Even in synopsis, there are striking similarities in the central message of the book and the kind of things I read about the views of the Sweden Democrats at the very start of my own investigation. Dugin’s Foundations declares267: “The battle for the world rule of [ethnic] Russians” has not ended and claims Russia remains “the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution.” The Eurasian Empire, which went on to be a centrepiece for Putin, would be constructed, Dugin said: “On the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us.” It all sounded so familiar when I first heard it, the targeting of NATO and this Moscow-centric axis of control, and military operations play only a relatively small role because the ideology of the text is centred on a “sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services.” There was everything, the media outlets like RT and Sputnik, the additional disinformation of the alt-right, APT28 and APT29, Wikileaks, the far-right political parties. All of it. The operations, the book set out, should be “assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilisation of Russia's gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.” And there was Rosneft, Qatar, Gazprom, Nord-Stream. It’s not a pleasant thing to realise that a roadmap to hybrid war was on the table for years and still everyone was completely blindsided and left to play catch up.
The strength of a united Europe is not underestimated by the author either, though the deeply exploitative efforts deployed by Putin’s Russia seem to have had the polar opposite effect to that desired. Le Pen had clearly read Dugin’s work, however. The book also envisioned Germany should be offered the “de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe,” and says the “Kaliningrad oblast could be given back to Germany.” The book uses the term Moscow-Berlin axis but adds France should be encouraged to form a “Franco-German bloc” with Germany, as “both countries have a firm anti-Atlanticist tradition.
Brexit itself is quite neatly shown as a successful operation in just one sentence: “The United Kingdom should be cut off from Europe.”
At first, it might have been easy to dismiss this publication as another coincidence but too much of it exists in the reality of the world we now know. For example, the book says “Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics.” And it gets darker still, going all the way back to my concerns about Russia in the Middle East and how it interacts with the Islamic State. The book stresses the “continental Russian-Islamic alliance which lies at the foundation of anti-Atlanticist strategy,” saying: “The alliance is based on the traditional character of Russian and Islamic civilization.” According to the doctrine: “Georgia should be dismembered. Abkhazia and “United Ossetia” (which includes Georgia's South Ossetia) will be incorporated into Russia. Georgia's independent policies are unacceptable,” while “Russia needs to create “geopolitical shocks” within Turkey. These can be achieved by employing Kurds, Armenians and other minorities.” Erdogan was right there, too.
Focusing on Asia, the book emphasises how Russia must spread Anti-Americanism everywhere, saying “the main 'scapegoat' will be precisely the US,” which left me with a deeply disturbing, secondary understanding of North Korea’s frequent targeting by Trump, which has been spreading to the UK through ineffective intelligence analysis. China and Japan have both been horrified by the prospect of Trump’s threatened nuclear holocaust against the despotic state and this has created a great deal of tension which will last long beyond Trump’s stay in the White House.
As regards the US itself, Dugin outlines how “Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke Afro-American racists.” It adds that Russia should: “Introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the US. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics.” Through RT they’d done this as far back as Occupy, at least, and moving forward to Bannon’s Breitbart and Trump’s White House, it is impossible not to agree Russia has succeeded. A number of alternative figures have also risen in the Democratic Party and the online resistance movements, too. All of this has clearly been extended to the UK, as well. For example, in the wake of the Finsbury Park terrorist attack in mid-June 2017, in which Darren Osborne – a white male from Wales – drove a van into worshippers at the mosque, it was discovered that Britain’s white extremists had shifted their social media use to unregulated social networks like the Russian-based VKontakte (VK) service where they have built up a substantial spider’s web of contacts through which they are radicalising each other. There was no coincidence in this, it was utterly inevitable, and in July the security services finally conceded they had seen exponential increases in white extremist terrorism since the Brexit vote. I found it desperately painful to examine the book, primarily because this adversary had already won. For now, Putin’s Russia, operating from Dugin’s strategy guide has been victorious – and it’s not just in looking back to the dated writing you can see the reality of our situation reflected.
I was privately sent another document which lit the same, grim fireworks268. In astounding written testimony, Rolandas Kriščiūnas, the Lithuanian Ambassador to the United States of America, gave blistering evidence to the US Senate of Russia's efforts to cut the transatlantic relationship between Europe and the US and undermine NATO. His statement was submitted in March 2017, two months before my own was sent pretty much everywhere.
According to the written statement on behalf of Lithuania: “Russia updated basic strategic documents, indicating NATO, and particularly the US, as threats. It is written in official documents, it is publically said by Russian politicians, and it is constantly broadcasted on TV for the public. Russia withdrew from international agreements aimed at building trust and stability and thus assuring existence of the international security system. Russia is violating basic international law norms, and is keen to change current international order.” At the same time as NATO was aiming to build a strategic partnership with Russia, cutting defence structures and focusing on expeditionary forces, Russia, the ambassador wrote, had been increasing its investments into defence, modernising its armaments and military structures, reviewing its strategy, doctrine and tactics.
Turning to disinformation and fake news, the Ambassador’s statement said: “Russia is extremely active in the information field, using pro-Russian media (e.g. Russia Today, Sputnik), propaganda, disinformation, fake news, trolls, leaks etc. in order to confuse public opinion and influence the decision-making. Russia also employs lobbying, PR agencies to disseminate the conspiracy theories, to discredit other states in the international arena and harasses those who criticize the Kremlin.”
“Russia tends to support European extremist and anti-EU groups, strives to foment divisions and instability in the target countries, and to create divisions inside the EU and NATO. Other forms of action: cyber activity (attacks against critical infrastructure, hacked and leaked emails, and cyber espionage), initiation of population resettlement (in order to change the ethnic composition of a frozen conflict region), creation of the proxy groups (pseudo-NGOs, youth organisations, research institutes, think tanks, motorcycle clubs).” The latter made me immediately think of Sweden, its hand grenades and the motorcycle gangs I’d discussed with Manne Gerell what seemed like a lifetime before
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The statement also set out information on further Russian strategies, saying: “The compatriot policy (providing financial, health care or other kind of benefits to Russian-speakers abroad, issuing Russian passports, and justifying aggression against neighbouring countries with protection of Russian speakers’ rights) is being used as an additional tool for Russia’s disruptive strategies abroad.”
According to Kriščiūnas, the Kremlin increasingly saw Europe's status as: “Whole, free, and at peace not as an opportunity for prosperous coexistence, but as a threat to its geopolitical agenda and regime survival.”
“Moscow views the Western values – pluralism and openness – as weaknesses to be exploited. Its tactics are asymmetrical, subversive, and not easily confronted. US is presented as an abuser of a global dominant position and Russia knows a solution – diminishing US role in the world to achieve multipolar international order. Western governments have ignored this threat for too long, but finally, awareness is growing that the transatlantic community must do more to defend its values and institutions,” he added.
While hybrid conflict and countermeasures were broadly covered – a topic my own investigation had delved into almost exhaustively – my central interest in the statement came back to disinformation and how it is deployed in Lithuania. The account more than echoed my long conversation with Steve Komarnyckyj and my own nosing around into RT and those other channels, which also started back in Sweden. I had been on the right trail from the very outset. Kriščiūnas wrote: “Russia pursues to influence Lithuanian and Western audiences by setting up and promoting international media channels that spread its views and disinformation on the sensitive topics – such as migration crisis, terrorism, ethnic relations, deployment of NATO troops in Central and Eastern Europe etc.”
“The most active propaganda project of Russia’s international media outlet Rossyia Segodnia in Lithuania is website Baltnews.lt. It realizes Russia’s informational and ideological policy, disseminates articles which cover main narratives of Russian propaganda. Baltnews.lt gets funding from Rossyia Segodnia in a complex and non-transparent financial scheme through intermediary companies in foreign states,” he explains. “A new Rossyia Segodnia propaganda project, Sputniknews.lt, was launched in Lithuania in December 2016. Sputniknews.lt is oriented in Lithuanian-speaking audience, but for the moment failed to gain any popularity.” Citing a specific example, he detailed the most recent example of an information attack as having been an attempt by Russian media outlets and pro-Russian activists, in February 2017, to spread the fake news that German soldiers stationed in Lithuania were culpable for the rape of the teenage girl. “This particular piece of disinformation failed to attract attention of mainstream media, but the like information attacks against NATO military personnel deployed in the region are highly likely to be repeated in the future,” he wrote. In Sweden, the same story had gained such traction the Defence Minister had to defend it across the nation once it crept into the mainstream media.
Further expanding on Russia’s covert funding of disinformation channels, Kriščiūnas explained that Moscow’s attempts to regain the influence in the post-Soviet region “materialize in Russia’s efforts to weaken Lithuania’s social integrity and to escalate intra-ethnic tensions. Russia employs so called compatriot policy to achieve that. Kremlin’s aim is to discredit and hinder any efforts made by the authorities’ to carry out a successful integration of national minorities. The main goal of Russia’s compatriot policy in the Baltics is to incite ethnic tensions.” He asserted the: “Fund to Support and Protect the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, which was established by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the federal agency Rossotrudnichestvo, finances two Lithuanian-based organisations, which try to fuel ethnic tensions within Lithuania.” The Centre for the Protection and Research of Fundamental Rights uses “various international human-rights events to blame Lithuania for violating the rights of ethnic communities. Independent Human Rights Centre, takes part in pro-Russian propaganda campaigns against the US and NATO.” Both organisations, according to the evidence, receive nearly one hundred thousand Euro from the fund every year. Vladimir Pozdorovkin, the current coordinator of the Baltics in the fund, had been the chief of SVR under a diplomatic cover at the Russian Embassy in Vilnius from 1994 till 1996. Another spy directly involved, but not the only one.
Kriščiūnas also savaged Russian intelligence operations in Belarus, writing: “In 2014 Belarusian intelligence operation against Lithuanian military communications system was terminated.” According to the Lithuanian diplomat, Belarusian military intelligence undercover officer Sergey Kurulenko carried out the failed operation, in which he tried to collect information about a fibre-optic cable network belonging to the national Lithuanian air navigation system. The cable was also used by the military among others for NATO communications. “Due to close military cooperation between Belarus and Russia,” Kriščiūnas wrote, “it is highly likely that the Belarusian GRU shared the collected information with the Russian military intelligence GRU.” He also reported that approximately one-hundred pro-Russian groups are active in Belarus – many of them paramilitary, describing some as “patriotic groups” and highlighting a portion of them are related to Belarusian Cossacks movement. These groups are most active in Belarus regions bordering Lithuania and Poland. Cossacks, his evidence says, played a significant role in the Russian hybrid warfare against Ukraine, including the Crimea takeover operation. “Belarusian Cossacks and other pro-Russian paramilitary groups operate in the same fashion as in Ukraine, using representatives of Russian Orthodox Church as liaison officers for the Russian intelligence services,” the Ambassador wrote, adding: “Pro-Russian groups in Belarus can be used by Russia to pressure Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko as well as various operations (provocations) against the NATO member countries, e.g. Lithuania and Poland.” Such provocations are highly likely during the “Zapad 2017” military exercise due to take place in September, Kriščiūnas warned.
Putin, of course, continued to deny Russian involvement of any kind. Meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in May269, he fielded a number of questions from journalists at a press conference, saying: “For years we have seen attempts to influence events in Russia via so called NGOs and directly. Realising the futility of such efforts, it has never occurred to us to interfere in other countries internal affairs,” adding: “You mention the US. No one has been able to prove this, these are just rumours used for internal political struggles in the US.”
Merkel, facing her fourth general election campaign in September, around the time of Zapad 2017, was having none of it, responding at the same conference by saying: “We know cyber criminality is an international challenge, and also that Russian military doctrine touches on the topic of hybrid military strategy, but I believe we will have no problems in the political campaign in Germany even if there are disagreements.” It turns out she already knew at the time of the meeting that, as recently as March and April 2017, hackers had tried to infiltrate computers of NGOs associated with Germany’s top political parties270. Trend Microsystems attributed the attacks to APT28 and APT29, both spear-phishing with false domains under yet another of the RIS’s operating names, Pawn Storm. As a result, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (the CDU) proposed the introduction of a new defence law which would permit the country to “hack back” and shut down servers hosting hackers during attacks – in line with the NATO Article 5 approach. The Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI), the German cyber security agency, was also taking on nearly two-hundred people and decided to place additional experts to work with the German election watchdog, to protect the integrity of the Autumn vote. In May, the BSI held talks with foreign counterparts, including France’s online security agency, to examine best practice in countering hybrid attacks on democratic elections. Maks Czuperski, head of the digital forensic research lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, had made sure the Germans were awa
re: “Since late 2016 we’ve been identifying attacks on Chancellor Merkel, and we are anticipating quite a strong barrage as the election approaches.”
Emmanuel Macron, whose campaign was also targeted by the Russian intelligence services yet went on to win, held similarly blunt talks with Putin at the end of May, during which he openly lambasted Russia’s propaganda machine, saying: “I have always had an exemplary relationship with foreign journalists, but they have to be journalists. Russia Today and Sputnik were organs of influence and propaganda that spread counterfeit truths about me.” The comment was made at a joint press conference with Putin after an initial, private, meeting271.
The Russian punch aimed at Merkel could well be the best-signalled and may prove to be the ultimate downfall of Putin’s campaign which wiped the floor with the floor with the UK and US. Putin himself has also read the signs and started changing tack, most recently attempting to peddle a theory claiming patriotic Russians could be responsible – but without state backing. Thankfully, I know enough coming out of this to be able to dismiss this line as utter nonsense. It’s a mess, all of it – of that there is no doubt – and investigating something so complex has been fraught with the dangers of any findings being dismissible as a conspiracy theory but the problem with that is: it’s all true – verifiably so.
At the conclusion of the process, as an independent journalist who had once been a police officer, what I came to believe was the world needed to have all of this laid out in one place. Not just so people could go away afterwards and – most importantly – check for themselves, but because a permanent point of reference needed to be created so future generations had something they could one day look back upon and say: “Never again.” I owe my children this and we all have similar debts, especially as this took place on our watch, as the saying goes. It doesn’t even matter how the sorry Trump or Brexit sagas conclude because – though I accept it is a challenging task for everyone – the reality we have to face up to, acknowledge, and fully understand is World War Three had been fought and won before we even noticed anything was wrong. It was not, in the end, the nuclear conflict feared for so many years but, rather, this only too real and wholly alien hybrid conflict being fought with the mixed methods of technology and psychology – disinformation, destabilisation, and the deployment of insidious, deniable and detached assets instead of missiles, infantry, and artillery. A war fought purely with lies – which Russia only won because it never made the official declaration.
Alternative War: Unabridged Page 34
