Thread by @AliAdair22

⁉️Why didn’t we see what was happening?

🎞️“Active Measures” is a documentary, but also a Russian term to describe political warfare by their state-run security services to influence world events, meaning to strengthen Russia’s position as a world power.

activemeasures.com

🕵️‍♂️"Active Measures" also seek to weaken all democracies or overpower them.

🕵️‍♂️“Active Measures” are usually done 3 ways:
📰Propaganda (digital disinformation campaigns, gaslighting with the intention of causing harm to 1 party), causing internal political unrest between 2 parties

💻Cyberattacks
🎎Installing a “puppet” candidate, controlled by Putin

💥These things happened in other countries before they happened in the U.S.

💥They happened in other countries long before 2016.

🇺🇦Ukraine 2004-2014.🇪🇪 Estonia: 2007. 🇬🇪Georgia: 2008.

🔥By the time the Russians started with the United States, they had practiced a lot. Trial and error.

💥Not just once.

💥So many times.

ℹ️Active Measures, is available on hulu, itunes & more:

🛎️Instead of repeating "familiar?" too many times I will just put this bell emoji.

🇺🇦UKRAINE:
In the Ukraine, the Russians used propaganda & the puppet technique. It lasted many years and ended with Russia annexing Crimea in March 2014. In 2004, serious problems started when the Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych ran for president against Viktor Yushchenko.

Yushchenko was the perfect candidate: handsome, honest, fair and pro-Western. The pro-Moscow, Kremlin-backed Yanukovych was declared the winner, but the results were rife with fraud (🛎️via hacking changing the results) & voter intimidation so Yushchenko challenged the results.

🧡This caused public outry in support of Yushchenko, called the Orange Revolution—largely peaceful—led by Yushchenko & Yulia Tymoshenko, his running mate. The Ukrainians would not accept the phony results.

telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews…

☠️But during the revolution, Yushchenko got seriously ill. Doctors soon discovered that Yushchenko had been poisoned by TCDD dioxin and severely disfigured. He suspected the Russians had poisoned him.

washingtonpost.com/news/worldview…

⚖️The Supreme Court of Ukraine ruled that the election should be a “do-over” and Yushchenko—who recovered within a few weeks but with a drastically changed appearance—and Tymoshenko, who became prime minister, prevailed over Yanokovich in the new election.

🛎️Cue: Paul Manafort. Manafort was called in in 2004 to “rehabilitate” Yanokovych so that he could win the next election for the Kremlin.

🇷🇺Meanwhile, The Russians started buying up the utilities and having a monopoly over the Ukraine's natural gas supply, they cut it off.

❄️🌬️In the winter.

🇷🇺Gazprom, the natural gas monopoly is the largest gas company in the world. As Prime Minister, Julia Tymoshenko was sent in to negotiate a "deal" with Russia.

nytimes.com/2009/01/02/wor…

🇺🇦Tymoshenko negotiated this deal, despite having differences with her president, whom she was expected to challenge in 2010.

🛎️Of course, the infighting was benefiting Yanukovych.

nytimes.com/2009/01/21/wor…

🌟As expected, Julia Tymoshenko ran against the new and improved (thanks to Manafort) Viktor Yanukovyck.

💥He refused to debate so she debated an empty podium. 🛎️There was propaganda & smears as she was labeled a "Jew" and an "Armenian.

🍾Yanukovyck won 49.61 vs. 45.72.

😡As promised, political persecution started. They pressed charges against her for the “bad” gas deal she made with Russia. “She may have made a bad deal but it certainly wasn’t a criminal action that the Ukrainian government under Yanukovych charged her with.” Steven Pifer.

💰Pifer was the U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine (1998-2000).

🎭After what she called a “Stalinish show trial,” her penalty for her "crimes" was 7 years in prison and she was ordered to pay back $2 million in compensation.

nytimes.com/2011/10/12/wor…

😡While in prison, she went on a hunger strike and was beaten.

🇷🇺Eventually, the Ukrainians rebelled against what was essentially Russian rule (they had technically been an independent state since 1991, but in 2004 they became a hybrid and remain so:...

🌍🇷🇺...between influences of the European Union and the Russian Federation).

🇺🇦In 2014, the Ukrainian Revolution started after Yanukovych decided to suspend the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement and seek closer economic ties with Russia.

bbc.com/news/world-eur…

🛎️Yanukovych tried to restrict Ukrainians basic rights of speech and assembly. The protests were violent and got worse. Yanukovych’s reign got more and more repressive.

⚰️People died.

🛎️He enraged the entire country.

cnn.com/2014/02/19/wor…

🇺🇦The Parliament voted to first limit Yanukovych’s powers, then to remove him.

🏃‍♂️He fled to Russia (while Manafort was still advising him), where he is now in exile.

🇷🇺Putin helped him.

bbc.com/news/world-eur…

🙌After Yanukovych fled, the Parliament voted to free Julia Tymoshenko, his arch-nemesis.

🙌She urged Ukrainians to assert their independence.

🇷🇺“At that point, the Russians panicked.” Pifer said.

✅Another plan.

independent.co.uk/news/world/asi…

🇷🇺The Russians' new plan was to seize military control & annex Crimea, desirable because of the port city of Sevastopol.

🇺🇸The U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia for this, adding to the ones already imposed for the torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky.

newsweek.com/russia-crimea-…

ESTONIA
🇷🇺At the Munich Conference on Security Policy in February 2007, Putin said that he thought the U.S. was undermining global stability and that Russia should play an active role in world affairs.

nytimes.com/2007/02/11/wor…

🇪🇪Meanwhile a few months later in Estonia, trouble was brewing over a 6’6” sculpture known as the "Bronze Soldier" statue, located in the middle of the Capital, Tallinn. The statue was placed in 1947 to commemorate the defeat of the Nazis in World War II.

forbes.com/sites/francist…

🇪🇪The Estonian government decided in 2007 they wanted to move it because to them it represented years of Soviet domination (Estonia became independent in 1991 and joined NATO in 2004). Russians protested what they thought was “blasphemy,” and there was violence.

🇷🇺Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the move “disgusting” and threatened, “This is blasphemous, and will have serious consequences for our relations with Estonia.”

uk.reuters.com/article/uk-est…

🖇️Link to New York Times article, Russia Rebukes Estonia for Moving Soviet Statue

nytimes.com/2007/04/27/wor…

🛎️🛎️After the threat by Lavrov, one of the largest cyberattacks ever occurred in Estonia (a member of NATO) on May 9, 2007. May 9th is the day that the Russians celebrate the end of World War II, the same thing the statue represents.

💻May 9th is the day that the Russians shut down all the banks, ATMs, newspapers, government communication—pretty much the entire internet in Estonia—with varied cyber attacks.

💻Cyber attacks “dramatically intensified” for 24 hours, then let up. “It was unheard of, and no one understood what was going on in the beginning,” Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia in 2007. They first thought it was an internal failure.

foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/27/10-…

🛎️🛎️Some of the attacks were distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. The hackers used hundreds of thousands of “zombie” computers and barraged the Estonian websites with thousands of requests/second, boosting traffic to unmanageable levels and overloading servers.

💻🛎️Other cyber attacks were waves of spam sent by “botnets.”

computer.howstuffworks.com/die-hard-hacke…

🇷🇺The attacks took a lot of time to deal with & are expensive to ward off, but eventually Estonia has become a world leader in cybersecurity. The attacks came from Russian IP addresses, but the Russian government denied all responsibility for the attacks.
bbc.com/news/39655415

🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️Of course they did.

💻One year after the Estonia cyber attacks, the Russians invaded Georgia.

GEORGIA
🇬🇪In Georgia, another clean, honest, intelligent pro-Western candidate, Mikheil Saakashvili, was elected president in 2004 after a revolution.

🦹‍♂️Before he was president, Georgia had been riddled with mafia, criminal gangs, “thieves in law” or professional, highly regarded criminals etc.

➕➕Saakashvili made significant positive changes.

🇷🇺The Russians hated Saakashvili.🛎️

🇷🇺The Russians kept provoking Georgia in order to start a war.

🇷🇺🤸‍♂️🤸‍♀️Russia attacked Georgia during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics.

🇷🇺🛎️Russia denied it and claimed that Georgia had started the war.

slate.com/news-and-polit…

🥳This gets good. Remember it's 2008. “Investigative Journalist” Alex Jones said at the time, ““I just hope Russia keeps troops in Georgia because the dictator—and we know he was elected under fraud—there in Georgia has said that he plans—he said it last week—to attack again.”

🛎️🛎️So Alex Jones on RT was promoting the false Russian narrative that the Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had attacked Russia and was planning to attack AGAIN.

🔥In 2008.

🇷🇺“The allegation that Georgia would attack Russia is so foolish and outrageous and disgraceful, but it’s typical of Vladimir Putin.” John McCain said at the time.

🤪Russians also peddled the creative perspective that Saakashvili was “dangerous” and a “madman.”

🎖️But militarily, Russia was not able to conquer Georgia and they were exposed as being weak.

💻The Russians changed course & decided instead to concentrate on political warfare which they were good at and was less expensive.

💰They increased funding to far-right, xenophobic, anti-immigration parties in other countries.

🛎️So enter the puppet. This puppet was a Russian oligarch billionaire named Bidzina Ivanishvili, the biggest private shareowner of Gazprom, the world’s largest gas company,

🐧🦓"The Puppet" Ivanishvili, depicted as an eccentric billionaire who lived in a glass house and owned penguins, lemurs and a zebra, ran for office in 2012.

🔪“Dirty, hostile, violent.” Molly McKim Writer & Information warfare expert said about the election.

🗳️"So the [Russian] narrative was that no matter what you will falsify, rig the elections. And then they would take it to the streets."—Saakashvili

🛎️The Russians created a narrative that they would put all the former government officials in prison.

theguardian.com/world/2012/oct…

🛎️The Russians pushed the idea that Saakashvili is really Armenian, not a Georgian.

💉Then he was a drug user.

🛎️Making the opponent look "inauthentic" was the best way to "discredit them," according to former FBI Special Agent Clint Watts quote).

🗣️🛎️Molly McKew: "Then it’s picked up by other media. It’s sort of spread about social media. Eventually people sort of say some of this must be true."

📞The mafia staged mass disturbances, listened in on phone calls.

🛎️🛎️Then because Bidzina Ivanishvili couldn’t be 100% pro-Russian, the new message “wouldn’t it be nice if we had a better relationship with Russia?”

🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️Does this sound familiar?

📼Then there was the release of what was known as the “prison abuse tapes” which hurt Saakashvili badly. The tapes were faked by Russian Intelligence, but it was too late and Saakashvili lost the election.

bbc.com/news/world-eur…

💥When Ivanishvili took over, 65 or so former gov't officials were arrested, detained or convicted.

⚡️Saakashvili will be arrested if he goes back.

✍️Journalist to Putin: ”Is it true that you promised to hang Saakashvili by a certain body part?”

🗣️Putin: “why only one part!”

🇷🇺💰🛎️Then, Ivanishvili started letting Russian money into Georgia. He could not be independent because he, his wealth & fortune was connected to Russia.

🗣️🛎️“Putin had told the national Security Council that the Georgian elections were the most successful Special Operations they’ve ever had. They learned that any Democratic system is essentially vulnerable to this kind of meddling.”—Saakashvili

🗣️🛎️Saakashvili (cont'd): "Full corruption, information campaigns, character destructions, and then your adversary’s much more vulnerable. Then it’s nothing about their economy size or military size. It’s about their state of mind."

UNITED STATES
🇺🇸Comments from Clint Watts, former Special Agent for the FBI: "Russia did a wide range of hacks. Started I would guess around August, September of 2015, extended all the way through the spring and into the summer of 2016.

🇺🇸Clint Watts (cont'd): We’re talking about thousands of Americans that were hit. They were going after anybody and everybody they could. Their targets include media personalities, politicians, government officials, current and former.

🇺🇸Clint Watts (cont'd): Anybody that they could gain what is ultimately information or kompromat that they could use. That is the nuclear fuel that powers the influence operation in ’16. Any wedge that’s there, they’re gonna test that audience out.

🇺🇸Clint Watts (cont'd): And when they find success then they exploit it. They double down on it. You might see them show up around Black Lives Matter protests. And in the counter protest movement. Any anti-government or white supremacist group. Nationalists, non-globalists.

🇺🇸Clint Watts (cont'd): Anti-EU, anti-NATO, anti-immigration....Russia wins the audience first and then directs them somewhere. It’s very different from American approaches.

🇺🇸Clint Watts (cont'd): The Russian hand in these influence efforts, ultimately they’ll try and hide it and they do it with two methods, putting them in jail or killing people off.

💣Destroy from within.

🇺🇸Clint Watts (cont'd): By actually creating fissures and exploiting them such that it’s the electorate is so divided that you don’t trust the government anymore.

🇺🇸Rep. Eric Swalwell: Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia by Aleksandr Dugin—the book the military & intelligence services has relied on and applied.

🗺️Map showing the proximity of Estonia, Ukraine, Crimea and Georgia to the Russian border.

🙌I forgot to post this earlier, but a good way to end this thread. A quote from Viktor Yushchenko after his rocky election win.

🛎️

P.S. Viktor Yushchenko eventually made a full recovery from the poisoning and the scars disappeared.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1… via @MailOnline