Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 98

Jimmy Dore: U.S. Media ADMITS Russia’s Economy Booming Despite Western Sanctions

YouTube link here.

Gilbert Doctorow: Yesterday’s (March 26) remarkable statements to journalists by Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB)

By Gilbert Doctorow, Website, 3/27/24

To the uninitiated, I explain first that the FSB is the successor organization to the Soviet Union’s well-known and much feared KGB. However, the FSB today might be better compared with the FBI in the United States. It deals with domestic criminality of all kinds and with threats to Russian civilians such as terrorism. The agency and its head are rarely in the news.

In this respect, the FSB is less visible both at home and abroad than the Foreign Intelligence Service headed by Sergei Naryshkin, a state figure who spent five years of this millennium as chairman of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of the legislature, and also three years as head of the Presidential Administration. In both positions Naryshkin was very often seen on television performing his duties.

By contrast, Bortnikov spent the past 15 years in his FSB offices out of sight. However, the spectacular attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue has propelled him to center stage and yesterday he met with the Russian state television journalist Pavel Zarubin for an interview and then allowed himself to be questioned further by a gaggle of other journalists on his way out along a corridor. This spontaneous Q&A was later broadcast on the television news. What Bortnikov had to say was extraordinary and bears directly on whether you and I should now be looking for bomb shelters. Regrettably you will not find any of it in the lead stories of today’s mainstream media. The Financial Times, for example, features an account of Xi’s meeting with CEOs of American businesses to mend ties: interesting, but not very relevant if we are at the cusp of WWIII.

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Bortnikov is by definition a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle of advisors. He, Putin and Naryshkin are all roughly the same age. At 72, Bortnikov is just several years older.

I was struck in particular by his poise and prudent, carefully weighed choice of words while setting out where the investigation is heading with transparency and a ‘let the chips fall where they may’ unaffected demeanor.

The journalists were all probing the question of who stood behind the terror attack. Bortnikov told them…and us: standing behind the terror act committed by Islamist extremists are the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine.

Bortnikov said that the preliminary findings indicate that the four perpetrators of the slaughter were headed by car to the border with Ukraine where they were awaited on the other side. He very calmly explained that the involvement of foreign powers is being clarified and that he will say nothing out of pure emotion now but will wait for the facts to be solidly collected before being presented.

Nonetheless, it was entirely newsworthy that he named the United States, Great Britain and Ukraine as the likely puppet masters of the terror act. Let us remember that following the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, the most significant attack on critical civilian infrastructure globally in the last 50 years, Russian officials did not point the finger directly at any country. There was innuendo but no direct accusations such as we heard from Bortnikov yesterday.

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Meanwhile, quite apart from Mr. Bortnikov’s chat with journalists, a lot of new elements to the terror attack at Crocus City Hall were posted yesterday on the Russian state television news and analysis program Sixty Minutes. In particular, we learned that in the last days of February and first couple of days of March two of the four attackers were in Istanbul. The departure and arrival of one at a Moscow airport was recorded on video. We were told which hotels they stayed in, and the selfies and other photos taken by one in Istanbul were put up on the screen. It is still not clear with whom they met in Turkey. However, the timing itself is very important, because the point was made that they returned to Moscow to carry out a terror attack on 8 March, International Women’s Day, a sacred date on the Russian calendar. Had they done so on that day, the effect would have been catastrophic for the presidential elections in Russia one week later.

However, per Sixty Minutes, it was determined that Russian state security on 8 March was too tight for the terrorist mission to succeed and the United States decided to pull the plug on that operation. Note that this is approximately the time when Victoria Nuland tendered her resignation at the State Department (5 March). The possible causal link here surely deserves attention by my peers in the U.S. ‘dissident’ community.

In any case, the scenario which was explored later in the day on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show is that the Ukrainians decided to proceed with the terror attack a week after the Russian presidential elections, when it lost most of its rationale. They did so over the objections of Washington.

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From time to time, readers ask why I pay attention to talk shows like Vladimir Solovyov’s. These skeptics tend to ignore that Solovyov invites not just the usual irresponsible academics and journalists who can amuse the public but also some very serious statesmen who are close to the center of power in Russia and exert influence on the conduct of foreign and domestic policy, including in particular committee chairmen and other key personalities from the State Duma.

So it was last night when we heard from a member of the Committee on Relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States (Former Soviet Union). With reference to the never ending terror attacks on civilians in the Russian border region of Belgorod coming from nearby Kharkiv (Ukraine), he said it is time to raze Kharkov to the ground: issue a warning to the population to get in their cars and head West, then blow it all to bits. Kharkiv is, by the way, Ukraine’s second most populous city after Kiev.

In general, the mood of panelists and of the host Solovyov himself is now changing in a cardinal manner: Ukraine is seen as an enemy state and the sooner it is finished off the better. There was talk last night on the need for missile strikes to flatten the presidential palace in Kiev along with all military and other decision making government centers in the capital.

As we have observed repeatedly over the past two years. President Putin has been a voice for moderation and restraint, resisting actions that might precipitate WWIII. That is clearly coming to an end when his own FSB director names the United States and the UK as planners of the biggest terror attack in Russia in 20 years.

The Bell: Less Capitalism, More State

The Bell, 3/1/24

Putin’s state-of-the-nation address offers Soviet vision of Russia’s future

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state-of-the-nation address Thursday broke records, both for length and the number of “spontaneous” outbreaks of applause (there were 116 of them, according to one count). But the parallels with the Soviet Union don’t end there. Putin spent only a short time talking about the main threat to the economy – Russia’s war in Ukraine – and instead threatened the West, engaged in nuclear saber-rattling, and appeared to promise a far greater role for the state in the Russian economy.

Putin competing with Putin

Unlike last year, Putin radiated confidence in his speech to lawmakers. He is clearly satisfied with the situation at the front, and believes there are enough resources to continue fighting for at least another year. However, opinion polls suggest that the most popular candidate in presidential elections next month would be someone who does not harp on about the war, but who offers solutions to Russia’s domestic problems. So, once he’d got the saber-rattling out of the way, the lion’s share of Putin’s speech was about his plans through 2030.

According to the president, Russia needs more social spending, higher birth rates, longer life expectancy and fewer imports. Of course, that’s basically what the country needed during his previous six-year presidential term. Putin continues to compete with himself.

One of the new initiatives that Putin announced was five “national projects.” Four of these (Family, Youth, Long and Active Life, and Personnel) are related to human capital. Only one, Data Economy, relates directly to the economy. 

Putin’s speech suggested the state intends to act as the major player on the market – not just as a guarantor. He set a target to double capitalization on the Russian stock market by 2030 – not a hugely ambitious goal considering that the S&P 500 Index in the U.S. doubles in value roughly every seven years (and inflation in Russia is much higher than the U.S.).

Putin also pledged billions of dollars of spending. The promised new spending over the next six years comes to around 6 trillion ($66 billion), or about one trillion rubles a year. It may sound like a lot, but in reality it is relatively little – about 0.6% of GDP each year. 

New taxes?

However, even these relatively modest sums must come from somewhere. And Putin hinted that the state could impose new taxes, or raise existing ones, to pay for its additional social spending, as well as to boost productivity and to wean the country off imports.

In particular, Putin suggested raising corporate taxes and hiking income tax for the wealthy. Coincidentally, just three days before the speech, pro-Kremlin media reported the existence of legislation that would raise taxes for high earners. That legislation was not backed by the United Russia party, so it is unlikely to gain traction. It should be seen as a trial balloon. However, the idea of raising income tax to 25% on those who earn above 500 million rubles a year would raise about 1 trillion rubles a year – enough to fund all Putin’s spending promises. 

Russian officials have spent years talking about shifting from Russia’s flat rate 13% income tax to a more progressive system. In 2021, income tax rate was increased to 15% on individuals who earn more 5 million rubles ($55,000) a year. The higher tax applies to all earnings above this threshold. From a bureaucratic point of view, however, implementing a progressive income tax presents several major problems:

Income tax goes to regional governments, which means that raising taxes will increase Russia’s already significant level of regional inequality;Progressive taxation could cause companies to take salaries off the books and pay wages in cash – resulting in an overall fall in revenue;Progressive income tax is first and foremost a tax on the middle class. In modern Russia, a large proportion of the middle class are state employees, particularly security officers and soldiers who the Kremlin would not like to irritate by taking money out of their pocket. They would likely need preferential treatment.

A more realistic alternative to hiking income tax would be a review of corporate income tax, which currently stands at 20%. Indeed, businesses have already suggested they would not be unhappy with higher taxes. Alexander Shokhin, chairman of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, a lobby group, said in December that businesses had no objection to a tax rise if the government stopped levying one-off payments. 

A new elite

Another important takeaway from Putin’s speech was that those pursuing private business have, in effect, been erased from the national elite. Putin put it bluntly. “The word “elite” has discredited itself, especially when applied to those who lined their pockets in the 1990s,” he said. “The real elite are the workers and warriors who serve Russia.”

Putin confirmed what businessmen already understand: the nationalization of assets will continue. Strikingly, up until now, Putin has acted as guarantor of the outcome of the 1990s privatization. And as recently as last year he said there would be no new nationalization. But a creeping reversal is well underway. The former assets of Mikhail Abyzov and Andrey Melnichenko’s Metafrax company reverted to state ownership in 2023, and, so far this year, the state has taken control of leading auto-dealer Rolf, and a large metals holding formerly owned by Yuri Antipov, a 1990s billionaire who was detained on fraud charges.

Putin believes the true elite are the “heroes” of Russia’s armed forces fighting in Ukraine. And he called for military veterans to play a greater role in managing enterprises, teaching and state service. Starting March 1, veterans will be able to sign up for a special program called “Time of Heroes.” Soldiers in Ukraine already enjoy more social benefits than anyone else in Russia. Among the most recent proposals, the Finance Ministry suggested exempting them from interest payments on outstanding loans.

Come again? 

There were also some odd moments in Putin’s speech. The president praised Russians for drinking less, despite the fact that recent official figures showed the first increase in the number of alcoholics in Russia for a decade. He also said the number of people in poverty should be reduced to 7% of the population – even though six years earlier he had set a far more ambitious target. 

Ominously, Putin promised to prevent an economic collapse like the one that occurred in the late Soviet Union. Putin said that military spending accounted for 13% of GDP in the1980s (a figure that tallies with accepted Western estimates). However, Russian military and related expenditure is currently estimated to be running at 10% of GDP.

Why the world should care

State capitalism in Russia is becoming more and more about the state, and less and less about capitalism. State spending, national projects and inflated government outlays are now a much better pathway to wealth than the free market. Nor did Putin much bother with presenting a new vision for the future in his speech. His new six-year plan can be summed up as: everything will be like before, only better. Some of Putin’s planned projects have obvious beneficiaries, such as the construction sector, and the new military elite. But who exactly will be better off, and how exactly this will work, is not at all clear. 

Fred Weir: Russia has long worried about terrorism. The Moscow attack showed it may not be prepared.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 3/25/24

The horrific slaughter at Crocus City Hall, in which gunmen with automatic weapons and explosives killed over 130 people last Friday, has jolted Muscovites out of a sense of complacency that they have enjoyed, despite two years of war in next-door Ukraine.

In an address to Russians the day after the attack, President Vladimir Putin hinted that Ukraine might have been involved in the atrocity.

But he failed to mention a more plausible suspect: the group known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), a sworn enemy of Russia generally associated with the kind of ruthless, face-to-face massacres that occurred in the Moscow concert hall.

The four prime suspects, who fled the scene in a car, were apprehended in Russia’s southwestern Bryansk region, near the borders with Ukraine and Belarus. On Sunday night, the suspects, who are from the former Soviet central Asian state of Tajikistan, were hauled before a Moscow court – all of them very badly beaten – and charged with terrorism, with a trial date set for late May.

While many Russians seem eager to embrace a Ukrainian connection to the attack, it looks like exactly the sort of threat emanating from Afghanistan that Russian security experts have been warning about for years.

The ISIS-K group is dedicated to creating a caliphate in the former Khorasan region of central Asia, which stretches from Iran to Tajikstan and includes parts of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, as well as all of Afghanistan. With Afghanistan once again under Taliban rule, the group has been moving into neighboring former Soviet states and infiltrating Russia through the stream of migrant workers, many of them Tajiks, who keep Russia’s construction and service industries running. Statistics are unreliable, but it’s estimated that over 1 million migrant workers are currently in Russia, many of them in Moscow, and are relatively free to move around.

In early March the United States warned Russia that ISIS was preparing an attack, and specifically mentioned a concert venue. Mr. Putin rejected the warning as a “provocation,” saying “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”

But, in fact, the Russians were already aware of the threat from ISIS. In early March, the Federal Security Service claimed to have raided and killed members of an “ISIS cell” near Moscow that was planning to bomb a Russian synagogue.

Now, experts say, the attack will almost certainly lead to tough security measures and stepped-up surveillance that the city hasn’t seen since a wave of terrorist attacks more than 20 years ago.

“There are so many questions and very few answers” about the Crocus City Hall attack, says Alexei Kondaurov, a former Duma deputy and former KGB major general specializing in anti-terrorist operations. “Any terrorist attack that isn’t caught at the stage of preparation represents a failure of special services. You can speak of solving 99% of crimes, but if one is not prevented, there is no justification. Particularly when the number of casualties is so high.”

A threat from Afghanistan

In the 1990s, Afghanistan under the Taliban was a haven and incubator of various extreme Islamist groups – such as Al Qaeda – who exported Islamist insurgencies to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and beyond.

After NATO occupied Afghanistan and Russia put down its own Islamist rebellion in Chechnya, things stabilized. The mass-scale terrorist attacks that had hit Moscow and other parts of Russia during the Chechen wars receded. But experts say the danger never completely went away.

Russia’s military intervention in Syria in 2015 again pitted Moscow against Islamist groups, and a planeload of Russian tourists was destroyed, reportedly by an ISIS bomb, over Egypt’s Sinai Desert that year, killing 224 people.

“What happened in that Moscow concert hall was a terrible tragedy,” says Grigory Shvedov, editor of Caucasian Knot, an independent online journal that reports on Russia’s mainly Muslim Caucasus region. “But, cynically speaking, it will be seen by some as an effective example and could revive this kind of extremism” within Russia, which has a very large Indigenous Muslim population.

The threat from ISIS-K, which is based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is particularly acute for Moscow, due to the Russian economy’s reliance on migrant labor from central Asia. Afghan ethnic groups include Uzbeks and Tajiks, who may move easily into the neighboring states and then join the stream of migrant workers into Russia, as the four alleged Crocus City Hall attackers appear to have done.

Once in Russia, migrant workers may be subject to police harassment and extortion, but actual security measures that might prevent terrorist attacks are sorely lacking. Mr. Shvedov gives the example of dozens of illegal hostels, whose existence is an open secret in Moscow. Migrants live there without observing the requirement to register with authorities.

“The rules exist, but realities are very different,” he says, alluding to pervasive corruption in the system.

Consequences from Crocus City Hall

Depending on whom Russia officially decides to blame for the calamity, the terrorist attack may further sour relations with the U.S. Alternatively, it may improve them if the two adversaries acknowledge that they have a dangerous common enemy in ISIS.

At home, Russians will likely face the security crackdown that, ironically, they have largely avoided over two years of war in Ukraine. That would mean a further tightening of the screws on speech and make it much harder to use public transportation or gather in large groups. Communities of migrant workers will likely face a real crackdown.

“I expect more repression, inside the country and outside, and a new level of brutality,” says Andrei Soldatov, a Russian security services expert who is presently a senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington. “We’ve seen it before – the tactics once adopted to deal with terrorists became quickly accepted as a new norm to treat political dissent.

“Thus the torture the Russian security services used against four suspects might be used against all sort of people in the country. This is the most direct consequence of the attack.”

Seymour Hersh: Duty to Warn (Excerpt)

Yesterday Seymour Hersh published a piece at his Substack in which he relayed what his US intelligence contacts have told him about the terrorist attack at Crocus Hall outside of Moscow last week. The gist of it is that US intelligence has a duty to warn all nations, including adversaries, of any terrorist attack that US intelligence sources pick up. HIs sources assure that US intelligence performed their duty by warning Russian authorities of the information they had of a possible terror attack:

This American intelligence community passed a warning of a possible attack involving religious extremists from Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan eighteen days in advance of the Moscow concert hall assault that killed at least 137 people and injured more than one hundred. Such a warning invariably comes from intercepts from the National Security Agency and agent reports from the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Americans did their job but the Russian intelligence community, heeding its boss, did not. President Vladimir Putin publicly called the warning “provocative statements” three days before the attack, and the Russian security services ignored it. They bear responsibility, in the view of American intelligence experts, for failing to do what was necessary to protect the concertgoers….

The prophetic alert released by the US Embassy in Moscow on March 7 explained that the embassy “is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings in the next 48 hours.”

By any standard, the American intelligence was riveting. President Putin chose to ignore the warnings, and in its aftermath he has fixated on what he apparently and wrongly believes was an attack that in some way had been orchestrated or known in advance by the Ukrainian government….

The tragic reality, as the Russian leader continues to insist on Ukraine’s involvement, is that he and his cowed bureaucracy failed his people and their children. In many nations, such a catastrophic mistake would have political consequences.

Putin’s Social Promises Look Set to Create New Center of Power

By Andrey Pertsev, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 3/11/24

The social spending commitments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his February state of the nation address indicate that at least one Russian official will get an influential new job. The lucky person will likely be either a deputy prime minister with expanded powers, or a special coordinator. Either way, they’ll get regular access to the president, the opportunity to disburse large sums, and the tools to shape their public image. That will automatically create an alternative center of power within the government.

Putin has not made any campaign pledges ahead of Russia’s presidential elections in March. Instead, he chose to use his state of the nation address to announce five new “national projects,” titled “Personnel,” “Youth of Russia,” “Family,” “Long and Active Life,” and “Data Economy.” Four of them are obviously socially orientated, and will involve subsidized mortgages, social handouts to families, and higher salaries for state employees, as well as building and modernizing schools, universities, and hospitals.

The reasoning is clear: the Kremlin reaps the biggest political dividends from social spending. People always notice when a local school or hospital is renovated. Of course, governors and the ruling United Russia party benefit from these projects, but the main beneficiary is Putin.

The new national projects will also be a boon for all those involved in executing them: above all, the deputy prime minister in charge of social affairs. Currently, this post is held by Tatiana Golikova, but after this month’s presidential election, the government will be required to resign, and there will likely be a reshuffle. To a lesser extent, the deputy prime ministers in charge of industry and construction will also be involved.

There are several possible benefits for these managers. Firstly, by manipulating the tender process, they can choose to award contracts to “friendly” companies with which it suits them to work. Secondly, they will get access to Putin, who will likely be hosting regular meetings on the national projects’ implementation: both in public and behind closed doors. That’s what happened with Russia’s first four national projects when they were launched in 2005.

Close contact with Putin is an extremely valuable resource in the Russian power vertical, bestowing financial and political rewards and often outweighing formal status. The best example is Dmitry Medvedev, who was the first person appointed to oversee the national projects in 2005. Then a deputy prime minister, Medvedev was selected by Putin three years later to succeed him as president.

It will be easy for the person in charge of the national projects to generate good PR for themselves. Indeed, they will be able to position themselves as something of an avuncular figure, doling out cash from a magic money tree. Any problems can be blamed on those in government who are directly responsible for the economy. The post will be an ideal opportunity to promote a personal brand.

Of course, whoever gets the job will have to be careful not to be seen to be dishing out more cash than Putin. But it’s clearly possible to have your own personal brand in Russian politics. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, for example, has fashioned an image for himself of both a professional operator and the sort of guy who can pat a minister on the back while dropping slang into conversation with them. The profile of Sergei Kiriyenko, the Kremlin deputy chief of staff in charge of domestic politics, is something along the lines of “Lord of the Donbas,” inspecting social infrastructure in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine and handing out largesse in the form of pensions and salaries.

Indeed, Kiriyenko is undoubtedly the frontrunner for the post of deputy prime minister overseeing the socially focused national projects. Apart from his close involvement in social issues in occupied Ukraine, he also previously headed the state nuclear corporation Rosatom, which ran a lot of social projects, and had a short stint as prime minister in the 1990s. He also works closely with the government’s social ministries, helped develop the ideological component of Russia’s school curriculum and new “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” university course, and has organized major conferences and forums.

Of course, there are other possible candidates. Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev, who is also the presidential envoy to the Far East, has long overseen social and infrastructure projects in that part of the country. Marat Khusnullin, one of Putin’s favorites, regularly reports to the president on the success of ambitious infrastructure ventures. There’s also Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, who oversees digitization and sport, and enjoys Putin’s favor. However, none of them are as well suited as Kiriyenko.

Either way, the creation of a new deputy prime minister post will cause a major shift in the balance of power within Russia’s bureaucracy. Considering Medevdev’s rise from national projects to the presidency, the appointment will mean the elite starts thinking about a possible successor to Putin. The person who gets the job will inevitably be seen in a new light. In addition, the emergence of a new center of influence in the government will likely generate conflicts with the prime minister, who will be required to find the money.

For many years now, Putin has avoided a major reshuffle among Russia’s top officials in order to head off any speculation about power transitions or successors. Now, however, he has little choice but to empower a major new political player.

Andrew Korybko: Putin Envisages Building A New Veteran-Led Russian Elite

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 1/29/24

President Putin shared his vision of a new veteran-led Russian elite in late January when meeting with ministers and top St. Petersburg officials according to RT’s report about their conversation:

“The Russian head of state previously revealed that some 617,000 service members had been deployed in Ukraine. ‘I met today with students, who put their studies on hold, many of them, [and] went to the warzone,’ Putin remarked. ‘It’s out of these people that we should be forming the country’s elite in the future,’ he added. The Russian head of state described returning troops as those who can be entrusted with the country’s development. ‘Hence, they should be supported [and] assisted.’”

Here are five background briefings about the ways in which the Russian leader has sought to reshape his country’s domestic affairs by way of reforming its elite:

* 1 January 2020: “20 Years Of Putin: His Top Domestic & Foreign Policy Successes”

* 28 October 2020: “President Putin’s 2020 Valdai Club Speech Articulated His Vision of Populist Statism”

* 4 November 2021: “Is Putin’s ‘Healthy/Moderate/Reasonable Conservatism’ Really a New Russian Ideology?”

* 11 June 2022: “President Putin’s Insight Into State Sovereignty Is Instructive For All Countries”

* 3 October 2022: “Putin’s Revolutionary Manifesto Focuses On The Struggle For Democracy Against The Deep State”

He basically wants to facilitate the rise of patriotic conservative-nationalists who’ll prioritize sovereignty and seamlessly channel the people’s will in order to continue safeguarding and modernizing the country.

The special operation, which has gone on for much longer than both sides expected due to each of them underestimating the other as explained here back in July 2022, led to over half a million Russians proving their patriotism by defending Russia’s national interests on the battlefield. These can be summarized as preserving its sovereignty, protecting its conservative–nationalist values, and promoting multipolarity. They’re accordingly the best crop of people to gradually replace the existing elite.

Up until the special operation, Russia’s political and economic elite privileged the West over the Global South, which was done for reasons of convenience and familiarity. Director of the Foreign Policy Planning Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Alexei Drobinin shared his detailed thoughts on “The lessons of history and vision for the future” in August 2022 where he lambasted this class for their “ideological separation from the popular masses” over the centuries. All of that has now changed.

While most existing members of the elite were able to change their stripes by pivoting to the Global South in light of changing circumstances, it’s much better for them all to be replaced by proven patriotic conservative-nationalists who literally put their lives on the line fighting the West. The latter are much more politically reliable and can more easily adapt to everything than the “old guard”, who either fled or were compelled to change their ways in order to keep what they’d obtained thus far in their lives.

The “new guard” is just starting off with their lives, however, and have little to lose but lots to gain by growing within this new elite system. The Russian leader also knows that they haven’t been tainted by a life’s worth of Western-leaning sympathies unlike most of the “old guard”, whose naivete about the West led to them misleading him about its intentions. He’s responsible for his policy choices, but they were arguably influenced by Western-leaning advisors. Here are five background briefings on this:

* 7 July 2022: “Putin Cautioned Russian Strategic Forecasters Against Indulging In Wishful Thinking”

* 8 December 2022: “Merkel’s Admission That Minsk Was Just A Ruse Guarantees A Protracted Conflict”

* 24 December 2022: “Putin Explained Why He Had No Choice But To Protect The Russian Population In Ukraine”

* 26 December 2022: “The Five Ways In Which 2022 Completely Changed Russian Grand Strategy”

* 20 December 2023: “Putin’s Admission Of Naivety About The West Signals His New Stance Towards Peace Talks”

The lesson that he learned is that he can no longer rely on the existing elite after their pre-special operation paradigm of International Relations was comprehensively debunked. That’s not to say that there don’t exist any patriotic conservative-nationalists within the elite whose previously fringe views were proven right by events, nor that some previously Western-leaning ones didn’t sincerely change their stripes, but just that he’s obviously uncomfortable with how few there are within their ranks.

President Putin couldn’t in good conscience hand the country off to whoever his successor may be without knowing that the “new guard” is actively in the process of replacing the “old guard”. To be sure, this is already underway, but he wants to accelerate it as much as possible and that’s why he explicitly said in late January that he envisages a veteran-led elite in the coming future. Just like Moscow wasn’t built in a day, so too will it take time to rebuild the Russian elite, but thankfully they’re off to a solid start.

Oliver Boyd-Barrett: Crocus Hall in Context; The French in Ukraine; Battlefields; Assange; Palestine

Oliver Boyd-Barrett is a critical scholar of media and communication, propaganda, and international news media and film. Subscribe to his Substack, Empire, Communication and NATO Wars, here.

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 3/26/24

Crocus Hall in Context: America is Behind This 100% (Ritter)

Scott Ritter in interview with Judge Napolitano today describes Ukrainian intelligence, especially the military intelligence agency GUR, as a total construct of the CIA and MI6, and that there is nothing that happens in the GUR that is not known by, approved by and coordinated with the CIA or MI6. (I would say much the same about the SBU, Ukraine’s internal intelligence agency, which President Putin today says should be recognized as a terrorist organization).

Essentially, it (i.e the GUR) works for the USA, just as the war with Ukraine is nothing to do with Ukrainian independence but is being fought for US national security interests, which in this case, says Ritter, are directed towards the strategic defeat of Russia. Many times in the recent past (Kirch, Bryansk, Belgorod) and still today the CIA and the GUR are working in support of what Ritter describes as Russian nationalist groups’ efforts to invade Russia. The purpose of the most recent attempts was to disrupt the election of Vladimir Putin.

So this tells us that the CIA is capable of carrying out acts of violence on Russian soil. This of course is relevant to our understanding of last Friday’s events in Moscow’s Crocus Hall concert. We should note that the Russian Security Council secretary Patrushev has said today that Ukrainian Special Forces was behind (a link in a bigger chain of) the Crocus terror attrack. Dima [of the Military Summary channel] says that Ukraine was involved in training (in the Middle East – presumably Turkey) and perhaps in funding and assisting. Any such money would effectively have originated with the USA. We should also take account of statements today by the head of the SBU, presumably with the permission of Zelenskiy, confirming its responsibility for assassinations over the entirety of Russia, including the assassinations of Kiva, Tatarsky, Pritepin and former LPR officials.

The Tajik terrorists responsible for the Crocus Hall attacks, trained in Turkey, were supposed to have launched their attack on March 8 or the 9 because a major nationalist and popular superstar was due to perform there on one of those days (nobody seems sure as to which it was) and there would have been many high-level people present. But security was too tight, so the terrorists backed out and went into hiding until security was reduced.

The US says that it provided intelligence about this planned attack to Russia on March 7, with the specification “concert hall.” They clearly had foreknowledge. Ritter claimed earlier today that instead of that intelligence passing through formal channels as protocol requires, it was only passed on informally, that nobody contacted the Russian government, and Foreign Secretary Lavrov said as much the other day. The FSB Director today clarifies this: the evidence passed by the US to Russia he says was only of a general nature (presumably the same as was made public by the US Embassy on March 7 for the safety of US citizens in Moscow) and that Russia acted upon it.

I note that Anatol Lieven for the Quincy Institute today criticises Russia for not maintaining higher security at Crocus Hall in the light of the intelligence that they had received: but this criticism misses the point, first, that the intelligence, as claimed by Ritter, was not passed through the correct channels (according to Ritter, or was simply very general), and, second, that the dates given for the anticipated attacks turned out to be incorrect (or they were simply postponed from March 8 or 9 to March 20) and, third, since the expectation was that the purpose of the attack was to assassinate some of the important people who would have been present on March 8 or 9, and to disrupt the Russian presidential election, it was not unreasonable for the Russian authorities – assuming they were aware of the US warnings – to relax their guard and assume that the worst of the danger had long passed since the original, public US warning indicated that the danger would have expired by March 10th.

Mercouris identified a copy of the US warning in the Dutch-based, English language and extremely anti-Putin Moscow Times which communicated awareness by the US embassy in Moscow of imminent, extremist (but no mention of ISIS) plans to target large public gatherings in Moscow, including concerts, over the next two days. The warning passed on by the US to Russian authorities was simply the same warning that they had made available publicly. The heavy security presence at the concert of March 8 or 9 at Crocus City Hall did indeed indicate a significant Russia concern for security at that event.

The USA was therefore cognizant of something that it later attributed to ISIS-K, The Afghan offshoot of ISIS. Jihadi terrorists of this stripe conventionally take film or video footage of themselves uttering the Shahada or the oath of allegiance to Islam, raising their right index finger as they do so (in Islam, Ritter explains, the left hand is the hand of evil). The Crocus Hall terrorists used their left hand. They were not authentic jihadists who were prepared to sacrifice their lives; they were mercenaries who accepted money, and who fled from the scene of their crime (which they had perpetrated not only in the holy month of Ramadan but also on the holy day of the week, Friday). And they fled to what Ritter describes as their “safe haven,” their “true North” – Ukraine. Russian authorities were monitoring their communications and overhead them liase with Ukrainian military intelligence to secure safe passage through the border.

The Crocus Hall attack, as Napolitano notes, was an act of war that murdered 140 innocent concert-goers. Who in the USA would have known? Ritter notes that the National Security Acts of 1947 and 1948 authorizes the CIA as the only US agency authorized to carry out covert action (deniable by law, unlike clandestine action). The CIA’s special activities center is tasked with covert action. These are the people who train terrorists to invade Russia, and who carry out sabotage operations deep inside Russia.

The President of the USA is directed by law to be briefed on such activities. He has to sign a presidential finding that gives the CIA authority to proceed. And the finding must be reported to the specifically nominated 8-person congressional group charged with this responsibility. Otherwise, it is a rogue operation. We know that the CIA is engaged in terror preparations in Ukraine. Let there be no doubt, says Ritter, that the President of the USA has given his approval to the CIA to carry out terror attacks in Russia whose ultimate goal is regime change. The CIA will have directed the GUR to carry out terrorism actions inside Russia: whether the CIA knew what exactly the targets were that the GUR was planning to attack, we cannot say.

Did Victoria Nuland have any role in the Crocus Hall acts of terrorism? Ritter considers she may have been broadly aware of plans for terrorist acts but may not have had specific knowledge of the targets. Jeffrey Sachs says that Nuland’s reference to “nasty surprises” a couple of weeks very well might have foreshadowed the events of last Friday. Sachs today tells Napolitano that the US record of lying on such matters in the past means that nothing them USA says about, say, ISIS-K, can be treated as credible, or serious, or as having weight.

British news media today report in unison, notes Alexander Mercouris in his daily broadcast, that the Crocus attack was clearly an ISIS operation and that Putin is merely being devious in trying to implicate Ukraine. Brirtish media claim there is no evidence for this at all – a claim that is actually entirely beyond their competence, although it is manifestly obvous that there is very good reason for suspecting Ukrainian involvement (always remembering that evidence is not the same thing as proof): notably, that the four gunmen were trying to escape into Ukraine and doing so in the context of an armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia in which Ukraine has carried out many attacks on citizens in Russia itself, as admitted by Ukrainian authorities, including in border villages of Russia in the month of March 2024.

The French in Ukraine

Macron has put 2,000 troops on notice for relocation, and would like to send another 18,000. They are being sent to Romania as non-combatants, and will bring the current French force in Romania up from 700 to 2,000+, presumably in readiness for intervention in the event of Russian action in Odessa. Scott Ritter today comments that they will make no difference in the battlefield context of over 1,000 Ukrainian casualties a day. The real goal, in the words of a Polish politician, is to expand NATO’s presence in Ukraine to 60,000 taking in troops from Poland and the Baltic states.

The practicality of all this is extremely dubious: will these forces, assuming they would ever reach 60,000, have sufficient food, training and weapons? Would they be capable of meaningful, coordinated action? And why is 60,000 a magic number? The Ukrainians have fielded many hundreds of thousands of troops and is still losing the war.

So it seems unlikely that the Macron initiative will add up to more than a hill of beans. Russia will take whatever measures that it must in order to destroy these forces, should they attack Russia and, in particular, should they attempt anything that diminishes the usefulness of Russian nuclear deterrence, in which case we may talking nuclear war. Many people think Russia is bluffing; Ritter asserts that the Russians do not bluff.

Could Macron’s initiative have been taken without the consent of other Western leaders? Yes. Macron feels abandoned by the USA, which has now backed off from the provision of further arms to Ukraine (while House Republicans continue to insist on more action on the southern border before they will consent to voting on a new arms package). On the other hand, the USA has not instructed the Europeans to stand down. Perhaps it is content to see Europe slide further into the economic abyss, no longer a remotely competitive player against the USA.

Is the Ukraine war becoming a direct NATO-Russian war? The Russian army is preparing a flotilla that will patrol the Dnieper river from the summer. Ritter speculates that Russia is anticipating the collapse of the Ukrainian army and the taking of Kharkiv and Odessa. Ritter is finishing a book to be titled Ukraine and the End of NATO, and the end of NATO, he says, is the inevitable outcome of a Russian victory in Ukraine.

Battlefields

Dima reports today that Zelenskiy has fired his Secretary of the National Security Council, Danilov, perhaps indicating a struggle for power within Kiev and an intensification of Ukrainian nervousness as the likelihood increases of a fairly imminent Russian offensive to take a major center of population such as Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipro, or Zapporizhzhia.

Kharkiv is today completely without electricity, presumably as a result of recent Russian strikes on two power plants serving the city. In nearby Volchansk fire hydrants are not working as a result of power blackouts. Ukraine, says Dima, would prefer Russia to strike at Kharkiv (rather than other possible targets) and it is not impossible that Ukraine is exaggerating the energy crisis there, making it look worse than it in fact is. Such tactics have been used in the past to distract Russia from re-attacking certain areas. Perhaps Ukraine’s attitude is based on the fact that Russia considers Kharkiv to be a particularly pro-Russian city, that therefore Russia would pull its punches in trying to take it. Dima speculates that one route such a Russian offensive might take in the north east would run from the mainland down through Chuhuiv to Donets.

The Ukrainian mobilization bill is proceeding, with an age of conscription being established as 18.

Assange

The British High Court has delayed the extradition of Assange to the USA until it has received certain assurances from the USA that he will not be subject to the death penalty in the event of further charges, and that the Department of Justice will have the same respect for his 1st Amendment Rights as it does for an American citizen. Napolitano considers that if the latter assurance was actually issued, then the USA would no longer have a case against Assange since journalists are granted immunity for publication of the truth. Napolitano’s interviewee, former British ambassador Craig Murray, noted, however, that the High Court dismissed all the more substantive points of the appeal (e.g. concerning freedom of speech, political extradition, conditions of imprisonment). There is no hope that Assange’s role in the exposure of war crime will any longer have a role in this dispute. And how would any Department of Justice assurances to the Britsh stand up in the event of the future, contrary judgements of US courts?

It is hard to be optimistic. It is possible the European Court of Human Rights might intervene with a stop order, if it could act quickly enough, prior to extradition but it is not certain that the UK would obey this.

If there is good news, it is that Murray speculates that Biden won’t want Assange coming to the USA anyway, ahead of the November election. So this gives Assange some months.

Palestine

The US yesterday abstained from voting for the UNSC resolution (demand) for an immediate (not permanent, but one that would be followed by one that is a lasting and sustainable) ceasefire. All other UNSC members – even Britain – voted for the resolution.

The US abstention offers further evidence to the Global South that the US is not on their side, as the world moves from unipolarity to multipolarity. Joe Biden should understand that he stands to lose the election in Michigan, perhaps also in some other states such as Florida, Minnesota and some other swing states where there are large numbers of Arab-Americans or of the latest, pro-Palestine generation of the former Reform US Jews of whom Crooke spoke yesterday. The US State Department describes the resolution as non-binding, but Murray assures us that it does have legal force even if it does not make punishment (in the form of sanctions, even military action) mandatory.

It requires all parties to do what they must under international law to cease all violence and hostilities against citizens, the holding of hostages, obstruction and barriers to aid etc., and to release all hostages. There is no specific reference in it to Hamas. The resolution thus enfuriates Israel but adds to growing international pressure on Israel, complementing what is likely to be a final decision by the International Court of Justice on the matter of Israeli culpability for genocide. Meantime, Sachs notes that US flows of arms to Israel continue, as do Netanyahu’s assurances of Israeli readiness to launch a ground operation on Rafah, where hundreds of thousands are starving and dying of starvation.

This is the ongoing policy of the Administration of President Joe Biden – the worst behavior since Bill Clinton’s bombing of Yugoslavia for 78 days.

Gilbert Doctorow: Responding to the call for ‘de-centering Russian Studies’: the field was ‘de-centered’ from its earliest days

By Gilbert Doctorow, Website, 2/8/24

A day ago I was invited by the editor of a daily digest on Russian affairs to comment on the President’s Speech to the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) that was delivered on 3 December 2023 at the Association’s annual conference. See

https://www.aseees.org/news-events/aseees-blog-feed/2023-presidents-address-de-centering-russia-challenges-and

As Political Science professor Juliet Johnson of McGill University remarks in her text, at the conference of the ASEEES during the preceding year there were 175 sessions that explicitly addressed the theme of ‘Decolonization’ of Russian studies in some way, accounting for more than 30% of the sessions overall. Either with intent to blaze new trails or just to employ a less emotive term, Johnson has renamed the subject at hand ‘decentering.’ The intent and the content remain the same.

The speaker further notes that one scholar at the year earlier conference said the following from the podium: “The conference program for ASEEES23 may have more occurrences of the word ‘decolonization’ than any other I have read. Take that, Putin!’’ Regrettably that puerile final point brings to mind the blather of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock when in the early months of the Russia-Ukraine war she admonished Germans to give up showers in favor of washing the three strategic body parts, saying ‘Take that, Putin!’  Baerbock is widely acknowledged to be a fool’s fool. The academic cited by Johnson is no better, nor are the recommendations set out by Johnson herself to achieve decolonization or decentering.

But my intent in this brief essay is not to take readers’ time with those pointless recommendations which only would direct research funding and teaching positions to peoples of the Former Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe who carry no weight in the world, never did and so hold little interest for normal people wherever they live. As we say, only their mothers could love them.

Instead I take issue with the speaker’s fundamental notion that Russian studies were ever carried on by academics in the USA or elsewhere who had the slightest empathy for Russia and whose disregard for everyone else in that part of the world was due to some inexplicable Russia-centrism. At their best and most relevant, these studies were conducted by people who were paid to inform U.S. military and diplomatic officials of the real challenges posed by the USSR and then by its successor, the Russian Federation. Period. Everthing else, like studying Russian literature, arts, economy, etc. just came along for the ride.

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My first point to develop is that Russian studies for most of the 20th century were the domain of everybody except Russians. Going back to when I was a graduate student in the 1970s and 80s, the field was almost exclusively taught by immigrants from the MINORITY, borderland peoples of the Russian Empire all of whom had an anti-Russian axe to grind.

Curiously, when new ethnic and nationalities studies were added to university programs in the 1970s and later, it was argued by those who had a vested interest in securing appointments that only blacks could properly teach Black History, or only Ukrainians deserved posts in the newly founded Ukrainian Studies Centers.  No one ever bothered to extend that logic to who was recruited for Russian Studies, perhaps because the field was not expected to generate positive feelings about the nation under the magnifying glass.

Who were the big names when I was at university? I point to my undergrad thesis adviser Richard Pipes at Harvard, a Polish Jew. He would comment on his weekend trips down to Washington to provide advice to Senator Jackson, best known to the broader public as the sponsor of the Jackson-Vanik amendment which aimed to knee-cap the Soviet economy over its emigration policy for Jews. Pipes later served for a little more than a year in Reagan’s National Security Council, where he fought tooth and nail against détente and against arms limitation agreements. Still later he was a key member of the Neocon dominated Committee on the Present Danger.

A few years later, when I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Russian Research Center, now the Davis Center, its director was the Polish Pole Adam Ulam who was no less a Russophobe than his colleague Pipes.

During my years at Columbia doing my doctorate, the lead professors were Leopold Haimson and Marc Raeff, on the one side, which perhaps we may call the ‘side of the angels,’ notwithstanding their religious and ethnic affiliation, but they were outdone by the Russia-hating Polish Pole Zbigniew Brzezinski on the other side. I do not have to explain who he was because since the start of the Ukrainian troubles back in 2014 even the broad public knows about his textbook for reducing Russia to a small box in the European region, Grand Chessboard. What they would not necessarily know is that Brzezinski advocated and even helped to implement the ‘pipeline wars’ against Russia’s hydrocarbon exports that logically and ultimately led to the destruction of Nord Stream I at the orders of Joe Biden. And let us remember that Madeleine Albright, the champion of NATO expansion which has brought us to the present day near-war with Russia was a student and protégé of Brzezinski.

 I do not present these few professors as constituting the majority of specialists in Soviet – Russian affairs. But they were the most important academics of the age. Perhaps a larger percentage of instructors was drawn from native-born WASP and other non-Slavic extraction candidates, but when the study programs at Harvard and Columbia were formed just after WWII, they drew heavily on ex-US intelligence officers whose views of Russia were certain to be less than empathetic.

I have little doubt that that the demographics of Russian studies changed somewhat in the 1990s when American universities generally closed down foreign language programs, including Russian. Consequently Russian speaking immigrants from the Russian Federation were suddenly very welcome. But they brought with them, whatever their personal ethnic or religious label, a loathing for the country they left behind which was very suitable for teaching the courses they were expected to give.

My second point is that the problem with Russian studies goes back to Russia itself, where the most influential historian of the last quarter of the 19th century, Vasily Kliuchevsky, set out views that suited very well the Anglophile Russian self-haters whom we know as Liberals. It was he who emphasized Russian expansionism and wars under the tsars which gave us the notion that when it stopped expanding Russia would implode. This view of Russia, the autocratic and aggressive, was carried forward and abroad by Kizevetter and then Milyukov, and their continuator at Harvard Mikhail Karpovich. It was then was picked up by our very first native born American historian of Russia Geroid Robinson, founder of the Russian Institute at Columbia to which he recruited alumni of the OSS (wartime US intelligence).

The consequence of the foregoing two points is that Russian studies were ever financed in the United States for reasons of the strategic challenges this particular country and people posed. That fact has not changed. And if a policy of ‘decolonization’ or ‘decentering’ is pursued by the association which is the professional torchbearer, they will only marginalize their field and condemn themselves to irrelevancy and unemployment.

Andrew Korybko: Here’s Why Ukraine’s GUR, And Not ISIS-K, Is The Prime Suspect In The Crocus Terrorist Attack

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 3/24/24

Speculation has swirled since Friday night’s terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow over whether ISIS-K was really responsible like the group claimed or if Ukraine’s military-intelligence service GUR orchestrated everything under the cover of its agents posing as members of that group. The Mainstream Media is running with the first scenario while doing their utmost to discredit the second, but recalling the GUR’s terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists shows that it’s not above suspicion.

They were responsible for assassinating Darya Dugina in summer 2022, carrying out the Crimean Bridge truck bomb attack that fall, assassinating Vladlen Tatarsky in spring 2023, and the cross–border terrorist raids by the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps” over the past year. They’re also tied to Crimean Tatar terrorists and ISIS-linked Chechen ones. The CIA is connected with these terrorist acts and groups too after the Washington Post reported last fall that they rebuilt the GUR from the ground-up after 2014.

The modern-day GUR is a product of the CIA, which certainly shared with its protégés everything that it learned while waging the ongoing Hybrid War on Syria, not to mention their terrorist contacts as well. It was through this meticulous cultivation that GUR chief Kirill Budanov obtained his bloodlust that was on full display last spring when he declared that “we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”

For as lethal as the GUR has become over the past decade, it’s still a CIA knockoff, which is why it’s expected to make sloppy mistakes from time to time. This is relevant when it comes to the latest attack after ISIS-K claimed responsibility using an outdated news template, thus suggesting that someone else claimed credit in their name at first but then ISIS-K opportunistically ran with it for clout. Considering its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists, that mysterious actor was arguably the GUR.  

What likely happened is that their agents posed as members of that terrorist group in order to retain plausible deniability in case the planned attack was foiled or the terrorists were caught afterwards. One of the Tajiks who was captured in the car that was racing towards the Ukrainian border claimed that they were recruited by the curators of a radical Telegram channel just a month ago to carry out the attack using already cached arms in exchange for a debit card payment of around $5000 each.

These nationals were probably chosen by the GUR since some of them are predisposed to religious radicalism due to the lingering legacy of Tajikistan’s Islamist-inspired civil war from the 1990s, their country abuts ISIS-K’s Afghan headquarters, and they have visa-free travel privileges to Russia. Accordingly, they were allegedly recruited via a radical Telegram channel, ISIS-K’s involvement doesn’t seem entirely implausible, and they were able to easily enter Russia with minimal scrutiny.

They weren’t radical enough to go out with guns blazing or in a suicide blast like ISIS-K is known for, however, but were still sufficiently sympathetic with that group’s ideology to carry out what they believed was its latest mission in exchange for money. This explains why they fled from the scene of the crime, which is contrary to what any affiliate of that group would ever do, after machine-gunning dozens of people and setting fire to the venue.

Had they reached Ukraine, where the FSB confirmed that they had contacts and President Putin said that “a window was prepared for them…to cross over”, then they’d likely have been killed by the GUR to cover everything up. It shouldn’t be forgotten that this group learned how to conduct terrorism from the CIA, which in turn perfected this practice in Syria over the past 13 years of the Hybrid War that it’s been waging there, but the GUR is still a knockoff and that’s why they made three sloppy mistakes.

In the order that they occurred, their first mistake was recruiting people who weren’t ready to fight to the death at the scene of their forthcoming terrorist attack. This led to the culprits being captured and spilling the beans about how they were recruited in exchange for money, which is one of the signs that ISIS-K wasn’t behind what happened since their members always expect to die as “martyrs”. Accordingly, the fact that this mistake was made suggests that the GUR was desperate to go through with their plans.

The second mistake was that they didn’t tell their proxies to flee to a safe house right after the attack to meet a contact that’ll then help them reach the border later on but who’d actually kill them once they meet in order to cover everything up. This led to them racing towards the Ukrainian border, thus showing everyone that they at the very least felt that they’d find sanctuary there, which made Russia’s claim of Ukrainian involvement much more believable for many skeptical Westerners.

And finally, the last mistake was that the GUR used an outdated news template to claim credit for the attack on behalf of ISIS-K, who they correctly predicted would opportunistically run with it for clout. By doing so, however, they signaled that the group itself didn’t play a role in organizing what happened otherwise their more modern template would have been used instead. Taken together, these three sloppy mistakes discredited the Mainstream Media’s narrative and drew attention to the GUR instead.

Coupled with its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamic groups, which respectively prove that it has the capabilities and intent to carry out the Crocus attack as well as the knowledge required to impersonate extremists online for recruiting purposes, all of this makes the GUR the prime suspect. It learned everything about terrorism from the CIA, but since it’s still a knockoff, it made a series of sloppy mistakes that resulted in incriminating Ukraine instead of lending false credence to the ISIS-K narrative.