Sidebar
War in Ukraine
www.theatlantic.com
## Highlights >“Now, there’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet.” (*Chuckles.*) “Good luck!” (*Laughter.*) “That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.” (*Laughter.*) >While we were still rhapsodizing about the many ways in which the internet could spread democracy, the Chinese were designing what’s become known as [the Great Firewall of China](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/01/china-great-firewall-generation-405385). >Even in a state where surveillance is almost total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society. The strength of these demonstrations, and the broader anger they reflected, was enough to spook the Chinese Communist Party into lifting the quarantine and allowing the virus to spread. The deaths that resulted were preferable to public anger and protest. >If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. That requires more than surveillance, more than close observation of the population, more than a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan: a narrative that damages both the idea of democracy everywhere in the world and the tools to deliver it. >This is the core problem for autocracies: The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and others all know that the language of transparency, accountability, justice, and democracy appeals to some of their citizens, as it does to many people who live in dictatorships. Even the most sophisticated surveillance can’t wholly suppress it. The very ideas of democracy and freedom must be discredited—especially in the places where they have historically flourished. >Instead of portraying China as the perfect society, modern Chinese propaganda seeks to inculcate nationalist pride, based on China’s real experience of economic development, and to promote a Beijing model of progress through dictatorship and “order” that’s superior to [the chaos and violence of democracy](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0EK08H/). >In September 2022, when Putin held a ceremony to mark his illegal annexation of southern and eastern Ukraine, he claimed that he was protecting Russia from the “satanic” West and “perversions that lead to degradation and extinction.” He did not speak of the people he had tortured or the Ukrainian children he had kidnapped. >Another strange actor in this field is RRN—the company’s name is an acronym, originally for Reliable Russian News, later changed to Reliable Recent News. Created in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, RRN, part of a bigger information-laundering operation known to investigators as Doppelganger, is primarily a “typosquatter”: a company that registers domain names that look similar to real media domain names—Reuters.cfd instead of Reuters.com, for example—as well as websites with names that sound authentic (like *Notre Pays*, or “Our Country”) but are created to deceive. >None of these efforts would succeed without local actors who share the autocratic world’s goals. Russia, China, and Venezuela did not invent anti-Americanism in Mexico. They did not invent Catalan separatism, to name another movement that both Russian and Venezuelan social-media accounts supported, or the German far right, or France’s Marine Le Pen. All they do is amplify existing people and movements—whether anti-LGBTQ, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-Ukrainian, or, above all, antidemocratic. >Here is a difficult truth: A part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk, but an active participant in creating and spreading them. Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying.
mickryan.substack.com
>The major story of the past couple of weeks has been Ukraine’s Kursk offensive and the seizing of over 1100 square kilometres of Russian territory in the past ten days. This has been a stunning change in the direction of the war. At least five Ukrainian brigades, or elements of those brigades, and possibly more have seized the initiative and remained on the move since surprising the Russians in their initial crossing of the border into the Russian Kursk oblast.
Seeing all these videos of soldiers dying and getting injured, it makes me wonder if the field medics carry morphine to ease their suffering.
www.lawfaremedia.org
# Cyber Conflict and Subversion in the Russia-Ukraine War ## Metadata - Author: Default - Category: article - URL: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/cyber-conflict-in-the-russia-ukraine-war ## Highlights >The Russia-Ukraine war is the first case of cyber conflict in a large-scale military conflict involving a major power. >**Contrary to cyberwar fears, most cyber operations remained strategically inconsequential, but there are several exceptions: the AcidRain operation, the UKRTelecom disruption, the September 2022 power grid sabotage, and the catastrophic Kyivstar outage of 2023.** >These developments suggest hacking groups are increasingly fusing cyber operations with traditional subversive methods to improve effectiveness. >The first exceptional case is [AcidRain.](https://www.sentinelone.com/labs/acidrain-a-modem-wiper-rains-down-on-europe/) This advanced malware knocked out satellite communication provided by Viasat’s K-SAT service across Europe the very moment the invasion commenced. Among the customers of the K-SAT service: Ukraine’s military. The operation that deployed this malware stands out not only because it shows a direct linkage to military goals but also because it could have plausibly produced a clear tactical, potentially strategic, advantage for Russian troops at a decisive moment. >The second exception is a cyber operation in March 2022 that caused a [massive outage of UKRTelecom](https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/ukrainian-telecom-companys-internet-service-disrupted-by-powerful-cyberattack-2022-03-28/), a major internet provider in Ukraine. It took only a month to prepare yet caused significant damage. It cut off [over 80 percent of UKRTelecom’s customers](https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1508453511176065033) from the internet for close to 24 hours. >Finally, the potentially most severe challenge to the theory of subversion is [a power grid sabotage operation](https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/sandworm-disrupts-power-ukraine-operational-technology) in September 2022. The operation stands out not only because it used a novel technique but also because it took very little preparation. According to [Mandiant](https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/sandworm-disrupts-power-ukraine-operational-technology), it required only two months of preparation and used what is called “living off the land” techniques, namely foregoing malware and using only existing functionality. >After all, why go through the trouble of finding vulnerabilities in complex networks and develop sophisticated exploits when you can take the easy route via an employee, or even direct network access?
[meduza.io/en/feature/2024/04/2…](https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/04/24/deceptively-close)
www.bbc.com
theins.press
Companies that seemingly find workarounds for sanctions
www.uawire.org
[meduza.io/en/feature/2024/02/1…](https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/02/16/the-battle-between-good-and-indifference-isn-t-over-yet)
[meduza.io/en/news/2023/12/20/r…](https://meduza.io/en/news/2023/12/20/russian-enlistment-officers-hand-out-military-summonses-to-new-citizens-at-naturalization-ceremony)
[meduza.io/en/feature/2023/12/0…](https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/12/09/russia-s-economy-grew-rapidly-in-2023-thanks-mainly-to-militarization-and-that-poses-enormous-risks-for-the-future)
mickryan.substack.com
[romaniajournal.ro/politics/rus…](https://www.romaniajournal.ro/politics/russia-accuses-romania-at-the-un-of-violating-the-rights-of-minorities/)
[reuters.com/world/europe/theyr…](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/theyre-just-meat-russia-deploys-punishment-battalions-echo-stalin-2023-10-03/)
www.forbes.com
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/4428644 > Months after virtually disappearing from Ukraine’s skies, the Ukrainian armed forces’ Bayraktar TB-2 drones are back in action. > > Videos that appeared online on Sunday depict the 1,500-pound, propeller-driven drones—which can range hundreds of miles—striking a Russian patrol boat and supply truck in occupied southern Ukraine. > > That TB-2s are venturing south into nominally Russian-controlled air space implies two things: that **Kyiv has managed to rebuild its TB-2 force**, nine months after Russian air-defenses badly attrited the 70-drone force. > > The TB-2’s dramatic reappearance also points to the **steady degradation of Russian air-defenses** across swathes of southern Ukraine as Kyiv’s 2023 counteroffensive grinds into its fourth month—and Ukrainian brigades make slow but steady progress along two main axes in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk Oblasts.
www.pravda.com.ua
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/Ukraine_UA/t/410496 > NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, assessing the counter-offensive of the Defence Forces, has said that the Ukrainians are exceeding expectations.
