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Done Cookin’: Putin’s Chef Moves to Belarus [UPDATE-1]

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. Updates will appear at the bottom of this post. /~Rayne]

If you have a bead on what transpired in Russia from Friday through Saturday, you’re ahead of most folks.

I’ll let VOA’s Steve Herman give a tick-tock:

1:14 p.m. ET / 8:14 p.m. Moscow —

1:16 p.m. ET / 8:16 p.m. Moscow —

1:29 p.m. ET / 8:29 p.m. Moscow —

What the hell happened?

There’s a bit more in the audio:

Dmitri @[email protected]
Prigozhin says it’s over:

“They were going to dismantle PMC Wagner. We came out on 23 June to the March of Justice. In a day, we walked to nearly 200km away from Moscow. In this time, we did not spill a single drop of blood of our fighters. Now, the moment has come when blood may spill. That’s why, understanding the responsibility for spilling Russian blood on one of the sides, we are turning back our convoys and going back to field camps according to the plan.”

Audio: https://t.me/concordgroup_official/1303
1:31 PM · Jun 24, 2023

The recent order for mercenaries to sign a contract with Russia’s defense ministry does appear to be a trigger. It would be tantamount to disbanding Wagner group since its personnel would be directly subordinate to Russia’s Defense Ministry and not Prigozhin and Wagner leadership.

Many, MANY people are still scratching their heads about Belarus’s president Alexander Lukashenko acting as a peace broker.

For my part I thought Lukashenko had flown out of Belarus late last night Belarus time according to reports in social media. Indeed, The New Voice of Ukraine reported he’d left just after midnight and arrived in Turkey at 5:15 a.m. local time after taking a wide detour:

According to the map, the plane tried to bypass Russia’s Krasnodar and Stavropol Krais, flew over the Caspian Sea and then reached the Turkish resort via Georgia.

That’s nearly twice as long as necessary to get to Turkey, which one might do if concerned about missile launchers in or near eastern Ukraine/western Russia.

Why Lukashenko, who appears to be a rather inert figure save for Putin’s puppetmastery, especially since he’d been rumored to be quite sick for weeks?

At 2:20 p.m. ET the advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine tweeted —

Anton Gerashchenko (@[email protected])

Former supporter of Prigozhin about alleged agreement between Prigozhin and Russian authorities:

“Now it’s finally allowed to say the three things he’s been promised. 1. Shoigu’s resignation. 2. Amnesty for “musicians” [Wagner mercenaries]. 3. The possibility to return to Africa. I’m sure that in reality he signed his own death sentence. And Wagner PMC as well, of course.”

In general, many “Wagner war correspondents” are extremely disappointed with the situation.

Some publicly resign. And curse Prigozhin.

2:20 PM · Jun 24, 2023

To be fair, let’s acknowledge before Prigozhin’s feint over the last day either Putin and/or Shoigu wanted to seize control of Wagner group personnel directly to augment what’s left of Russia’s armed forces.

But Prigozhin signing his own death warrant? Hmm — who’d execute it?

In the course of sorting through all the feeds and news articles related to the last 24 hours in Ukraine and Russia, I ran across several social media reports regarding the parties to the negotiations with Prigozhin. It contained a tidbit which at the time the deal was reported didn’t seem important.

Now I realize it may have been critical to understanding why Prigozhin traded away what looked like his leverage by stopping the march to Moscow and reversing Wagner personnel’s direction back to Rostov and the front.

In these reports it was noted Lukashenko was not the actual negotiator but that the other participant was key to the process — Tula’s governor Aleksey Dyumin. Lukashenko may instead have been a guarantor of the deal while Dyumin, a former member of FSB, GRU, presidential guard, and deputy defense minister, handled the negotiations.

Tula Oblast is a province located in Russia’s Central Federal District; its capital city, Tula, is located about 140 miles/224 km south of Moscow.

The M4 highway on which Wagner group personnel convoy worked its way toward Moscow runs right through the heart of Tula Oblast.

One could see why Tula’s governor might have a vested interest in negotiating a de-escalation of tensions since the convoy might begin to run into conflict in the middle of the oblast.

But if negotiations were between Lukashenko, Dyumin, and Prigozhin, why was Lukashenko given top billing with Dyumin’s role rarely mentioned in media?

This article in Meduza from last autumn, focusing on the relationship between Prigozhin and Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov, also spells out their connections to Dyumin:

Meduza’s sources also say that Kadyrov’s and Prigozhin’s criticisms of the army are silently supported by “a group of ambitious young FSO-men” — that is, Putin’s former security officers, the Governor of Tula Alexey Dyumin and the former head of the Yaroslavl region, Dmitry Mironov, who is now an assistant to the President. According to sources close to the President’s Office, Mironov and Dyumin often talk and meet in person. Sources in the Yaroslavl and Tula regions confirm this information.

A source in Tula’s regional administration points out that, even before the war, Evgeny Prigozhin collaborated with the local government – for example, by bringing political consultants to manage elections. The Insider (a media project deemed a “foreign agent” and “undesirable” in Russia) has also written about Dyumin’s connection to Prigozhin.

According to two sources close to the President’s Office, Ramzan Kadyrov got to know both Dyumin and Prigozhin when they were still Putin’s bodyguards. Apparently, Kadyrov was friendly with both of them – and even called Dyumin his “elder brother.”

“FSO men” — members of the Federal Protective Service which includes Putin’s guards. What an interesting common link.

Lukashenko is also connected to Dyumin economically; Belarus and Tula Oblast have swapped commodities since a deal last autumn. It’s possible this is a means to get around sanctions on Russia though it’s not clear from financial reporting.

But Lukashenko has another relationship which hasn’t surfaced in all of today’s reporting. Belarus has been useful to Wagner group:

The last weeks of the 2020 presidential election campaign in Belarus brought an unexpected development: on July 29th, Belarusian authorities arrested 33 Russian citizens who allegedly belonged to the Wagner Group. While Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko used the story of the arrested Wagner operatives for his election campaign, accusing them of planning to interfere with the elections, independent sources revealed that, in fact, the Wagner Group has been using Belarus regularly as a transit country to various operational theaters; thus their presence on Belarusian territory was by no means extraordinary.

Wagner uses Belarus to move to its other operations and programs while it also proved useful as a scapegoat — or willing partner — in the 2020 election.

One of the sources which mentioned Dyumin was the real negotiator also said he was the likely next Russian Defense Minister.

Which means that Dyumin may have had a vested interest in looking useful to Putin, making sure the negotiations included the removal of Sergei Shoigu as Defense Minister, and that Prigozhin would get something out of this show of force demanding Shoigu’s ouster.

Was all of this just theater by a handful of buddies who had shared histories in order to shift one of them into Defense Minister — the guy who’d likely award contracts to mercenaries?

~ ~ ~

One other critical point to keep in mind about Russian  private military companies (PMCs) like Wagner: they don’t technically exist in Russia. They’re not licensed in any way; the government looks the other way allowing weasel words to justify companies having their own security. They’re meant to be a means to do off-the-books work so they aren’t in public or government records.

By being off-the-books, Putin can opt for maximum plausible deniability while keeping head count and subsequent losses out of the public eye, undocumented by Russian Ministry of Defense in casualty reports.

Between this fact and the Defense Ministry’s move to consolidate head count between regular armed forces and PMCs, Putin and/or Russian military’s top brass can hide the mounting Russian casualties in Putin’s misbegotten war on Ukraine.

Prigozhin didn’t spell this out directly, but he did point out that he felt Wagner was going to be broken up. He made this seizure of his PMC public if not on the books, and he punctuated it with the march, ensuring the head count Wagner committed to this statement was in the public’s consciousness.

Which brings up another point: responsible as he was for the Internet Research Agency troll farm which has screwed with the U.S. through online influence operations since 2013, Prigozhin knows how to influence perception and public opinion even with this march on Moscow.

How much of the march was an influence operation?

How much of the subsequent negotiations and the response of other key players was an influence operation?

Who was the intended target of the operation(s), if that’s what Wagner group’s weekend’s march toward Moscow was?

What was the ultimate intent of the operation(s), assuming that’s what this was, apart from the concessions revealed to the public?

~ ~ ~

It will be quite some time before all the details fall into place to explain what really happened.

Ukrainians may be amused by some of it, may have taken advantage of the situation by pressing east along the front during the confusion, but Russian missiles continued to fall on Ukraine. Three died when Kyiv was hit though Ukraine’s air defenses managed to deter 80% of the attempted strikes.

The U.S. intelligence community, though, had information suggesting Prigozhin could attempt a coup two weeks ago.

At least one news report suggested this possibility the last week of May.

Let’s hope Ukraine had been informed and will continue to be informed about another potential coup. With Putin’s grip on power proven weak by Prigozhin, it’s more likely there will be more marches toward Moscow ahead, increasing confusion in Russia about its leadership, and improved opportunities to seize more of eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE-1 — 11:45 A.M. 26-JUN-2023 —

Kevin Rothrock, managing editor at Meduza (English), reported Prigozhin uploaded an audio recording which was more than 11 minutes long some time before 10:30 a.m. ET/5:30 p.m. Moscow time. Rothrock has published both a Russian and an English transcript though both are AI generated.

This is the English transcript:

Today I opened the press service and received thousands of questions about the events. In order to avoid misunderstandings, I want to answer the main of these questions. First. What were the prerequisites for Masha Justice on 06/23/23? PMC “Wagner” is perhaps the most experienced and combat-ready unit in Russia, and possibly in the world. motivated, charged fighters who performed a huge number of tasks in the interests of the Russian Federation and always only in the interests of the Russian Federation, in Africa, in the Arab countries and around the world. Recently, this unit has achieved good results in Ukraine, having completed the most serious tasks.

As a result of the intrigues of ill-conceived decisions, this unit was supposed to cease to exist on July 1, 23. A council of commanders gathered, which brought all the information to the fighters. No one agreed to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense, since everyone knows very well from the current situation of their experience during the NWO that this will lead to a complete loss of combat capability. Experienced fighters, experienced commanders will simply be smeared and will actually go to the meat, where they will not be able to use their combat potential and combat experience. Those fighters who decided that they were ready to move to the Ministry of Defense did. But this is the minimum amount, calculated by a percentage or two. All the arguments that were in order to keep the Wagner PMC safe and sound were used.

But none were implemented. in an attempt to enter into any other structure where we can really be useful. We were categorically against what they want to do. At the same time, the decision to transfer to the Ministry of Defense and understanding our attitude to close the Wagner PMC was made at the most inopportune moments. Nevertheless, we put the equipment on the grass, collected everything that was needed, made an inventory and were going, if the decision was not made, to leave on June 30 in a column to Rostov and publicly hand over the equipment near the headquarters of the NWO. Despite the fact that we did not show any aggression, we were attacked by missiles and immediately after that the helicopters worked. About 33 fighters of PMC “Wagner” were killed. Some were injured.

This prompted the Council of Commanders to immediately decide that we should move out immediately. I made a statement in which I said that we are not going to detect aggression in any way. But if we are hit, we will take it as an attempt to destroy and give an answer. During the entire march, which lasted 24 hours, one of the columns went to Rostov, the other in the direction of Moscow. During the day we covered 780 kilometers. Not a single soldier on earth was killed. We regret that we were forced to strike at air assets, but these assets were dropping bombs and delivering missile strikes. During the day we covered 780 kilometers, short of 200 small kilometers to Moscow. During this time, all military facilities that were along the road were blocked and neutralized. Nobody died, I repeat once again, from those who were on the ground. And this was our task. Among the fighters of the Wagner PMC, several people were wounded and two dead, who joined us, military personnel and the Ministry of Defense, of their own free will. None of the fighters of PMC “Wagner” was forced to this campaign, and everyone knew his ultimate goal.

The purpose of the campaign was to prevent the destruction of the PMC “Wagner” and to bring to justice those persons who, through their unprofessional actions, made a huge number of mistakes during the SVO. It was demanded by the public. All the servicemen who saw us during the march supported us. We did not reach about 200 kilometers to Moscow, having covered 780 kilometers in one and the other direction. We stopped at the moment when the first assault detachment, which had approached 200 kilometers from Moscow, deployed its artillery, reconnoitered the area, and it was obvious that at that moment a lot of blood would be shed. Therefore, we felt that the demonstration of what we were going to do, it is sufficient. And our decision to turn around was two major factors.

The first factor is that we did not want to shed Russian blood. The second factor is that we went to demonstrate our protest, and not to overthrow the government in the country. At this time, Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko extended his hand and offered to find solutions for the further work of Wagner PMC in legal jurisdiction. The columns turned back and went to the field camps. I want to point out that our march of justice showed a lot of the things that we talked about earlier. Serious security problems throughout the country. We blocked all the military units of the airfield that were in our way. In 24 hours, we covered the distance that corresponds to the distance from the launch site of Russian troops on February 24, 22 to Kyiv and from the same point to Uzhgorod.

Therefore, if the action on February 24, 22, at the time of the start of the special operation, was carried out by a unit in terms of the level of training, in terms of the level of moral composure and readiness to perform tasks, like the Wagner PMC, then perhaps the special operation would last a day. It is clear that there were other problems, but we showed the level of organization that the Russian army should correspond to. And when on June 23-24 we walked past Russian cities, civilians met us with the flags of Russia and with the emblems and flags of the Wagner PMC. They were all happy when we came and when we passed by. Many of them still write words of support, and some are disappointed that we stopped, because in the march of justice, in addition to our struggle for existence, they saw support for the fight against bureaucracy and other ailments that exist in our country today.

These are the main questions that I can answer in order to exclude rumors both in Russian social networks and the media and in foreign networks. So, we started our march because of justice. On the way, on the ground, we did not kill a single soldier. In a day, only 200 kilometers did not reach Moscow, they entered and completely took control of the city of Rostov. The civilians were glad to see us. We showed a master class on how February 24, 22 should look like. We did not have the goal of overthrowing the existing regime and the legally elected government, which has been said many times. We turned around in order not to shed the blood of Russian soldiers.

There’s a lot of fuzziness in this with regards to the terms of the Ministry of Defense’s subsumption of private military companies’ personnel (and possibly assets?).

Also a lot of fuzziness in this regarding the agreement Prigozhin negotiated to end his march to Moscow.

Up to now there have been weasel words with regard to the number of Russian armed forces killed/not killed. This transcript offers more specificity though I haven’t seen much information about the aircraft shooting on Wagner personnel during the march.

Assuming this is a legitimate audio recording and not an AI-generated fake from which an AI-generated transcript has been produced, there may be a dig at Shoigu and the Russian military industrial complex with the bit about bureaucracy. Shoigu is not a soldier by training and experience but a bureaucrat.

Another dig likely aimed at Putin: the reception of Wagner group by Russian citizens. Putin gets highly-produced crowds, not spontaneous pop-ups.

Watch this video pulled together by RFE/RFL showing Prigozhin and Wagner personnel leaving Rostov-on-Don late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. That’s in part what Prigozhin made reference to in his audio.

It’s also the real, lingering threat to Putin. The video looks much more like an extremely popular politician leaving a campaign event.

There have been wisecracks made about Russia’s army being the second most powerful army in Russia and the third most powerful in Ukraine, implying Wagner group had more clout than Russia’s armed forces.

Once Wagner has left Russia, Belarus may have a more powerful army than Russia. Food for thought.

Another Report from an Unidentified Russian Operative

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[NB: Check the byline, please and thanks. /~Rayne]

Once again, a MASSIVE CAVEAT in advance of the fifth letter in a series purportedly by an FSB insider; this could be a psyop, it may be complete nonsense, it could be real, or something in between. I have no other authentication available at this time.

You can read the previous letters at these posts:

Letter One: The Pointy End of Attrition’s Stick

Letters Two through Four: Reports from an Unidentified Russian Operative

This most recent one is painful, knowing what we know now about some areas under Russian control in Ukraine.

There’s no rationality to this, no logic whatsoever correlating the actions of Russian military with Putin’s claims Ukraine is one people with Russia.

Or there is a rationality to this, consistent for the man who has either blown up, poisoned, or defenstrated those who are inconvenient.

Thanks to Igor Sushko for his effort translating the Russian to English.

1 🧵My translation of the 5th letter from the #WindofChange inside the FSB to Vladimir Osechkin. Written after the raid of the FSB on 3/11. The part that can be made public is pretty short and definitely please share far & wide. The text is only ~600 words. #FSBletters
2 As always, my comments for clarification are in parenthesis. So, let’s roll:

“Vladimir, good (REDACTED)! The temperature has really risen here, it’s uncomfortably hot. I won’t be able to communicate for a bit here going forward.
3 I hope that we’ll be able to chat normally again in several days. There is a lot that I need to share with you…
4 The questions are being raised by FSO (Federal Protective Service of the Russian Federation, aka Putin’s Praetorian Guard) & DKVR (Russian Dept. of Military Counterintelligence).
5 It is specifically the DKVR that’s mounted its horse and they are searching for “moles” and traitors here (FSB) and at Genstaff (General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) concerning leaks of Russian column movements in Ukraine.
6 Now every structure’s task is to transfer blame to others and make the others’ guilt more visible. Almost all of us here (FSB) are occupied with this right now.
7 The bullseye is on us moreso than others right now because of the utmost hellish circumstances concerning the interpolitical situation in Ukraine:
8 We (the FSB, not #WindofChange specifically) issued reports that at minimum about 2,000 trained civilian in every major city in Ukraine were ready to overthrow Zelensky (President of Ukraine).
9 And that at least 5,000 civilians were prepared to come out with flags against Zelensky on the beck-and-call of Russia.
10 Do you want a laugh? We (FSB) were expected to be the arbitrators for crowning Ukrainian politicians who were supposed to start tearing each other apart competing for the right to be called “aligned with Russia.”
11 We even had established criteria on how to select the best of the best (of the Ukrainian politicians). Of course some concerns were even raised that we may not be able to attract a large number of people (Ukrainian politicians) in Western Ukraine among small tows and Lvov itself.
12 What do we actually have? Berdyansk, Kherson, Mariupol, Kharkiv are the *most* pro-Russian populated areas (and there is no support for Russia even there).
13 A plan call fall apart, a plan can be wrong. A plan can yield a 90% result, even 50%, or 10%. And that would be a total failure. Here – it’s 0.0%.
14 There is also a question: “How did this happen?” This question is actually a setup (disingenuous). Because 0.0% is an estimate derived from many years of work of very serious (top rank) officials.
15 And now it turns out that they are either “agents of the enemy” or are simply incomprehensible (according to FSO / DKVR that are now searching for “moles” within the FSB).
16 But the question doesn’t end there. If they are so bad, then who appointed them and who controlled their work? Turns out – the people of the same quality but one rank higher. And where does this pyramid of responsibility end? At the boss (Putin).
17 And here the wicked games begin: Our dear Александр Васильевич (Alexander Vasilyevich Bortnikov – Director of the entire FSB) can’t not understand how deeply he got caught. (Bortnikov realizes the deep mess he is in now)
18 And our ill-wishers from the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service – equivalent to the CIA) understand everything [and not just from these two orgs].
19 The situation is so bad that there are no boundaries to possible variants (of events about to take place), but something extraordinary will happen.
20 (The insinuation here is rather obvious in Russian: Putin and the Director of the FSB Bortnikov cannot co-exist.)
21 (The letter continues but we cannot post the rest)(END OF TRANSLATION)
22 Full translation in article form available here: http://igorsushko(.)com
23 [tweet promoting substack omitted]
24 Missed a word translating – “2000 trained civilian FIGHTERS in every major city…” Sorry.
25 [tweet containing Youtube music link omitted]

There’s such an emotional and psychic disconnect between the system described above which derived manipulated numbers reported as supporting Putin and Russia in Ukraine, and reality in Ukraine.

~ ~ ~

On March 11 in Melitopol, located in southern Ukraine about 119 miles west of Mariupol, the mayor was seized by Russian forces. A black plastic bag placed over his head, Ivan Fedorov was dragged away by armed men. He’s been accused of terror and allegedly tortured until he “cooperated.”

The town’s citizens have protested and demanded the return of their duly elected mayor.

Translation: “Residents of Melitopol took to the streets of the city. They chant: “Ukraine – Melitopol” and “Where is our mayor?” Russian military warns over a loudspeaker about the ban on rallies.”

A new mayor has been appointed. She sounds like a Trumpist.

On Sunday in Dniprorudne which is 50 miles north of Melitipol, the mayor was kidnapped.

We can expect yet another appointed mayor who will likewise sound like a Trumpy Stepford wife.

And as Guardian’s Isobel Koshiw wrote, there have been executions of civilians along with confiscations (a.k.a. thefts).

This is not an attempt to win the hearts and minds of Ukraine. It’s not a legitimate attempt to return people to the fold.

Putin’s invasion is genocide, and no amount of tepid arms-length explanations about Russia’s toxic internal politics can make this make sense.

If there’s a sixth letter in the future, I don’t think it will be worth the effort if it can’t shed realistic light on how to make this humanitarian disaster stop without compromising the consent of the Ukrainian people.

If there’s any value to this exercise, it’s that we can see connections more clearly between the U.S.’s veer toward fascism and its violent realization by Russia, manifest now in Ukraine.

Reports from an Unidentified Russian Operative

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

A MASSIVE CAVEAT upfront here, as with the first letter attributed to an FSB insider: this could be a psyop, it may be complete balderdash, and this time I have no further attempts to validate the source of the content to follow below.

However these three follow-up letters came through the same manner the first did — a Russian human rights activist Vladimir Osechkin published them to his website. I’m sharing here a translated version by a Ukrainian-born race car driver, Igor Sushko. You’ll note I’ve left Sushko’s interstitial interjections as they appeared in the Twitter threads in which he posted the translations.

Why am I not posting the originals from Osechkin’s site? Because I can’t be certain the site’s traffic is being monitored, or that the site hasn’t been tampered with, including malware and ransomware.

That said, I haven’t yet run across strong opposition to Sushko’s threads or translations. If you’ve seen any objections, please share them in comments.

There have been four letters to date; the first was published late on March 4 and shared on March 5. The second and third are dated March 5 but not translated and shared until March 9 and 10 respectively. The fourth was dated March 9 with its translation shared on March 10.

They’re worth reading as alternatives to U.S. perspective. What about these letters rings true, what doesn’t? Does the perspective here, filtered by a Ukrainian-born translator into English, have any potential affect on democratic nations which support Ukraine?

And what if all of this is an elaborate psyop? What should we take away from it?

~ ~ ~

Letter 2
Tweet thread beginning 10:35 PM March 9, 2022

1 🧵My translation of the 2nd letter in the series from an active FSB analyst to Vladimir Osechkin, Russian human rights activist exiled in France. Written 1 day later on March 5th. Buckle up for a long thread and definitely please share far & wide. The text is over 1000 words.
2 I will add clarification comments inside parenthesis where necessary. So, let’s roll: “Here’s the picture with regards to Putin & FSB.
3 On the one hand, he is supported and respected, but if you slightly dig deeper, it’s a collective feeling for the image, thanks to which FSB has the power that it really has. To serve (in the FSB), there is one unforgettable rule.
4 To most, this rule even appears rather natural and is taken for granted – To criticize Putin’s image is to betray your own interests.
5 In reality, Putin was never a spy. It’s actually an open secret. But here (FSB) our doubts concerning the authority’s competence is equivalent to treason.
6 Who makes the decisions? I can tell from our own work that there is no single decision-making post – intrigues and “people who are trusted by the top” lobby the teams, decisions, etc. In light of this, sometimes facts and even events are “created.”
7 I personally do not have contact with Putin, but if I were to assess him as a target for recruitment as an asset and develop a situational profile, then we have the following as fact:
8 1) Narcissistic disorders, possibly due to childhood complexes, as methods of overcoming them.
9 2) Rejection of family life – no information about his parents, secrecy around his children and his own personal life. This requires psychological compensatory mechanisms in search of close relationships. Such psychotype is prone to “cross dominance” in relationships.
10 3) He tries to surround himself with the type of people whom he respected/feared in his childhood psychotype, over whom he now has power.
11 4) Strongest psychological resistance of personal responsibility for difficult decisions. It is a result of the 1) above, but in turn, this also leads to a mechanism for denying his own guilt/responsibility even to himself.
12 From this, considering 3) above, we can say the following with near absolute certainty: Putin is psychologically incapable of refusing with justification, an offer from his closest circle.
13 But this also leads to the conclusion that he does not guarantee anything to anyone by saying “yes”, because to guarantee is to take responsibility.
14 With high probability I assert that in case of an offer from his closest circle, he will agree with every offer, delegating the control/responsibility to the person making the offer.
15 Psychologically, he will not have any contradictions in “agreeing” to mutually exclusive proposals – “you yourself are to blame if you failed.”
16 Next. The current situation is such that no one anywhere has reliable information on complex issues. The reports that go through me are then corrected by the leadership to be politically correct – more positivity, less negativity.
17 These already rosy reports are then again massaged to be even more rosy – and false. So, everything is very good here – I know this for sure.
18 At the top level of the authorities, several realities exist in parallel and they are all real in their own way. Power, just like money, is an illusion. It exists exclusively due to belief in it. It is an axiom of a theory of control. There is no Russia as a whole picture either.
19 It sure is something that Putin could find himself completely closed off in a “universe” belonging to someone in his close circle – there’s a reason he is afraid to even allow his ministers near him. This is something we are kept in the dark about and I do not have the details.
20 But what I know for sure: Volodin (Chairman of the State Duma of Russia) flew to Cuba prior to the war, and on the day of the invasion he wrote that it’s critical he fly to Nicaragua. No mention of war.
21 The lion’s share of people close to the main Towers sincerely believed that there would be no war. And they understood that such a war would be a trap. This is worth noting.
22 Did Shoigu (Minister of Defense) think that the war will turn out this way? No. He is not a real military man. He fully believed in the picture of the army that he painted Putin.
23 I am personally aware of such facts concerning this fu#&er, who is at the highest level of our military, they’d be too rich to turn into an anecdote (a Russian joke).
24 When for example Generals are demanded to provide rapid reports on victories, and they (chain-of-command) continue to pass on the order (for the report) downstream while screaming & cursing, until finally some Sergeant agrees to make the report in exchange for military leave,
25 after which he takes a video depicting American work in Afghanistan, erases the sound, and hands it off up the chain-of-command.
26 And the recipient up the chain, and so on, until it reaches the tables of the Command, who completely believe the report, and they hand it off to Shoigu (Minister of Defense of Russia), who then hands it off to Putin.
27 There are serious discussions about how Putin is lately absorbed by finding “mystical meanings.” From numerology to the shamans somewhere up north. Can’t say anything concrete – it doesn’t fit into any analysis.
28 But that the Czar is not the Czar is a fact. (Putin is not in charge anymore) He wants to be the Czar, but this is a trap of illusions and a field of object manipulations. Prerequisites are established for this from all perspectives.
29 About the internet – yes, we can shut down the internet. Technically. Can also sew closed your own mouth, in order to stop drinking. Technically, yes. Attempts to shut down (the internet) will be made. The worst is that various departments will compete for greater efficiency.
30 All kidding aside, my superiors sometimes say this in all seriousness: “North Korea lives in this regime (without internet) – and it’s fine.”
31 Anyway, war psychosis is scary – we can screw up a lot of things in this mental state. How this will end is unknown. Look at the big picture: We react in real-time. The law was passed criminalizing those who post “fake info against the military.”
32 Kadyrov reasonably responded that his structures belong to the RosGvardia (National Guard), meaning his members can’t be charged with this law. Another law can be passed (to exclude others).
33 And then one that excludes judges (from this law), then a law for those in the special forces, and then for the tax officials. This is not proper systematic work, but some kind of parody of case law in the United States. No exclusions should be made.
34 Which is why I believe in your actions (Vladimir Osechkin, human rights activist). No, I don’t believe that prison tortures will be reduced as a result of your actions. But the percentage of those who perfectly understand what is going on is rather high.
35 Within our ranks (FSB) as well as within the military. I need points of support so as not to feel like a doomed renegade. If this layer is also lost, that’s it, the lid of the country’s coffin will be hammered shut.
36 Soon everything will change. I am afraid to even think how and when exactly – we’ve entered the impossible state of “as it used to be” but do not fit into the state of “how we’d like it to be.”
37 We are now at a classic fault point in the country – as in (Evgeny) Messner’s “Mutinous War,” which was reworked into “Gerasimov’s Doctrine.”
38 Need any points of support (fulcrum) to maintain sanity even just minimally. And those who’ve already gone off the rails – they don’t care anymore.

~ ~ ~

Letter 3

Tweet thread beginning 3:45 AM March 10, 2022

1 🧵My translation of the 3rd letter in the series from an active FSB analyst to Vladimir Osechkin, Russian human rights activist exiled in France. Dated March 5th. Buckle up for a long thread and definitely please share far & wide. The text is over 1400 words.
2 I will add clarification comments inside parenthesis where necessary. So, let’s roll:
3 “I will start with the big picture. There are people with particular talents in the field of analytics (inside the FSB), who are retained here in the bureau not just for the value they bring, but to ensure that they remain under “control” (of the Russian government).
4 For example, and I am one of them, such people may never return to an ordinary life, the system does not allow for such a shift. “There” (outside the FSB) we are considered dangerous. This is my department’s policy.
5 I am here, and now I definitely understand why we won’t have any more Mercedes or BMWs (in the country), but will have a ton of Ladas. In order (for Russia) to have Mercedes, we must behave according to protocol which is optimized and controlled.
6 Without political decisions and knee-jerk demands of the authorities (that affect an agency like the FSB). This isn’t about “catching up and overtaking,” but about methodical and painstaking work, with a strategy rather than a wishlist. But in Russia this never happens.
7 We have plenty of resources within the FSB to switch to a method of systemic analysis, but nobody fuc$ing wants it. We can meticulously calculate variations, build models, and identify problems.
8 But on a whim, some bastard who is usually not even from our structure – I’m talking about senior officials, politicians and their hangers-on) can suddenly declare that “here (in the department) the mood is too defeatist,
9 and you are casting a shadow on the leadership of some state structure with which we want to avoid conflict.” There is professionalism and there is loyalty.
10 Loyalty is demanded – and is highly valued at critical times to elevate the leadership (within FSB) or to satisfy the “requirements from the very top.”
11 While we work on some pedophile & human trafficking cases, I say from first-hand experience, no one interferes. And we get results. And once we deliver results, then we are assigned to more political cases.
12 Analysts should not have emotions. There are forecast models, there are statistics, there is sociology. “Believe or don’t believe” should not exist (in his line of work). But it exists.
13 And those who are ready to nod and say “We will find a solution and solve the problem” are the ones climbing the ladder. Problems from such an approach are only piling up.
14 Now on to your question – the situation is out of control. Any model has a time horizon in planning with parameters for performance within functional boundaries. Now there is none of this: most input parameters are junk based on political decisions.
15 – reliable data on the military prospects of the operation. There are whole sets of data from various departments and services, and they contradict each other, which means there’s nothing.
16 -a well-developed model of economic management under the current restricted conditions (sanctions)
17 – reliable information with regards to loyalty of the elites in the financial and political sectors.
18 – reliable data on the impending extreme measures to be implemented in Russia.
19 (I POSTED THIS PARTIAL TRANSLATION AS I AM EXHAUSTED AND WANTED TO ENSURE I COMMITTED MYSELF TO POSTING THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE – I WILL KEEP TRANSLATING AND I WILL POST MORE SOON)
20 What we do have:
21 – a constant stream of new data on “emergent” economic problems that “cannot exist”:
22 partial failures in the supply chains of raw materials can stop complex processes, including the production of strategic products (military), the (non) functioning of single-industry towns and industrial agglomerations;
23 – the expected explosive growth of banditry and crime, due to the superposition of several factors including: economic problems, a decrease in the mental stability of the population from stress + war psychosis + compounded nervous state from isolation measures
24 – situational planning of the political sort without assessing the long-term [and even short- and medium-term] prospects for their introduction;
25 – segregation/compartmentalization of workflow and services and departments due to the loss of a unified management system;
26 – the growth of foreign policy threats, including military – there is no guarantee that Japan will not attack the Kuril islands or that Georgia will not attack Ossetia-Abkhazia, Syria and Libya is preparing for attacks against our units);
27 – the complete dysfunction of the former economic model as there is no more stabilization fund, the exchange rate is not stable, and the old system of employment is now impossible in principle.
28 There can’t be any forecasts with such inputs. We have now jumped from anti-crisis management to crisis management. And to be honest, we just entered catastrophic mode.
29 A catastrophe as a condition is characterized by “it will not be as it was, and how it will be, we will not know until it happens.”
30 Paradoxically, the country’s survival under such conditions for some time is only possible because of the autonomy of certain parts of the government. To be blunt, a police chief of a small town knows what he needs rather than adhering to the “universal commands from the center.”
31 Here and now, this and only this can extend the survival of structures and systems, but if we take a horizon of a year or more, then this is the death of the (centralized) government as whole.
32 As I predicted, Nabiullina (Head of the Russian Central Bank) will now be dragged, people around her will be prosecuted.
33 This will pulverize the banking sector into the trash – what will happen with the exchange rate and policy of the Central Bank – I am not an economist by education, don’t even want to think about it without systematic study.
34 The worst option – they will put in place the one who offers to turn on the printing press to “hold the situation.”
35 For the same reason [I am not an economist] I will not assess the prospects of the commodity market, but it has gone off the rails: everything is being bought out, which means the demand is causing crazy swings.
36 As a result, normal logistics are impossible as warehousing and transportation are calculated from the model of optimal average values, when there is the most uniform load to its full potential.
37 And when you need to produce, transport, store, and sell 2-months supply of goods in just 3 days, and then go idle for 2 months – that’s fu#Ked. At the same time, not the best is happening with loans – rates are rising, and access to money is only getting more difficult.
38 Burnout. Personally, I’m already burned out – indifference is seeping in, the desire to bust my ass is gone. It’s impossible to work toward a result with such inputs.
39 You want me to give you “plans for victory” and put on a smart face “according to the law of wartime” – OK, you won. Now that’s what I do. And burnout will be absolute, rampant.
40 Now the internal mobilization of the power resources (riot police, etc.) will begin, and when it is done without a time horizon, it is a catastrophe.
41 All departments are in elevated mode, everyone is looking for enemies and saboteurs, everyone is saving the country from the inside. Those who do not burn out – that’s who we should be afraid of. It will be classic lawlessness and fascism.
42 Many of our people (FSB) also believe that “now it is necessary to be tough with enemies,” and anyone around can become an enemy. This psychosis is happening against the backdrop of the professional deformation of one’s personality. This is a moral shift. Irreversible.
43 The Scariest. If at the top they decide to issue a command of “military expediency” – hell will be here immediately. Military expediency is lawlessness. The right of force. A person is psychologically wired to seek justifications for all his actions.
44 The law is only a tool that sets the boundaries. Because “for the sake of your country” you can shoot out the legs of a suspicious person, and you can kill a person who refuses to submit to a soldier.
45 Military expediency unleashes total freedom for internal justifications. In fact, it is the same revolution when force overthrows the establishment.
46 I have no universal forecasts except for the old one: By May-June we won’t have what to fight with (weapons), whom to fight with (soldiers) and how to support all this. But the turning point (of the war) will be in the coming days. I suspect for the worse.
47 And even if we choose to activate strategic aviation – it will only make it worse for us. Frankly, the United States is allowing us to get sucked into this conflict further. They understand that we are now trapped.
48 Markers we are still monitoring:
49 The West preparing programs that conditionally fall under the category of “oil in exchange for food.” For us. This will mean that the trap has been slammed shut;
50 Sudden changes in personnel in the government bloc, which we will not be notified about in advance to ensure additional control. This will speak of panic governing – a system of abrupt and consequential personnel decisions solely based on emotions;
51 Total nationalization. Personally, unlike many of my colleagues, I prioritize this marker above all others, as after this we will economically turn into Venezuela even without war and sanctions, this will be de-facto pillaging.
52 Military ultimatums from other countries. But we can also make our own ultimatums for now.
53 Desertion by the highest-level military-political representatives of Russia to other countries. We are tracking this nominally, but we do not have a “clean” special service (FSB) after all. It’d take long to explain nor is it very pleasant.
54 Improvement of the economic situation in Russia within the next 3-5 years is impossible in all available scenarios.
55 Although, of course, there could be exceptions: highly developed aliens 👽 who choose to specifically support us, we will learn to cast spells🧙‍♂️; something else from this opera (a Russian expression meaning something from a similar story).
56 And currently unknown is how Asia and the Arab world will react when hunger strikes these regions in the summer – grains will not be exported this year (from Russia).
57 It’s difficult to succinctly summarize such topics, but I hope that at least partially I’ve answered the question. You simply must hamper the torture processes within the prisons – there is no one beside you who can possibly do it.
58 Uncontrolled violence will be such that the bloody arrival of Bolsheviks to power will seem like a light warm-up. I don’t think we will be able to avoid the terrible, but it is worth at least to soften up the hell that is coming.
59 (END OF TRANSLATION)
60 Full translation accessible in article form: http://igorsushko(.)com

~ ~ ~

Letter 4

Tweet thread beginning 3:51 PM March 10, 2022

1 🧵 My translation of the 4th letter in the series from an active FSB analyst to Vladimir Osechkin. Written March 9th. As consequential as the 1st translated letter. Buckle up for a long thread and definitely please share far & wide. The text is over 1200 words.
2 Vladimir, good afternoon!

This is probably the first time that I’ve been able to write to you in the daytime during a weekday – everything is upside down now.
3 Under different circumstance, this information would look like utter nonsense, but right now, I am afraid, this won’t be the end of it.
4 First, we (FSB) are seriously evaluating a version that the current events of war with Ukraine is a war between the US and China, in which the Americans simply set us up and are using us. Now I’ll try to explain succinctly & clearly.
5 (This is the new ‘nonsensical’ working theory that the FSB analysts are being tasked to work on)

A global clash between the USA and China was unavoidable.
6 After the war started in Ukraine [at least here in this correspondence I don’t have to use the term “operation”] the cost of resources has risen globally, especially energy.
7 The main casualty of these events is China and our side (Russia) provided China certain guarantees, which I can personally confirm – that everything will end quickly (invasion of Ukraine). Which is why China has been tolerating the situation. But this was before.
8 The American situation is such that owners of the industry and oil drilling are in essence the same corporations, and that helps with the internal balance:
9 They make money on drilling when oil is expensive, and when it’s cheap – from industrial development. This is a bit blunt, but it provides the necessary insight into their approach. Shales (oil fracking), unlike the classic method (of oil extraction), is easy to stop and start.
10 Now the US will make an agreement with Venezuela and Iran. They can buy out Venezuelan light crude with a crazy discount. And the opening of the Iranian oil (market) will obviously be perceived with hostility by Saudi Arabia and UEA.
11 The Yemeni conflict is also relevant here, and a row of other factors which I will ignore for the sake of simplicity. But it all leads to the fact that the US had already made preparations for these negotiations in advance.
12 The US has basically set a trap for us, almost analogous to the trap set for Iraq in Kuwait, when Saddam Hussein was being convinced that for a “small conflict (incursion)” there will be no response. He entered Kuwait and “Dessert Storm” began. The beginning of the end of Iraq.
13 We were receiving similar signs that the US will not get involved, which has been confirmed from a military perspective.
14 China can absolutely give us a harsh ultimatum to end the war to stabilize the price of oil. If this happens, I don’t want to make predictions – it’d be on the horizon of catastrophic events.
15 Russia’s image is so negative in the eyes of so many countries because of the war, that the US can easily pressure the Europeans to impose sanctions against China in case China decides to maneuver around the current sanctions against Russia (to help Russia).
16 China’s high dependence on exports coupled with its dependence on commodity prices would result in a fatal blow if the cost of commodities goes up because their domestic market will disappear (Chinese population can’t afford the increased price of goods).
17 Not only that, Xi Jing Ping was considering a takeover of Taiwan in autumn – he needs his own small victory to be re-elected for his 3rd term – there’s a colossal internal fight between the elites.
18 Now after the events in Ukraine, the window of opportunity (to take Taiwan) has been closed. This gives the US an opportunity to blackmail Xi and also negotiate with his rivals on favorable terms.
19 In this instance, it is us (Russia) that set this trap for China through our actions (in Ukraine). We won’t be able to admit this out loud, even an assessment of scenarios from current conditions is “not entirely appropriate.”
20 Hence the desire that the secret becomes open: Yes, this is only a working version, but it exists in our structures (in the FSB).
21 Second – the evolution of the current situation.

Now about our other plans, which go beyond any bounds of insanity. Sanctions against Russia have reached a level with no precedent in history. The only thing that Putin is right about – this is essentially equivalent to war.
22 The current approach with sanctions leaves Russia without any chances. Now the matter may not be limited to threatening Europe – the chance of hostilities, albeit of localized nature, can be considered to be historically high.
23 Ukraine is a monstrously large front, there are smaller fronts. For example, if we were talking about Moldova, the military operations would really be limited to several hours. With the Baltics – several days, but there’d be artillery hits first.
24 (WILL CONTINUE TRANSLATING AND WILL PUBLISH IN A BIT. INTERMISSION FOR NOW)
25 Actual threats of conventional rocket strikes against Europe [not bluffs] in the event of further sanctions can no longer be dismissed.
26 Supporters of such an approach, who exist among those with influence on the decision, muse that in a sordid case we will simply be crushed by waiting until an internal implosion and collapse from inside (in Russia).
27 In addition to the rockets, we have the capability to conduct a massive cyberwar – the internet can be shut down (by Russia inside Russia). Such a possibility exists and it’d be difficult (for the West) to respond symmetrically (since Russia won’t have internet anyway).
28 And the external war should reduce the internal tension and redirect the aggression outward. However “should” – doesn’t mean it’ll be so.
29 There’s also a more realistic [but I can’t say good] plans of a massive disinformation campaign that we are prepared for the war and sanctions for years to come: This should pressure the Ukrainians psychologically – “It won’t end quickly, better to surrender” and also the West.
30 I suppose that various government powers (in Russia) could start pushing their own plans (on how to proceed). That will simply lead to even more chaos (in Russia).
31 I won’t talk about the economy – it’s like discussing the nuances of pacifism while being nuclear-bombed.

The terror has strengthened – there are no internal instruments to hold the (economic) situation inside the country.
32 But terror is a complicated and expensive thing – it should become temporary. It’s like holding your breath because the air is poisoned: If you can escape the area, then the action is justified. But if you hold your breath for “an hour” – you saved yourself from poison but…
33 Systemic decisions with a positive outcome do not exist. There is no Ukrainian political power that we could delegate the authority just for the optics.
34 If we present Yanukovich (former President of Ukraine that was Putin’s asset, who dismantled the Ukrainian military pre-2014), it will only expose how bad things really are here. No single strategically important city has been taken in Ukraine.
35 Kherson and Kharkov were considered the most pro-Russian. Pro-Ukrainian protests are not dying down in Kherson despite the presence of our soldiers. In Khrakov things are much worse.
36 Just summarizing the gist without getting into the details.

There is another piece of information that is critical.

The “Plan for Victory” in the FSB is being painted as such:
37 Zelensky will be pressured into signing a fluff peace agreement recognizing Crimea as Russian, and Luhansk- and Donetsk-oblasts will become LDNR. LDNR will be the focus of our negotiators in terms of nuance, etc. But it’s just a distraction.
38 The key clause would be about demilitarization, which would essentially ban Ukrainian intelligence services, and most importantly dismantle their counter-intelligence.
39 And here our people (FSB) already see the prognosis: Over a number of years, it would be possible for us (FSB) with some minimal help from the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence), to carry out a total cleansing of the socio-political field in Ukraine.
40 And after all this, we could install any government in Kiev. With high probability this plan will become dominant for the Kremlin with strategic correction, although the scenario is insane and aggression on other fronts is not being cancelled.
41 In theory, the plan does have potential, but how it will be in practice is unknown. There will be no military victory, only something like this
42 Lots of nuances, but most important – our side will be able to breach such agreements after they’re signed anytime, when there’s strength to turn the tide.
43 Then it won’t be the military but the “black crows” who will be executing the “second phase,” arresting those accused of breaking the agreement from the Ukrainian side.
44 This scenario is not as crazy as the others, but it is completely contingent on the idea that Kiev can actually be pressured in the negotiations.
45 We are now working the Western contacts at the highest levels – looking for countries who will support our position and to put pressure on Zelensky.
46 It could be another bluff, it could be an analogue of Wenck’s army in our current reality. Overall, as I’ve been saying, the level of chaos here is quite high.
47 In economic terms, we are falling and everything is very predictable: the abyss is fervently winking at us. 😉
48 We are limited in our ability to verify all data, but consider it important to disclose this information for the purpose of informing of the existing threats to global security. Нет войне! (No to War!)
49 (END OF TRANSLATION)
50 Full translation in article form here: http://igorsushko(.)com

~ ~ ~

I lean toward thinking this is mostly true, though even if true it’s presented by someone whose work is tightly defined, who is used to working toward an expected outcome if Letter 1 is an accurate assessment of the FSB’s condition. They live in one of the parallel realities they describe in Letter 2, section/tweet 18.

A narrow reality might explain perceptions about the oil market although it doesn’t explain why they don’t acknowledge their personal risk because they live in a Hotel California situation and there can’t be many occupants in that space.

All four letters taken together, I suspect the only way out for Putin is to pin the blame on someone or some department and make a massive example of them. If he uses FSB he will encourage those who can destroy him. If he goes after the military, there are retired military who may not take this well.

It’s a recipe for a lot of radioactive tea, nerve gassed shorts, and inconveniently placed windows.

It would be best for everyone if one of Putin’s leadership cohort chose to fall on their sword to get him out of this mess, but if Putin is perceived as weak in the same way this purported letter writer does, they’re not going to leave Putin at the helm.

This alleged FSB insider still suffers from delusional thinking inside their parallel reality, too — no reformulation of Russian intelligence will give them control over Ukraine’s democracy. A purged and rejuvenated Russian intelligence,  however, might eventually seat a leadership in Russia which looks more like Ukraine’s.

But I don’t recommend anyone hold their breath.

Two things which really must be discussed whether these letters are true, partly true, or not true at all:

— food aid and not just for oil, given the likelihood of massive crop failures ahead which will affect large portions of the world;

— the trap, because there is one though it doesn’t yet appear fully set.

Go ahead, bring it in comments once you’ve finished digesting this.

Putin’s FSB: Failed Straightforwardness and Benevolence

/72 Comments/in /by

[NB: Check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

It’s rather amusing that in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War — the ancient Chinese monograph used globally to teach the fundaments of warfare — spying is addressed in the very last of its 13 chapters.

To conduct successful and effective warfare, intelligence collection and analysis including spying should be a country’s first consideration. A nation’s leader can’t make an informed, reasoned decision  to take any military action let alone commit resources ahead of the possibility of war, without knowing everything possible about the potential opponent as well as knowledge of one’s own state.

Somehow Vladimir Putin neglected this critical lesson, subordinating the critical nature of Russia’s own FSB to his narcissism. He’s learned the hard way — assuming he’s actually getting the truth from anyone in his circle — that the intelligence on which he operated was deeply flawed.

He has no one to blame but himself but he’ll be sure to punish others for his weakness. The director and deputy of FSB have allegedly been taken into custody for questioning.

I actually feel a little sorry for FSB personnel, if the first letter from the FSB insider is true; political conditions didn’t allow anyone to share anything but happy talk of victory based on the narrowest of intelligence, because Putin apparently can’t handle the truth.

From The Art of War:

15. Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.

16. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness.

17. Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports.

Assuming the first FSB letter is true — and the detention of FSB leadership suggests it is — Putin wasn’t able to exercise the necessary benevolence and straightforwardness necessary to obtain candid and complete reports. How can spies and analysts obtain and present the truth when they’re under tight political restrictions to report only what a volatile president wants to hear?

Furthermore, if the president is afraid of his own intelligence community to the point where he ensures they are suffocatingly restrained, he will get out of them nothing useful.

~ ~ ~

Let’s look at the organization of the Russian “coercive apparatus” which has been compartmented to reduce the changes of a coup. Adam Casey, post-doc fellow at Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan, shared a Twitter thread describing this system.

1 What are the prospects for a coup against Putin in Russia? A thread on what we know about coups in other similar regimes and how the Russian coercive apparatus is structured to prevent coups 1/16
2 First of all, the grievances that have motivated coups elsewhere are present in Russia: battlefield setbacks, low morale, economic catastrophe, disgruntled elites harmed by Putin’s actions
3 But Putin has been preparing for the risks posed by a palace or military coup for decades. The Russian coercive apparatus in fact has multiple mechanisms to prevent a coup
4 First, Russia has a large praetorian guard, the Federal Protective Service (Федеральная служба охраны). The FSO is the successor to the KGB 9th Directorate and is responsible for leadership protection and is well armed. Estimates of its size vary widely
5 Second, Putin consolidated his internal security troops under the National Guard (Росгвардия) in 2016. I don’t see the Guard as a coup-proofing measure per se, but more about centralizing the agencies useful for repressing mass protests in Russia
6 Yet by removing the possible use of the regular army for repression at home, Rosgvardia does help reduce some of the motivations for coups. In comparative perspective, we know militaries really dislike being used for domestic repression and it has motivated coups
7 Third, Russia has the FSB. The FSB is not only large, with its own security troops, but it has one key mechanism to prevent a military coup in Russia: the military counterintelligence department (Департамента военной контрразведки ФСБ)
8 The Soviet system had essentially three components to prevent a military coup: 1) party membership for officers/soldiers; 2) political commissars; 3) embedded secret police (‘special departments’). This was coup prevention through the penetration of the army by monitoring agents
9 Contemporary Russia has 1 of those 3 mechanisms. Officers are not generally members of the ruling party (United Russia) and when active duty officers have run for office (like Gen. Kartapolov last year) it was unusual. He also retired his commission
10 Commissars are also absent. There is technically a successor to the main political administration (the org responsible for managing the commissars) but it does not function in the same way as during the USSR)
11 The only major part of the Soviet system present is the military counterintelligence department of the FSB. This department monitors the military. It was strengthened considerably a couple months after Putin came into office. He once described the department as a “mini-FSB”
12 The FSB is much more autonomous than the Soviet KGB (it is not under any central party control), it is also engaged far more in corruption than the Soviet service. Corruption of course was (especially later on) a problem in the KGB, but in the FSB it is more pronounced
13 In short, there are a lot of mechanisms to prevent a coup in Russia. Yet in other ways Russia also doesn’t have a typically ‘coup proofed’ military. His nephew doesn’t run the 1st armored division in Moscow or anything like that. It has a professional officer corps
14 Instead, the Russian military’s loyalty to the system is generally sought through autonomy and insulation from politics, and of course the watchful gaze of the FSB military counterintelligence department.
15 In part for these reasons, I think the most likely scenario for actually ousting Putin is elite defection rather than a coup. It is really hard to coordinate a coup even against a hated dictator, especially with a security apparatus as extensive as Putin’s
16 But it might be more likely for elites to defect from the regime rather than use extensive repression to save Putin. This too is perhaps unlikely, but the costs of defection can be less than the costs of a failed coup (jail, exile, death). /end

There are so many moving parts watching other moving parts it’s a wonder anything constructive has ever been done — and perhaps there hasn’t. Each function must be constantly looking over their shoulder making straight feedback difficult. Benevolence as The Art of War calls it, or the lack thereof, expressed in suspicion inhibits productivity.

When the apparatus spends so much time looking inward, constantly second guessing what the leader wants to hear while working under pressure from kleptocratic forces, it’s irrational to expect lucid, honest intelligence. Straightforwardness in reporting is a casualty.

~ ~ ~

The quality of Russian intelligence is not the only loss; nine Russian generals are reported to have died since the invasion of Ukraine began.

I used the passive voice there because Russia and its predecessor the USSR have an unfortunate history when it comes to losing generals.

Materiel losses continue to mount…

…along with personnel losses.


There can’t be much regular army to call up to replace those killed, injured, or surrendered if Putin is calling for volunteers from elsewhere like Syria.


Wagner Group personnel were detailed as part of a hit squad to decapitate Ukraine’s government, but now there appears to be wider recruitment. Again, this also suggests limited regular army for deployment to Ukraine.


Contractors don’t have the same motivations as regular army; they may not accept getting paid in rubles which makes sanctions even more important to deterring mercenaries. They’re not loyal to a nationalist cause if they’re not Russian, which may make them harder to command and control.

How will the Russian army respond if it feels it’s not only been set up to fail, its efforts potentially undermined by contractors while it suffers for lack of adequate support? We’ve seen enough anecdotes about Russian troops who had inadequate food and water from day one; they may have been given permission to loot. What happens when remaining Russian military leadership feels the weight of  condemnation and ridicule directed at their mission, let alone its futility?

None of this suggests the kind of discipline necessary to prevent a coup.

~ ~ ~

Outside the “coercive apparatus,” the Russian government, and the shuttered social and independent media, the truth about Russia’s illegal and misbegotten invasion of Ukraine has begun to leak through to the public. Protests have made it onto television:

Vladimir Soloviyev, usually one of the Kremlin’s most reliable chief propagandists, had to interrupt guests on his prime time television talk show to stop their criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking during a broadcast on Russia 1, Karen Shakhnazarov, a filmmaker and state pundit, said the conflict in Ukraine risked isolating Russia.

He told Mr Soloviyev: “I have a hard time imagining taking cities such as Kyiv. I can’t imagine how that would look.”

He went on to call for the conflict to be brought to an end, saying: “If this picture starts to transform into an absolute humanitarian disaster, even our close allies like China and India will be forced to distance themselves from us.

This is an interesting sleight of hand. Soloviyev has been sanctioned by the European Union, his Italian villa seized. He stopped the protest against the invasion on his program featured on Russia 1 network, but he could have prevented the content from being broadcast if he really wanted to keep it off the air.

Similarly, a protest by a military officer also leaked through a talk show on Zvezda, the Russian ministry of defense’s network. The officer wanted the deaths of his comrades honored thought the program host asked him to stop his line of commentary. It was another subtle method of telling the public there are many military deaths in Ukraine to be acknowledged by the government and the public.

The invasion began only 17 days ago and it’s already been likened to “Afghanistan, but even worse” on Russian television.

One doesn’t need to be a trained intelligence analyst to understand what this means in a country which does not allow much free speech.

~ ~ ~

In the first chapter of The Art of War it is written, “All warfare is based on deception.”

Deceiving one’s own country about warfare treats them like the enemy. After a while it becomes difficult to know who the enemy really is. We might wonder if Russia’s FSB has come to the same conclusion.

The Pointy End of Attrition’s Stick

/94 Comments/in /by

[NB: check the byline as usual, thanks. /~Rayne]

Russia continued bombing Ukraine this weekend, as you’re no doubt well aware.


On Friday I wrote about a world war of attrition, in which Russia’s economy appears fucked in tandem with Russia’s Aleppo-style attack on Ukrainian cities.

It’s not clear whether a majority of the Russian public knows what’s going on and how badly they will be affected by economic sanctions, thanks to Putin’s stranglehold on independent news media and social media. We’ve seen brave protesters in large numbers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and several other cities but the sentiment of Russians outside urban centers isn’t readily accessible.

While Putin continues his steady genocidal obliteration of Ukraine’s cities, the pointy end of this war of attrition is coming around toward Russia.

~ ~ ~

I want to share and discuss something published on Twitter and shared in Pastebin which may shed light on the how, what, and why of the Russian invasion.

MASSIVE CAVEAT: The letter which follows is believed to be the assessment of a current FSB employee. Christo Grosev, executive director of Bellingcat, sought validation of the letter’s origins.

This is not an assurance on my part of the letter’s source or its contents. Grosev’s investigation, though, allows readers to weight the authenticity of the letter and and its content. Team Bellingcat has been extremely reliable in its open source intelligence. /END CAVEAT

If this letter is a very good psyop — one which Grosev and his FSB contacts couldn’t detect easily — and is instead the work of a Russian active measure intended to influence the west, how would Putin expect it work on us, especially if the best, most effective influence operations contain truth mixed with disinformation?

Which portions of this are more likely to be true than not if it is a psyop? What indicators would validate those portions which might be true?

If this letter and its assessment is wholly true, what are the likely next failures we’ll see in Russia?

1 One of the insiders from the Russian special services, I will publish without edits or censorship, because it’s hell: “I’ll be honest: I almost did not sleep all these days, almost all the time at work, my head is a bit floating, like in a fog. And from overwork sometimes already catching states, as if it’s all not real.
2 Frankly speaking, Pandora’s Box is open – by summer a real horror of world scale will start – global famine is inevitable (Russia and Ukraine were the main grain suppliers in the world, this year’s harvest will be smaller, and logistical problems will bring the disaster to its peak).
3 I cannot tell you what guided the decision to operate, but now all the dogs are methodically brought down on us (the Service). We are scolded for being analytical – this is very much in my line of work, so I will explain what is wrong.
4 We have been under increasing pressure lately to adjust reports to the requirements of management – I once touched on this subject. All these political consultants, politicians and their entourage, influence teams – it’s all been creating chaos. A lot of it.
5 Most importantly, no one knew that there would be such a war, it was hidden from everyone. And here is an example: You are asked (conventionally) to calculate the possibility of human rights in different conditions, including a prison attack by meteorites. You specify the meteorites, and you are told that this is just a reinsurance for calculations, there will be nothing like that. You understand that the report will be only for a tick, but it must be written in a victorious style, so that there would be no questions, saying, why do you have so many problems, did you not work well? In general, you write a report that in the fall of a meteorite, we have everything to eliminate the consequences, we are good, all is well. And you concentrate on the tasks that are real – we do not have enough strength. And then suddenly really throw meteorites and expect that everything will be on your analysis, which were written from the ball.
6 That’s why we have total fuck-ups – I don’t even want to choose another word. There is no defense against sanctions for the same reason: Nabiullina may well be found guilty of negligence (more likely the point men on her team), but what is their fault? No one knew that there would be such a war, so no one was prepared for such sanctions. This is the flip side of secrecy: since no one told anyone, who could have calculated what no one told?
7 Kadyrov’s going off the rails. There was almost a conflict with us, too: the Ukrainians may have planted the lie that we had given up the routes of Kadyrov’s special units in the first days of the operation. They were killed in the most horrific way, they hadn’t even begun to fight yet, and they were simply torn apart in some places. And so it went: the FSB leaked the routes to the Ukrainians. I do not have such information, I will leave 1-2% for the reliability (you can not completely exclude it either).
8 The blitz has failed. It is simply impossible to accomplish the task now: if in the first 1-3 days they had captured Zelensky and government officials, seized all the key buildings in Kiev, let them read the order to surrender – yes, the resistance would have subsided to a minimum. Theoretically. But then what? Even with this ideal scenario, there was an unsolvable problem: with whom to negotiate? If we tear down Zelensky, all right, with whom would we sign agreements? If with Zelensky, then these papers won’t be worth anything after his demolition. OPZJ refused to cooperate: Medvedchuk is a coward, he ran away. There is a second leader there – Boyko, but he refuses to work with us – even his own people won’t understand him. We wanted to bring Tsarev back, but even our pro-Russian ones have turned against us. Should we bring back Yanukovych? How can we do that? If we say that we can’t occupy him, then all our government will be killed 10 minutes after we leave. Occupy? And where are we going to get so many people? Commandant’s office, military police, counterintelligence, guards – even with the minimum resistance from the locals we need 500 thousand or more people. Not counting the supply system. And there is a rule of thumb that by overriding quantity with poor management you only ruin everything. And that, I repeat, would be under an ideal scenario, which does not exist.
9 What about now? We can’t declare a mobilization for two reasons:
10 1) Large-scale mobilization would undermine the situation inside the country: political, economic, social.
11 2) Our logistics are already overstretched today. We will send a much larger contingent, and what will we get? Ukraine is a huge country in terms of territory. And now the level of hatred towards us is off the charts. Our roads simply can’t absorb such supply caravans – everything will come to a standstill. And we will not be able to manage it, because it is chaos.
12 And these two reasons are falling out at the same time, although even one is enough to break everything.
13 As for losses: I do not know how many. Nobody knows. The first two days there was still control, now no one knows what’s going on there. It is possible to lose large units from communication. They may be found, or they may be dispersed because they were attacked. And even their commanders may not know how many are running around, how many have died, how many have been taken prisoner. The death toll is definitely in the thousands. It can be 10 thousand, it can be 5, and it can be only 2. Even at headquarters they don’t know that for sure. But it should be closer to 10. And we are not counting the LNRD corps right now – they have their own count.
14 Now, even if we kill Zelensky and take him prisoner, nothing will change. Chechnya is there by the level of hatred towards us. And now even those who were loyal to us are against it. Because they were planning on above, because we were told that such an option will not happen, unless we are attacked. Because we were told that we must create the most credible threat in order to agree peacefully on the right terms. Because we initially prepared protests inside Ukraine against Zelensky. Without regard to our direct entry. An invasion, to put it simply.
15 Further, civilian losses will go exponentially – and resistance to us will only increase, too. We have already tried to enter the cities with infantry – out of twenty landing groups, only one was a tentative success. Remember the storming of Mosul – that was the rule in all countries, nothing new.
16 To keep it under siege? According to the experience of military conflicts in Europe in recent decades (Serbia is the largest testing ground here), cities can be under siege for years, and even function. It is only a matter of time before humanitarian convoys from Europe get there.
17 We have a conditional deadline of June. Conditional – because in June we have no economy, nothing left. By and large, next week will begin to turn to one side, simply because the situation cannot be in such overdrive. There is no analytics – you can’t calculate the chaos, no one can say anything for sure here. Acting on intuition, and even on emotion – but this is not poker. The stakes will be raised, hoping that suddenly some option will shoot through. The trouble is that we too can now miscalculate and lose everything in one move.
18 Basically, the country has no way out. There is simply no option for a possible victory, and if we lose – that’s it, we’re screwed. Then they decided to kick weak Japan and get a quick win, then it turned out that the army was a disaster. Then they started a war to the bitter end, then they took the Bolsheviks to “re-educate” them in the army – they were outcasts, nobody was interested in them in the masses. And then nobody really knew the Bolsheviks picked up anti-war slogans and they went crazy…
19 On the plus side: we did everything to prevent even a hint of mass sending of the “fine men” to the front line. Send there cons and “socially unreliable”, political (so they don’t muddy the water inside the country) – the morale of the army will simply go down the drain. And the enemy is motivated, motivated monstrously. They know how to fight, they have enough middle-ranking commanders. They have weapons. They have support. We will simply create a precedent for human losses in the world. That’s all.
20 What we fear the most: they are acting on the rule of overlapping an old problem with a new one. This was largely the reason for the start of Donbass in 2014 – it was necessary to draw the attention of Westerners away from the Russian spring in Crimea, so the Donbass crisis was supposed to draw all the attention to itself and become a bargaining chip. But even bigger problems started there. Then they decided to sell Erdogan on the four pipes of South Stream and went into Syria – this was after Suleimani gave deliberately false inputs to solve his problems. As a result, we failed to solve the problem with the Crimea, there are problems with Donbass too, South Stream has shrunk to 2 pipes, and Syria is another headache (if we go out, they will bring down Assad, which will make us look idiots, but it will be hard and useless to sit still).
21 I don’t know who came up with the “Ukrainian blitzkrieg.” If we were given real inputs, we would at the very least point out that the original plan is moot, that we need to double-check a lot of things. A lot of things. Now we are up to our necks in shit. And it’s not clear what to do. “Denazification” and “demilitarization” are not analytical categories, because they have no clearly formed parameters by which to determine the level of accomplishment or non-fulfillment of the assigned task.
22 Now all that remains is to wait for some fucked-up advisor to convince the upper echelons to start a conflict with Europe with a demand to lower some sanctions. Either they lower the sanctions or they go to war. And if they refuse? Now I don’t rule out that then we’ll get into a real international conflict like Hitler did in 1939. And we would then get our Z’s flattened with a swastika.
23 Is there a possibility of a local nuclear strike? Yes. Not for military purposes (it won’t do anything – it’s a defense breakthrough weapon), but to intimidate the rest. At the same time the ground is being prepared to turn everything over to Ukraine – Naryshkin and his SVR are now digging the ground to prove that they secretly created nuclear weapons there. They are hammering on what we have studied and analysed on bones long time ago: the proofs cannot be drawn up on a knee-high, and the availability of specialists and uranium (Ukraine is full of depleted isotope 238) is of no importance.
24 [blank space]
25 “And the fact that their old nuclear power plants can yield weapons-grade plutonium (plants like REB-1000 give it in minimal quantities as a “by-product” of the reaction) – so the Americans have introduced such controls there with the involvement of the IAEA that it is silly to discuss the topic.
26 Do you know what will start in a week? Well, even in two weeks. We’re going to be so caught up that we’re going to miss the hungry ’90s. While the auction was closed, Nabiullina seems to be making normal steps – but it’s like plugging a hole in the dam with a finger. It will still burst, and even stronger. Nothing will be solved in three, five or ten days.
27 Kadyrov doesn’t just hoof it for a reason – they have their own adventures there. He’s created an image of himself as the most powerful and invincible. And if he falls once, he’ll be brought down by his own people. He will no longer be the master of the victorious clan.
28 Let’s move on. Syria. “The guys will hold out, everything will be over in Ukraine – and there in Syria we will reinforce everything by positions again. And now at any moment they can wait there when the contingent runs out of resources – and such a heat will go… Turkey is blocking the straits – airlifting supplies there is like heating an oven with money.
29 Note – all this is happening at the same time, we do not even have time to put it all in one pile. Our situation is like Germany’s in ’43-’44. At the start all at once. Sometimes I am already lost in this overwork, sometimes it seems that everything was a dream, that everything is as it was before.
30 On prisons, by the way, it’s going to get worse. Now they’re going to tighten the screws until they bleed. Everywhere. To be honest, then purely technically it’s the only chance of containing the situation – we’re already in a total mobilization mode. But we can’t stay in such a mode for long, and our timetable is unclear, and it will only get worse. Mobilization always makes management lose its way. And just imagine: you can run a hundred meters in a sprint, but to go into a marathon race and run as hard as you can is bad. Here we are with the Ukrainian question rushed, as on a hundred meters, and fit into a cross-country marathon.
31 And that’s a very, very brief description of what’s going on.
32 The only cynical thing I can add is that I do not believe that VV Putin will press the red button to destroy the whole world.
33 First of all, there is not one person who makes the decision, at least someone will jump out. And there are many people there – there is no “single red button”.
34 Secondly, there are some doubts that everything successfully functions there. Experience shows that the higher the transparency and control, the easier it is to identify deficiencies. And where it is unclear who and how controls, but always bravura reports – everything is always wrong there. I am not sure that the red button system is functioning as declared. Besides, the plutonium charge has to be replaced every 10 years.
35 Thirdly, and most disgusting and sad, I personally do not believe in the willingness to sacrifice a man who does not let his closest representatives and ministers near him, nor the members of the Federation Council. Whether out of fear of coronavirus or attack, it doesn’t matter. If you are afraid to let your most trusted ones near you, how will you dare to destroy yourself and your loved ones inclusive?
36 Ask me anything, but I may not answer for days at a time. We’re in rush mode, and we’re getting more and more tasked.
37 On the whole, our reports are upbeat, but everything goes to hell.
38 Never before has this source Gulagu[.]net swear, wrote briefly and to the point. But now even he…

Legend:

the Service — the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation or FSB, successor counterintelligence and security agency to USSR’s KGB

Nabiullina — Elvira Nabiullina, chair of Bank of Russia (since 2013, before Euromaidan and subsequent incursion into Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine).

Kadyrov — Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic (since 2007); also a member of the Advisory Commission of the State Council of the Russian Federation.

blitz — slang for Blitzkrieg

Medvedchuk — Viktor Medvedchuk, People’s Deputy of Ukraine (since August 2019), chair of pro-Russian entity Ukrainian Choice; an oligarch who calls Putin a “personal friend”; Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter Daryna. Currently under house arrest for “treason and attempted looting of national resources.”

OZPH — Opposition Platform for Life, the party to which Medvedchuk belongs.

Boyko — Yuriy Boyko, former Vice Minister of Ukraine (2012-2014).

Tsarev — Oleg Tsaryov, former People’s Deputy of Ukraine representing pro-Russian Party of Regions; Speaker of the Unity Parliament for Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.

Yanukovych — Viktor Yanukovych, pro-Russian fourth president of Ukraine from 2010 until removal during 2014 Maidan Revolution.

LNRD corps — component of Russian ground forces, believe this is personnel in Luhansk and Donetsk regions (TBD, subject to revision).

storming of Mosul — believed to refer to 2017 Battle of Mosul against ISIS consisting of urban warfare in a dense urban environment. (Two US military “lessons learned” papers on Battle of Mosul: The Mosul Study Group and the Lessons of the Battle of Mosul (longer);  Five Operational Lessons (shorter).)

Donbass — Donbas, the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, Russian occupied since 2014.

Crimea — Peninsular region of southern Ukraine illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Suleimani — Qasem Soleimani, major general of Iran’s army, assassinated in 2020 on order of Donald Trump.

South Stream — Natural gas pipeline project which was to run west from Russia through the Black Sea to Europe, canceled in 2014.

Naryshkin — Sergey Naryshkin, director of the SVR since 2016.

SVR — Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, Russia’s intelligence agency.

depleted isotope 238 — Depleted uranium, the product of processing natural uranium for nuclear power plant fuel and nuclear weapons.

REB-1000 — unclear, likely a reference to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Federation Council — Senat of the Federal Assembly, Russia’s legislative body.

Gulagu(.)net — Human rights NGO focused on prisoners’ rights and prison abuses in Russia, founded by Vladimir Osechkin. (See Oct 2021 article regarding this organization and a key conflict with Russian government.)

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The letter supports other indicators Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a tightly-held secret. There have been anecdotes of conscripts and non-military personnel who were told they were going on an exercise only to find themselves ordered to invade Ukraine. This may have been a key reason why the Russians deployed had no cell phones — not merely for operations security to protect the deployment mission, but to prevent any discussion between different factions of the Russian Federation’s military and government personnel as well as the Russian public.

The author doesn’t appear to know there were supply problems from the start for the deployed personnel though they know the first echelon aren’t the best part of the regular army. The understanding of the difference in passion between the front line Russians and the Ukrainians fighting to preserve their country acknowledges a critical failing in other Russian operations like Chechnya. There’s also recognition that logistics limited the launch and expansion of the invasion, and will play a role in the economic crash to come as military personnel and resources along with commodities will hurt for the loss of ports and equipment.

The tight silos and narrative constraints placed on models the Bank of Russia used as well as the FSB suggests each branch of Russia’s government and military will experience failures earlier rather than later because they have been modeling and operating on flawed and incomplete understandings of their country’s mission.

Imagine if the Bank of Russia and Finance Ministry as well as Energy and Agriculture were tasked with modeling to the same flimsy “prison attack by meteorites” scenario the letter’s author uses as an example. How deeply flawed would their assumptions be? How could their functions integrate with other ministries to mitigate risks to Russia and in an extremely tight timeline with constraints they hadn’t planned on in the given scenario?

“Kadyrov’s going off the rails” suggests increased tensions between the Chechen leader and Russian leadership after what is perceived as a possible betrayal by FSB. The letter writer doesn’t appear to know that the Chechen national guard itself leaked badly ahead of the invasion’s launch because of poor operation security on their part; there’s no inkling the decimation of Chechen forces may have been blamed on FSB by Ukraine (or others) in order to manipulate and fragment the Russian-Chechen relationship.

An invasion driven in no small part by Russian Orthodox faith was already very much at risk if it relied on an ethnic Muslim state to perform its decapitation of a popular democratically-elected Jewish president to obtain control over a majority Ukrainian Orthodox state. The hatred mentioned explains anecdotes of Chechens who’ve switched loyalties (if they had any to Russia) to Ukraine; the annexation of Muslim-majority Crimea may also fuel fighters’ flips.

Yet another challenge not fully addressed is the possibility of a country-wide power vacuum if Zelenskyy were removed from Ukraine’s presidency. Who of any of the candidates mentioned would be up to leading a deeply-angry occupied population? The letter writer acknowledges Russia simply doesn’t have an adequate number of people who can step into governmental roles across Ukraine; at least one mayor in Russia had mentioned this same problem the week the invasion began, so it’s obvious outside FSB an occupation is already problematic.

The discussion of the use of the 2014 Donetsk and Luhansk conflict to mask the annexation of Crimea brings up another question: did Russia not only provide pro-Russian rebel forces with a Buk 9M83 surface-to-air missile launcher, but loosely encourage their sloppiness which shot down civilian aircraft Malaysia Air MH17 in order to draw the west’s attention away from Crimea?

Manufacturing evidence of nuclear weapons production as an ex postfacto casus belli is also acknowledged and likely explains why Chernobyl was such an early target of Russian forces in spite of its location away from Kyiv. An active disinformation campaign has already been noted on the internet to bolster this false claim.

The letter both assures and scares when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons. They could be used but the author doesn’t think Putin will push the button, and further assumes the Russian system will likely bottleneck their use even if approved, and the equipment itself may not be adequate because of implied maintenance lapses. The problem, though, is whether the assumptions in this letter are damaged in the same way the FSB’s assessments were by siloed information.

One surprising issue to arise from this letter is the possible fall of Syria if Russia can’t continue its military action in service to Bashar al-Assad’s continued leadership. Not mentioned in this letter is that Russia deployed jets with missile launch capability to Syria a week or two ahead of the invasion. What drove that deployment?

The one point which is most problematic in this letter is the assumption that “We have a conditional deadline of June. ” No — Russia’s economy has weeks, not months. The speed of the downturn could accelerate if more economic sanctions are brought to bear; the UK hasn’t made much if any genuine effort to constrain the Russian oligarchs which own Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party.

~ ~ ~

Economic attrition has begun its march on Russia. Another caveat on the following tweet and video — the sourcing is seen as credible by other credible sources, and yet we’re three or more degrees away from the origin. It’s still important to note the event documented, and the lack of any published pushback by the company where this took place.

Workers at a factory in Tatarstan stopped work Saturday because their wages weren’t protected from decreases in currency valuation.


Gemont is a subsidiary of a Turkish transnational construction company which appears to compete with firms like KBR, Bechtel, or Fluor Corporation. It’s had a contract to produce and operate a turnkey polyethylene production plant in Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan for Russian chemical company Nizhnekamskneftekhim. Radio Free Europe reported the workers received a higher wage after negotiation, but this may not last.

An additional wrinkle: the workers may also be Turkish, not Russian. Will they be allowed to leave Russia if they are dissatisfied with their workplace and economic conditions as sanctions affect their targets more deeply?

Imagine this same scenario playing out repeatedly across Russia, resulting in longer walk-outs when a higher wage isn’t available to offset decreases in currency valuation, and when paychecks aren’t available at all due to lack of banking and access to cash.

Russia doesn’t have until June at this rate — it has weeks, not months.

Minority Report: Putin’s Programma Destabilizatsii Began Much Earlier

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[NB: Note the byline, thanks. / ~Rayne]

By now you should have read Marcy’s post, The Guardian “Scoop” Would Shift the Timeline and Bureaucracy of the Known 2016 Russian Operation which compares much of The Guardian’s article to known details leading up and into 2016 election.

The primary problem with the material journalists Harding, Borger and Sabbagh obtained is the new timeline it offers as well as its attempt to limit Russian interference in the election to a narrow window. In my opinion there are at least two more critical problem.

The reported description of Trump as “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex” is problematic. This implies with treatment — like ADD medications and psychotherapy — Trump might be able overcome this challenge. But far too many professionals in psychology and psychiatry have already indicated Trump is a narcissist; this is not a treatable mental illness but a personality disorder. There’s limited treatment for this which may or may not work, including talk therapy. Such therapy poses an inherent national security risk.

Should Trump suffer from dementia worsening with age, his disorder will only worsen, his increasing boldness, meanness, and disinhibition making him even more unfit for any public office. He should never have access to the power of the executive office again.

But that’s one reason why the subtle disinformation has been planted. If Putin’s goal is to destabilize the U.S. and make it both ungovernable and unable to focus its collective will, encouraging the U.S.’s right-wing to reseat Trump under the misguided belief he will improve over time serves his purpose.

The second problem with The Guardian’s report and the underlying materials is that it treats the 2016 election interference to seat Trump as discrete, an end in itself, when the truth is that it was a single project inside a larger framework — a program of destabilization which predates Trump’s candidacy for presidency in 2015.

You’ll recall the case of three Russian spies arrested in January 2015, a date which in itself may not suggest there was a longer destabilization program, only spying. Even the role of former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page in the three spies case is not a solid indicator of a longer program.

In the indictment of the spies, however, there was a bit of recorded conversation which has troubled me since I first read it, which I noted in early 2017 when revisiting the three spies case:

“And then Putin even tried to justify that they weren’t even tasked to work, they were sleeper cells in case of martial law,” Victor Podobnyy remarked in a conversation about the Illegals Program sleeper cells. What did he mean by, “in case of martial law”? Is this a continuing concern with regard to any remaining undetected sleeper cells?

Emphasis mine, and on the part which has haunted me.

Was the January 6 insurrection always part of the end goal along with the continuing obstruction by the now thoroughly compromised Republican Party? Was Trump supposed to have invoked the Insurrection Act and martial law with it as part of a longer destabilization program?

That same program, then, would have extended beyond 2015, before the FBI began surveillance of the three spies, before one of the three spies, Evgeny Buryakov, began work in New York City.

The program would have predated the expulsion of the identified Illegals Program sleeper cells in June 2010, if the intent was to use them during civil strife in the U.S. resulting in martial law.

The presence of some of the Illegals Program spies pre-dated Putin’s ascension to Russia’s presidency in December 1999 and his role as Director of the Federal Security Service from 1998-1999, but it’s not clear whether Putin co-opted the program to plan for destabilization, or if the program had always been intended for destabilization but thwarted in 2010.

What’s clear, though, is that the U.S. paid little heed to Putin’s preparedness for conditions in the U.S. leading to martial law, going back at least as far as 2010.

The Illegals Program revealed to the American public the presence of sleeper cells. The general public has assumed all sleeper cells were rolled up in 2010; the use of the program as fiction fodder in cable network series The Americans marginalizes sleeper cells as entertainment. There’s nowhere near the level of concern about white persons with Russian accents as there is about Asian Americans of any heritage, the latter becoming the subject of hate crimes while the presence of Russians and Russian Americans is treated as no big deal. How would Florida’s Sunny Isles municipality function without the presence of Russian and Russian Americans’ money, after all?

This is part of the same umbrella program of destabilization: Putin knows the U.S. has a deep schism which goes to its foundation and he’s placed pressure on it to force it to open more widely. We know this from the documented efforts of Russia’s Internet Research Agency in 2016. Racist Americans have been encouraged to focus on an “Other” with the help of Trump whose repeated remarks about the “China flu.” With this redirection of attention, it’s too easy for any other remaining or new sleeper cells to be created undetected.

Some of these cells may not need to be Russians any longer. They can be loosely organized anarchic groups which are united by their preference for white supremacy and theocratic government. They could include peripherally-connected but influential individuals like David Duke who moved to Russia and lived there for a handful of years, to return to the U.S. to foment more racist tension.

Duke moved to Moscow in 1999 — the same year Putin was FSB Director. Did Duke have an invitation?

Does Putin’s Programma destabilizatsii go back that far?

I won’t even go into the much larger possibility that the umbrella destabilization program was meant to end NATO — which may mean Brexit was not a proof-of-concept linked to the interference in the 2016 election by the use of Cambridge Analytica/SCL, but wholly meant to work hand-in-glove to sustain an attack on NATO.

If this is the case, of course Putin would want to wall off interference into the 2016 election as a discrete, isolated event. Why would NATO continue to tolerate multiple sustained attacks using hybrid warfare on its member nations jointly and separately and not invoke Article 5?

Nothing Happens in a Vacuum: Diplomatic Scuffles and Academic Speeches in Moscow

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In front of a brick building one pre-dawn summer morning, a security guard tackled a man as he walked toward the entrance after exiting a cab. The security guard slammed the man onto the building’s concrete steps, choking him as he restrained the man. The man managed to open the door and gain partial egress into the foyer without use of his hands while the guard continued to choke him.

The guard was Russian.

The man was an American.

The building was the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

The two-man scuffle happened June 6, 2016, exactly one month before Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page would view the EUFA Portugal vs. Wales semi-final match at a Morgan Stanley-hosted event in Moscow.

On June 26, WaPo’s Josh Rogin wrote about increasing harassment of U.S diplomats across Europe by Russia. Episodes included breaking into diplomats’ homes and stalking diplomats’ children. Norm Eisen, U.S. ambassador the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014, called this harassment “gray war.”

On June 29, Rogin wrote about the June 6 scuffle; the American was not identified by name or by employment. He may have been a diplomat or a spy under diplomatic cover; different sources gave different possible explanations.

But the guard who beat up the American was an FSB employee. The American’s shoulder was broken; the severity of his injuries required a flight out of Russia for urgent medical care.

On June 30, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova issued a statement* and claimed WaPo, the U.S. State Department and ‘special services’ had spread false information about the June 6 event. The FSB guard acted when the American didn’t show his ID; further, the “police officer on duty was attacked” and can be seen in surveillance video.

On July 7, Josh Rogin wrote that Congress had begun to investigate the June 6 event, concerned the FSB guard’s actions violated the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations. The Obama administration had refused comment though State Department’s John Kirby said the Russian’s statements were “inaccurate” while administration officials quietly briefed members of Congress about the episode.

This same day Carter Page gave a speech at the New Economic School in Moscow, the day after he attended the EUFA semifinals viewing party, meeting Rosneft’s Directer of Investor Relations Andrey Baranov, Gazprom Investproekt’s CEO Oleg Nagovitsyn, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, and members of the Duma. A video of Page’s speech is uploaded that day to YouTube by a think tank.

On July 8, RT (Russia Today) publishes on YouTube a tightly edited excerpt from a surveillance camera videotape which captured the June 6 scuffle. The FSB guard clearly had the upper hand from the moment he slammed the unnamed diplomat to the concrete.

This same day Carter Page would give a commencement speech at the New Economic School; it, too, is captured on video and uploaded to YouTube, though not until months later.

How odd that it took a little over a month for RT to acquire the video and upload it to their YouTube channel.

How odd that RT never asked Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser, what he might recommend to Trump to prevent future “gray war” events like the June 6 scuffle.

How odd that the “gray war” episodes which concerned Republican members of Congress so much are now inert about the sanctions they placed on Russia, with little concern for the effect on NATO.

“The problem is there have been no consequences for Russia,” said Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who serves as president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. “The administration continues to pursue a false narrative that Russia can be our partner. They clearly don’t want to be our partner, they’ve identified us as an adversary, and we need to prepare for that type of relationship.”

What changed since June 2016 besides the presidency?

* Open with caution; link is to a Russian government site.

 

What Was the Relationship Between FSB and GRU in the DNC Hack, Redux?

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I want to return to last week’s House Intelligence Hearing on Russia (because that fecker Devin Nunes canceled my birthday hearing with James Clapper and John Brennan today), to revisit a question I’ve asked a number of times (in most detail here): what was the relationship between Russia’s FSB and GRU intelligence services in the DNC hack?

The public narrative (laid out in this post) goes like this: Sometime in summer 2015, APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) 29 (associated with FSB, Russia’s top intelligence agency) hacked the DNC along with 1,000 other targets and because DNC ignored FBI’s repeated warnings, remained in their network unnoticed. Then, in March 2016, APT 28 (generally though not universally associated with GRU, Russia’s military intelligence) hacked DNC and John Podesta. According to the public story, GRU oversaw the release (via DC Leaks and Guccifer 2.0) and leaking (to Wikileaks via as-yet unidentified cut-outs) of the stolen documents.

Under the public story, then, FSB did the same kind of thing the US does (for example, with Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012), collecting intelligence on a political campaign, whereas GRU did something new (though under FBI-directed Sabu, we did something similar to Bashar al-Assad in 2012), leaking documents to Wikileaks.

Obama’s sanctions to retaliate for the hack primarily focused on GRU, but did target FSB as well, though without sanctioning any FSB officers by name. And in its initial report on the Russian hack, the government conflated the two separate groups, renaming attack tools previously dubbed Cozy and Fancy Bear the “Grizzly Steppe,” making any detailed discussion of how they worked together more confusing. As I noted, however, the report may have offered more detail about what APT 29 did than what APT 28 did.

Last week’s hearing might have been an opportunity to clarify this relationship had both sides not been interested in partisan posturing. Will Hurd even asked questions that might have elicited more details on how this worked, but Admiral Mike Rogers refused to discuss even the most basic details  of the hacks.

HURD: Thank you, Chairman.

And gentlemen, thank you all for being here. And thank you for your continued service to your country. I’ve learned recently the value of sitting in one place for a long period of time and listening and today I’m has added to that understanding and I’m going to try to ask questions that y’all can answer in this format and are within your areas of expertise. And Director Rogers, my first question to you — the exploit that was used by the Russian’s to penetrate the DNC, was it sophisticated? Was it a zero day exploit? A zero day being some type of — for those that are watching, an exploit that has never been used before?

ROGERS: In an open unclassified forum, I am not going to talk about Russian tactics, techniques or procedures about how they executed their hacks.

HURD: If members of the DNC had not — let me rephrase this, can we talk about spear fishing?

ROGERS: Sure, in general terms, yes sir.

HURD: Spear fishing is when somebody sends an email and they — somebody clicks on something in that email…

ROGERS: Right, the user of things (inaudible) they’re receiving an email either of interest or from a legitimate user, they open it up and they’ll often click if you will on a link — an attachment.

HURD: Was that type of tactic used in the…

ROGERS: Again, I’m not in an unclassified forum just not going to be…

The refusal to discuss the most basic details of this hack — even after the government listed 31 reports describing APT 28 and 29 (and distinguishing between the two) in its updated report on the hacks — is weird, particularly given the level of detail DOJ released on the FSB-related hack of Yahoo. Given that the tactics themselves are not secret (and have been confirmed by FBI, regardless of what information NSA provided), it seems possible that the government is being so skittish about these details because they don’t actually match what we publicly know. Indeed, at least one detail I’ve learned about the documents Guccifer 2.0 leaked undermines the neat GRU-FSB narrative.

Comey did confirm something I’ve been told about the GRU side of the hack: they wanted to be found (whereas the FSB side of the hack had remained undiscovered for months, even in spite of FBI’s repeated efforts to warn DNC).

COMEY: The only thing I’d add is they were unusually loud in their intervention. It’s almost as if they didn’t care that we knew what they were doing or that they wanted us to see what they were doing. It was very noisy, their intrusions in different institutions.

There is mounting evidence that Guccifer 2.0 went to great lengths to implicate Russia in the hack. Confirmation GRU also went out of its way to make noise during the DNC hack may suggest both within and outside of the DNC the second hack wanted to be discovered.

I have previously pointed to a conflict between what Crowdstrike claimed in its report on the DNC hack and what the FBI told FireEye. Crowdstrike basically said the two hacking groups didn’t coordinate at all (which Crowdstrike took as proof of sophistication). Whereas FireEye said they did coordinate (which it took as proof of sophistication and uniqueness of this hack). I understand the truth is closer to the latter. APT 28 largely operated on its own, but at times, when it hit a wall of sorts, it got help from APT 29 (though there may have been some back and forth before APT 29 did share).

All of which brings me to two questions Elise Stefanik asked. First, she asked — casually raising it because it had “been in the news recently” — whether the FSB was collecting intelligence in its hack of Yahoo.

STEFANIK: Thank you. Taking a further step back of what’s been in the news recently, and I’m referring to the Yahoo! hack, the Yahoo! data breech, last week the Department of Justice announced that it was charging hackers with ties to the FSB in the 2014 Yahoo! data breech. Was this hack done to your knowledge for intelligence purposes?

COMEY: I can’t say in this forum.

STEFANIK: Press reporting indicates that Yahoo! hacked targeted journalists, dissidence and government officials. Do you know what the FSB did with the information they obtained?

COMEY: Same answer.

Again, in spite of the great deal of detail in the indictment, Comey refused to answer these obvious questions.

The question is all the more interesting given that the indictment alleges that Alexsey Belan (who was sanctioned along with GRU in December) had access to Yahoo’s network until December 2016, well after these hacks. More interestingly, Belan was “minting” Yahoo account credentials at least as late as May 20, 2016. That’s significant, because one of the first things that led DNC to be convinced Russia was hacking it was when Ali Chalupa, who was then collecting opposition research on Paul Manafort from anti-Russian entities in Ukraine, kept having her Yahoo account hacked in early May. With the ability to mint cookies, the FSB could have accessed her account without generating a Yahoo notice. Chalupa has recently gone public about some, though not all, of the other frightening things that happened to her last summer (she was sharing them privately at the time). So at a time when the FSB could have accomplished its goals unobtrusively, hackers within the DNC network, Guccifer 2.0 outside of it, and stalkers in the DC area were all alerting Chalupa, at least, to their presence.

While it seems increasingly likely the FSB officers indicted for the Yahoo hack (one of whom has been charged with treason in Russia) were operating at least partly on their own, it’s worth noting that overlapping Russian entities had three different ways to access DNC targets.

Note, Dianne Feinstein is the one other person I’m aware of who is fully briefed on the DNC hack and who has mentioned the Yahoo indictment. Like Comey, she was non-committal about whether the Yahoo hack related to the DNC hack.

Today’s charges against hackers and Russian spies for the theft of more than 500 million Yahoo user accounts is the latest evidence of a troubling trend: Russia’s sustained use of cyber warfare for both intelligence gathering and financial crimes. The indictment shows that Russia used these cyberattacks to target U.S. and Russian government officials, Russian journalists and employees of cybersecurity, financial services and commercial entities.

There seems to be a concerted effort to obscure whether the Yahoo hack had any role in the hack of the DNC or other political targets.

Finally, Stefanik asked Comey a question I had myself.

STEFANIK: OK, I understand that. How — how did the administration determine who to sanction as part of the election hacking? How — how familiar with that decision process and how is that determination made?

COMEY: I don’t know. I’m not familiar with the decision process. The FBI is a factual input but I don’t recall and I don’t have any personal knowledge of how the decisions are made about who to sanction.

One place you might go to understand the relationship between GRU and FSB would be to Obama’s sanctions, which described the intelligence targets this way.

  • The Main Intelligence Directorate (a.k.a. Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie) (a.k.a. GRU) is involved in external collection using human intelligence officers and a variety of technical tools, and is designated for tampering, altering, or causing a misappropriation of information with the purpose or effect of interfering with the 2016 U.S. election processes.
  • The Federal Security Service (a.k.a. Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti) (a.k.a FSB) assisted the GRU in conducting the activities described above.

[snip]

  • Sanctioned individuals include Igor Valentinovich Korobov, the current Chief of the GRU; Sergey Aleksandrovich Gizunov, Deputy Chief of the GRU; Igor Olegovich Kostyukov, a First Deputy Chief of the GRU; and Vladimir Stepanovich Alexseyev, also a First Deputy Chief of the GRU.

Remember, by the time Obama released these sanctions, several FSB officers, including Dmitry Dokuchaev (who was named in the Yahoo indictment) had been detained for treason for over three weeks. But the officers named in the sanctions, unlike the private companies and individual hackers, are unlikely to be directly affected by the sanctions.

The sanctions also obscured whether Belan was sanctioned for any role in the DNC hack.

  • Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan engaged in the significant malicious cyber-enabled misappropriation of personal identifiers for private financial gain.  Belan compromised the computer networks of at least three major United States-based e-commerce companies.

Again, all of this suggests that the intelligence community has reason to want to obscure how these various parts fit together, even while publicizing the details of the Yahoo indictment.

Which suggests a big part of the story is about how the public story deviates from the real story the IC is so intent on hiding.

Sanctioning GRU … and FSB

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While I was out and about today, President Obama rolled out his sanctions against Russia to retaliate for the Russian hack of Democrats this year. Effectively, the White House sanctioned two Russian intelligence agencies (GRU — Main Intelligence, and FSB –Federal Security Service), top leaders from one of them, and two named hackers.

In addition to sanctioning GRU, the White House also sanctioned FSB. I find that interesting because (as I laid out here), GRU has always been blamed for the theft of the DNC and John Podesta documents that got leaked to WikiLeaks. While FSB also hacked the DNC, there’s no public indication that it did anything aside from collect information — the kind of hacking the NSA and CIA do all the time (and have done during other countries’ elections). Indeed, as the original Crowdstrike report described, FSB and GRU weren’t coordinating while snooping around the DNC server.

At DNC, COZY BEAR intrusion has been identified going back to summer of 2015, while FANCY BEAR separately breached the network in April 2016. We have identified no collaboration between the two actors, or even an awareness of one by the other. Instead, we observed the two Russian espionage groups compromise the same systems and engage separately in the theft of identical credentials. While you would virtually never see Western intelligence agencies going after the same target without de-confliction for fear of compromising each other’s operations, in Russia this is not an uncommon scenario. “Putin’s Hydra: Inside Russia’s Intelligence Services”, a recent paper from European Council on Foreign Relations, does an excellent job outlining the highly adversarial relationship between Russia’s main intelligence services – Федеральная Служба Безопасности (FSB), the primary domestic intelligence agency but one with also significant external collection and ‘active measures’ remit, Служба Внешней Разведки (SVR), the primary foreign intelligence agency, and the aforementioned GRU. Not only do they have overlapping areas of responsibility, but also rarely share intelligence and even occasionally steal sources from each other and compromise operations. Thus, it is not surprising to see them engage in intrusions against the same victim, even when it may be a waste of resources and lead to the discovery and potential compromise of mutual operations.

Data provided by FireEye to War on the Rocks much later in the year suggested that the DNC hack was the only time both showed up in a server, which it took to mean the opposite of what Crowdstrike had, particularly high degree of coordination.

According to data provided for this article by the private cybersecurity company, FireEye, two separate but coordinated teams under the Kremlin are running the campaign. APT 28, also known as “FancyBear,” has been tied to Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, the Main Intelligence Agency or GRU. APT 29, aka “CozyBear,” has been tied to the Federal Security Service or FSB. Both have been actively targeting the United States. According to FireEye, they have only appeared in the same systems once, which suggests a high level of coordination — a departure from what we have seen and come to expect from Russian intelligence.

The sanctioning materials offers only this explanation for the FSB sanction: “The Federal Security Service (a.k.a. Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti) (a.k.a FSB) assisted the GRU in conducting the activities described above.”

So I’m not sure what to make of the fact that FSB was sanctioned along with GRU. Perhaps it means there was some kind of serial hack, with FSB identifying an opportunity that GRU then implemented — the more extensive coordination that FireEye claims. Perhaps it means the US has decided it’s going to start sanctioning garden variety information collection of the type the US does.

But I do find it an interesting aspect of the sanctions.

The FBI’s Improving Cooperation with FSB

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There were a number of questions about security threats to the Sochi Olympics at the Global Threat hearing the other day. One of them provided Jim Comey the opportunity to say this:

National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen: So we’re very focused on the problem of terrorism in the run-up to the Olympics. I would add that I traveled to Sochi last December and met with Russian security officials. They understand the threat; they are very focused on this and devoting substantial resources. The biggest issue, from my perspective, is not the games themselves, the venues themselves; there is extensive security at those locations — the sites of the events. The greater threat is to softer targets in the greater Sochi area and in the outskirts, beyond Sochi, where there is a substantial potential for a terrorist attack.

Dianne Feinstein: Thank you very much. Mr. Comey, would you tell us what you can about cooperation between Russia and your organization?

FBI Director Jim Comey: Certainly, Senator. The cooperation between the FSB and the FBI in particular has been steadily improving over the last year. We’ve had exchanges at all levels, particularly in connection with Sochi, including me directly to my counterpart at FSB, and I think that we have a good level of cooperation there. It can always improve; we’re looking for ways to improve it, as are they, but this, as Director Olsen said, remains a big focus of the FBI. [my emphasis]

In the middle of a hearing at which James Clapper railed against Edward Snowden, claiming that counterintelligence threats — by which he largely meant Snowden — presented the second biggest threat to the country, the FBI Director stated that cooperation between his agency and the Russian spy agency has been improving for the last year (I’m guessing he means it has been improving since the Boston attack, because relations were quite chilly before that).

Snowden’s the second biggest threat to this country, and yet our relations with Russia, and specifically with Russia’s spy agency, have been steadily improving over the entire period Snowden has had asylum in Russia.

I don’t pretend to know precisely what that means.

At a minimum, it poses real questions about the unsubstantiated and whispered claims that Snowden has provided Russia great intelligence on NSA’s activities. After all, if Russia was busy exploiting Snowden’s secrets, it presumably would present challenges for this budding new cooperation between the FSB and those investigating Snowden’s leaks.

(The Global Threats report actually raises the case of Jeffrey Paul Delisle, a Canadian intelligence officer who gave Russia Five Eyes secrets for five years, as proof the Russians are soliciting more spies as part of its cyberwar efforts.)

There is, of course, another (remote) possibility: that we worked out a deal with Russia, whereby they’d give Snowden asylum and report back what he had taken. I have no reason to believe Snowden has shared secrets (though don’t doubt Putin will take whatever he can get his hands on), and the thought that Russia would agree to tell us what Snowden got is far-fetched. Still, Putin’s enough of a statist he might do it (and might misinform us along the way). While far-fetched, if that were the case, though, it’d give the US several things: the security in knowing Snowden was in the hands of security forces who would prevent any non-state or weaker states from getting to him, who were also limiting what Snowden could say publicly. Some clue about what Snowden had taken. And a political situation which would help US efforts to propagndize against Snowden.

Alternately, one of the things the FBI has learned as it has worked more closely with the FSB is that Snowden hasn’t shared any secrets with Russia (perhaps, as many have suggested, Russia got enough from Delisle that they would rather use Snowden solely to discomfit us).

I don’t know what it means. But I do find it rather implausible that the FBI would continue to expand cooperation with the FSB even as it extracted NSA’s family jewels from Snowden. Yet that’s the story Snowden’s biggest detractors would like you to believe.