike a new security deal with NATO and Europe to avoid an open-ended conflict, and then it will be America’s turn to leave, taking its troops and missiles with it,” Hill wrote. Michael Kofman, one of the U.S.’s lead Russian military analysts, echoed as much, noting, “Ukraine, whose fate hangs in the balance, may be at the center of the crisis, but Moscow has a greater goal in mind: the revision of Europe’s security order.”

Putin, in other words, may be angling to return Russia to the dominant place in the European security order — the position he believes it deserves.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/why-does-russia-want-invade-ukraine-ask-putin

…it’s hard to believe that even putin actually relishes the prospect of all out global conflict

The scope of Mr. Putin’s professed ambition is alarming and bewildering for much of the world. As Mr. Biden asked, “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belonged to his neighbors?”
[…]
The magnitude of the Russian gambit is staggering. Whatever Mr. Putin’s ideas on how Ukraine should relate to Russia, whatever his grievances over Western encroachment on what he perceives as Russia’s sphere of influence, whatever his views on Russia’s place in Europe and the world, an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign European state is an unprovoked declaration of war on a scale, on a continent and in a century when it was thought to be no longer possible.

No Justification for a Brazen Invasion [NYT]

…& despite “assurances” like the idea that not having US forces on the ground in Ukraine meaning that the prospect of direct conflict between those & their russian counterparts leaves some daylight between the current state of play & an actual world war III

"Putin would not stop seeking to undermine democracy and sovereignty in Ukraine, Georgia, or the region as whole if NATO stopped expanding." 2/

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 23, 2022

From "What Putin Fears Most" https://t.co/YHXPvotZVc via @JoDemocracy 4/ END THREAD

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 23, 2022

…there isn’t nearly as much of that daylight as there’d need to be for anyone to feel comfortable about the way things are going

[…] There are two types of war: wars of necessity, to protect vital national interests and involving the use of military force as a last resort, such as World War II and the Persian Gulf war of 1991; and wars of choice — armed interventions taken either in the absence of vital national interests or despite the availability of options not involving military force. Into this category fall the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and, after a limited initial phase, Afghanistan.

Mr. Putin’s conflict is, decidedly, a war of choice. The Russian president’s justifications hold no water: There was and is no consensus about bringing Ukraine into NATO in the next decade or later. There was and is no threat to ethnic Russians in Ukraine. And the United States and NATO have voiced their openness to discussing European security arrangements that take legitimate Russian interests into account.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/russia-ukraine-invasion-putin.html

2008: We will not invade Georgia
2014: The little green men are not Russian soldiers.
2014: We are not invading Eastern Ukraine
2022: We are not going to recognize "separatist" areas
2022: We are not going to invade Ukraine

Also 2022: We are not going to occupy Ukraine https://t.co/OxMcI15Uh1

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) February 24, 2022

Stop quoting Russian government officials as if their words have meaning. They lie.

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 24, 2022

…& of course it’s also true that these days wars have less identifiable fronts to worry about, too

President Biden’s initial response to Russia’s military thrust into eastern Ukraine was to cut off two major Russian banks from U.S. financing and to bar American investors from buying Russian government bonds.

Yet the two banks — VEB and Promsvyazbank — are almost entirely domestically focused and funded. And the Russian government has little immediate need to raise money from foreign investors, whose role in Moscow’s financial system has been ebbing.

“They don’t have a deficit to finance. They’re not desperate for money,” said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist for the Institute of International Finance (IIF). “The banking system is very liquid. They have extra cash sloshing around.”

[…] the president added additional measures on Wednesday targeting the company behind a controversial Russian gas pipeline. Yet investors expect Russia’s $1.5 trillion economy — smaller than New York state’s — to incur increasing damage if the crisis persists.

On Wednesday, one market gauge forecast Russia’s benchmark interest rate in 12 months spiking well into the double digits, which could plunge the economy into recession, according to IIF data.

Another measure of market jitters — the cost of insuring against a Russian default — has doubled in one week. An investor now would need to spend $431,000 to insure $10 million in Russian government bonds against a failure by Moscow to repay its debt, the highest price in more than seven years.

As the crisis over Russian intentions in Ukraine intensified, Moscow’s stock market over the past week lost more than 20 percent of its value and fell 37 percent from its October peak.
[…]
[since 2014] Russia almost doubled its foreign currency reserves and bulked up on Chinese and Japanese holdings at the expense of its dollar and euro assets. Moscow also has all but eliminated its stockpile of U.S. Treasury securities, selling all but $4 billion of a $97 billion stake it held in 2016.

In what he described as the “first tranche” of U.S. sanctions, Biden this week barred American investors from buying Russia’s sovereign debt. But after years of government budget restraint — and with oil prices well above the level needed to balance government accounts — Moscow has only a limited need to issue the debt that the United States on Tuesday sanctioned.
[…]
Foreign fund managers also hold just 20 percent of Russian government bonds. With American — and European — investors off limits, Russian authorities will probably lean on domestic banks to buy more government debt. The banks have plenty of resources to do that and ultimately are backstopped by the Russian central bank and its $630 billion war chest.
[…]
“Unless you see a significant ramping up of sanctions, you will not see a destabilization of the Russian financial system in a meaningful way,” said Markus Schneider, a senior economist with AllianceBernstein in London. “If the U.S. decides to do so, they could take some very, very powerful measures with, of course, a lot of collateral damage in the process.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/02/23/biden-sanctions-putin-ukraine-russia/

When the United States barred Americans from doing business with Russian banks, oil and gas developers and other companies in 2014, after the country’s invasion of Crimea, the hit to Russia’s economy was swift and immense. Economists estimated that sanctions imposed by Western nations cost Russia $50 billion a year.

Since then, the global market for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets has ballooned. That’s bad news for enforcers of sanctions, and good news for Russia.
[…]
“Russia has had a lot of time to think about this specific consequence,” said Michael Parker, a former federal prosecutor who now heads the anti-money laundering and sanctions practice at the Washington law firm Ferrari & Associates. “It would be naïve to think that they haven’t gamed out exactly this scenario.”
[…]
To apply sanctions, a government makes a list of people and businesses its citizens must avoid. Anyone caught engaging with a member of the list faces heavy fines. But the real key to any effective sanctions program is the global financial system. Banks around the world play a major role in enforcement: They see where money comes from and where it’s bound, and anti-money laundering laws require them to block transactions with sanctioned entities and report what they see to authorities. But if banks are the eyes and ears of governments in this space, the explosion of digital currencies is blinding them.
[…]
Banks have to abide by “know your customer” rules, which include verifying their clients’ identities. But exchanges and other platforms that facilitate the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies and digital assets are rarely as good at tracking their customers as banks are, even though they are supposed to follow the same rules. In October, the U.S. Treasury Department warned that cryptocurrencies posed an increasingly serious threat to the American sanctions program and that U.S. authorities needed to educate themselves about the technology.

Should it choose to evade sanctions, Russia has multiple cryptocurrency-related tools at its disposal, experts said. All it needs is to find ways to trade without touching the dollar.

The Russian government is developing its own central bank digital currency, a so-called digital ruble that it hopes to use to trade directly with other countries willing to accept it without first converting it into dollars. Hacking techniques like ransomware could help Russian actors steal digital currencies and make up revenue lost to sanctions.

And while cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on the underlying blockchain, making them transparent, new tools developed in Russia can help mask the origin of such transactions. That would allow businesses to trade with Russian entities without detection.

There is a precedent for these kinds of workarounds. Iran and North Korea are among countries that have used digital currencies to mitigate the effects of Western sanctions, a trend that U.S. and United Nations officials have recently observed. North Korea, for instance, has used ransomware to steal cryptocurrency to fund its nuclear program, according to a U.N. report.
[…]
Sanctioned Russian entities could deploy their own evasion strategy, using ransomware attacks. The playbook is straightforward: A hacker breaks into computer networks and locks up digital information until the victim pays for its release, usually in cryptocurrency.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/business/russia-sanctions-cryptocurrency.html

A cyber report published by intelligence agencies in the UK and US on Wednesday has attributed insidious new malware to a notorious Russia-backed hacking group.
[…]
The joint research was published by the National Cyber Security Centre in the UK and US agencies including the National Security Agency. It warned that a Russian state-backed hacker group known as Sandworm had developed a new type of malware called Cyclops Blink, which targets firewall devices made by the manufacturer Watchguard to protect computers against hacks.

The sophisticated virus can withstand typical remedies including reboots, the report said. The findings come as the UK and US, allies to Ukraine, are on high alert for Russian state-sponsored hacks. The agencies added that their statement was a “routine advisory” not directly linked to the situation in Ukraine.

However, the US cybersecurity firm Mandiant said the announcement was a reminder of the damage that could be inflicted by Sandworm, which has been blamed for the devastating NotPetya attack on Ukraine in 2017. John Hultquist, a vice-president at Mandiant Threat Intelligence, said Sandworm remained a “capable and clever” adversary.

“In light of the crisis in Ukraine we are very concerned about this actor, who has surpassed all others we track in terms of the aggressive cyber-attacks and information operations they have conducted,” he said. “No other Russian actor has been so brazen and successful in disrupting critical infrastructure in Ukraine and elsewhere.”
[…]
Wednesday saw a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that targeted websites of Ukraine’s government and banks.
[…]
Wednesday’s hack was consistent with the country’s tactics to distract and disrupt adversaries while “providing a level of plausible deniability”, said Rick Holland, chief information security officer at the cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows.

“Russia didn’t just decide to invade Ukraine this week,” he said. “Military planners have prepared for this campaign years in advance. Disinformation, false flags, DDoS attacks, and destructive wiper malware are a part of Russian military doctrine; the battle plans have been drawn up and are now being executed.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/23/russia-hacking-malware-cyberattack-virus-ukraine

Against Russia’s brazen assault on Ukraine, the Biden administration has tried to fight back with aggressive use of intelligence. But beware: Two can play this game, and history shows the Russians are ruthless masters of covert operations in this region.

The Ukraine spy wars, so far, have taken place mostly in what Russians like to call the “information space” — and the performance by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies has been dazzling. They’ve penetrated Russia’s wall of secrecy to expose its military planning, its “false flag” plots and even its plans for targeted killings and kidnappings of Ukrainian leaders.
[…]
But Russia plays a very long and devious game in intelligence, and there’s no better example than Ukraine during the Cold War’s first years. The CIA was patting itself on the back for aggressive operations there in the early 1950s — but it turned out they were nearly all penetrated and manipulated by Moscow.

The Ukrainian partisans were seduced back then by unrealistic U.S. promises. “The Ukrainian resistance had no hope of winning unless America was prepared to go to war on its behalf. Since America was not prepared to go to war, America was in effect encouraging Ukrainians to go to their deaths,” John Ranelagh explains in his 1986 history “The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA.”

What makes this spy history relevant now is that support for a Ukrainian insurgency is a little-discussed part of the Biden administration’s plan for combating an all-out Russian invasion. The aim is to make Ukraine an indigestible “porcupine” for Russian occupiers. That sounds good, given Russian and U.S. difficulties in combating insurgencies in Afghanistan and in Iraq. But this strategy has some significant weaknesses that need a frank examination now, before it’s too late.
[…]
The biggest problem for Ukraine and its allies is that Russia knows this battlespace well — and undoubtedly has been recruiting a network of Ukrainian double agents. These agents can sow havoc for a resistance movement by revealing its leaders, safe houses, communications and plans of attack. And it gets worse: A trademark of Russian intelligence, for a century, has been its ability to manipulate resistance groups in Ukraine and elsewhere so that they were actually controlled by the Kremlin.
[…]
Perhaps the Ukrainians will be able to field a strong, prickly resistance movement in the weeks ahead. But history teaches that this porcupine may have internal parasites — and that it will be pursued by a very sharp-toothed fox.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/23/deadly-devious-intelligence-war-unfolds-ukraine/

…none of which makes for pleasant reading, frankly…or seems to have left space for any of the not-about-ukraine things I’d vaguely intended to find a spot for today…but with any luck I’ll manage to add some tunes at some point, at least