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Another Report from an Unidentified Russian Operative

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[NB: Check the byline, please and thanks. /~Rayne]

Once again, a MASSIVE CAVEAT in advance of the fifth letter in a series purportedly by an FSB insider; this could be a psyop, it may be complete nonsense, it could be real, or something in between. I have no other authentication available at this time.

You can read the previous letters at these posts:

Letter One: The Pointy End of Attrition’s Stick

Letters Two through Four: Reports from an Unidentified Russian Operative

This most recent one is painful, knowing what we know now about some areas under Russian control in Ukraine.

There’s no rationality to this, no logic whatsoever correlating the actions of Russian military with Putin’s claims Ukraine is one people with Russia.

Or there is a rationality to this, consistent for the man who has either blown up, poisoned, or defenstrated those who are inconvenient.

Thanks to Igor Sushko for his effort translating the Russian to English.

1 🧵My translation of the 5th letter from the #WindofChange inside the FSB to Vladimir Osechkin. Written after the raid of the FSB on 3/11. The part that can be made public is pretty short and definitely please share far & wide. The text is only ~600 words. #FSBletters
2 As always, my comments for clarification are in parenthesis. So, let’s roll:

“Vladimir, good (REDACTED)! The temperature has really risen here, it’s uncomfortably hot. I won’t be able to communicate for a bit here going forward.
3 I hope that we’ll be able to chat normally again in several days. There is a lot that I need to share with you…
4 The questions are being raised by FSO (Federal Protective Service of the Russian Federation, aka Putin’s Praetorian Guard) & DKVR (Russian Dept. of Military Counterintelligence).
5 It is specifically the DKVR that’s mounted its horse and they are searching for “moles” and traitors here (FSB) and at Genstaff (General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) concerning leaks of Russian column movements in Ukraine.
6 Now every structure’s task is to transfer blame to others and make the others’ guilt more visible. Almost all of us here (FSB) are occupied with this right now.
7 The bullseye is on us moreso than others right now because of the utmost hellish circumstances concerning the interpolitical situation in Ukraine:
8 We (the FSB, not #WindofChange specifically) issued reports that at minimum about 2,000 trained civilian in every major city in Ukraine were ready to overthrow Zelensky (President of Ukraine).
9 And that at least 5,000 civilians were prepared to come out with flags against Zelensky on the beck-and-call of Russia.
10 Do you want a laugh? We (FSB) were expected to be the arbitrators for crowning Ukrainian politicians who were supposed to start tearing each other apart competing for the right to be called “aligned with Russia.”
11 We even had established criteria on how to select the best of the best (of the Ukrainian politicians). Of course some concerns were even raised that we may not be able to attract a large number of people (Ukrainian politicians) in Western Ukraine among small tows and Lvov itself.
12 What do we actually have? Berdyansk, Kherson, Mariupol, Kharkiv are the *most* pro-Russian populated areas (and there is no support for Russia even there).
13 A plan call fall apart, a plan can be wrong. A plan can yield a 90% result, even 50%, or 10%. And that would be a total failure. Here – it’s 0.0%.
14 There is also a question: “How did this happen?” This question is actually a setup (disingenuous). Because 0.0% is an estimate derived from many years of work of very serious (top rank) officials.
15 And now it turns out that they are either “agents of the enemy” or are simply incomprehensible (according to FSO / DKVR that are now searching for “moles” within the FSB).
16 But the question doesn’t end there. If they are so bad, then who appointed them and who controlled their work? Turns out – the people of the same quality but one rank higher. And where does this pyramid of responsibility end? At the boss (Putin).
17 And here the wicked games begin: Our dear Александр Васильевич (Alexander Vasilyevich Bortnikov – Director of the entire FSB) can’t not understand how deeply he got caught. (Bortnikov realizes the deep mess he is in now)
18 And our ill-wishers from the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service – equivalent to the CIA) understand everything [and not just from these two orgs].
19 The situation is so bad that there are no boundaries to possible variants (of events about to take place), but something extraordinary will happen.
20 (The insinuation here is rather obvious in Russian: Putin and the Director of the FSB Bortnikov cannot co-exist.)
21 (The letter continues but we cannot post the rest)(END OF TRANSLATION)
22 Full translation in article form available here: http://igorsushko(.)com
23 [tweet promoting substack omitted]
24 Missed a word translating – “2000 trained civilian FIGHTERS in every major city…” Sorry.
25 [tweet containing Youtube music link omitted]

There’s such an emotional and psychic disconnect between the system described above which derived manipulated numbers reported as supporting Putin and Russia in Ukraine, and reality in Ukraine.

~ ~ ~

On March 11 in Melitopol, located in southern Ukraine about 119 miles west of Mariupol, the mayor was seized by Russian forces. A black plastic bag placed over his head, Ivan Fedorov was dragged away by armed men. He’s been accused of terror and allegedly tortured until he “cooperated.”

The town’s citizens have protested and demanded the return of their duly elected mayor.

Translation: “Residents of Melitopol took to the streets of the city. They chant: “Ukraine – Melitopol” and “Where is our mayor?” Russian military warns over a loudspeaker about the ban on rallies.”

A new mayor has been appointed. She sounds like a Trumpist.

On Sunday in Dniprorudne which is 50 miles north of Melitipol, the mayor was kidnapped.

We can expect yet another appointed mayor who will likewise sound like a Trumpy Stepford wife.

And as Guardian’s Isobel Koshiw wrote, there have been executions of civilians along with confiscations (a.k.a. thefts).

This is not an attempt to win the hearts and minds of Ukraine. It’s not a legitimate attempt to return people to the fold.

Putin’s invasion is genocide, and no amount of tepid arms-length explanations about Russia’s toxic internal politics can make this make sense.

If there’s a sixth letter in the future, I don’t think it will be worth the effort if it can’t shed realistic light on how to make this humanitarian disaster stop without compromising the consent of the Ukrainian people.

If there’s any value to this exercise, it’s that we can see connections more clearly between the U.S.’s veer toward fascism and its violent realization by Russia, manifest now in Ukraine.

Reports from an Unidentified Russian Operative

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

A MASSIVE CAVEAT upfront here, as with the first letter attributed to an FSB insider: this could be a psyop, it may be complete balderdash, and this time I have no further attempts to validate the source of the content to follow below.

However these three follow-up letters came through the same manner the first did — a Russian human rights activist Vladimir Osechkin published them to his website. I’m sharing here a translated version by a Ukrainian-born race car driver, Igor Sushko. You’ll note I’ve left Sushko’s interstitial interjections as they appeared in the Twitter threads in which he posted the translations.

Why am I not posting the originals from Osechkin’s site? Because I can’t be certain the site’s traffic is being monitored, or that the site hasn’t been tampered with, including malware and ransomware.

That said, I haven’t yet run across strong opposition to Sushko’s threads or translations. If you’ve seen any objections, please share them in comments.

There have been four letters to date; the first was published late on March 4 and shared on March 5. The second and third are dated March 5 but not translated and shared until March 9 and 10 respectively. The fourth was dated March 9 with its translation shared on March 10.

They’re worth reading as alternatives to U.S. perspective. What about these letters rings true, what doesn’t? Does the perspective here, filtered by a Ukrainian-born translator into English, have any potential affect on democratic nations which support Ukraine?

And what if all of this is an elaborate psyop? What should we take away from it?

~ ~ ~

Letter 2
Tweet thread beginning 10:35 PM March 9, 2022

1 🧵My translation of the 2nd letter in the series from an active FSB analyst to Vladimir Osechkin, Russian human rights activist exiled in France. Written 1 day later on March 5th. Buckle up for a long thread and definitely please share far & wide. The text is over 1000 words.
2 I will add clarification comments inside parenthesis where necessary. So, let’s roll: “Here’s the picture with regards to Putin & FSB.
3 On the one hand, he is supported and respected, but if you slightly dig deeper, it’s a collective feeling for the image, thanks to which FSB has the power that it really has. To serve (in the FSB), there is one unforgettable rule.
4 To most, this rule even appears rather natural and is taken for granted – To criticize Putin’s image is to betray your own interests.
5 In reality, Putin was never a spy. It’s actually an open secret. But here (FSB) our doubts concerning the authority’s competence is equivalent to treason.
6 Who makes the decisions? I can tell from our own work that there is no single decision-making post – intrigues and “people who are trusted by the top” lobby the teams, decisions, etc. In light of this, sometimes facts and even events are “created.”
7 I personally do not have contact with Putin, but if I were to assess him as a target for recruitment as an asset and develop a situational profile, then we have the following as fact:
8 1) Narcissistic disorders, possibly due to childhood complexes, as methods of overcoming them.
9 2) Rejection of family life – no information about his parents, secrecy around his children and his own personal life. This requires psychological compensatory mechanisms in search of close relationships. Such psychotype is prone to “cross dominance” in relationships.
10 3) He tries to surround himself with the type of people whom he respected/feared in his childhood psychotype, over whom he now has power.
11 4) Strongest psychological resistance of personal responsibility for difficult decisions. It is a result of the 1) above, but in turn, this also leads to a mechanism for denying his own guilt/responsibility even to himself.
12 From this, considering 3) above, we can say the following with near absolute certainty: Putin is psychologically incapable of refusing with justification, an offer from his closest circle.
13 But this also leads to the conclusion that he does not guarantee anything to anyone by saying “yes”, because to guarantee is to take responsibility.
14 With high probability I assert that in case of an offer from his closest circle, he will agree with every offer, delegating the control/responsibility to the person making the offer.
15 Psychologically, he will not have any contradictions in “agreeing” to mutually exclusive proposals – “you yourself are to blame if you failed.”
16 Next. The current situation is such that no one anywhere has reliable information on complex issues. The reports that go through me are then corrected by the leadership to be politically correct – more positivity, less negativity.
17 These already rosy reports are then again massaged to be even more rosy – and false. So, everything is very good here – I know this for sure.
18 At the top level of the authorities, several realities exist in parallel and they are all real in their own way. Power, just like money, is an illusion. It exists exclusively due to belief in it. It is an axiom of a theory of control. There is no Russia as a whole picture either.
19 It sure is something that Putin could find himself completely closed off in a “universe” belonging to someone in his close circle – there’s a reason he is afraid to even allow his ministers near him. This is something we are kept in the dark about and I do not have the details.
20 But what I know for sure: Volodin (Chairman of the State Duma of Russia) flew to Cuba prior to the war, and on the day of the invasion he wrote that it’s critical he fly to Nicaragua. No mention of war.
21 The lion’s share of people close to the main Towers sincerely believed that there would be no war. And they understood that such a war would be a trap. This is worth noting.
22 Did Shoigu (Minister of Defense) think that the war will turn out this way? No. He is not a real military man. He fully believed in the picture of the army that he painted Putin.
23 I am personally aware of such facts concerning this fu#&er, who is at the highest level of our military, they’d be too rich to turn into an anecdote (a Russian joke).
24 When for example Generals are demanded to provide rapid reports on victories, and they (chain-of-command) continue to pass on the order (for the report) downstream while screaming & cursing, until finally some Sergeant agrees to make the report in exchange for military leave,
25 after which he takes a video depicting American work in Afghanistan, erases the sound, and hands it off up the chain-of-command.
26 And the recipient up the chain, and so on, until it reaches the tables of the Command, who completely believe the report, and they hand it off to Shoigu (Minister of Defense of Russia), who then hands it off to Putin.
27 There are serious discussions about how Putin is lately absorbed by finding “mystical meanings.” From numerology to the shamans somewhere up north. Can’t say anything concrete – it doesn’t fit into any analysis.
28 But that the Czar is not the Czar is a fact. (Putin is not in charge anymore) He wants to be the Czar, but this is a trap of illusions and a field of object manipulations. Prerequisites are established for this from all perspectives.
29 About the internet – yes, we can shut down the internet. Technically. Can also sew closed your own mouth, in order to stop drinking. Technically, yes. Attempts to shut down (the internet) will be made. The worst is that various departments will compete for greater efficiency.
30 All kidding aside, my superiors sometimes say this in all seriousness: “North Korea lives in this regime (without internet) – and it’s fine.”
31 Anyway, war psychosis is scary – we can screw up a lot of things in this mental state. How this will end is unknown. Look at the big picture: We react in real-time. The law was passed criminalizing those who post “fake info against the military.”
32 Kadyrov reasonably responded that his structures belong to the RosGvardia (National Guard), meaning his members can’t be charged with this law. Another law can be passed (to exclude others).
33 And then one that excludes judges (from this law), then a law for those in the special forces, and then for the tax officials. This is not proper systematic work, but some kind of parody of case law in the United States. No exclusions should be made.
34 Which is why I believe in your actions (Vladimir Osechkin, human rights activist). No, I don’t believe that prison tortures will be reduced as a result of your actions. But the percentage of those who perfectly understand what is going on is rather high.
35 Within our ranks (FSB) as well as within the military. I need points of support so as not to feel like a doomed renegade. If this layer is also lost, that’s it, the lid of the country’s coffin will be hammered shut.
36 Soon everything will change. I am afraid to even think how and when exactly – we’ve entered the impossible state of “as it used to be” but do not fit into the state of “how we’d like it to be.”
37 We are now at a classic fault point in the country – as in (Evgeny) Messner’s “Mutinous War,” which was reworked into “Gerasimov’s Doctrine.”
38 Need any points of support (fulcrum) to maintain sanity even just minimally. And those who’ve already gone off the rails – they don’t care anymore.

~ ~ ~

Letter 3

Tweet thread beginning 3:45 AM March 10, 2022

1 🧵My translation of the 3rd letter in the series from an active FSB analyst to Vladimir Osechkin, Russian human rights activist exiled in France. Dated March 5th. Buckle up for a long thread and definitely please share far & wide. The text is over 1400 words.
2 I will add clarification comments inside parenthesis where necessary. So, let’s roll:
3 “I will start with the big picture. There are people with particular talents in the field of analytics (inside the FSB), who are retained here in the bureau not just for the value they bring, but to ensure that they remain under “control” (of the Russian government).
4 For example, and I am one of them, such people may never return to an ordinary life, the system does not allow for such a shift. “There” (outside the FSB) we are considered dangerous. This is my department’s policy.
5 I am here, and now I definitely understand why we won’t have any more Mercedes or BMWs (in the country), but will have a ton of Ladas. In order (for Russia) to have Mercedes, we must behave according to protocol which is optimized and controlled.
6 Without political decisions and knee-jerk demands of the authorities (that affect an agency like the FSB). This isn’t about “catching up and overtaking,” but about methodical and painstaking work, with a strategy rather than a wishlist. But in Russia this never happens.
7 We have plenty of resources within the FSB to switch to a method of systemic analysis, but nobody fuc$ing wants it. We can meticulously calculate variations, build models, and identify problems.
8 But on a whim, some bastard who is usually not even from our structure – I’m talking about senior officials, politicians and their hangers-on) can suddenly declare that “here (in the department) the mood is too defeatist,
9 and you are casting a shadow on the leadership of some state structure with which we want to avoid conflict.” There is professionalism and there is loyalty.
10 Loyalty is demanded – and is highly valued at critical times to elevate the leadership (within FSB) or to satisfy the “requirements from the very top.”
11 While we work on some pedophile & human trafficking cases, I say from first-hand experience, no one interferes. And we get results. And once we deliver results, then we are assigned to more political cases.
12 Analysts should not have emotions. There are forecast models, there are statistics, there is sociology. “Believe or don’t believe” should not exist (in his line of work). But it exists.
13 And those who are ready to nod and say “We will find a solution and solve the problem” are the ones climbing the ladder. Problems from such an approach are only piling up.
14 Now on to your question – the situation is out of control. Any model has a time horizon in planning with parameters for performance within functional boundaries. Now there is none of this: most input parameters are junk based on political decisions.
15 – reliable data on the military prospects of the operation. There are whole sets of data from various departments and services, and they contradict each other, which means there’s nothing.
16 -a well-developed model of economic management under the current restricted conditions (sanctions)
17 – reliable information with regards to loyalty of the elites in the financial and political sectors.
18 – reliable data on the impending extreme measures to be implemented in Russia.
19 (I POSTED THIS PARTIAL TRANSLATION AS I AM EXHAUSTED AND WANTED TO ENSURE I COMMITTED MYSELF TO POSTING THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE – I WILL KEEP TRANSLATING AND I WILL POST MORE SOON)
20 What we do have:
21 – a constant stream of new data on “emergent” economic problems that “cannot exist”:
22 partial failures in the supply chains of raw materials can stop complex processes, including the production of strategic products (military), the (non) functioning of single-industry towns and industrial agglomerations;
23 – the expected explosive growth of banditry and crime, due to the superposition of several factors including: economic problems, a decrease in the mental stability of the population from stress + war psychosis + compounded nervous state from isolation measures
24 – situational planning of the political sort without assessing the long-term [and even short- and medium-term] prospects for their introduction;
25 – segregation/compartmentalization of workflow and services and departments due to the loss of a unified management system;
26 – the growth of foreign policy threats, including military – there is no guarantee that Japan will not attack the Kuril islands or that Georgia will not attack Ossetia-Abkhazia, Syria and Libya is preparing for attacks against our units);
27 – the complete dysfunction of the former economic model as there is no more stabilization fund, the exchange rate is not stable, and the old system of employment is now impossible in principle.
28 There can’t be any forecasts with such inputs. We have now jumped from anti-crisis management to crisis management. And to be honest, we just entered catastrophic mode.
29 A catastrophe as a condition is characterized by “it will not be as it was, and how it will be, we will not know until it happens.”
30 Paradoxically, the country’s survival under such conditions for some time is only possible because of the autonomy of certain parts of the government. To be blunt, a police chief of a small town knows what he needs rather than adhering to the “universal commands from the center.”
31 Here and now, this and only this can extend the survival of structures and systems, but if we take a horizon of a year or more, then this is the death of the (centralized) government as whole.
32 As I predicted, Nabiullina (Head of the Russian Central Bank) will now be dragged, people around her will be prosecuted.
33 This will pulverize the banking sector into the trash – what will happen with the exchange rate and policy of the Central Bank – I am not an economist by education, don’t even want to think about it without systematic study.
34 The worst option – they will put in place the one who offers to turn on the printing press to “hold the situation.”
35 For the same reason [I am not an economist] I will not assess the prospects of the commodity market, but it has gone off the rails: everything is being bought out, which means the demand is causing crazy swings.
36 As a result, normal logistics are impossible as warehousing and transportation are calculated from the model of optimal average values, when there is the most uniform load to its full potential.
37 And when you need to produce, transport, store, and sell 2-months supply of goods in just 3 days, and then go idle for 2 months – that’s fu#Ked. At the same time, not the best is happening with loans – rates are rising, and access to money is only getting more difficult.
38 Burnout. Personally, I’m already burned out – indifference is seeping in, the desire to bust my ass is gone. It’s impossible to work toward a result with such inputs.
39 You want me to give you “plans for victory” and put on a smart face “according to the law of wartime” – OK, you won. Now that’s what I do. And burnout will be absolute, rampant.
40 Now the internal mobilization of the power resources (riot police, etc.) will begin, and when it is done without a time horizon, it is a catastrophe.
41 All departments are in elevated mode, everyone is looking for enemies and saboteurs, everyone is saving the country from the inside. Those who do not burn out – that’s who we should be afraid of. It will be classic lawlessness and fascism.
42 Many of our people (FSB) also believe that “now it is necessary to be tough with enemies,” and anyone around can become an enemy. This psychosis is happening against the backdrop of the professional deformation of one’s personality. This is a moral shift. Irreversible.
43 The Scariest. If at the top they decide to issue a command of “military expediency” – hell will be here immediately. Military expediency is lawlessness. The right of force. A person is psychologically wired to seek justifications for all his actions.
44 The law is only a tool that sets the boundaries. Because “for the sake of your country” you can shoot out the legs of a suspicious person, and you can kill a person who refuses to submit to a soldier.
45 Military expediency unleashes total freedom for internal justifications. In fact, it is the same revolution when force overthrows the establishment.
46 I have no universal forecasts except for the old one: By May-June we won’t have what to fight with (weapons), whom to fight with (soldiers) and how to support all this. But the turning point (of the war) will be in the coming days. I suspect for the worse.
47 And even if we choose to activate strategic aviation – it will only make it worse for us. Frankly, the United States is allowing us to get sucked into this conflict further. They understand that we are now trapped.
48 Markers we are still monitoring:
49 The West preparing programs that conditionally fall under the category of “oil in exchange for food.” For us. This will mean that the trap has been slammed shut;
50 Sudden changes in personnel in the government bloc, which we will not be notified about in advance to ensure additional control. This will speak of panic governing – a system of abrupt and consequential personnel decisions solely based on emotions;
51 Total nationalization. Personally, unlike many of my colleagues, I prioritize this marker above all others, as after this we will economically turn into Venezuela even without war and sanctions, this will be de-facto pillaging.
52 Military ultimatums from other countries. But we can also make our own ultimatums for now.
53 Desertion by the highest-level military-political representatives of Russia to other countries. We are tracking this nominally, but we do not have a “clean” special service (FSB) after all. It’d take long to explain nor is it very pleasant.
54 Improvement of the economic situation in Russia within the next 3-5 years is impossible in all available scenarios.
55 Although, of course, there could be exceptions: highly developed aliens 👽 who choose to specifically support us, we will learn to cast spells🧙‍♂️; something else from this opera (a Russian expression meaning something from a similar story).
56 And currently unknown is how Asia and the Arab world will react when hunger strikes these regions in the summer – grains will not be exported this year (from Russia).
57 It’s difficult to succinctly summarize such topics, but I hope that at least partially I’ve answered the question. You simply must hamper the torture processes within the prisons – there is no one beside you who can possibly do it.
58 Uncontrolled violence will be such that the bloody arrival of Bolsheviks to power will seem like a light warm-up. I don’t think we will be able to avoid the terrible, but it is worth at least to soften up the hell that is coming.
59 (END OF TRANSLATION)
60 Full translation accessible in article form: http://igorsushko(.)com

~ ~ ~

Letter 4

Tweet thread beginning 3:51 PM March 10, 2022

1 🧵 My translation of the 4th letter in the series from an active FSB analyst to Vladimir Osechkin. Written March 9th. As consequential as the 1st translated letter. Buckle up for a long thread and definitely please share far & wide. The text is over 1200 words.
2 Vladimir, good afternoon!

This is probably the first time that I’ve been able to write to you in the daytime during a weekday – everything is upside down now.
3 Under different circumstance, this information would look like utter nonsense, but right now, I am afraid, this won’t be the end of it.
4 First, we (FSB) are seriously evaluating a version that the current events of war with Ukraine is a war between the US and China, in which the Americans simply set us up and are using us. Now I’ll try to explain succinctly & clearly.
5 (This is the new ‘nonsensical’ working theory that the FSB analysts are being tasked to work on)

A global clash between the USA and China was unavoidable.
6 After the war started in Ukraine [at least here in this correspondence I don’t have to use the term “operation”] the cost of resources has risen globally, especially energy.
7 The main casualty of these events is China and our side (Russia) provided China certain guarantees, which I can personally confirm – that everything will end quickly (invasion of Ukraine). Which is why China has been tolerating the situation. But this was before.
8 The American situation is such that owners of the industry and oil drilling are in essence the same corporations, and that helps with the internal balance:
9 They make money on drilling when oil is expensive, and when it’s cheap – from industrial development. This is a bit blunt, but it provides the necessary insight into their approach. Shales (oil fracking), unlike the classic method (of oil extraction), is easy to stop and start.
10 Now the US will make an agreement with Venezuela and Iran. They can buy out Venezuelan light crude with a crazy discount. And the opening of the Iranian oil (market) will obviously be perceived with hostility by Saudi Arabia and UEA.
11 The Yemeni conflict is also relevant here, and a row of other factors which I will ignore for the sake of simplicity. But it all leads to the fact that the US had already made preparations for these negotiations in advance.
12 The US has basically set a trap for us, almost analogous to the trap set for Iraq in Kuwait, when Saddam Hussein was being convinced that for a “small conflict (incursion)” there will be no response. He entered Kuwait and “Dessert Storm” began. The beginning of the end of Iraq.
13 We were receiving similar signs that the US will not get involved, which has been confirmed from a military perspective.
14 China can absolutely give us a harsh ultimatum to end the war to stabilize the price of oil. If this happens, I don’t want to make predictions – it’d be on the horizon of catastrophic events.
15 Russia’s image is so negative in the eyes of so many countries because of the war, that the US can easily pressure the Europeans to impose sanctions against China in case China decides to maneuver around the current sanctions against Russia (to help Russia).
16 China’s high dependence on exports coupled with its dependence on commodity prices would result in a fatal blow if the cost of commodities goes up because their domestic market will disappear (Chinese population can’t afford the increased price of goods).
17 Not only that, Xi Jing Ping was considering a takeover of Taiwan in autumn – he needs his own small victory to be re-elected for his 3rd term – there’s a colossal internal fight between the elites.
18 Now after the events in Ukraine, the window of opportunity (to take Taiwan) has been closed. This gives the US an opportunity to blackmail Xi and also negotiate with his rivals on favorable terms.
19 In this instance, it is us (Russia) that set this trap for China through our actions (in Ukraine). We won’t be able to admit this out loud, even an assessment of scenarios from current conditions is “not entirely appropriate.”
20 Hence the desire that the secret becomes open: Yes, this is only a working version, but it exists in our structures (in the FSB).
21 Second – the evolution of the current situation.

Now about our other plans, which go beyond any bounds of insanity. Sanctions against Russia have reached a level with no precedent in history. The only thing that Putin is right about – this is essentially equivalent to war.
22 The current approach with sanctions leaves Russia without any chances. Now the matter may not be limited to threatening Europe – the chance of hostilities, albeit of localized nature, can be considered to be historically high.
23 Ukraine is a monstrously large front, there are smaller fronts. For example, if we were talking about Moldova, the military operations would really be limited to several hours. With the Baltics – several days, but there’d be artillery hits first.
24 (WILL CONTINUE TRANSLATING AND WILL PUBLISH IN A BIT. INTERMISSION FOR NOW)
25 Actual threats of conventional rocket strikes against Europe [not bluffs] in the event of further sanctions can no longer be dismissed.
26 Supporters of such an approach, who exist among those with influence on the decision, muse that in a sordid case we will simply be crushed by waiting until an internal implosion and collapse from inside (in Russia).
27 In addition to the rockets, we have the capability to conduct a massive cyberwar – the internet can be shut down (by Russia inside Russia). Such a possibility exists and it’d be difficult (for the West) to respond symmetrically (since Russia won’t have internet anyway).
28 And the external war should reduce the internal tension and redirect the aggression outward. However “should” – doesn’t mean it’ll be so.
29 There’s also a more realistic [but I can’t say good] plans of a massive disinformation campaign that we are prepared for the war and sanctions for years to come: This should pressure the Ukrainians psychologically – “It won’t end quickly, better to surrender” and also the West.
30 I suppose that various government powers (in Russia) could start pushing their own plans (on how to proceed). That will simply lead to even more chaos (in Russia).
31 I won’t talk about the economy – it’s like discussing the nuances of pacifism while being nuclear-bombed.

The terror has strengthened – there are no internal instruments to hold the (economic) situation inside the country.
32 But terror is a complicated and expensive thing – it should become temporary. It’s like holding your breath because the air is poisoned: If you can escape the area, then the action is justified. But if you hold your breath for “an hour” – you saved yourself from poison but…
33 Systemic decisions with a positive outcome do not exist. There is no Ukrainian political power that we could delegate the authority just for the optics.
34 If we present Yanukovich (former President of Ukraine that was Putin’s asset, who dismantled the Ukrainian military pre-2014), it will only expose how bad things really are here. No single strategically important city has been taken in Ukraine.
35 Kherson and Kharkov were considered the most pro-Russian. Pro-Ukrainian protests are not dying down in Kherson despite the presence of our soldiers. In Khrakov things are much worse.
36 Just summarizing the gist without getting into the details.

There is another piece of information that is critical.

The “Plan for Victory” in the FSB is being painted as such:
37 Zelensky will be pressured into signing a fluff peace agreement recognizing Crimea as Russian, and Luhansk- and Donetsk-oblasts will become LDNR. LDNR will be the focus of our negotiators in terms of nuance, etc. But it’s just a distraction.
38 The key clause would be about demilitarization, which would essentially ban Ukrainian intelligence services, and most importantly dismantle their counter-intelligence.
39 And here our people (FSB) already see the prognosis: Over a number of years, it would be possible for us (FSB) with some minimal help from the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence), to carry out a total cleansing of the socio-political field in Ukraine.
40 And after all this, we could install any government in Kiev. With high probability this plan will become dominant for the Kremlin with strategic correction, although the scenario is insane and aggression on other fronts is not being cancelled.
41 In theory, the plan does have potential, but how it will be in practice is unknown. There will be no military victory, only something like this
42 Lots of nuances, but most important – our side will be able to breach such agreements after they’re signed anytime, when there’s strength to turn the tide.
43 Then it won’t be the military but the “black crows” who will be executing the “second phase,” arresting those accused of breaking the agreement from the Ukrainian side.
44 This scenario is not as crazy as the others, but it is completely contingent on the idea that Kiev can actually be pressured in the negotiations.
45 We are now working the Western contacts at the highest levels – looking for countries who will support our position and to put pressure on Zelensky.
46 It could be another bluff, it could be an analogue of Wenck’s army in our current reality. Overall, as I’ve been saying, the level of chaos here is quite high.
47 In economic terms, we are falling and everything is very predictable: the abyss is fervently winking at us. 😉
48 We are limited in our ability to verify all data, but consider it important to disclose this information for the purpose of informing of the existing threats to global security. Нет войне! (No to War!)
49 (END OF TRANSLATION)
50 Full translation in article form here: http://igorsushko(.)com

~ ~ ~

I lean toward thinking this is mostly true, though even if true it’s presented by someone whose work is tightly defined, who is used to working toward an expected outcome if Letter 1 is an accurate assessment of the FSB’s condition. They live in one of the parallel realities they describe in Letter 2, section/tweet 18.

A narrow reality might explain perceptions about the oil market although it doesn’t explain why they don’t acknowledge their personal risk because they live in a Hotel California situation and there can’t be many occupants in that space.

All four letters taken together, I suspect the only way out for Putin is to pin the blame on someone or some department and make a massive example of them. If he uses FSB he will encourage those who can destroy him. If he goes after the military, there are retired military who may not take this well.

It’s a recipe for a lot of radioactive tea, nerve gassed shorts, and inconveniently placed windows.

It would be best for everyone if one of Putin’s leadership cohort chose to fall on their sword to get him out of this mess, but if Putin is perceived as weak in the same way this purported letter writer does, they’re not going to leave Putin at the helm.

This alleged FSB insider still suffers from delusional thinking inside their parallel reality, too — no reformulation of Russian intelligence will give them control over Ukraine’s democracy. A purged and rejuvenated Russian intelligence,  however, might eventually seat a leadership in Russia which looks more like Ukraine’s.

But I don’t recommend anyone hold their breath.

Two things which really must be discussed whether these letters are true, partly true, or not true at all:

— food aid and not just for oil, given the likelihood of massive crop failures ahead which will affect large portions of the world;

— the trap, because there is one though it doesn’t yet appear fully set.

Go ahead, bring it in comments once you’ve finished digesting this.

Putin’s FSB: Failed Straightforwardness and Benevolence

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

It’s rather amusing that in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War — the ancient Chinese monograph used globally to teach the fundaments of warfare — spying is addressed in the very last of its 13 chapters.

To conduct successful and effective warfare, intelligence collection and analysis including spying should be a country’s first consideration. A nation’s leader can’t make an informed, reasoned decision  to take any military action let alone commit resources ahead of the possibility of war, without knowing everything possible about the potential opponent as well as knowledge of one’s own state.

Somehow Vladimir Putin neglected this critical lesson, subordinating the critical nature of Russia’s own FSB to his narcissism. He’s learned the hard way — assuming he’s actually getting the truth from anyone in his circle — that the intelligence on which he operated was deeply flawed.

He has no one to blame but himself but he’ll be sure to punish others for his weakness. The director and deputy of FSB have allegedly been taken into custody for questioning.

I actually feel a little sorry for FSB personnel, if the first letter from the FSB insider is true; political conditions didn’t allow anyone to share anything but happy talk of victory based on the narrowest of intelligence, because Putin apparently can’t handle the truth.

From The Art of War:

15. Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.

16. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness.

17. Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports.

Assuming the first FSB letter is true — and the detention of FSB leadership suggests it is — Putin wasn’t able to exercise the necessary benevolence and straightforwardness necessary to obtain candid and complete reports. How can spies and analysts obtain and present the truth when they’re under tight political restrictions to report only what a volatile president wants to hear?

Furthermore, if the president is afraid of his own intelligence community to the point where he ensures they are suffocatingly restrained, he will get out of them nothing useful.

~ ~ ~

Let’s look at the organization of the Russian “coercive apparatus” which has been compartmented to reduce the changes of a coup. Adam Casey, post-doc fellow at Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan, shared a Twitter thread describing this system.

1 What are the prospects for a coup against Putin in Russia? A thread on what we know about coups in other similar regimes and how the Russian coercive apparatus is structured to prevent coups 1/16
2 First of all, the grievances that have motivated coups elsewhere are present in Russia: battlefield setbacks, low morale, economic catastrophe, disgruntled elites harmed by Putin’s actions
3 But Putin has been preparing for the risks posed by a palace or military coup for decades. The Russian coercive apparatus in fact has multiple mechanisms to prevent a coup
4 First, Russia has a large praetorian guard, the Federal Protective Service (Федеральная служба охраны). The FSO is the successor to the KGB 9th Directorate and is responsible for leadership protection and is well armed. Estimates of its size vary widely
5 Second, Putin consolidated his internal security troops under the National Guard (Росгвардия) in 2016. I don’t see the Guard as a coup-proofing measure per se, but more about centralizing the agencies useful for repressing mass protests in Russia
6 Yet by removing the possible use of the regular army for repression at home, Rosgvardia does help reduce some of the motivations for coups. In comparative perspective, we know militaries really dislike being used for domestic repression and it has motivated coups
7 Third, Russia has the FSB. The FSB is not only large, with its own security troops, but it has one key mechanism to prevent a military coup in Russia: the military counterintelligence department (Департамента военной контрразведки ФСБ)
8 The Soviet system had essentially three components to prevent a military coup: 1) party membership for officers/soldiers; 2) political commissars; 3) embedded secret police (‘special departments’). This was coup prevention through the penetration of the army by monitoring agents
9 Contemporary Russia has 1 of those 3 mechanisms. Officers are not generally members of the ruling party (United Russia) and when active duty officers have run for office (like Gen. Kartapolov last year) it was unusual. He also retired his commission
10 Commissars are also absent. There is technically a successor to the main political administration (the org responsible for managing the commissars) but it does not function in the same way as during the USSR)
11 The only major part of the Soviet system present is the military counterintelligence department of the FSB. This department monitors the military. It was strengthened considerably a couple months after Putin came into office. He once described the department as a “mini-FSB”
12 The FSB is much more autonomous than the Soviet KGB (it is not under any central party control), it is also engaged far more in corruption than the Soviet service. Corruption of course was (especially later on) a problem in the KGB, but in the FSB it is more pronounced
13 In short, there are a lot of mechanisms to prevent a coup in Russia. Yet in other ways Russia also doesn’t have a typically ‘coup proofed’ military. His nephew doesn’t run the 1st armored division in Moscow or anything like that. It has a professional officer corps
14 Instead, the Russian military’s loyalty to the system is generally sought through autonomy and insulation from politics, and of course the watchful gaze of the FSB military counterintelligence department.
15 In part for these reasons, I think the most likely scenario for actually ousting Putin is elite defection rather than a coup. It is really hard to coordinate a coup even against a hated dictator, especially with a security apparatus as extensive as Putin’s
16 But it might be more likely for elites to defect from the regime rather than use extensive repression to save Putin. This too is perhaps unlikely, but the costs of defection can be less than the costs of a failed coup (jail, exile, death). /end

There are so many moving parts watching other moving parts it’s a wonder anything constructive has ever been done — and perhaps there hasn’t. Each function must be constantly looking over their shoulder making straight feedback difficult. Benevolence as The Art of War calls it, or the lack thereof, expressed in suspicion inhibits productivity.

When the apparatus spends so much time looking inward, constantly second guessing what the leader wants to hear while working under pressure from kleptocratic forces, it’s irrational to expect lucid, honest intelligence. Straightforwardness in reporting is a casualty.

~ ~ ~

The quality of Russian intelligence is not the only loss; nine Russian generals are reported to have died since the invasion of Ukraine began.

I used the passive voice there because Russia and its predecessor the USSR have an unfortunate history when it comes to losing generals.

Materiel losses continue to mount…

…along with personnel losses.


There can’t be much regular army to call up to replace those killed, injured, or surrendered if Putin is calling for volunteers from elsewhere like Syria.


Wagner Group personnel were detailed as part of a hit squad to decapitate Ukraine’s government, but now there appears to be wider recruitment. Again, this also suggests limited regular army for deployment to Ukraine.


Contractors don’t have the same motivations as regular army; they may not accept getting paid in rubles which makes sanctions even more important to deterring mercenaries. They’re not loyal to a nationalist cause if they’re not Russian, which may make them harder to command and control.

How will the Russian army respond if it feels it’s not only been set up to fail, its efforts potentially undermined by contractors while it suffers for lack of adequate support? We’ve seen enough anecdotes about Russian troops who had inadequate food and water from day one; they may have been given permission to loot. What happens when remaining Russian military leadership feels the weight of  condemnation and ridicule directed at their mission, let alone its futility?

None of this suggests the kind of discipline necessary to prevent a coup.

~ ~ ~

Outside the “coercive apparatus,” the Russian government, and the shuttered social and independent media, the truth about Russia’s illegal and misbegotten invasion of Ukraine has begun to leak through to the public. Protests have made it onto television:

Vladimir Soloviyev, usually one of the Kremlin’s most reliable chief propagandists, had to interrupt guests on his prime time television talk show to stop their criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking during a broadcast on Russia 1, Karen Shakhnazarov, a filmmaker and state pundit, said the conflict in Ukraine risked isolating Russia.

He told Mr Soloviyev: “I have a hard time imagining taking cities such as Kyiv. I can’t imagine how that would look.”

He went on to call for the conflict to be brought to an end, saying: “If this picture starts to transform into an absolute humanitarian disaster, even our close allies like China and India will be forced to distance themselves from us.

This is an interesting sleight of hand. Soloviyev has been sanctioned by the European Union, his Italian villa seized. He stopped the protest against the invasion on his program featured on Russia 1 network, but he could have prevented the content from being broadcast if he really wanted to keep it off the air.

Similarly, a protest by a military officer also leaked through a talk show on Zvezda, the Russian ministry of defense’s network. The officer wanted the deaths of his comrades honored thought the program host asked him to stop his line of commentary. It was another subtle method of telling the public there are many military deaths in Ukraine to be acknowledged by the government and the public.

The invasion began only 17 days ago and it’s already been likened to “Afghanistan, but even worse” on Russian television.

One doesn’t need to be a trained intelligence analyst to understand what this means in a country which does not allow much free speech.

~ ~ ~

In the first chapter of The Art of War it is written, “All warfare is based on deception.”

Deceiving one’s own country about warfare treats them like the enemy. After a while it becomes difficult to know who the enemy really is. We might wonder if Russia’s FSB has come to the same conclusion.

Minority Report: Putin’s Programma Destabilizatsii Began Much Earlier

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[NB: Note the byline, thanks. / ~Rayne]

By now you should have read Marcy’s post, The Guardian “Scoop” Would Shift the Timeline and Bureaucracy of the Known 2016 Russian Operation which compares much of The Guardian’s article to known details leading up and into 2016 election.

The primary problem with the material journalists Harding, Borger and Sabbagh obtained is the new timeline it offers as well as its attempt to limit Russian interference in the election to a narrow window. In my opinion there are at least two more critical problem.

The reported description of Trump as “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex” is problematic. This implies with treatment — like ADD medications and psychotherapy — Trump might be able overcome this challenge. But far too many professionals in psychology and psychiatry have already indicated Trump is a narcissist; this is not a treatable mental illness but a personality disorder. There’s limited treatment for this which may or may not work, including talk therapy. Such therapy poses an inherent national security risk.

Should Trump suffer from dementia worsening with age, his disorder will only worsen, his increasing boldness, meanness, and disinhibition making him even more unfit for any public office. He should never have access to the power of the executive office again.

But that’s one reason why the subtle disinformation has been planted. If Putin’s goal is to destabilize the U.S. and make it both ungovernable and unable to focus its collective will, encouraging the U.S.’s right-wing to reseat Trump under the misguided belief he will improve over time serves his purpose.

The second problem with The Guardian’s report and the underlying materials is that it treats the 2016 election interference to seat Trump as discrete, an end in itself, when the truth is that it was a single project inside a larger framework — a program of destabilization which predates Trump’s candidacy for presidency in 2015.

You’ll recall the case of three Russian spies arrested in January 2015, a date which in itself may not suggest there was a longer destabilization program, only spying. Even the role of former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page in the three spies case is not a solid indicator of a longer program.

In the indictment of the spies, however, there was a bit of recorded conversation which has troubled me since I first read it, which I noted in early 2017 when revisiting the three spies case:

“And then Putin even tried to justify that they weren’t even tasked to work, they were sleeper cells in case of martial law,” Victor Podobnyy remarked in a conversation about the Illegals Program sleeper cells. What did he mean by, “in case of martial law”? Is this a continuing concern with regard to any remaining undetected sleeper cells?

Emphasis mine, and on the part which has haunted me.

Was the January 6 insurrection always part of the end goal along with the continuing obstruction by the now thoroughly compromised Republican Party? Was Trump supposed to have invoked the Insurrection Act and martial law with it as part of a longer destabilization program?

That same program, then, would have extended beyond 2015, before the FBI began surveillance of the three spies, before one of the three spies, Evgeny Buryakov, began work in New York City.

The program would have predated the expulsion of the identified Illegals Program sleeper cells in June 2010, if the intent was to use them during civil strife in the U.S. resulting in martial law.

The presence of some of the Illegals Program spies pre-dated Putin’s ascension to Russia’s presidency in December 1999 and his role as Director of the Federal Security Service from 1998-1999, but it’s not clear whether Putin co-opted the program to plan for destabilization, or if the program had always been intended for destabilization but thwarted in 2010.

What’s clear, though, is that the U.S. paid little heed to Putin’s preparedness for conditions in the U.S. leading to martial law, going back at least as far as 2010.

The Illegals Program revealed to the American public the presence of sleeper cells. The general public has assumed all sleeper cells were rolled up in 2010; the use of the program as fiction fodder in cable network series The Americans marginalizes sleeper cells as entertainment. There’s nowhere near the level of concern about white persons with Russian accents as there is about Asian Americans of any heritage, the latter becoming the subject of hate crimes while the presence of Russians and Russian Americans is treated as no big deal. How would Florida’s Sunny Isles municipality function without the presence of Russian and Russian Americans’ money, after all?

This is part of the same umbrella program of destabilization: Putin knows the U.S. has a deep schism which goes to its foundation and he’s placed pressure on it to force it to open more widely. We know this from the documented efforts of Russia’s Internet Research Agency in 2016. Racist Americans have been encouraged to focus on an “Other” with the help of Trump whose repeated remarks about the “China flu.” With this redirection of attention, it’s too easy for any other remaining or new sleeper cells to be created undetected.

Some of these cells may not need to be Russians any longer. They can be loosely organized anarchic groups which are united by their preference for white supremacy and theocratic government. They could include peripherally-connected but influential individuals like David Duke who moved to Russia and lived there for a handful of years, to return to the U.S. to foment more racist tension.

Duke moved to Moscow in 1999 — the same year Putin was FSB Director. Did Duke have an invitation?

Does Putin’s Programma destabilizatsii go back that far?

I won’t even go into the much larger possibility that the umbrella destabilization program was meant to end NATO — which may mean Brexit was not a proof-of-concept linked to the interference in the 2016 election by the use of Cambridge Analytica/SCL, but wholly meant to work hand-in-glove to sustain an attack on NATO.

If this is the case, of course Putin would want to wall off interference into the 2016 election as a discrete, isolated event. Why would NATO continue to tolerate multiple sustained attacks using hybrid warfare on its member nations jointly and separately and not invoke Article 5?

Of Spies and Casinos

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[photo: liebeslakritze via Flickr]

Many have forgotten the case of Russian spies arrested in the U.S.

Not the ten from the Illegals Program sleeper cell spy ring rounded up in 2010, whose integration into the U.S. formed the backbone of the cable drama, The Americans.

No, the ones in New York City who attempted to recruit college students and collect economic intelligence.

Three in total were arrested a year ago January — Evgeny Buryakov, Igor Sporyshev and Victor Podobnyy — the latter two shipped out as they were here under diplomatic visas while the first was prosecuted and jailed.

The story is rather interesting though it didn’t garner much attention outside New York. The spies were tasked with not only recruiting but gathering intelligence in the financial sector about market destabilization and the status of development and investment in alternative energy.

Buryakov, who was not under diplomatic protection, wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box. He was a little put out at having a less than glamorous gig, and he was rather imprudent. He was recorded easily, and his words used as evidence against him.

One interesting bit was thinly fleshed out in the USDOJ’s complaint.

Buryakov toured casinos in Atlantic City.

But which casinos?

In July 2014, a confidential contact working on behalf of the FBI, “posed as the representative of a wealthy investor looking to work with Bank-1 [the Russian bank for which Buryakov posed as an employee] to develop casinos in Russia,” and approached Buryakov about casino development in Russia. A tour of Atlantic City casinos was taken in August.

Combing through the complaint looking for the colleges from which they attempted to recruit revealed no mention of Trump University.

But the casinos visited aren’t clear. The Trump Plaza (closed September 2014) or the Trump Taj Mahal (closed October 2016) can’t be ruled out as sites visited by Buryakov — the Plaza closed only a few weeks later.

The skepticism with which they viewed the casino gambit was amusing (excerpt from complaint, p. 23-24):

It was a trap, just as suspected; did the confidential source not give off the right vibe, or were the Russians skeptical of any investment in casinos developed in Russia? Trump, after all, didn’t get his Trump Towers Moscow off the ground even after his 2013 trip for the Miss World Pageant. Did the skepticism worry the FBI they might lose their targets? Or did the FBI finally have enough of toying with these guys and decide it was time to drop the hammer? Was some other trigger which forced the FBI to wrap up this investigation?

A few other points worth noting:

• “Others known and unknown” were also involved in spying or supporting spies but were not included in the warrant according to the complaint (ex: CC-1 and CC-2 in complaint). Who were they and where are they now? Has the FBI continued to watch them? Were any of them among the Russians who were escorted out of the U.S. after former president Obama announced new sanctions this past December?

• “And then Putin even tried to justify that they weren’t even tasked to work, they were sleeper cells in case of martial law,” Victor Podobnyy remarked in a conversation about the Illegals Program sleeper cells. What did he mean by, “in case of martial law”? Is this a continuing concern with regard to any remaining undetected sleeper cells?

• A “leading Russian state-owned news organization” was mentioned in the complaint, “used for intelligence gathering purposes.” Which news outlet was this? How did this news organization figure into advanced methods used by this operation? It would be interesting to know if this was RT (formerly Russia Today) given Michael Flynn’s and Jill Stein’s attendance at an RT event in December 2015.

• The spies used an office in Manhattan for conveying information to their superiors. How was this done apart from phone calls; what technology and networks if any were involved?

There’s an important bit about aeronautics, but I’ll tackle that in another post. It’s important enough to be broken out on its own.

Oh, one last thing about this case: timing.

— On January 21, 2016 UK’s public inquest announced its final conclusions into the PO-210 poisoning death of Alexander Litivinenko, attributing the murder to orders from the top of Russia’s FSB — including Vladimir Putin.

— The next day, January 22,  the UK froze the assets of the escaped henchmen accused of the poisoning while seeking their extradition.

— A sealed complaint and a request for warrants were filed in Southern District of New York for the three Russian spies on January 23, 2016.

— The arrests of the spies was reported publicly on January 26, 2016.

These events on either side of the Atlantic didn’t happen in a vacuum. The casinos’ tour and the hand-off of government documents happened nearly six months before the complaint and warrants were filed and issued. But the Litvinenko inquest conclusion and the arrests happened within a couple of days — mere hours apart.

It shouldn’t be surprising to find coordinated retaliation occurred against both the UK and the US.

Long Island Iced Tea

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I love maps. They often reveal things quickly and simply in a way text cannot. Like this map I’ve pulled together showing two points recently in the news.

To the right, Groton, Connecticut, where the U.S. has a naval facility

To the left, Glen Cove, New York — the location of a waterfront compound, Killenworth Mansion, owned for decades by Russia. The site was used for electronic spying according to the Reagan administration. A second compound, Norwich House, located five miles away in Upper Brookville, was vacated in December after former president Obama issued new sanctions on Russia in response to alleged interference in U.S. 2016 presidential election.

Multiple news reports yesterday noted a Russian spy ship “loitering” approximately 30 miles south of Groton, near Long Island’s shoreline, in international waters.

But none of them mentioned the ship was approximately 60-80 miles from the site of the Russian government compounds.

Huh. What an interesting coincidence that this Russian vessel didn’t loiter near any of more than a dozen naval facilities along the east coast. Granted, Groton is home to the Naval Submarine Base New London, home to the Navy’s subs on the east coast.

But is this submarine base more interesting than any of the Navy facilities in Maryland, Virginia, Florida? Not to mention Rhode Island, South Carolina or Georgia. Nor did the spy ship hang around near the other waterfront facility located in Maryland that Russia was forced to vacate in December.

It’s almost if the Russians left something behind on Long Island and were looking for it.

Or listening for it.

UPDATE — 5:38 p.m. EST: Here’s another nifty map depicting existing and planned submarine communications cables landed in northeast US. Fun stuff! I wonder which one carries the most financial data to/from Wall Street to overseas markets…

Submarine communications cables, northeast US, 2016 (via Greg’s Cable Map at cablemap.info)

Monday: A Different Ark

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[Caution: some content in this video is NSFW] Today’s Monday Movie is a short film by Patrick Cederberg published three years ago. This short reflects the love life of a youth whose age is close to that of my two kids. A few things have changed in terms of technology used — I don’t think either Facebook or Chatroulette is as popular now with high school and college students as it was, but the speed of internet-mediated relationships is the same. It’s dizzying to keep up with kids who are drowning in information about everything including their loved ones.

Their use of social media to monitor each other’s commitment is particularly frightening; it’s too easy to misinterpret content and make a snap decision as this movie shows so well. Just as scary is the ease with which one may violate the privacy of another and simply move on.

Imagine if this youngster Noah had to make a snap decision about someone with whom they weren’t emotionally engaged. Imagine them using their lifetime of video gaming and that same shallow, too-rapid decision-making process while piloting a drone.

Boom.

Goodness knows real adults with much more life experience demonstrate bizarre and repeated lapses in judgment using technology. Why should we task youths fresh out of high school and little education in ethics and philosophy with using technology like remote surveillance and weaponized drones?

Speaking of drones, here’s an interview with GWU’s Hugh Gusterson on drone warfare including his recommendations on five of books about drones.

A, B, C, D, USB…

  • USBKiller no longer just a concept (Mashable) –$56 will buy you a USB device which can kill nearly any laptop with a burst of electricity. The only devices known to be immune: those without USB ports. The manufacturer calls this device a “testing device.” Apparently the score is Pass/Fail and mostly Fail.
  • Malware USBee jumps air-gapped computers (Ars Technica) — Same researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University who’ve been working on the potential to hack air-gapped computers have now written software using a USB device to obtain information from them.
  • Hydropower charger for USB devices available in 2017 (Digital Trends) — Huh. If I’m going to do a lot of off-grid camping, I guess I should consider chipping into the Kickstarter for this device which charges a built-in 6,400mAh battery. Takes 4.5 hours to charge, though — either need a steady stream of water, or that’s a lot of canoe paddling.

Hackety-hack, don’t walk back

  • Arizona and Illinois state elections systems breached (Reuters) — An anonymous official indicated the FBI was looking for evidence other states may also have been breached. The two states experienced different levels of breaches — 200K voters’ personal data had been downloaded from Illinois, while a single state employee’s computer had been compromised with malware in Arizona, according to Reuters’ report. A report by CSO Online explains the breaches as outlined in an leaked FBI memo in greater detail; the attacks may have employed a commonly-used website vulnerability testing application to identify weak spots in the states’ systems. Arizona will hold its primary election tomorrow, August 30.
  • Now-defunct Australian satellite communications provider NewSat lousy with cyber holes (Australian Broadcasting Corp) — ABC’s report said Australia’s trade commission and Defence Science Technology Group have been attacked frequently, but the worst target was NewSat. The breaches required a complete replacement of NewSat’s network at a time when it was struggling with profitability during the ramp-up to launch the Lockheed Martin Jabiru-1 Ka-band satellite. China was named as a likely suspect due to the level of skill and organization required for the numerous breaches as well as economic interest. ABC’s Four Corners investigative reporting program also covered this topic — worth watching for the entertaining quotes by former CIA Director Michael Hayden and computer security consultant/hacker Kevin Mitnick in the same video.
  • Opera software users should reset passwords due to possible breach (Threatpost) — Thought users’ passwords were encrypted or hashed, the browser manufacturer still asks users to reset passwords used to sync their Opera accounts as the sync system “showed signs of an attack.” Norwegian company Opera Software has been sold recently to a Chinese group though the sale may not yet have closed.

That’s a wrap for now, catch you tomorrow! Don’t forget your bug spray!