Tag: Russian President Vladimir Putin

Mueller Report Results In Premature Exoneration For Trump Mouthpieces

Richard Cameron
photo of Robert Mueller, former FBI director and Special Counsel

by Richard Cameron   Trump’s media cartel and others in Republican ranks are already speculating that the Special Counsel’s report turned in to the Justice Department on Friday, will not contain specific details about Donald Trump’s participation in a conspiracy with Russian operatives to impact the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The notion among those in these circles is that because there may be no ‘smoking gun’ in Robert Mueller’s report specifically demonstrating Trump himself coordinating with the Russians, that they can spin Mueller’s summary into an exoneration of…

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Putin’s Nuclear Blackmail of the U.S.: Who is the Intended Target?

Tony Wyman

by Kseniya Kirillova Just recently, the Russian state channel Russia-1 listed US military facilities that would become Kremlin’s possible targets in the event of a nuclear strike. In particular, the TV host Dmitry Kiselev (pictured above) threatened to aim the Zircon hypersonic missiles at the Pentagon and several command posts, including the control centre for nuclear forces, writes Kseniya Kirillova. As horrifying as they may be, there is nothing new in the latest case of Russian “nuclear swagger” demonstrated in President Vladimir Putin‘s comments made in February that his country’s military is ready for a…

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Are Russian Immigrants an Unwitting Fifth Column of the Kremlin?

Tony Wyman

by Kseniya Kirillova The Russian-speaking diaspora abroad is quite numerous in many Western countries and is made up of many different waves of emigration – from descendants of White Russian émigrés to those who are arriving today. However, all these waves are characterized by a fairly high level of support for Vladimir Putin. It’s especially surprising to see such sentiments amongst people who emigrated in Soviet times, not so much for economic reasons but rather in search of freedom. However, even among them, support is quite high for a president…

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The Russian Government’s War Against the Integrity Initiative: Putin’s Propaganda Machine Fights Back

Tony Wyman

by Kseniya Kirillova In late November, 2018, Russian news agencies, like state-sponsored RIA Novosti and Mint Press News, accused the Integrity Initiative, a U.K.-based group devoted to countering Russia’s use of the media to spread propaganda, of being “…engaged in highly deceptive covert propaganda campaigns funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), NATO, Facebook and hardline national security institutions.”  They claim in their reports, the Integrity Initiative “was used to interfere in the internal affairs of European countries and for the information war against Russia.” Citing documents stolen…

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Paul Whelan Isn’t an American Spy, but is He a Russian Tool?

Tony Wyman

by Kseniya Kirillova On December 28th of last year, Canadian-American Paul Whelan was detained in Moscow by police on suspicion of espionage after he was found in possession of classified information belonging to the Russian government.  The FSB (Russian federal security service) claims Mr. Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, was involved in an American intelligence operation, but his friends and members of the American intelligence service say he was set up. According to Russian news agency Rosbalt, citing sources in the intelligence community, Mr. Whelan was detained after receiving a…

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What Does Putin Really Want?

Tony Wyman

by Tony Wyman “It is very difficult to predict with certainty what is going to happen. I am convinced, given not just the events of yesterday but the cumulative set of events that have taken place, that this change is real… The rapidity of change is mind-boggling. The quest for freedom is stronger than steel, more permanent than concrete.” – Pres. George H.W. Bush, Nov 12, 1989, three days after the Berlin Wall was opened, beginning the end of the Cold War Few people in 1989 would have argued with…

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Many Russian Christians Criticize the Putin Regime, But not Church Officials

Tony Wyman

by Kseniya Kirillova A new Russian “socio-political club” called The New Orthodoxy was announced in Moscow in October. Its founders assert that the name originates not in religion, but in the eponymous innovative model of economic development created in the 1930s in the USA which contributed to the country’s recovery from the Great Depression. However, the movement’s religious roots are still evident. According to the list of founders, it includes Lutherans, Old Catholics, the Party of the 10 Commandments, created by evangelical Christians, and other organizations associated with religion – along with…

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Russian State-Backed Media Strongly Supports Donald Trump

Tony Wyman

by Kseniya Kirillova Russia’s interference in the internal affairs of the United States has long ceased to be a “political card”, as it’s usually described in Kremlin discourse. The indictments that are being handed down one after another by both Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice show in detail the mechanisms of Russian operations for organizing and financing influence campaigns to manipulate American society. Since tracking hacker attacks and other operations is law-enforcement work, I try here to give a brief overview of the themes in Kremlin attitudes towards the…

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Delusion of Freedom: The U.S. Far Right and the Kremlin

Tony Wyman
Fascist Alexander Dugin

by Kseniya Kirillova One of the pillars of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s political system is confrontation with the outside world and the search for enemies. His regime conducts “information operations” against the West to try and undermine democracy. The operations are in many ways similar to the propaganda techniques used by the Kremlin inside Russia. They use lies, slander, selective use of facts, conspiracy theories and a multitude of contradictory versions of reality designed to destroy the notion of truth, as well as exploiting the slightest contradictions within Western societies. However, the…

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How Russian, American And European Information Warfare Persuades With Emotions

Tony Wyman
image pastiche of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin flanked by Peter the Great and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin

by Kseniya Kirillova As Russian propaganda and disinformation spread around the world, more and more initiatives  are being created to expose the lies and distortions emanating from the Kremlin: projects to expose fake news, analytical centres that review and monitor disinformation campaigns, and many private initiatives to observe Russian media. However, experts increasingly acknowledge that despite all these efforts, Kremlin propaganda remains a very effective tool of information warfare – much more effective than its Soviet predecessor. In many respects, this difference is explained by the fact that, unlike Communist propaganda, today’s Kremlin’s ‘information operations’ do not need…

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