The fifth and latest U. S. Senate-led intelligence report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election, titled “Counterintelligence: Threats and Vulnerabilities,” serves as yet another reminder of how much the Kremlin is involved in undermining and destabilizing democracies around the world.
The approach in the Kremlin’s influence textbook is always more or less the same: apply a concerted effort to misinform and twist the facts while backchanneling and getting access through a target’s vulnerabilities by manipulation and compromising material (kompromat). Having the upper hand, the Kremlin then spreads those lies and targets the masses whose opinions it tries to affect for vested interests.
What the report drives home is that this strategy has proven particularly effective in the United States since U.S. President Donald J. Trump entered the political scene.
Trump has falsely claimed that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election (instead of the Kremlin) based on propaganda that originated in Russia, according to the report.
Trump has also retweeted purported calls between his political rival in the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election, former Vice President Joseph Biden, and Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko, thereby giving them credence. Those recordings also likely originated from Russia’s intelligence.
The Senate report also highlights the role played by Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, who is currently serving a 90-month prison sentence for conspiracy and fraud under home arrest.
Ukrainians associate Manafort with the blood spilled under their country’s disgraced former president, Viktor Yanukovych, during the EuroMaidan Revolution. His name is also tied to the infestation of cronies who spread the Kremlin’s propaganda and who stole billions of dollars from Ukraine.
Manafort previously worked for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, which ties his case directly to Ukraine. Many of his affairs involved Konstantin Kilimnik, whose name appears more than 800 times in the report and who is also referred to as a “Russian intelligence officer.”
All of this emphasizes that America is vulnerable to Russian election interference and disinformation for many of the same reasons that Ukraine is: corruption, dishonest politicians and “political consultants” looking to make a quick and easy buck by working the worst political actors around the world.
To understand all of the intricacies of Russia’s concerted efforts to destabilize U.S. elections through Ukraine, read the 966-page report in full. It is an eye-opening document.
Its overarching lesson, however, is that the Kremlin remains a constant and very serious threat to global democracy as it kills, undermines, manipulates, and exploits. We have witnessed this most vividly in Georgia in 2008, Ukraine since 2014, and now in Belarus since two weeks ago.
There is perhaps no other country that knows the Kremlin’s strategies better than Ukraine — which could explain why the word “Ukraine” pops up more than 300 times in the report. Ukraine has to deal with both military and information threats from Russia on a daily basis in a war that has directly taken almost 15,000 lives and displaced more than 1.5 million Ukrainians.
America should keep that in mind.
