Russian Digest
Top weekly stories I'm keeping an eye on
North Korean officials in Russian uniforms present in Mariupol, security source says
North Korean technical advisers have arrived in the Russian-occupied port city of Mariupol, a Ukrainian security source told CNN Friday.
The purpose of their visit was unclear, the source said, adding they wore Russian uniforms. Their arrival expands the presence of the Russian ally across the front line.
The North Korean troops in Mariupol remain detached from the Russian units they are supporting, the source said. While other foreign fighters in Russian ranks blended into the units, the source added, the North Koreans are kept separate — with their own quarters, food, music and films.
The source also said that recent Ukrainian missile strikes inside Russia had targeted a senior North Korean general, yet it remained unclear if the commander has been killed.
Remember: An estimated 11,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine holds territory after a surprise counteroffensive in the summer.
Via CNN
HUR: Russia hit Dnipro with a ballistic missile from the "Kedr" complex
On November 21, Russia hit Dnipro with a ballistic missile from the Kedr complex. This was reported by the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense.
It is reported that the missile's flight time from the moment of launch from the Astrakhan region to the impact in Dnipro was 15 minutes. Six combat units were installed on the rocket, each equipped with six submunitions. The speed on the final part of the trajectory was more than Mach 11, i.e. 13.585 km/h.
According to the HUR, the tests of the "Kedr" missile complex took place at the 4th state central interspecies range of the Russian Federation in the city of Kapustin Yar, Astrakhan region. The tests were held in October 2023 and June 2024.
Via Inforesist
Russia Suspected as Baltic Undersea Cables Cut in Apparent Sabotage
Western officials say incidents are similar to other operations resulting from Moscow’s escalating hybrid warfare against NATO countries
Russia is suspected of orchestrating another major act of sabotage in Europe after two key fiber-optic data cables running below the Baltic Sea were cut off in quick succession earlier this week, government officials said.
A 135-mile internet link connecting Sweden’s Gotland Island and Lithuania stopped working on Sunday morning, and a similar 700-mile-long cable linking Finland and Germany ceased to operate the following night, according to government officials and telecom operators.
Swedish police started a preliminary sabotage investigation on Tuesday with assistance from the coast guard and the armed forces, the country’s police authority said.
Western officials said there are indications that Russia was behind the incidents, which they said were similar to other operations resulting from Moscow’s escalating hybrid warfare against NATO countries in Europe.
“Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally cut off,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters. “Therefore we must conclude—without yet knowing specifically who was behind it—that this is a hybrid operation.”
His statement was echoed by Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen and her German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock. “Our European security is not only threatened by Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine but also by the hybrid warfare of malicious actors,” the two ministers said in a statement. They stopped short of pointing the finger at Moscow, but officials from both countries said Russia was the prime suspect, without revealing any evidence for this suspicion.
The preliminary investigation involving Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Germany and other nations found that the cables were likely cut in Swedish economic waters, where the two cables intersect in a relatively small area, according to two people familiar with the findings.
Read more at WSJ
Ruble plummets to lowest since March 2022 after US sanctions on Russian banks
The ruble fell sharply on the forex market on Friday after the tightening of US sanctions, which affected 50 Russian banks, including Gazprombank, which has become a "hub" for gas payments.
According to LSEG, the dollar-ruble exchange rate jumped by almost 3 rubles in a few hours, to 103.74 rubles, the highest since March 2022. The euro rose above 108 rubles for the first time in a month and a half and almost updated its annual record.
The yuan exchange rate on the Moscow Exchange, where trading in world currencies is suspended due to sanctions, was close to the 14 ruble mark, which the market has not seen since October last year. At 13:45 Moscow time, the Chinese currency costs 13.99 rubles, the maximum for the last year.
The US Treasury Department's new sanctions can be considered the most extensive since the spring of 2022, when Sber and VTB were cut off from the global financial system, international expert in the field of sanctions George Voloshin told RBK.
Gazprombank, the third largest state bank by assets, was one of the last financial "bridges" between Russia and the world: it retained access to SWIFT and conducted settlements in euros. Now, "EU payments for energy resources through Gazprombank will most likely become impossible," write analysts from the Sinara investment bank: this will happen at the end of 2024, when the temporary license of the US Treasury expires.
The foreign exchange reserves of Russian companies may also be under attack, Tsifra Broker does not rule out: we are talking about tens of billions of dollars in foreign exchange earnings that businesses kept abroad, without depositing them into Russian accounts.
"The new sanctions may provoke problems with foreign exchange liquidity again," warns HSE professor Evgeny Kogan: if the previous rounds of restrictions affected payments for imports, now the US Treasury's target has become Russian exports, and with them the inflow of currency into the country.
The sanctions package also included a warning for foreign banks working with the Russian "analogue of SWIFT" — the Financial Message Transfer System (SPFS) of the Bank of Russia. This means that "financial interaction with Russian counterparties will be complicated," write analysts at Alfa Bank.
"Export revenues may temporarily decrease, so the ruble will most likely become cheaper in the coming months," predicts Kogan: the dollar may reach 105 rubles, and the yuan — 15 rubles.
Banks that continued to pay directly from Russia to China and Turkey were also hit by sanctions, representatives of importing companies told The Moscow Times: these are BCS Bank, Dom. rf, Forabank, Garant-Invest, Derzhava, Sinara, Primsotsbank and others.
As a result, transferring money directly to “friendly countries” will become virtually impossible, TMT’s interlocutors believe: if the share of such payments is currently estimated at 25%, it will soon drop to almost zero.
Via Moscow Times
Belarus Weekly: New Russian military doctrine to cover Belarus with nuclear umbrella
Belarus’ authorities are on full alert ahead of upcoming presidential elections in January 2025, new wave of police raids target relatives of political prisoners.
Belarusian police conduct counter-protest drills to prevent “manifestations of extremism and terrorism” during the election campaign.
Russia’s military doctrine was updated, covering Belarus with a Russian nuclear umbrella. No change in the U.S. nuclear posture.
Read more at Kyiv Independent
Russia Supplies Antiaircraft Missiles to North Korea, South Korea Says
Pyongyang has long coveted an advanced air-defense system to guard against missiles and war planes from the United States and South Korea.
Russia has supplied North Korea with antiaircraft missiles in return for the deployment of its troops to fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korea’s national security adviser said on Friday.
In recent weeks, North Korea has sent an estimated 11,000 troops, some of whom have joined Russian forces in their fight to retake territories occupied by Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region, according to South Korean and United States officials. It has also sent close to 20,000 shipping containers of weapons to Russia since the summer of 2023, including artillery guns and shells, short-range ballistic missiles and multiple-rocket launchers, South Korean officials have said.
In return, North Korea has been widely expected to seek Russian help in modernizing its conventional armed forces and advancing its nuclear weapons program and missiles. One of the biggest weaknesses of the North Korean military has been its poor, outdated air defense system, while the United States and its allies in South Korea and Japan run fleets of high-tech war planes, including F-35 stealth fighter jets.
“We understand that Russia has provided related equipment and anti-air missiles to shore up the poor air defense for Pyongyang,” the North Korean capital, South Korea’s national security adviser, Shin Won-shik, said in an interview with SBS-TV on Friday.
Read more at NYT
MikropriborLeaks: How Russia Built a Military Plant Using Western Equipment
How a Russian Su-57 manufacturer was re-equipped with Western technology.
Equipment purchases are still ongoing under the guise of deliveries of Chinese and Russian products.
Industrial equipment is supplied from Taiwan and Germany, which themselves risk becoming victims of aggression.
In today's publication, we invite our readers on a tour of the Russian defense plant "Mikropribor", located in the village of Konakovo in the Tver region of the Russian Federation. The plant is involved in the production of the new Russian combat aircraft Su-57. Most recently, in October 2024, the British publication The Telegraph wrote about problems with this project due to a shortage of parts for the MPPU-50 device, which is produced at "Mikropribor".
The Su-57 5th generation aircraft system is a key element of Russian propaganda in the style of “analognet” – a set of theses about the technological superiority of the Russian military-industrial complex over its rivals. However, the evidence of analysts, reported by The Telegraph, shows that the production of onboard equipment for the Su-57 is impossible without Western components, the supply of which to Russia continues in circumvention of sanctions.
InformNapalm volunteers have already demonstrated how the Russian company Planar, through its branch in the USA, supplies the necessary electronic components, including for Mikropribor.
It should be noted that both materials were released thanks to data provided by hacktivists of the Cyber Resistance group. But the operation to spy on Mikropribor differs from many previous ones. It lasted two years and was made possible thanks to cooperation with the private analytical and intelligence company Dallas. In particular, spyware was downloaded into the plant's internal network. Thanks to this, the performance characteristics of weapons, in the production of which Mikropribor is involved, were obtained. The data was transferred to Ukraine's partners abroad. Dallas employees took on the collection of primary information about the target and also helped the hacktivists successfully gain access to the information.
Read more at InformNapalm
Miami Financier Is Quietly Trying to Buy Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline
An American investor with a history of dealmaking in Russia has asked the U.S. government to allow him to bid on the sabotaged Nord Stream Pipeline 2 if it comes up for auction in a Swiss bankruptcy proceeding.
Stephen P. Lynch spent two decades doing business in Moscow and now wants to buy the natural-gas pipeline that runs from Russia to Germany. He has argued to U.S. officials and lawmakers that American ownership of the pipeline would provide leverage in any peace negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine and serve U.S. long-term interests.
“The bottom line is this: This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for American and European control over European energy supply for the rest of the fossil-fuel era,” Lynch said in a rare interview.
Lynch, who lives in Miami and was a large contributor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, has told people “he wants to be the richest guy you’ve never heard of,” but his audacious plan would thrust the former Peace Corps volunteer into public view.
Read more at WSJ
UK Storm Shadow missiles reportedly fired on Russian targets
Ukraine’s action on the battlefield speaks for itself,” Defence Secretary John Healey told MPs.
British Storm Shadow cruise missiles have been fired at targets inside Russia in response to the deployment of North Korean troops by Moscow in its war on Ukraine, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
It follows claims by a Russian military blog that fragments of the missile were discovered in the Kursk region of Russia.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long demanded that Western allies loosen their restrictions on the use of donated weapons.
Read more at Politico
Disinformation Watch
Divide and Rule: How Russian Propaganda Polarizes Media Audiences and Interferes in U.S. Elections
How Russia interferes with democratic processes in the United States through information campaigns and hybrid aggression.
On November 5, the United States will hold its presidential election, where Donald Trump is the Republican candidate, and Kamala Harris represents the Democrats. The outcome of this electoral race will shape the future of international politics, economics, security, and U.S. support for Ukraine in resisting Russia’s full-scale aggression.
Russian propaganda remains a challenge to U.S. national security. In September 2024, the U.S. Department of State imposed sanctions on individuals connected to Russia Today. Russia attempted to meddle in the 2016 and 2020 elections through bot and troll farms and the actions of Russian intelligence agencies. MediaSapiens explores how Russian propaganda seeks to influence public opinion in the United States.
Sovietology
The roots of modern Russian influence in the U.S. trace back to the Cold War, specifically within academic circles. To better understand its adversary (the USSR), the White House established departments and institutes focused on Eurasian and East European studies. This was a step in the development of Sovietology.
Scholars studied the Russian language and literature, analyzing the Soviet Union primarily from a Russian perspective. This approach often ignored the unique characteristics of the societies under Moscow’s control, resulting in an incomplete and distorted understanding of the USSR’s development. Consequently, even the CIA failed to anticipate the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
A notable example of this miscalculation is the speech delivered by President George H.W. Bush to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada in August 1991, famously dubbed the “Chicken Kyiv” speech. In it, he warned Ukrainians against “suicidal nationalism” and urged them to collaborate with Mikhail Gorbachev in reforming the USSR.
The history of modern Russian influence in the United States began during the Cold War within academic circles. Since the White House needed a better understanding of its adversary, the USSR, departments, and institutes focusing on Eurasian and Eastern European studies were established. This development marked the rise of Sovietology.
Scholars studied the Russian language and literature, analyzing the Soviet Union from a Russian perspective without accounting for the unique characteristics of societies under Moscow’s control. Consequently, their understanding of the USSR’s development was incomplete and distorted. This led to the Central Intelligence Agency’s failure to anticipate the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
An illustrative moment of this misunderstanding was George H.W. Bush’s speech in the Ukrainian parliament in early August 1991, known historically as the “Chicken Kyiv speech.” The U.S. president warned Ukrainians against “suicidal nationalism” and urged them to continue working with Mikhail Gorbachev on reforming the USSR.
U.S. media were cautious in their response to Ukraine’s declaration of independence on August 24, 1991. Detector Media published an article revealing that Western outlets’ coverage in the early 1990s was influenced by a limited understanding of Ukrainian history and culture and a lack of relevant information in English. Many Sovietologists, fascinated by Russian culture, failed to see the emerging Russia as a national security threat to the United States and instead sought to further develop Russian studies.
Read more at Detector Media
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