A 54-page redacted report from the bi-partisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (during the 116th Congress, released during the Trump administration), confirming what every other federal governmental agency had reported, clearly found that pervasive and massive Russian hacking and spreading of disinformation in targeted and general social media was aimed to support Donald Trump’s election and thwart Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That was 2016, but the online efforts continued and even escalated in the 2018 mid-terms and exploded in the 2020 elections. Attacks on Joe Biden and particularly his son Hunter emanated in massive doses from sophisticated Russian governmental sources, occasionally masquerading as rogue hackers from various locations within Russia.
Our intelligence agencies confirmed that the level of hacking, which soon escalated into Russia’s support of ransomware attacks on essential Web services, hospitals and government agencies (from a dramatic hack of the federal government to localize extortion to small municipal agencies), required the kinds of expertise and large numbers of well-trained computer experts only available at a governmental level. Russian penetration of our Internet vulnerabilities has only increased this year, even resulting in a conversation between President Biden and Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin where Biden promised serious retaliation for Russia’s incursions, even as Putin continued to lie and deny governmental involvement.
Aside from extra-territorial assassinations – like the UK hits of Alexander Litvinenko from radiation poisoning and the attempted assassination of Sergei and Yulia Skripal (nerve agent) in the U.K., a mass of “hits” against anti-Russian and anti-Assad regime targets in Syria, etc., etc. – “mysterious” killings and attempted killings within Russia (e.g., Russian Putin opponent, Alexei Navalny) illustrate a rogue state without moral limits. But these efforts pale into comparison with Russian indifference to human rights, innocent victims and even their own treaties. The annexation of Crimea and the efforts to destabilize eastern Ukraine fly in the face of long-standing treaty guarantees on Ukrainian sovereignty. But Russian willingness to back recent genocidal efforts by the most brutal current regime on earth, the al Assad family in Syria, are staggeringly horrific.
Not only did Russia supply the Assad regime with barrel bombs and chlorine gas which they knew would be deployed on civilians, Russia fully cooperated in Assad’s bombing campaign against hospitals and even schools in areas not fully controlled by Syrian forces. Pictured above. Russia-supplied aircraft and weapons, some actually flown by Russian pilots, tilted the rising insurrection against the hated Assad family with raw Russian killing power. By every international definition of “war crimes,” Russia is guilty, guilty, guilty, and Vladimir Putin could easily face conviction if ever subjected to a trial under International Criminal Law in the International Criminal Courts.
Russia is openly allied with dictatorships that support all things anti-American. The Russian coziness with the brutal theocracy of Iran – which just inaugurated its eighth president, Ebrahim Raisi, a former official in the Tehran Province “death commission” who routinely ordered the mass executions of Iranian dissidents – guarantees to jab US interests with destructive effectiveness for the foreseeable future. Yet Russia likes to play both sides of the aisle with its support for reinstatement of a nuclear containment treaty, while continuing to stoke Iran’s anti-Western zeal. Russian aid, military and otherwise, easily finds its way to any nation willing to take a stand against the United States. Like Venezuela and Cuba in our own hemisphere.
If all of this were not enough, we also need to be aware of Russian forces, often pretending to operate as if they were unaffiliated with Moscow (e.g., the “Green Men” in eastern Ukraine), to destabilize hotspots wherever the opportunity arises, baiting the United States and its Western allies at every opportunity. The August 11th BBC.com provides this very recent illustration: “A new BBC investigation has revealed the scale of operations by a shadowy Russian mercenary group in Libya's civil war, which includes links to war crimes and the Russian military… A Samsung tablet left by a fighter for the Wagner group exposes its key role - as well as traceable fighter codenames… And the BBC has a ‘shopping list’ for state-of-the-art military equipment which expert witnesses say could only have come from Russian army supplies…
“There is little doubt that they kill prisoners - something one ex-fighter freely admits. ‘No-one wants an extra mouth to feed.’… One Libyan villager describes how he played dead as his relatives were killed. His testimony helped the BBC team identify a suspected killer.
“Describing another possible war crime, a Libyan government soldier also recalls how a comrade, his friend, surrendered to Wagner fighters but was shot twice in the stomach. The soldier has not seen him since, nor three other friends taken away at the same time… Russia denies any links to Wagner.” Indeed, Russian denials are worth the paper they are printed on.
We face a hostile China, equally untrustworthy and exceptionally brutality within its own borders, an economic power that dwarf’s Russia’s staggering economy. Nonetheless, Russia is better practiced in the dark arts of disruption, direct military support of genocidal dictators and assassination. But then, Russia is led by a former colonel in the dreaded and feared Soviet era KGB.
I’m Peter Dekom, and unless we make a solid and retaliatory stand against this pervasive foe, the level of malevolent Russian exploits against our interests will only escalate.
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