Putin S Asymmetric Assault On Democracy In Russia And Europe

The official U.S. government report on Russian interference in democracy around the world! Most Americans were surprised to learn of Russian efforts to manipulate the results of the 2016 presidential election, and have become increasingly concerned about the vulnerabilities of our democracy. Here for the first time in an official U.S. government report is the fascinating and detailed account of how ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin has used computer hackers, official state spy agencies, and even Russian organized crime thugs over the past thirty years to achieve his policy agenda?not only for Russian political domination, but also for his own enrichment and the enrichment of the oligarchs who control almost all aspects of the Russian economy. This complete report includes chapters on: Putin’s Rise and Motivations Manipulation and Repression Inside Russia Old Active Measures and Modern Malign Influence Operations Weaponization of Civil Society, Ideology, Culture, Crime, and Energy Kremlin Interference in Semi-Consolidated Democracies and Transitional Governments Kremlin Interference in Consolidated Democracies Multilateral and U.S. efforts to Counter the Kremlin’s Asymmetric Arsenal In Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe, we learn about Vladimir Putin’s rise to power through the KGB to mayor of St. Petersburg and eventually as head of the Russian state. We discover the history of how Putin used classic Cold War KGB tactics by weaponizing civil society, culture, ideology, and Russia’s criminal element against the nascent Russian democracy by cultivating and using ties to NGOs, thinktanks, extremist political groups, the Russian orthodox church, industrial and energy policy, and the Russian Mafia. We also see how the Kremlin then exported this political extortion, intimidation, and monetary corruption first to its Eastern European neighbors, then their western partners in the European Union, and how it has now landed on America’s shores. Just as certain people in the intelligence community became increasingly alarmed at the growing strength and sophistication of Al-Qaeda in the late 1990s, the senators and staffers of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations are giving the nation fair warning of a 9/11-level assault on the United States, this time by Russia’s spy agencies. Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe reveals not only the history of Russia’s devastating tactics, but how to recognize and counter them.

For years, Vladimir Putin's government has engaged in a relentless assault to undermine democracy and the rule of law in Europe and the United States. Mr. Putin's Kremlin employs an asymmetric arsenal that includes military invasions, cyberattacks, disinformation, support for fringe political groups, and the weaponization of energy resources, organized crime, and corruption. The Kremlin has refined the use of these tools over time and these attacks have intensified in scale and complexity across Europe. If the United States fails to work with urgency to address this complex and growing threat, the regime in Moscow will become further emboldened. It will continue to develop and refine its arsenal to use on democracies around the world, including against U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020. The threat posed by Mr. Putin's meddling existed before the current U.S. Administration, and may well extend beyond it. The Russian government's malign influence operations can be deterred. Several countries in Europe took notice of the Kremlin's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election and realized the danger posed to their democracies. They have taken steps to build resilience against Mr. Putin's aggression and interference, and the range of effective measures implemented by European countries provide valuable lessons for the United States.

In Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe, we learn about Vladimir Putin's rise to power through the KGB to mayor of St. Petersburg and eventually as head of the Russian state. We discover the history of how Putin used classic Cold War KGB tactics by weaponizing civil society, culture, ideology, and Russia's criminal element against the nascent Russian democracy by cultivating and using ties to NGOs, thinktanks, extremist political groups, the Russian orthodox church, industrial and energy policy, and the Russian Mafia. We also see how the Kremlin then exported this political extortion, intimidation, and monetary corruption first to its Eastern European neighbors, then their western partners in the European Union, and how it has now landed on America's shores.

Russian Information Warfare: Assault on Democracies in the Cyber Wild West examines how Moscow tries to trample the very principles on which democracies are founded and what we can do to stop it. In particular, the book analyzes how the Russian government uses cyber operations, disinformation, protests, assassinations, coup d'états, and perhaps even explosions to destroy democracies from within, and what the United States and other NATO countries can do to defend themselves from Russia's onslaught. The Kremlin has been using cyber operations as a tool of foreign policy against the political infrastructure of NATO member states for over a decade. Alongside these cyber operations, the Russian government has launched a diverse and devious set of activities which at first glance may appear chaotic. Russian military scholars and doctrine elegantly categorizes these activities as components of a single strategic playbook —information warfare. This concept breaks down the binary boundaries of war and peace and views war as a continuous sliding scale of conflict, vacillating between the two extremes of peace and war but never quite reaching either. The Russian government has applied information warfare activities across NATO members to achieve various objectives. What are these objectives? What are the factors that most likely influence Russia's decision to launch certain types of cyber operations against political infrastructure and how are they integrated with the Kremlin's other information warfare activities? To what extent are these cyber operations and information warfare campaigns effective in achieving Moscow's purported goals? Dr. Bilyana Lilly addresses these questions and uses her findings to recommend improvements in the design of U.S. policy to counter Russian adversarial behavior in cyberspace by understanding under what conditions, against what election components, and for what purposes within broader information warfare campaigns Russia uses specific types of cyber operations against political infrastructure.

This book examines Russian influence operations globally, in Europe, and in Russia’s neighboring countries, and provides a comprehensive overview of the latest technologies and forms of strategic communication employed in hybrid warfare. Given the growing importance of comprehensive information warfare as a new and rapidly advancing type of international conflict in which knowledge is a primary target, the book examines Russia’s role in Global Knowledge Warfare. The content is divided into three parts, the first of which addresses conceptual issues such as the logic of information warfare, the role of synthetic media, and Russia’s foreign policy concepts, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on influence operations. The second part analyzes technological, legal and strategic challenges in modern hybrid warfare, while the third focuses on textual, cultural and historical patterns in information warfare, also from various regional (e.g. the Western Balkans, Romania, Ukraine, and the Baltic) perspectives. The book is primarily intended for scholars in the fields of international relations, security and the military sciences who are interested in Russian foreign policy and influence operations, but also their impact on the global security environment.

The 2016 elections in the United States exposed a massive campaign of subversion and interference carried out by Russia and aimed at undermining the inner workings of American democracy. But that disinformation offensive represents just one part of a larger challenge now confronting the United States - the weaponization of news and views, both real and fabricated, by repressive regimes and radical non-state actors in order to advance their strategic objectives. In this volume, leading scholars and experts chart the rise of this "authoritarian media" phenomenon and explore its implications for U.S. foreign policy and America's standing in the world.

*Shortlisted for the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award* From America’s leading scholar of democracy, a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism. We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count. In 2020, freedom's last line of defense still remains "We the people."

Two decades before the war against Ukraine, a “special operation” was launched against Russian historical memory, aggressively reshaping the nation’s understanding of its history and identity. The Kremlin’s militarization of Russia through World War II propaganda is well documented, but the glorification of Russian medieval society and its warlords as a source of support for Putinism has yet to be explored. This book offers the first comparison of Putin’s political neomedievalism and re-Stalinization and introduces the concept of mobmemory to the study of right-wing populism. It argues that the celebration of the oprichnina, Ivan the Terrible’s regime of state terror (1565–1572), has been fused with the rehabilitation of Stalinism to reconstruct the Russian Empire. The post-Soviet case suggests that the global obsession with the Middle Ages is not purely an aesthetic movement but a potential weapon against democracy. The book is intended for students, scholars, and non-specialists interested in understanding Russia’s anti-modern politics and the Russians’ support for the terror unleashed against Ukraine.