Clint Watts Profile picture
Aug 21, 2022 20 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Significant assassination inside Russia, seems Dugin was meant to be target, but this article leaves out significant data, more than 1 scenario for who killed Dugin “Daughter of prominent Putin supporter killed in Moscow car bomb attack | Financial Times” ft.com/content/a1ce13…
Story insinuates scenario 1 - Ukraine connects pulled off sophisticated bombing deep inside Russia to eliminate a purveyor of Kremlin disinformation motivating Russians to support invasion of Ukraine. Maybe true, but fails logic test on several fronts. For example…
This assumes Ukraine has ability to set up detonate complex device in Moscow area and wants to send a message by striking deep in heart of Russia. If they had such ability and wanted to send a message, why Dugin as target?
Killing an ideologue like Dugin leads to him being easily replaced by another ideologue saying same Kremlin talking points
While Dugin is an important messenger for linking global far right movement from Europe to North America, he’s not that important inside Russia except for juicing select young men to go to Ukraine. There would seem to be many more important targets for Ukraine inside RU
Ukraine has been very good about selecting targets of military significance inside RU, Crimea, unless it’s just about hitting an accessible target (undefended by body guards etc), why would they not hit a target inside RU that matters militarily or that matters more to Russians?
Also, attacking an ideologue has the inverse affect if UKR wants demoralize RU and hurt motivation for cause, instead it would likely galvanize support for war amongst most zealous.
Lastly, all the Kremlin propagandists quickly pointed (Malofeev in this article) at Ukraine, which is also what Putin would want the world and Russians in particular to believe, which leads to scenario 2…..
Scenario 2 - Putin tried to kill off Dugin. 1- Putin facing the inevitability of waging a blundered military campaign 6 months. Troop, ammo, equipment shortages & domestic disinfo can’t hide facts now. Deserters, high death toll, wounded & veterans rotating back tell truth
Despite the polls, sub-surface evidence of concern amongst trolls & propagandists and 1 in particular was likely Dugin
Last year, Dugan started chirping in ways that could be seen as anti-Putin. Exhibit A here below, would seem Dugin taking a dangerous populist streak against Kremlin Image
And who has history of killing off dissenters in Moscow with targeted assassinations (bombs, bullets, balconies)? Seems more likely the Kremlin who has long history of these things, you know, “Follow the trail of dead Russians”
Issue is for journalists that write about the assassination Dugin offering scenario 1 without scenario 2, until facts are known (if they can be), one might be helping Putin write narratives to his favor. As Surkov would likely say “managed democracy”
Todays updates on the situation. nytimes.com/2022/08/21/wor…
Adding to the thread, guess who solved this assassination in just a few hours. The FSB -
I’m strongly leaning toward scenario #2 for Dugina where Kremlin was in on the killing. Speed of FSB investigation, quick evidence, seeding of narratives, synchronization of messengers all suggest pre-planning nytimes.com/2022/08/22/wor…
Dugina assassination occurs curiously at same point where Russia needs to rally domestic audience against Ukraine, and kills the daughter of prominent anti-Ukraine propagandist Dugin, but not the more valuable messenger himself - Dugin.

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More from @selectedwisdom

Dec 27, 2022
Musk - the owner of this platform with the largest following on Twitter - is boosting an enduring Russian propaganda & disinformation campaign into nearly all Twitter feeds tonight.
The Kremlin has covertly and more recently overtly tried running CALEXIT and TEXIT campaigns on social media in america since at least 2014. texasmonthly.com/news-politics/…
Kremlin’s active measures strategy seeks to break unions, “win through the force of politics rather than the politics of force” it hasn’t worked, but, Medvedev could only dream of having millions see this narrative, today is the day kqed.org/news/11217187/…
Read 5 tweets
Dec 7, 2022
Surprising and not surprising at the same time. For those interested, NYT did an excellent broadcast “Day X” about similar extremism in Germany nytimes.com/2022/12/07/wor…
Again, not a surprise. They wanted to make contact with Russia. Image
Germany is a pivotal partner for holding together NATO/EU and support to Ukraine through the winter. Deeply alarming and not surprising based on recent indicators.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 7, 2022
ok, let's take a breath on Russian meddling in election via social media. The website here hosts american content gets little to no traction, the account posting memes is well known, extremely low traction nytimes.com/2022/11/06/tec…
At present, this is least Russian influence activity I've seen in 4 election cycles. Unless strategic hack on election day, see no evidence Russia tipping any election outcome.
More importantly for journalists, when IRA-Prighozin noisy & overt, they are doing little covert & achieving less. Putin's chef is achieving effects here, while not doing much of anything. apnews.com/article/2022-m…
Read 4 tweets
Nov 3, 2022
Summary: “Americans use Iranian disinformation about election 2020 to create American disinformation about election 2022” this is foreign disinfo being re-used by Americans - #NotLegit
This is a fake video the US Treasury said Iran "made in an attempt to undermine faith in the election by implying that individuals could cast fraudulent ballots."
Video created by Iranian state-sponsored actors executing a digital influence operation to intimidate and influence American voters. home.treasury.gov/news/press-rel…
Read 4 tweets
Nov 1, 2022
week until Election Day 2022, regarding foreign influence & interference, my general assessment is same as 2020 “what could a foreign country do to America that America is not already doing to itself.” However, a few things we’ve seen, few to look for nytimes.com/2022/10/31/tec…
2 parts to foreign election meddling; 1) influence of the outcome 2) interference in the conduct. On #1 - foreign has been light & weak. Seen no signs that of the outcome of any contest being tipped by those outside the U.S., but one interesting highlight...
China finally jumped into social media influence ops in U.S. election. An escalation for them, past elections had been CCP had been overt or sloppy or both. This time they tried to play like the Russians, except, lucky for the U.S., China sucks at it.
rollingstone.com/politics/polit…
Read 13 tweets
Oct 23, 2022
There it is. Kremlin using same strategy as February, telling on themselves. Watch the dam on Dnipro river, chemical weapons use, nuclear plants.
Russian troop in/around Kherson are in retreat. Kremlin taking heavy losses, realize they will not take Ukraine they are resorting to targeting energy infrastructure inside Ukraine. Also expanding cyber/sabotage on Europe. Escalating to deescalate, settle for ground before defeat
Read 4 tweets

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