Author Topic: International Politics Thread - Disease and Disaster (Read 1313793 times)

The EU wonders if Boris's proposal was some sort of 'mistake'.
EU officials left London disappointed and sad. Boris had a challenging call with Merkel.

https://twitter.com/EP_President/status/1181635230932901891

Boris is doing more important things
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1181590220560588800

Rufus · « **Reply #7527 on:** October 08, 2019, 02:52:05 PM »

https://twitter.com/eucopresident/status/1181519363783974912

Deja vu...

Occam · « **Reply #7528 on:** October 08, 2019, 04:02:57 PM »

Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/world/europe/unit-29155-russia-gru.html

Quote

First came a destabilization campaign in Moldova, followed by the poisoning of an arms dealer in Bulgaria and then a thwarted coup in Montenegro. Last year, there was an attempt to assassinate a former Russian spy in Britain using a nerve agent. Though the operations bore the fingerprints of Russia’s intelligence services, the authorities initially saw them as isolated, unconnected attacks.

Western security officials have now concluded that these operations, and potentially many others, are part of a coordinated and ongoing campaign to destabilize Europe, executed by an elite unit inside the Russian intelligence system skilled in subversion, sabotage and assassination.

The group, known as Unit 29155, has operated for at least a decade, yet Western officials only recently discovered it. Intelligence officials in four Western countries say it is unclear how often the unit is mobilized and warn that it is impossible to know when and where its operatives will strike.

The purpose of Unit 29155, which has not been previously reported, underscores the degree to which the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, is actively fighting the West with his brand of so-called hybrid warfare — a blend of propaganda, hacking attacks and disinformation — as well as open military confrontation.

“I think we had forgotten how organically ruthless the Russians could be,” said Peter Zwack, a retired military intelligence officer and former defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Moscow, who said he was not aware of the unit’s existence.

In a text message, Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, directed questions about the unit to the Russian Defense Ministry. The ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Hidden behind concrete walls at the headquarters of the 161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center in eastern Moscow, the unit sits within the command hierarchy of the Russian military intelligence agency, widely known as the G.R.U.

Though much about G.R.U. operations remains a mystery, Western intelligence agencies have begun to get a clearer picture of its underlying architecture. In the months before the 2016 presidential election, American officials say two G.R.U. cyber units, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and then published embarrassing internal communications.

[Our correspondent Matt Apuzzo reported on Russia’s blueprint for foreign disruption on “The Weekly,” The Times’s TV show. Watch on FX and Hulu.]

Last year, Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, indicted more than a dozen officers from those units, though all still remain at large. The hacking teams mostly operate from Moscow, thousands of miles from their targets.

By contrast, officers from Unit 29155 travel to and from European countries. Some are decorated veterans of Russia’s bloodiest wars, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Ukraine. Its operations are so secret, according to assessments by Western intelligence services, that the unit’s existence is most likely unknown even to other G.R.U. operatives.

The unit appears to be a tight-knit community. A photograph taken in 2017 shows the unit’s commander, Maj. Gen. Andrei V. Averyanov, at his daughter’s wedding in a gray suit and bow tie. He is posing with Col. Anatoly V. Chepiga, one of two officers indicted in Britain over the poisoning of a former spy, Sergei V. Skripal.

“This is a unit of the G.R.U. that has been active over the years across Europe,” said one European security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe classified intelligence matters. “It’s been a surprise that the Russians, the G.R.U., this unit, have felt free to go ahead and carry out this extreme malign activity in friendly countries. That’s been a shock.”

To varying degrees, each of the four operations linked to the unit attracted public attention, even as it took time for the authorities to confirm that they were connected. Western intelligence agencies first identified the unit after the failed 2016 coup in Montenegro, which involved a plot by two unit officers to kill the country’s prime minister and seize the Parliament building.

But officials began to grasp the unit’s specific agenda of disruption only after the March 2018 poisoning of Mr. Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had betrayed Russia by spying for the British. Mr. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, fell grievously ill after exposure to a highly toxic nerve agent, but survived.

(Three other people were sickened, including a police officer and a man who found a small bottle that British officials believe was used to carry the nerve agent and gave it to his girlfriend. The girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess, died after spraying the nerve agent on her skin, mistaking the bottle for perfume.)

The poisoning led to a geopolitical standoff, with more than 20 nations, including the United States, expelling 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity with Britain.

Ultimately, the British authorities exposed two suspects, who had traveled under aliases but were later identified by the investigative site Bellingcat as Colonel Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. Six months after the poisoning, British prosecutors charged both men with transporting the nerve agent to Mr. Skripal’s home in Salisbury, England, and smearing it on his front door.

But the operation was more complex than officials revealed at the time.

Exactly a year before the poisoning, three Unit 29155 operatives traveled to Britain, possibly for a practice run, two European officials said. One was Mr. Mishkin. A second man used the alias Sergei Pavlov. Intelligence officials believe the third operative, who used the alias Sergei Fedotov, oversaw the mission.

Soon, officials established that two of these officers — the men using the names Fedotov and Pavlov — had been part of a team that attempted to poison the Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev in 2015. (The other operatives, also known only by their aliases, according to European intelligence officials, were Ivan Lebedev, Nikolai Kononikhin, Alexey Nikitin and Danil Stepanov.)

The team would twice try to kill Mr. Gebrev, once in Sofia, the capital, and again a month later at his home on the Black Sea.

Speaking to reporters in February at the Munich Security Conference, Alex Younger, the chief of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, spoke out against the growing Russian threat and hinted at coordination, without mentioning a specific unit.

“You can see there is a concerted program of activity — and, yes, it does often involve the same people,” Mr. Younger said, pointing specifically to the Skripal poisoning and the Montenegro coup attempt. He added: “We assess there is a standing threat from the G.R.U. and the other Russian intelligence services and that very little is off limits.”

The Kremlin sees Russia as being at war with a Western liberal order that it views as an existential threat.

At a ceremony in November for the G.R.U.’s centenary, Mr. Putin stood beneath a glowing backdrop of the agency’s logo — a red carnation and an exploding grenade — and described it as “legendary.” A former intelligence officer himself, Mr. Putin drew a direct line between the Red Army spies who helped defeat the Nazis in World War II and officers of the G.R.U., whose “unique capabilities” are now deployed against a different kind of enemy.

“Unfortunately, the potential for conflict is on the rise in the world,” Mr. Putin said during the ceremony. “Provocations and outright lies are being used and attempts are being made to disrupt strategic parity.”

In 2006, Mr. Putin signed a law legalizing targeted killings abroad, the same year a team of Russian assassins used a radioactive isotope to murder Aleksander V. Litvinenko, another former Russian spy, in London.

Unit 29155 is not the only group authorized to carry out such operations, officials said. The British authorities have attributed Mr. Litvinenko’s killing to the Federal Security Service, the intelligence agency once headed by Mr. Putin that often competes with the G.R.U.

Although little is known about Unit 29155 itself, there are clues in public Russian records that suggest links to the Kremlin’s broader hybrid strategy.

A 2012 directive from the Russian Defense Ministry assigned bonuses to three units for “special achievements in military service.” One was Unit 29155. Another was Unit 74455, which was involved in the 2016 election interference. The third was Unit 99450, whose officers are believed to have been involved in the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

A retired G.R.U. officer with knowledge of Unit 29155 said that it specialized in preparing for “diversionary” missions, “in groups or individually — bombings, murders, anything.”

“They were serious guys who served there,” the retired officer said. “They were officers who worked undercover and as international agents.”

Photographs of the unit’s dilapidated former headquarters, which has since been abandoned, show myriad gun racks with labels for an assortment of weapons, including Belgian FN-30 sniper rifles, German G3A3s, Austrian Steyr AUGs and American M16s. There was also a form outlining a training regimen, including exercises for hand-to-hand combat. The retired G.R.U. officer confirmed the authenticity of the photographs, which were published by a Russian blogger.

The current commander, General Averyanov, graduated in 1988 from the Tashkent Military Academy in what was then the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. It is likely that he would have fought in both the first and second Chechen wars, and he was awarded a Hero of Russia medal, the country’s highest honor, in January 2015. The two officers charged with the Skripal poisoning also received the same award.

Though an elite force, the unit appears to operate on a shoestring budget. According to Russian records, General Averyanov lives in a run-down Soviet-era building a few blocks from the unit’s headquarters and drives a 1996 VAZ 21053, a rattletrap Russia-made sedan. Operatives often share cheap accommodation to economize while on the road. British investigators say the suspects in the Skripal poisoning stayed in a low-cost hotel in Bow, a downtrodden neighborhood in East London.

But European security officials are also perplexed by the apparent sloppiness in the unit’s operations. Mr. Skripal survived the assassination attempt, as did Mr. Gebrev, the Bulgarian arms dealer. The attempted coup in Montenegro drew an enormous amount of attention, but ultimately failed. A year later, Montenegro joined NATO. It is possible, security officials say, that they have yet to discover other, more successful operations.

It is difficult to know if the messiness has bothered the Kremlin. Perhaps, intelligence experts say, it is part of the point.

“That kind of intelligence operation has become part of the psychological warfare,” said Eerik-Niiles Kross, a former intelligence chief in Estonia. “It’s not that they have become that much more aggressive. They want to be felt. It’s part of the game.”

team filler · « **Reply #7529 on:** October 08, 2019, 04:59:52 PM »

https://twitter.com/TheArabSource/status/1181669189913907200

kingv · « **Reply #7530 on:** October 08, 2019, 06:15:08 PM »

If the Russians and Israelis starred shooting each other, that would actually be pretty awesome.

Nintex · « **Reply #7531 on:** October 08, 2019, 06:26:28 PM »

https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1181692299828482049

lmao

Occam · « **Reply #7532 on:** October 08, 2019, 06:46:28 PM »

So, unless Johnson comes up with a workable final proposal tomorrow, there'll be a no-deal Brexit.

Nintex · « **Reply #7533 on:** October 08, 2019, 06:48:03 PM »

No deal, Brexit
No, deal Brexit
No deal Brexit

Madrun Badrun · « **Reply #7534 on:** October 08, 2019, 07:48:09 PM »

20 minutes into last night's Canada debate - this is really shameful.

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #7535 on:** October 08, 2019, 07:49:05 PM »

I forgot about that and feel apathetic to that as a whole, I really should read up on it

Tripon · « **Reply #7536 on:** October 08, 2019, 10:15:32 PM »

shosta · « **Reply #7537 on:** October 08, 2019, 10:40:43 PM »

This is just fantasizing out loud but I'd love for the EU to back Irish reunification in the event of a no deal brexit

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #7538 on:** October 08, 2019, 11:04:02 PM »

lmao
that's right, take a hike hans

kingv · « **Reply #7539 on:** October 08, 2019, 11:12:25 PM »

Fucking frogs trying to take Britain’s shine!

team filler · « **Reply #7540 on:** October 08, 2019, 11:35:16 PM »

Quote from: shosta on October 08, 2019, 10:40:43 PM

This is just fantasizing out loud but I'd love for the EU to back Irish reunification in the event of a no deal brexit

https://twitter.com/AWAKEALERT/status/1181568169904934912

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #7541 on:** October 09, 2019, 01:14:27 AM »

damn, where is that superpower 2020 video

OnlyRegret · « **Reply #7542 on:** October 09, 2019, 01:21:39 AM »

nevermind, the video was 2030
this is your future, wh*tes

kingv · « **Reply #7543 on:** October 09, 2019, 09:23:03 AM »

Quote from: OnlyRegret on October 09, 2019, 01:14:27 AM

damn, where is that superpower 2020 video

By 2020 was when they were supposed to solve public defecation. From there, the sky is the limit.

Occam · « **Reply #7544 on:** October 09, 2019, 09:42:26 AM »

Quote from: Occam on October 08, 2019, 06:46:28 PM

So, unless Johnson comes up with a workable final proposal tomorrow, there'll be a no-deal Brexit.

My bad, Johnson has to deliver his proposal to the EU before the 11th, meaning he has another day.
(Not expecting anything).

Raist · « **Reply #7545 on:** October 09, 2019, 10:54:47 AM »

The unfaltering support to BoJo from his own family continues.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49987567

Quote

Boris Johnson's father has told Extinction Rebellion protesters that their work is "extremely important" - less than two days after his son labelled them "uncooperative crusties".

Brehvolution · « **Reply #7546 on:** October 09, 2019, 10:54:57 AM »

Quote from: kingv on October 08, 2019, 06:15:08 PM

If the Russians and Israelis starred shooting each other, that would actually be pretty awesome.

https://www.discoveryworld.us/bible-prophesy/the-coming-war-with-russia-part-2/

Quote

The fact is, Russia is one of the major end-time players described in the Old Testament prophecies of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. According to Ezekiel, Russia (Gog of the land of Magog) will one day gather a huge armada of armed forces including many soldiers from the Islamic countries of the Middle East. Like a massive storm or swarm of grasshoppers covering the land, they will attempt to invade the ancient land of Israel.

Nintex · « **Reply #7547 on:** October 09, 2019, 03:24:34 PM »

So Boris will send Nigel as the UK man in Brussels to veto everything if there is an extension.

Occam · « **Reply #7548 on:** October 09, 2019, 03:31:27 PM »

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/09/we-fought-isis-side-by-side-with-americans-now-theyre-leaving-us-our-fate/

Quote

We fought ISIS side by side with the Americans. Now they’re leaving us to our fate.

By Ilham Ahmed
Oct. 9, 2019 at 5:48 p.m. UTC

Ilham Ahmed is a co-president of the Democratic Council of Syria.

The organization I represent, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is the ally of the global coalition against the Islamic State. Our relationship with the United States began in 2014, after the battle of Kobani, when our men and women in uniform astonished the world with their heroic defense against Islamic State jihadists.

I was one of the main advocates for sustaining and improving the relationship between Syrians and Americans. Skeptics warned me: “The U.S has no friends, only interests.” But I rejected such sentiments as an anti-American narrative encouraged by our enemies. Now it turns out that the pessimists were right. I was wrong.

Founded in 2015, the SDF is an alliance of Arab, Kurdish, Syriac and Turkmen groups fighting for a secular, democratic and decentralized Syria. With the support of our coalition partners, we captured nearly all the territory the Islamic State once held in Syria, including Raqqa, the so-called capital of the Islamic State.

The forces of the Islamic State see us as their sworn enemy. Yet the Islamic State also used its foothold in Syria and the vacuum created by Turkey to spread its terror to Europe and the United States. It used its guns and considerable resources to create a sharia state. With the comparatively limited resources we received, we successfully defeated the Islamic State and built a system of good governance in northeast Syria, including democratic checks and balances, that replaced both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s murderous oppression and the terrorism of the jihadists. We created the foundations for a stable Syria in the areas under our control.

The United States has not always treated us like a full partner; it refused to listen to our concerns about Turkish intervention, and it excluded us from United Nations-brokered talks on the future of Syria. U.S. officials told us to destroy our defensive fortifications on the border with Turkey, to withdraw heavy weapons and to pull back our fighters. Although this left our families and children exposed to Turkey and the jihadist groups, the United States promised it would maintain border security. We obliged because we desire peace with Turkey and because we trusted the United States to make good on its commitments.

The sacrifices we made to defeat the Islamic State were not just a service to our people but also a service to the United States, Europe and the entire international community, who faced a real and present threat from terrorism. We expected our sacrifice and commitment to be repaid in kind.

Instead, now we have been betrayed. President Trump has ordered U.S. troops in our territory to withdraw, exposing us to an invasion by Turkish troops who aim to destroy us.

The American decision not only puts the lives of countless thousands at risk. It also increases the likelihood of a resurgence of the global terror threat we worked so hard together with the US and its allies to defeat. Thousands of Islamic State fighters are in our custody. Guarding them takes huge amounts of resources. Now that we are forced to fend off a Turkish invasion, we will have no choice but to redirect our forces who are guarding the Islamic State prisoners. Many of them are European passport holders. Their escape would pose a grave danger to Europe and beyond. This is not a threat, merely a reality — we cannot both defend against Turkey and maintain security over the Islamic State prisoners. Our people and our homes must come first. It is our obligation.

We acknowledge Turkish military strength. But we are self-confident and full of resolve. Now that we are under attack, all of us — including me — will pick up our weapons and fight to the end. Self-defense is our right. We are a capable defensive army that has millions of supporters. And we will be protecting hundreds of thousands of people who belong to persecuted minorities: Kurds and Assyrians, Christians and Yazidis.

We prefer to pursue peace. There is still room to prevent conflict between Turkey and northeast Syria and the dire global consequences that will ensue. But success requires the active engagement of the United States and the international community. That will require three conditions: facilitating a resolution of our differences with Turkey so we can coexist peacefully as neighbors; our inclusion in U.N.-led Syrian peace talks so we can secure a viable political future for the whole of Syria; and discussions without procrastination about the Islamic State prisoners in our custody so there can be a safe and sustainable answer on how to process them.

Despite the betrayal we have endured, we still believe in American values and our true friends in U.S. uniform — those who stood shoulder to shoulder with our fighters and who changed widespread impressions here about the United States. We saw how dismayed many of them were after hearing the news about withdrawal and how the United States had opened the way to Turkish invasion.

We hope that our confidence in core American values is not misplaced. We are ready to play our part to achieve progress toward peace with Turkey, peace in Syria and a sustainable solution to the Islamic State prisoners. But it is now up to the United States and the international community to engage with us. The choice is clear: peace and stability — or conflict and chaos that will reverberate around the world.

Note: The SDF has imprisoned 11,000 former members of ISIS. They are about to be let loose on the rest of the world.

VomKriege · « **Reply #7549 on:** October 09, 2019, 03:40:54 PM »

Turns out Trump was also jealous of Obama and Clinton creating ISIS and has to one up that too.

Nintex · « **Reply #7550 on:** October 09, 2019, 03:42:10 PM »

Turkey has begun the land invasion of Syria from 3 fronts.

https://twitter.com/tcsavunma/status/1182017350821912577
Operation Peace Spring, that's the most #lagestagecapitalism name for a military operation ever.

https://twitter.com/eu_eeas/status/1182017987496366082

shosta · « **Reply #7551 on:** October 09, 2019, 06:15:37 PM »

Quote from: Nintex on October 08, 2019, 06:26:28 PM

https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1181692299828482049

lmao

We really need Elizabeth to step up and get the UK on the path back to an absolute monarchy.

At the very least, pre-Glorious Revolution levels of power.

kingv · « **Reply #7552 on:** October 09, 2019, 11:00:48 PM »

I can’t wait to watch BoJo equivocate about how well Brexit is going a few months from now. Going to be fucking hilarious.

Nintex · « **Reply #7553 on:** October 10, 2019, 03:54:49 AM »

https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1182037846573666305

Thank you Jeremy!

https://twitter.com/itvpeston/status/1182020313929805824

Nintex · « **Reply #7554 on:** October 10, 2019, 02:01:03 PM »

https://twitter.com/RudawEnglish/status/1182350120647614465

kingv · « **Reply #7555 on:** October 10, 2019, 02:16:09 PM »

Quote from: Occam on October 08, 2019, 04:02:57 PM

Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/world/europe/unit-29155-russia-gru.html

Quote
First came a destabilization campaign in Moldova, followed by the poisoning of an arms dealer in Bulgaria and then a thwarted coup in Montenegro. Last year, there was an attempt to assassinate a former Russian spy in Britain using a nerve agent. Though the operations bore the fingerprints of Russia’s intelligence services, the authorities initially saw them as isolated, unconnected attacks.

Western security officials have now concluded that these operations, and potentially many others, are part of a coordinated and ongoing campaign to destabilize Europe, executed by an elite unit inside the Russian intelligence system skilled in subversion, sabotage and assassination.

The group, known as Unit 29155, has operated for at least a decade, yet Western officials only recently discovered it. Intelligence officials in four Western countries say it is unclear how often the unit is mobilized and warn that it is impossible to know when and where its operatives will strike.

The purpose of Unit 29155, which has not been previously reported, underscores the degree to which the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, is actively fighting the West with his brand of so-called hybrid warfare — a blend of propaganda, hacking attacks and disinformation — as well as open military confrontation.

“I think we had forgotten how organically ruthless the Russians could be,” said Peter Zwack, a retired military intelligence officer and former defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Moscow, who said he was not aware of the unit’s existence.

In a text message, Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, directed questions about the unit to the Russian Defense Ministry. The ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Hidden behind concrete walls at the headquarters of the 161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center in eastern Moscow, the unit sits within the command hierarchy of the Russian military intelligence agency, widely known as the G.R.U.

Though much about G.R.U. operations remains a mystery, Western intelligence agencies have begun to get a clearer picture of its underlying architecture. In the months before the 2016 presidential election, American officials say two G.R.U. cyber units, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and then published embarrassing internal communications.

[Our correspondent Matt Apuzzo reported on Russia’s blueprint for foreign disruption on “The Weekly,” The Times’s TV show. Watch on FX and Hulu.]

Last year, Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, indicted more than a dozen officers from those units, though all still remain at large. The hacking teams mostly operate from Moscow, thousands of miles from their targets.

By contrast, officers from Unit 29155 travel to and from European countries. Some are decorated veterans of Russia’s bloodiest wars, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Ukraine. Its operations are so secret, according to assessments by Western intelligence services, that the unit’s existence is most likely unknown even to other G.R.U. operatives.

The unit appears to be a tight-knit community. A photograph taken in 2017 shows the unit’s commander, Maj. Gen. Andrei V. Averyanov, at his daughter’s wedding in a gray suit and bow tie. He is posing with Col. Anatoly V. Chepiga, one of two officers indicted in Britain over the poisoning of a former spy, Sergei V. Skripal.

“This is a unit of the G.R.U. that has been active over the years across Europe,” said one European security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe classified intelligence matters. “It’s been a surprise that the Russians, the G.R.U., this unit, have felt free to go ahead and carry out this extreme malign activity in friendly countries. That’s been a shock.”

To varying degrees, each of the four operations linked to the unit attracted public attention, even as it took time for the authorities to confirm that they were connected. Western intelligence agencies first identified the unit after the failed 2016 coup in Montenegro, which involved a plot by two unit officers to kill the country’s prime minister and seize the Parliament building.

But officials began to grasp the unit’s specific agenda of disruption only after the March 2018 poisoning of Mr. Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had betrayed Russia by spying for the British. Mr. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, fell grievously ill after exposure to a highly toxic nerve agent, but survived.

(Three other people were sickened, including a police officer and a man who found a small bottle that British officials believe was used to carry the nerve agent and gave it to his girlfriend. The girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess, died after spraying the nerve agent on her skin, mistaking the bottle for perfume.)

The poisoning led to a geopolitical standoff, with more than 20 nations, including the United States, expelling 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity with Britain.

Ultimately, the British authorities exposed two suspects, who had traveled under aliases but were later identified by the investigative site Bellingcat as Colonel Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. Six months after the poisoning, British prosecutors charged both men with transporting the nerve agent to Mr. Skripal’s home in Salisbury, England, and smearing it on his front door.

But the operation was more complex than officials revealed at the time.

Exactly a year before the poisoning, three Unit 29155 operatives traveled to Britain, possibly for a practice run, two European officials said. One was Mr. Mishkin. A second man used the alias Sergei Pavlov. Intelligence officials believe the third operative, who used the alias Sergei Fedotov, oversaw the mission.

Soon, officials established that two of these officers — the men using the names Fedotov and Pavlov — had been part of a team that attempted to poison the Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev in 2015. (The other operatives, also known only by their aliases, according to European intelligence officials, were Ivan Lebedev, Nikolai Kononikhin, Alexey Nikitin and Danil Stepanov.)

The team would twice try to kill Mr. Gebrev, once in Sofia, the capital, and again a month later at his home on the Black Sea.

Speaking to reporters in February at the Munich Security Conference, Alex Younger, the chief of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, spoke out against the growing Russian threat and hinted at coordination, without mentioning a specific unit.

“You can see there is a concerted program of activity — and, yes, it does often involve the same people,” Mr. Younger said, pointing specifically to the Skripal poisoning and the Montenegro coup attempt. He added: “We assess there is a standing threat from the G.R.U. and the other Russian intelligence services and that very little is off limits.”

The Kremlin sees Russia as being at war with a Western liberal order that it views as an existential threat.

At a ceremony in November for the G.R.U.’s centenary, Mr. Putin stood beneath a glowing backdrop of the agency’s logo — a red carnation and an exploding grenade — and described it as “legendary.” A former intelligence officer himself, Mr. Putin drew a direct line between the Red Army spies who helped defeat the Nazis in World War II and officers of the G.R.U., whose “unique capabilities” are now deployed against a different kind of enemy.

“Unfortunately, the potential for conflict is on the rise in the world,” Mr. Putin said during the ceremony. “Provocations and outright lies are being used and attempts are being made to disrupt strategic parity.”

In 2006, Mr. Putin signed a law legalizing targeted killings abroad, the same year a team of Russian assassins used a radioactive isotope to murder Aleksander V. Litvinenko, another former Russian spy, in London.

Unit 29155 is not the only group authorized to carry out such operations, officials said. The British authorities have attributed Mr. Litvinenko’s killing to the Federal Security Service, the intelligence agency once headed by Mr. Putin that often competes with the G.R.U.

Although little is known about Unit 29155 itself, there are clues in public Russian records that suggest links to the Kremlin’s broader hybrid strategy.

A 2012 directive from the Russian Defense Ministry assigned bonuses to three units for “special achievements in military service.” One was Unit 29155. Another was Unit 74455, which was involved in the 2016 election interference. The third was Unit 99450, whose officers are believed to have been involved in the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

A retired G.R.U. officer with knowledge of Unit 29155 said that it specialized in preparing for “diversionary” missions, “in groups or individually — bombings, murders, anything.”

“They were serious guys who served there,” the retired officer said. “They were officers who worked undercover and as international agents.”

Photographs of the unit’s dilapidated former headquarters, which has since been abandoned, show myriad gun racks with labels for an assortment of weapons, including Belgian FN-30 sniper rifles, German G3A3s, Austrian Steyr AUGs and American M16s. There was also a form outlining a training regimen, including exercises for hand-to-hand combat. The retired G.R.U. officer confirmed the authenticity of the photographs, which were published by a Russian blogger.

The current commander, General Averyanov, graduated in 1988 from the Tashkent Military Academy in what was then the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. It is likely that he would have fought in both the first and second Chechen wars, and he was awarded a Hero of Russia medal, the country’s highest honor, in January 2015. The two officers charged with the Skripal poisoning also received the same award.

Though an elite force, the unit appears to operate on a shoestring budget. According to Russian records, General Averyanov lives in a run-down Soviet-era building a few blocks from the unit’s headquarters and drives a 1996 VAZ 21053, a rattletrap Russia-made sedan. Operatives often share cheap accommodation to economize while on the road. British investigators say the suspects in the Skripal poisoning stayed in a low-cost hotel in Bow, a downtrodden neighborhood in East London.

But European security officials are also perplexed by the apparent sloppiness in the unit’s operations. Mr. Skripal survived the assassination attempt, as did Mr. Gebrev, the Bulgarian arms dealer. The attempted coup in Montenegro drew an enormous amount of attention, but ultimately failed. A year later, Montenegro joined NATO. It is possible, security officials say, that they have yet to discover other, more successful operations.

It is difficult to know if the messiness has bothered the Kremlin. Perhaps, intelligence experts say, it is part of the point.

“That kind of intelligence operation has become part of the psychological warfare,” said Eerik-Niiles Kross, a former intelligence chief in Estonia. “It’s not that they have become that much more aggressive. They want to be felt. It’s part of the game.”

On the plus side, I’m sure that the scrutiny given to “who is and isn’t ISIS” was about as good as The “Who is and isn’t Al Qaeda” that ended up with a bunch of innocent people in GITMO and CIA black sites.

team filler · « **Reply #7556 on:** October 10, 2019, 04:38:53 PM »

https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/1182268451269857281

Nintex · « **Reply #7557 on:** October 11, 2019, 03:01:43 PM »

https://twitter.com/MevlutCavusoglu/status/1182612729653280768

VomKriege · « **Reply #7558 on:** October 11, 2019, 05:57:18 PM »

Jesus, Europe has been defanged something fierce in Syria.
I guess there's not a lot of wiggle room because of the cooperation with Turkey over hosting refugees and everyone being a NATO member here... But still.

I guess we'll have to settle for negotiating some settlement, hosting high profile political refugees or punching the table to nominally save some civilian pockets at the twilight hour.

Nintex · « **Reply #7559 on:** October 11, 2019, 06:08:47 PM »

Quote from: VomKriege on October 11, 2019, 05:57:18 PM

Jesus, Europe has been defanged something fierce in Syria.
I guess there's not a lot of wiggle room because of the cooperation with Turkey over hosting refugees and everyone being a NATO member here... But still.

I guess we'll have to settle for negotiating some settlement, hosting high profile political refugees or punching the table to nominally save some civilian pockets at the twilight hour.

The Turks are 'accidentally' bombing US special forces and bases near Kobane, trying to force them to withdraw.
Footage on social-media shows Turkey is using former ISIS members as proxies. Anyone who thinks Erdogan will stop at that "safe zone" is delusional.

The Kurds and Christians in Syria will be crushed by the Turkish army or forced to convert to Islam by the remaining Jihadist groups and unless somebody wants to risk a ground war in Syria or the Kurds pull off a military miracle there's no escaping it.

News:

Author Topic: International Politics Thread - Disease and Disaster (Read 1313793 times)