In Moscow's Shadows 268: Peace and (Info) War
On the latest talk of peace - the progress and the obstacles - and also Oleshky, and then a dive into information operations, and the risks posed of generating vicious circles of bluster and insecurity...
buzzsprout.com/1026985/episod…
On the latest talk of peace - the progress and the obstacles - and also Oleshky, and then a dive into information operations, and the risks posed of generating vicious circles of bluster and insecurity...
buzzsprout.com/1026985/episod…
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The Putin Whisperers
@maxseddon has outdone himself with this @FT piece about the backchannel contacts that may have averted nuclear war, but failed to secure peace in Ukraine...
ft.com/content/dcb57f…
@maxseddon has outdone himself with this @FT piece about the backchannel contacts that may have averted nuclear war, but failed to secure peace in Ukraine...
ft.com/content/dcb57f…
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It’s a steep, painful uphill struggle to get the message across, but it’s both important and laudable that the British ambassador is doing this, and I hope more Western ambassadors follow his example
(And the reason why the Kremlin/Russian MFA try to suppress this message is precisely because it undermines their whole “we have to do what we do because Europe is irredeemably Russophobic” narrative)
(And the reason why the Kremlin/Russian MFA try to suppress this message is precisely because it undermines their whole “we have to do what we do because Europe is irredeemably Russophobic” narrative)
🇬🇧 Посол Великобритании в России Найджел Кейси в интервью Current Time:
«Мы всегда очень ясно давали понять, что считаем эту войну результатом сознательного выбора российского руководства, а не российского народа».
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Mark Galeotti retweeted
Finally, a good historical-parallels article linking Russian intelligence failures in Ukraine 2014-2022 to previous episodes, such as Prague 1968. Worth a read!
"A central weakness was an interpretive template that shaped how the KGB understood Czechoslovak political dynamics"
"A central weakness was an interpretive template that shaped how the KGB understood Czechoslovak political dynamics"
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Since I can’t go to Russia, wandering round Helsinki feels (architecturally, at least!) as close as I can readily get, these days…
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Central Asia's Gangsters Found a New Business
In the latest ep of my #Bratva vlog series for @GI_TOC, I take an admittedly over-brief look at #CentralAsia and what unites and differentiates the region's organised crime scenes
youtu.be/3Ap2EyyPxj0
In the latest ep of my #Bratva vlog series for @GI_TOC, I take an admittedly over-brief look at #CentralAsia and what unites and differentiates the region's organised crime scenes
youtu.be/3Ap2EyyPxj0
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Monday morning re-up: Gangster stories, with a detour to the inspiration behind Ostap Bender…
In Moscow's Shadows 267: Once Upon A Time In... Chelyabinsk?
The story of Chelyabinsk's Artakovsky organised crime gang is an instructive guide to wider trends in the Russian underworld from Chechen 'franchising' to the AUE threat...
buzzsprout.com/1026985/episod…
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Mark Galeotti, organized crime expert: ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So is the path to techno-authoritarianism’
For a change, not about Russia/Ukraine; an interview with @el_pais/@elpaisinenglish on my book HOMO CRIMINALIS
english.elpais.com/technology/202…
For a change, not about Russia/Ukraine; an interview with @el_pais/@elpaisinenglish on my book HOMO CRIMINALIS
english.elpais.com/technology/202…
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By the way, if you're a member of the wider @durham_uni community, I'll be speaking with the provocative title 'Can Britain be friends with Russia?' at Stephenson College on 9 November
instagram.com/p/DejiHF1AU5u/
instagram.com/p/DejiHF1AU5u/
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In Moscow's Shadows 267: Once Upon A Time In... Chelyabinsk?
The story of Chelyabinsk's Artakovsky organised crime gang is an instructive guide to wider trends in the Russian underworld from Chechen 'franchising' to the AUE threat...
buzzsprout.com/1026985/episod…
The story of Chelyabinsk's Artakovsky organised crime gang is an instructive guide to wider trends in the Russian underworld from Chechen 'franchising' to the AUE threat...
buzzsprout.com/1026985/episod…
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RT @leonidragozin: I can now confirm that yesterday I was notified of my expulsion from Latvia where I lived for 12 years. This, I believe,…
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Mark Galeotti retweeted
📉❓Following Ukraine’s attacks on Yandex data centers, social media networks were full of reports that the Kremlin’s bots had disappeared from social networks. But some things in this story don’t line up.
A graphic from Cloudflare Radar, showing a decline in bot traffic following drone strikes on Yandex data centers, has been circulating on social media. The graphic led to speculation that the attacks took Russian “troll factories” offline, but it isn’t about troll factories. Rather, it shows automated programs, a significant portion of which are likely used by Yandex’s own search engine.
Cloudflare provides resources to ensure the security and performance of websites, and its Radar service monitors, among other things, automated HTTP requests to websites served by Cloudflare. The original graphic about “bot traffic” has nothing to do with social media, the bot blocker project pointed out. Yandex is primarily a search engine, and any search engine has to have bots that crawl websites and upload them to its database. The decline in “Russian bot traffic” that Cloudflare registered is very likely due to Yandex web crawlers going offline as a result of the strike on the data center.
The speculation frenzy about Russian bot traffic has obscured the real story of the drone strikes, which is that these strikes have been Ukraine’s most successful attacks yet on Russia’s infrastructure, and have caused real problems for Yandex and its users, which includes essentially everyone living in Russia. Over the course of a week, Ukraine has landed three hits on Yandex data centers.
Initially, the attacks took down certain services like food delivery, but their impact was limited. By Friday of last week, however, a source inside Yandex told The Bell that the company had been forced to shut down most of its functionality just to manage the core workload. Over the weekend, every Yandex service experienced disruptions. They left users unable to order a taxi, pay for purchases, check their own bank balances, or even send an email.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian drone attacks targeted oil refineries, and then e-commerce warehouses. The first contributed to Russia’s ongoing fuel crisis, while the second demoralized the population. Attacks on Yandex data centers, though, may be the most effective in disrupting Russia’s social and economic status quo.
Read our original reporting on the data center strikes on our subscriber newsletter (link below).
A graphic from Cloudflare Radar, showing a decline in bot traffic following drone strikes on Yandex data centers, has been circulating on social media. The graphic led to speculation that the attacks took Russian “troll factories” offline, but it isn’t about troll factories. Rather, it shows automated programs, a significant portion of which are likely used by Yandex’s own search engine.
Cloudflare provides resources to ensure the security and performance of websites, and its Radar service monitors, among other things, automated HTTP requests to websites served by Cloudflare. The original graphic about “bot traffic” has nothing to do with social media, the bot blocker project pointed out. Yandex is primarily a search engine, and any search engine has to have bots that crawl websites and upload them to its database. The decline in “Russian bot traffic” that Cloudflare registered is very likely due to Yandex web crawlers going offline as a result of the strike on the data center.
The speculation frenzy about Russian bot traffic has obscured the real story of the drone strikes, which is that these strikes have been Ukraine’s most successful attacks yet on Russia’s infrastructure, and have caused real problems for Yandex and its users, which includes essentially everyone living in Russia. Over the course of a week, Ukraine has landed three hits on Yandex data centers.
Initially, the attacks took down certain services like food delivery, but their impact was limited. By Friday of last week, however, a source inside Yandex told The Bell that the company had been forced to shut down most of its functionality just to manage the core workload. Over the weekend, every Yandex service experienced disruptions. They left users unable to order a taxi, pay for purchases, check their own bank balances, or even send an email.
Earlier this year, Ukrainian drone attacks targeted oil refineries, and then e-commerce warehouses. The first contributed to Russia’s ongoing fuel crisis, while the second demoralized the population. Attacks on Yandex data centers, though, may be the most effective in disrupting Russia’s social and economic status quo.
Read our original reporting on the data center strikes on our subscriber newsletter (link below).
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Mark Galeotti retweeted
The revival of the "Putindunnit" Brexit narrative demonstrates how politicians continue to misunderstand and misrepresent the scale, impact but above all goals of Russian political interference.
Andy Burnham, perhaps as ever wanting to please his interlocutors of the moment, and Rory Stewart on their The Rest is Politics podcast that when he looked into whether there had been Russian interference in the 2016 vote, "I've had the clear answer that, yes, there was."
✍️ Mark Galeotti
Article | spectator.com/article/what-r… | @MarkGaleotti
Andy Burnham, perhaps as ever wanting to please his interlocutors of the moment, and Rory Stewart on their The Rest is Politics podcast that when he looked into whether there had been Russian interference in the 2016 vote, "I've had the clear answer that, yes, there was."
✍️ Mark Galeotti
Article | spectator.com/article/what-r… | @MarkGaleotti
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Mark Galeotti retweeted
Why does the BBC describe Markov as a "former Putin spokesperson"? Sure, he was one of countless доверенные лица (authorized campaign representatives) during the 2012 presidential election, but that hardly warrants comparing him to the likes of Dmitry Peskov or Alexey Gromov.
"It's a direct lie... Either Prime Minister Burnham is lying, or the intelligence service of Great Britain."
Former Putin spokesperson Sergei Markov says that the PM's claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum is "absolutely a clear lie."
#Newsnight
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Mark Galeotti retweeted
The no 1 goal of Russian interference in our democracies is that it triggers a toxic fight about Russian interference in our democracies.
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As we wait to see if anything really will come from Trump's claim of an energy ceasefire (Schrödinger's ceasefire: it exists and it doesn't?), a re-up of yesterday's pod looking at the diesel deal and more...
In Moscow's Shadows 266: Diesel and Delusion
Trump's belated birthday gift to Putin, that benefits the Kremlin even if not a single barrel of diesel shifts, and why European groupthink needs to be tested (which leads me to the sad @leonidragozin case) buzzsprout.com/1026985/episod…
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"Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed" claims Trump just now. Never would I be happier to be proven wrong, but let's see - we've been here before
In Moscow's Shadows 266: Diesel and Delusion
Trump's belated birthday gift to Putin, that benefits the Kremlin even if not a single barrel of diesel shifts, and why European groupthink needs to be tested (which leads me to the sad @leonidragozin case) buzzsprout.com/1026985/episod…
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Putin sees Trump as the gift that keeps on giving
Happy belated birthday, Vladimir. On the diesel deal, for @theipaper
inews.co.uk/news/world/put…
Happy belated birthday, Vladimir. On the diesel deal, for @theipaper
inews.co.uk/news/world/put…
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In Moscow's Shadows 266: Diesel and Delusion
Trump's belated birthday gift to Putin, that benefits the Kremlin even if not a single barrel of diesel shifts, and why European groupthink needs to be tested (which leads me to the sad @leonidragozin case) buzzsprout.com/1026985/episod…
Trump's belated birthday gift to Putin, that benefits the Kremlin even if not a single barrel of diesel shifts, and why European groupthink needs to be tested (which leads me to the sad @leonidragozin case) buzzsprout.com/1026985/episod…
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