Russia and European far right

[Firn]

Much more at the link. Bottom line is NATO's alleged military superiority can be easily and cheaply subverted with information warfare. We're concerned with little green men, when we should be concerned with the information domain. If we can dominate the information domain, we can easily eliminate the little green men.

I partly disagree.

a) While the military superiority of NATO does make it arguably more attractive to employ means like information warfare even the potentially conventionally superior WP used it extensively during the Cold War. It's more about return on propaganda investment and basic opportunity costs.

b) The Russian forces were ordered to invade Crimea and SE-Ukraine by their president. The poor economic performance of Ukraine and the ressource-driven economic success of Russian plus Soviet nostalgia made the population a rather fertile ground for the Kremlin information campaigns. But in the end the decisive factor in the occupation of those regions were still the invading military forces.

Rather old-fashioned stuff with some modern means as support, at least IMHO.

[kaur]

Britain’s Ukip and France’s National Front teamed up with other anti-EU parties to vote against a Russia-critical resolution at the European Parliament on Wednesday (10 June).
The non-binding report, by centre-right Lithuanian MEP Gabrielius Landsbergis, passed anyway by 494 votes against 135 with 69 abstentions.

It raises the alarm over what it calls the emergence of a new “Nationalist International”.
It says the European Parliament is “deeply concerned at the ever more intensive contacts and co-operation, tolerated by the Russian leadership, between European populist, fascist, and extreme right-wing parties on the one hand and nationalist groups in Russia”.

It calls the Russia-backed bloc “a danger to democratic values and the rule of law in the EU”.

It also “calls on the [European] Commission to propose legislation forbidding financing of political parties in the EU by political or economic stakeholders outside the EU”.

French investigative reporters last November revealed the National Front received at least €9 million in loans from a Kremlin-linked bank.

German media and the Austrian opposition say the anti-euro AfD party in Germany and the far-right FPO party in Austria are also being financed by Russia, in allegations they deny.

The far-right Jobbik party in Hungary and the pro-Russian Latvijas Krievu savieniba party in Latvia are facing criminal probes on similar grounds.

The parties regularly speak out in favour of Russia at home and in the EU assembly.

https://euobserver.com/political/129071

[kaur]

Anton Shekovtsov comments this weekend event.

Russian politicians building an international extreme right alliance
(This article originally appeared in Norwegian in Verdens Gang.)

Russia seems to be getting serious about building an international alliance of extreme right parties that would aim at undermining the liberal democratic consensus in the West. In addition to providing financial support for parties such as France’s Front National and using extreme right activists and politicians as tools of propaganda, Russia is now building what it calls the “World National-Conservative Movement” (WNCM). A number of the internal documents (passed to me by the Moscow-based "Sova Centre") provide an insight into the agenda and structure of the WNCM.

http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.be...-building.html

[kaur]

Riskandforecast series analysis about Kremlin and Front National.

http://www.politicalcapital.hu/wp-co...France_ENG.pdf

[kaur]

The Telegraph reports.

American intelligence agencies are to conduct a major investigation into how the Kremlin is infiltrating political parties in Europe, it can be revealed.
James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, has been instructed by the US Congress to conduct a major review into Russian clandestine funding of European parties over the last decade.

X

Officials declined to say which parties could come into the probe but it is thought likely to include far-right groups including Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece, the Northern League in Italy and France’s Front National which received a 9m euro (£6.9m) loan from a Russian bank in 2014.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ing-in-EU.html

[kaur]

Frenchmen visited Donetsk.

A delegation led by Jacques Closterman, a French politician linked with Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front and two lawyers - Josy Jean Bousquet and Hanen Maksud – are on a visit to the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’. Their aim, according to Russian and Kremlin-backed militant sources, is “to gather cases of Ukrainian war crimes against residents of Donbas for the further circulation of such information among the public of France and Europe”

http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1452639620

During visit of Doentsk airport ruins. In concert with Russian narrative about fascists. I wonder why Russians took away collection of NATO weapons from airport.

SOT Reporter (French): "Is what happened here Fascism?"

SOT Jacques Clostermann (French): "Certainly, certainly. But it's very difficult to explain that less than 2,500 km from Paris, there are horrors such as the ones that have occurred here, among these people. It's also difficult to explain that these people fought for their freedom, and that everything that happened here was in the name of liberty for the people themselves, for the rights of the people to self-determination. This is something extraordinary."

https://www.ruptly.tv/vod/view/40680...ion-to-donetsk

NATO weapons in Donetsk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO3RuLUZneg

[Bill Moore]

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debat...ainst-germany/

Russia having success in hybrid war against Germany

Now, as the German chancellor flounders domestically because of her open-door refugee policy, she has made herself vulnerable to attack. “I’ve never seen so much glee from the Russians as during Germany’s refugee crisis,” said a diplomat in Berlin.

Later proven to be a false claim, but it still served it purpose to mobilize Russian immigrants in Germany, and the far right.

Stoking outrage in Germany’s Russian-speaking community is not an end in itself, but a means to exploiting cracks in German society exposed by the refugee crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who served as a KGB agent in Soviet-occupied East Germany and speaks fluent German, believes that Berlin and Moscow can form a strategic axis based on Russian natural resources and German technology. Merkel, in her insistence that Russia do more to bring peace to Ukraine, is getting in the way.