Russian information war


 * ''See also Putin's Troll Factory



USA

 * Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America - Max Seddon, BuzzFeed, June 2, 2014
 * The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money - Peter Pomerantsev, Michael Weiss, The Interpreter and the Institute of Modern Russia, November 22, 2014 (PDF)
 * The Kremlin's comment trolls are real — as is the media's amnesia about them - Mark Ames, Pando, April 2, 2015
 * Russia’s Long History of Messing With Americans Minds Before the DNC Hack - Michael Weiss, The Daily Beast, July 26, 2016
 * ''Russia’s intelligence services have a long history of mingling sinister fiction with shards of fact and leaking through third parties to cover their tracks.
 * A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories - The New York Times, August 28, 2016
 * How I Got Slimed By Russian Propagandist Site Sputnik, by Kurt Eichenwald, - "Newsweek", October 20, 2016
 * More here.
 * Bausman and fraud at Russia Insider? Lavelle blows the whistle - Fort Russ, April 11, 2016
 * Clinton Distraction Circus Hits Panic Mode Over Russia And ‘Fake News’ - Michael Sainato, Observer, November 25, 2016
 * The Orwellian War on Skepticism, Robert Parry, December 1, 2016
 * Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election - ODNI, January 6, 2016
 * RT stars in ODNI report on 'Russian activities and intentions' in US presidential election - RT, January 6, 2016
 * For the record, RT and Sputnik Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan response, (Engl.)(Rus.)
 * Hate Makes Us Weak - How Russia exploits American racism and xenophobia for its own gain - William Saletan, Slate, March 31, 2017
 * Inside Russia’s Social Media War on America - Massimo Calabresi, TIME, May 29, 2017
 * War by Other Means - Russian Active Measures and the Weaponization of Information - Max Bergmann and Carolyn Kenney, Center for American Progress, June 2017 (PDF)
 * Forget Comey. The Real Story Is Russia’s War on America - Molly K. McKew, Politico, June 12, 2017
 * How Russia Targets the U.S. Military - Ben Schreckinger, Politico, June 12, 2017
 * Online Trolling Wreaks Havoc On People — And On Democracies - Liz Wahl, Newsy, June 29, 2017
 * How The Russians Won World War III - A Short History - Michael Rosenblum, Huffington Post, August 16, 2017
 * Here’s What Russia’s Propaganda Network Wants You to Read - J.M. Berger, Politico, August 23, 2017
 * ''How a new system for tracking Kremlin influence operations reveals what Moscow is thinking.
 * Will America finally wise up to the Russian media war on our democracy? - Sarah Posner, Washington Post, September 13, 2017
 * ''This propaganda war, Rutenberg reports, is a different sort of attack on our democracy from the Russian cyber-attacks and computer hacking we’ve heard so much about. It demonstrates how the Russian assault is multi-faceted and often opaque to American news consumers. By injecting a barrage of “news” into the social media ecosystem, the goal is to manipulate and confuse American viewers and readers, sowing division and chaos in American politics and society.
 * Meet Clint Watts, a Dubious Russia Meddling 'Expert' Lobbying the U.S. Government to 'Quell Information Rebellions' - Max Blumenthal, AlterNet, November 8, 2017
 * ''“Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words,” he proclaimed. “America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”
 * ''Next, Watts suggested a government-imposed campaign of media censorship: “Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced: silence the guns and the barrage will end.”
 * Secret Finding: 60 Russian Payments "To Finance Election Campaign Of 2016” - BuzzFeed News, November 14, 2017
 * TASS quotes Russian Embassy response, indicates that this has to do with funding for overseas voting in Russian Duma elections, September 18, 2016
 * Is the U.S. serious about countering Russia’s information war on democracies? - Thomas M. Hill, Brookings, November 21, 2017
 * Suddenly, I’m a ‘Russian Agent’! - Dave Lindorff, Counterpunch, November 28, 2017
 * Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options - Washington Post, December 25, 2017
 * Report: Kremlin Troll Wrote for Far-Left U.S. Sites - Daily Beast, December 28, 2017
 * Go Ask Alice: the Curious Case of “Alice Donovan” - CounterPunch, December 25, 2017
 * MSM Uses Russiagate To Punch Left - Caitlin Johnstone, December 28, 2017

Fake news

 * Wikipedia: Fake news website
 * List of fake news websites
 * "Fake News" Fizzles on Arrival - Anatoly Karlin, UNZ Review, November 29, 2016
 * Washington Post on the ‘Fake News’ Hot Seat At least one of the websites blamed in a story for supposedly circulating Russian propaganda is threatening to sue the storied newspaper. Lloyd Grove, The Daily Beast, December 9, 2016
 * Russia Used Fake News to Influence the Election, Says U.S. Intelligence Chief - Will Oremus, Slate, January 5, 2017
 * The C.I.A.’s Fake News Campaign - NY Times, October 13, 2017.
 * ..Sure, secret agents and front groups have hacked email systems, dumped documents on WikiLeaks, paid an army of internet trolls and spent thousands buying political ads on social media ... K.G.B. officer, Mr. Putin......If so, it’s payback indeed.

PropOrNot

 * Is It Propaganda Or Not?
 * On Blacklists and Russia 'Hacking' American Democracy, Yasha Levine, November 25, 2016
 * Washington Post Promotes Shadowy Website That Accuses 200 Publications of Being Russian Propaganda Plants, Max Blumenthal, November 25, 2016
 * Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group, Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald, November 26, 2016
 * Washington Post’s ‘Fake News’ Guilt, Robert Parry, November 28, 2016
 * The Major Purveyor of ‘Fake News’ is the CIA-Corporate Complex - Wayne Madsen, Strategic Culture, November 28, 2016
 * Bait & Switch – Fake News, propornot, the Real Inform & Influence Operation - GH Eliason, offGuardian, November 30, 2016
 * The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda - Adrian Chen, The New Yorker, December 1, 2016
 * ''A report from a group called PropOrNot has accused hundreds of Web sites of spreading Russian propaganda. But its methodology is a mess.
 * House Quietly Passes Bill Targeting "Russian Propaganda" Websites - ZeroHedge, December 2, 2016
 * The Anonymous Blacklist Promoted by the Washington Post Has Apparent Ties to Ukrainian Fascism and CIA Spying - Mark Ames, Alternet, December 7, 2016

Influencing presidential elections

 * Facebook says likely Russia-based group paid for political ads during US election - The Guardian, September 7, 2017
 * ''The social media network said that many of the ads promoted 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages that it has now suspended. The ads spread polarizing views on topics including immigration, race and gay rights, instead of backing a particular political candidate, it said. Facebook announced the findings in a blog post by its chief security officer, Alex Stamos, and said that it was cooperating with federal inquiries into influence operations during the 2016 US presidential election.
 * ''The company said it found no link to any presidential campaign. Three-fourths of the ads were national in scope, and the rest did not appear to reflect targeting of political swing-states as voting neared. Facebook did not print the names of any of the suspended pages, but some of them included such words as “refugee” and “patriot”.
 * ''The findings buttress US intelligence agency conclusions that Russia was actively involved in shaping the election.
 * The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election - Scott Shane, The New York Times, September 7, 2017
 * ''The DCLeaks site had gone live a few days earlier, posting the first samples of material, stolen from prominent Americans by Russian hackers, that would reverberate through the presidential election campaign and into the Trump presidency. The site’s phony promoters were in the vanguard of a cyberarmy of counterfeit Facebook and Twitter accounts, a legion of Russian-controlled impostors whose operations are still being unraveled.
 * ''The Russian information attack on the election did not stop with the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails or the fire hose of stories, true, false and in between, that battered Mrs. Clinton on Russian outlets like RT and Sputnik. Far less splashy, and far more difficult to trace, was Russia’s experimentation on Facebook and Twitter, the American companies that essentially invented the tools of social media and, in this case, did not stop them from being turned into engines of deception and propaganda.
 * ''An investigation by The New York Times, and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked. On Wednesday, Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign.

Congress
House bill H.R. 6393 (passed House), ‘‘Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017’’: Sec. 501. Committee To Counter Active Measures By The Russian Federation To Exert Covert Influence Over Peoples And Governments, 22 Nov 2016


 * Senate Quietly Passes The "Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act" - ZeroHedge, December 12, 2016
 * SCARED SHITLESS: 2016 NDAA Targets Alternative Media For Treason - Alexander Higgins, December 12, 2016

Inaugural benedictions were not Russian
A number of religious benedictions or similar pronouncements were delivered at President Trump inauguration. In particular the one delivered by Rabbi Hier of Simon Wiesenthal Center,Psalm 137 based, was the first of its kind and quite widely discussed. In particular, it was speculated that it may have to do with a theory that President Putin considers Israel a Russian Federation dominion, with about 1 million or so of its citizens holding a Russian passport. That theory is not quite true as it stands, despite the quotations, but in any case, Rabbi Hier is of Polish origin and there is nothing 'Russian' about him at all. --Resup (talk) 13:36, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * “My parents escaped in the ’20s from Poland ", Rabbi Hier was quoted saying.

Europe

 * THE “WHITE WHALE”: WHY EUROPE IS OBSESSED WITH FIGHTING ‘RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA’ - HANEUL'S RED STAR RANTS, December 8, 2016
 * Tide of Fake News Is `Almost Overwhelming,' EU Warns - Aoife White, Bloomberg, November 13, 2017

UK

 * It’s time we turned the heat up on Putin’s lie machine. The news service RT has got a nerve complaining about the closure of its bank account. Oliver Kamm - "The Times", October 18, 2016
 * "Putin’s Useful Idiots: Britain’s Left, Right and Russia", Russia Studies Centre Policy Paper No. 10 (2016), Dr Andrew Foxall, The Henry Jackson Society, October 2016
 * The Putin Problem - Sky News, July 8, 2017 (video)
 * Theresa May accuses Russia of interfering in elections and fake news - Rowena Mason, The Guardian, November 14, 2017
 * British PM to Russia: 'We know what you are doing' - CNN, November 14, 2017
 * ''In a significant escalation of rhetoric, May accused Moscow of attempting to "weaponize information" as part of a "sustained campaign of cyberespionage and disruption." Russia's actions were "threatening the international order," she said.
 * Russian politicians dismiss PM's 'election meddling' claims - BBC, November 14, 2017
 * How Russia's spewing out propaganda from Moscow TV station - Daily Mail, November 14, 2017
 * Russia used hundreds of fake accounts to tweet about Brexit, data shows - The Guardian, November 14, 2017
 * Signs of Russian Meddling in Brexit Referendum - David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, November 15, 2017
 * Facebook says Russian-linked accounts spent just 97 cents on ads over Brexit - Reuters, December 13, 2017
 * Facebook criticised for response to questions on Russia and Brexit - The Guardian, December 13, 2017
 * Facebook’s Brexit probe unearths three Russian-bought “immigration” ads - Tech Crunch, December 13, 2017
 * ''Further to your request, we have examined whether any of the identified Internet Research Agency (IRA) pages or account profiles funded advertisements to audiences in the United Kingdom during the regulated period for the EU Referendum. We have determined that these accounts associated with the IRA spent a small amount of money ($0.97) on advertisements that delivered to UK audiences during that time. This amount resulted in three advertisements (each of which were also targeted to US audiences and concerned immigration, not the EU referendum) delivering approximately 200 impressions to UK viewers over four days in May 2016.

Germany

 * Warum darf dieser Putin - Scherge an Merkels Tisch sitzen?- "Bild", October 19, 2016

Finland

 * Countering the information war from the East with robust cooperation - Nordic Council, January 22, 2015
 * This is What Pro-Russia Internet Propaganda Feels Like – Finns Have Been Tricked into Believing in Lies - YLE Kioski, June 24, 2015
 * Jessikka Aro: My year as a pro-Russia troll magnet - Jessikka Aro, Kyiv Post, November 9, 2015 (original)
 * Targeted by the Kremlin troll army - Business Ukraine, December 5, 2015
 * NATO’s information expert Jessikka Aro turned out to be a convicted drug dealer - Ilja Janitskin, MV-lehti, February 24, 2016
 * Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro's inquiry into Russian trolls stirs up a hornet's nest - Nick Miller, Sidney Morning Herald March 13, 2016
 * Aro and Kankkonen win Bonnier journalism prizes - YLE Uutiset, MArch 16, 2016
 * The cyberspace war: propaganda and trolling as warfare tools - Jessikka Aro, European View, June 2016, Volume 15, Issue 1, pp 121–132 (May 10, 2016)
 * MV Lehti – Russian Trolls In Finland - Joel Harding, May 26, 2016
 * Effort to Expose Russia's 'Troll Army' Draws Vicious Retaliation - Andrew Higgins, The New York Times, May 30, 2016
 * How Finland became a battleground in the Russia-NATO information war - Nikolai Shevchenko, RBTH, June 10, 2016
 * THE KREMLIN’S VOICE: JOHAN BÄCKMAN - Joel Harding, September 14, 2016
 * Infiltration of YLE revealed when the defamation campaign against the award-winning journalist Jessikka Aro rolled up by prosecutors and police - Joel Harding, October 15, 2016
 * Finland sees propaganda attack from former master Russia - Reuters, October 19, 2016

Western response

 * Total fact-fail by EU’s favorite fact-checkers - RT, August 2017
 * State Dept has $120mn war chest for Russia-bashing – and ex-envoy McFaul wants to spend it - RT, March 7, 2018
 * Britain to launch counter-propaganda war against Russia as Theresa May unveils 'Fusion Doctrine' defence plan - The Telegraph, March 27, 2018 (Same Telegraph story but not paywalled)
 * ''British spies will launch a counter-propaganda war against the Russians as part of a major overhaul of the UK's security capabilities announced by Theresa May.
 * ''The Prime Minister has instructed the intelligence services to use social media to disrupt misinformation as she promised to use "every capability at our disposal" to defeat the new threat facing Britain.

Russia
"Kremlin" produced anti-Navalnyi "hips-don't lie" video, telling a little schoolboy to stay away from politics, 'start with yourself", "go study the basics". Navalnyi admits all is lost, produces with NATO psy-ops help a response pro-Putin video
 * Some identified sources used in Navalnyi's psy-op video: one is Budaev's re-rendering (going several years back) of 'White Sun of the Desert"; there is also graphics resembling scenes from "Master and Margarita"; other stuff of unknown origin meshes quite well with those. "Putin with Snowden" is from Budaev too, second pic here (+ more in this album is on video); "with Yanukovich on Maidan", 4th pic here. Title pic is Budaev again.

Social media
Certain Valentin Ivanovich Turchinov (DOB 1909), namesake of father of Alexander Turchinov (DOB 1964), served in 1942 in a German army's prisoners work battalion in Lannion, France, and was punished and served in a   Russian camp after the war. Further claimed that actually he later served in 447 punishers battalion committing war crimes in anti-partisan operations in Bryansk region; but interrogation page document appears quite new and at least not the original. Used to make a case against Alexander Turchinov (though a bit late for fatherhood, and a different wife). Here the story pretty-presented and cheered up, sort of, by pro-Bandera users, part mockery, part extra admiration of the "Bloody Pastor' image.

Analysis

 * IN DEPTH: Why the US is losing the information war - the medium is the message - Joaquin Flores, Fort Russ News, January 7, 2018
 * Meet The Cabal That Are Framing Domestic American Activism As “Russian Influence” and “Fake News” - Adam Carter, Disobedient Media, January 29, 2018
 * Threads Of Establishment Russia Narrative Trace Back To Neocon Think Tanks - Caitlin Johnstone, January 30, 2018
 * The FBI Is Setting Up a Task Force to Monitor Social Media - Chip Gibbons, The Nation, February 1, 2018