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☆ Wagner boss' reported efforts to sell out Russia's army are a serious threat to Putin's leadership, expert says. 'This was treason.'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

"Essentially this poses a real serious challenge to Putin's leadership in the sense that he has to act," Galeotti added. Galeotti said the alleged actions, which Prigozhin has denied, pose a threat to Putin's leadership. The report of Prigozhin's offer came after months of escalating feuds between the Wagner leader and Russia's military brass. "If he could have delivered Bakhmut while the Russian military was looking assailed elsewhere — in part precisely because of the information that he provided, but still — he would've looked particularly useful to the boss," he said. Despite rising tensions between Prigozhin's and Russia's traditional military leadership, Putin has yet to publicly intervene.

☆ 'Loud mouth' Prigozhin's public feuding with Russia's military leaders is an effort to blame the Kremlin for Wagner's failures in Bakhmut, military expert says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Erin Snodgrass | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russia's military brass have been locked in a public feud for monthsMeanwhile, Prigozhin's Wagner Group troops have sustained significant losses in Bakhmut. For months, Wagner troops have borne the brunt of the attritional fighting in Bakhmut as the frontlines grinded to a brutal stalemate. The White House in February said Wagner troops had suffered 30,000 casualties since the war began in February 2022. A mural depicting mercenaries of Russia's Wagner Group that reads: "Wagner Group - Russian knights." "I think they probably hate [Prigozhin] because he's such a loud mouth," Hodges said of Russia's defense leaders.

☆ CIA launches video to recruit Russian spies
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Alex Marquardt | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

The CIA first posted the video on Telegram, which ends with instructions on how to get in touch with the CIA anonymously and securely. The video is also being posted to its other social media platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. It appeals to their sense of patriotism and plays on Russian culture, quoting lines from Leo Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. The emotional two-minute video shows different Russians going about their lives, appearing to contemplate major decisions. Monday’s video mirrors a more blunt outreach on social media by the CIA a year ago, two months into the war in Ukraine.

☆ Leaked details of Wagner boss Prigozhin's dealings suggest he was ready to throw Russia's war 'under the bus' just to win a battle, Russia expert says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Sinéad Baker | Jake Epstein | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

The Wagner Group has frequently feuded with Russia's military leadership over its war in Ukraine. A new report suggests the group leader took it farther than previously known, offering to give Ukraine Russian troop locations. The report indicates that Yevgeny Prigozhin was ready to derail Russia's war for his own aims, an expert told Insider. And according to a new report, amid these tensions, Prigozhin attempted derail Russia's battlefield operations in a major way. Ukrainian soldiers walk in the position close to Bakhmut, Ukraine, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023.

☆ Special counsel issues report criticizing FBI for launching Trump-Russia investigation
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Ken Dilanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

The special counsel who spent four years investigating the Trump-Russia probe accused the FBI of acting negligently by opening the investigation based on vague and insufficient information in a sweeping 300-page report made public Monday. The FBI responded to the report, indicating that the missteps identified by Durham have already been addressed. Durham's report examines in painstaking detail various aspects of the now infamous FBI investigation code-named "Crossfire Hurricane," which led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Durham's investigation found that at the time, neither the FBI nor CIA had any intelligence suggesting an improper relationship between Trump and Russia. Durham appears to suggest that the intelligence information should have given the FBI pause in its pursuit of allegations involving the Trump campaign.

☆ Russian security agents have been using a secret network of corrupted computers to spy on NATO for decades, but the US just busted it open, feds say
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Jake Epstein | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

US authorities have busted open a secret computer network run by Russian security agents. FBI agents have neutralized what the Justice Department called "sophisticated malware." "Globally, the FSB has used Snake to collect sensitive intelligence from high-priority targets, such as government networks, research facilities, and journalists." Director of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov attends a meeting of the service's collegium in Moscow, Russia, February 28, 2023. Top Justice Department officials praised the FBI's ability to neutralize the FSB's network.

☆ Russia's war on Ukraine latest: Wagner group appears to do U-turn on withdrawal
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-07 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

CONFLICT* Russian forces are evacuating residents from the town that serves the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainian military said. * Russian missiles targeted an industrial site in the Mykolaiv region of southern Ukraine, while Ukrainian and Russian media reported multiple explosions across Russian-occupied Crimea. * Russia's defence ministry said its air defences had detected and destroyed 22 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea overnight. * Air raid alerts blared for several hours overnight into early Sunday over roughly two-thirds of Ukraine, with officials saying air defence systems shot down a number of drones. * The head of the U.N.'s nuclear power watchdog warned on Saturday that the situation around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear station has become "potentially dangerous" as Moscow-installed officials began evacuating people from nearby areas.

It also highlights Russian frustration at failing to complete the capture of Bakhmut after more than nine months of costly, intense battle. ANGRY TIRADEWhat looked real, however, was Prigozhin's fury at Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov. "If Putin wants him to be in combat, he'll force him in one way or another to do so." Marten said its involvement in the battle for Bakhmut, including fighters recruited from Russian prisons, had allowed Putin to avoid declaring a full-scale mobilization. Whatever its immediate intentions around Bakhmut, Wagner is likely to remain a significant player in the war, given Prigozhin's personal ambitions and determination to stay in the limelight.

☆ Russia Tightens Restrictions in Occupied Regions of Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Marc Santora | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +5 min

Residents waiting for buses in Russian-controlled Mariupol, Ukraine, in December. Russian counterintelligence operatives are restricting travel in occupied areas of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials. KYIV, Ukraine — As Ukrainian forces step up their assaults behind enemy lines ahead of an expected counteroffensive, Russia is imposing stricter measures on civilians in occupied areas of Ukraine, Ukrainian officials say. The Ukrainian General Staff, which is responsible for the country’s overall military strategy, said “the violent abduction of pro-Ukrainian civilians” in occupied areas was continuing and that there were signs more civilians could be detained. In a reflection of the dangers facing Russian occupiers themselves, both Ukrainian and Russian officials reported an assassination attempt on the Kremlin-appointed deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on Tuesday.

☆ Moscow's 'special' forces: An inside look at how Russia's famed Spetsnaz really operate
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Mark Galeotti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +24 min

Russia's Spetsnaz forces are often depicted as a kind of Russian super troops. Osprey PublishingMost countries' special forces emphasize physical fitness, determination and aggression. Special people, for special tasksMembers of the Russian military's 16th Separate Special Purpose Brigade during an exercise in 2018. Even so, being better than most of the Soviet army's miserable and recalcitrant conscript forces did not make most of them truly special, special forces. The special operations commandMembers of Russian's 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade during an exercise in November 2017.

Inspectors from the United Nations’ nuclear agency visited the Zaporizhzhia nuclear-power plant last year. Photo: Yuri Kochetkov/ShutterstockThe United Nations atomic energy agency is racing to prevent Russia’s war in Ukraine from endangering the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, as fighting nearby intensifies. Artillery fire and explosions now ring out nearly every day at the six-reactor plant that sprawls near an active front line and is occupied by Russian security agents.

☆ How Putin spent 20 years rebuilding Russia's military 'and then just simply destroyed it' in Ukraine, according to an expert who watched it happen
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Christopher Woody | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +17 min

Vladimir Putin has spent his two decades in power rebuilding and reforming Russia's military. Below, Galeotti describes those reforms, what they achieved, and how, in a devastating war in Ukraine, Putin has squandered the military he built. IGOR SAREMBO/AFP via Getty ImagesWhen Putin came to power at the end of the 1990s, what was the state of the Russian military? How did the Russian military underperform in that conflict in Georgia? What did those conflicts show about the capabilities of the Russian military and about the impact of those reforms?

☆ Russia is arresting police officers and overhauling its security forces after data leaks to Ukraine, say reports
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russian media is reporting investigations and arrests of police officers over leaks to Ukrainians. The country appears to be overhauling its domestic security bodies over the leaks, experts said. A Russian source told the think tank that police officers had been detained as part of the investigation. TASS reported that the checks were taking place over "the leakage of data from Russian security forces at the request of Ukrainian citizens," according to ISW's translation. Baza reported that Ukrainians were paying for information on Russian security forces and judges, and that police officers had been arrested.

☆ Factbox: Who is Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

April 17 (Reuters) - Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza was convicted of treason by a Moscow court on Monday and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Kara-Murza, 41, is a historian, journalist and opposition politician who holds Russian and British passports and studied in England at Cambridge University. He was a close associate of Boris Nemtsov, a leading opposition figure who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015, and continued to speak out against President Vladimir Putin despite the mounting risks. Twice, in 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza suddenly fell ill in what he said were poisonings by the Russian security services, on both occasions falling into a coma before eventually recovering. Kara-Murza was arrested in April 2022, hours after CNN broadcast an interview in which he said Russia was being run by a "regime of murderers".

State prosecutors, who had requested the court jail him for 25 years, had accused him of treason and of discrediting the Russian military after he criticised what Moscow calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine. In a CNN interview broadcast hours before he was arrested, Kara-Murza had alleged that Russia was being run by a "regime of murderers." He had also used speeches in the United States and across Europe to accuse Moscow of bombing civilian targets in Ukraine, a charge it has rejected. I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate," he had said. Kara-Murza's lawyers say that as a result, he suffers from a serious nerve disorder called polyneuropathy.

☆ As Ukraine Readies Counteroffensive, Russia Steps Up Campaign Against Partisans
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-09 | by ( Matthew Luxmoore | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

KYIV, Ukraine—Russia is deepening a crackdown on dissent in occupied areas of Ukraine, the Ukrainian military said Sunday, as Kyiv’s forces launched fresh attacks aimed at weakening Moscow’s hold in the south. In occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Russian security forces were raiding homes and checking local residents’ phones for prohibited photos and videos, Ukraine’s general staff said in its daily briefing.

☆ Putin is so paranoid about being tracked, he travels in a secret grey train that stealthily blends in with other Russian locomotives, says a former elite Russian security officer
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Vladimir Putin rides in a train because planes can be tracked, said an FSO officer who defected. The train is indistinguishable from other Russian trains "for stealth purposes," the officer said. His account aligns with previous reports that Putin secretly travels in trains to avoid being tracked. "Same as all the other Russian Railways trains — grey with a red stripe," he said. Karakulov said his team started equipping the train for Putin's operations in 2014 or 2015, per the Dossier Center.

☆ Putin is still worried about COVID-19 and makes his staff quarantine for weeks, says an elite Russian security officer who defected
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Vladimir Putin has still been isolating himself and making staff quarantine, an ex-FSO officer says. The former FSO officer said Putin only allowed staff members to work in the same room as him after a two-week quarantine period, per the Dossier Center. "There is a pool of employees who have been cleared, who underwent this two-week quarantine," Karakulov said. He added that when he left, Putin's staff were already becoming confused by the president's insistence on keeping to old pandemic restrictions. "I have no idea why; he's probably just worried about his health," Karakulov also said.

☆ U.S. Readies ‘Wrongfully Detained’ Label for Reporter Held in Russia
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Vivian Salama | Andrew Restuccia | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The State Department is preparing to designate as “wrongfully detained” a Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested by Russian security services last week during a reporting trip and accused of espionage, a designation that would rev up the U.S. government’s efforts to win his release. With the official designation, supervision of Evan Gershkovich ’s case would shift to a State Department section known as the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, which is focused on negotiating for the release of hostages and other Americans classified as wrongfully detained in foreign countries. The designation is expected as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter.

"I feel it's a good thing that Finland is joining NATO. In Virolahti, near the Russian border due east of Helsinki, retired Finnish combat engineer Ilkka Lansivaara had hung his own NATO flag from the side of his house. Memories of Finland's close relations with Moscow to preserve independence - a tactic known as "Finlandisation" - run deep for many Finns. Finland brings a sizable, well-trained military into NATO and Russia has said it will have to take "counter-measures" to ensure Russian security in response. Meanwhile, Finland's close partner Sweden continues to wait for ratification of its NATO membership bid in the face of opposition from Turkey and Hungary.

☆ Russia's ultranationalists appear increasingly vulnerable after pro-war blogger's killing
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Holly Ellyatt | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The blast killed Tatarsky and injured at least 30 others, the authorities said, before detaining a woman on suspicion of involvement in what they described as a "high-profile murder." The death also sent shockwaves through Russia's pro-war commentariat which has burgeoned since Russia invaded Ukraine over a year ago. Tatarsky was one of Russia's more prominent and outspoken pro-war bloggers, with 572,000 followers on the popular messaging app Telegram. Unsettling ultranationalistsTatarsky's death is the second apparent assassination of a prominent Russian pro-war commentator on home soil. A leading Russian military blogger was killed on April 2, 2023 in an explosion in Russia's second-largest city of St. Petersburg, the interior ministry said.

☆ In Russia's St Petersburg, locals say Finland 'making problems' with NATO accession
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

ST PETERSBURG, April 4 (Reuters) - Citizens of St Petersburg, the Russian city closest to Finland, on Tuesday accused their neighbour of turning its back on them by joining the Western military alliance NATO, following their government's line that the accession was a hostile act. "I don't think anything will change for us," said St. Petersburg resident Yevgeny, who like others declined to give his surname. Another resident, Nikolai, said Finland was "making problems for itself". "We have always had good neighbourly relations with Finland." Another citizen, Alexei, had a recommendation for Finland: "If they wanted to unite with Russia against NATO, then I would be glad."

☆ Arrested WSJ reporter could become 'bargaining chip' following West's success in smashing Russia's suspected global spy rings, ex-CIA officer says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-01 | by ( Isobel Van Hagen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Numerous countries have detained or expelled suspected Russian spies in recent months. The arrest comes after several countries detained or expelled hundreds of suspected Russian spies in the preceding weeks and months. Hundreds of suspected Russian spies have been expelledSergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, pictured in Russian military uniform Department of JusticeLast week, documents released by the Department of Justice revealed the dramatic story of an accused Russian spy. In a similar case in Australia in February, a local newspaper reported that authorities expelled a large Russian spy ring — whose members were posing as diplomats — from the country. Countries across Scandinavia have also made a significant clampdown on those accused of Russian espionage, Politico reports.

☆ Siemens investigating report employee worked for Russian hacking firm
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

ZURICH, March 31 (Reuters) - Siemens (SIEGn.DE) has launched an investigation after Der Spiegel reported a former programmer from Russian IT company NTC Vulkan - which has reported links to Russian security services - worked for the German engineering and tech company. Der Spiegel reported on Friday that more than 90 former staff from NTC Vulkan worked for a several other European companies. The magazine said NTC Vulkan maintains close ties to all three major Russian intelligence services: FSB, GRU and SWR. Its so-called "Vulkan Files" said the company builds cyber programmes for the security services aimed at attacking critical infrastructure facilities. NTC Vulkan did not respond to requests for comment.

☆ Russian Security Service Detains Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Daniel Michaels | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, who was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service. Russia’s main security agency said it had detained a Wall Street Journal reporter for what it described as espionage. The Federal Security Service said Thursday it had detained Evan Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, in the eastern city of Yekaterinburg.

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