Category: Eurasia

Can democrats restore ‘Internet’s Lost Promise’?

     

Russia has used information warfare to influence election outcomes with the aim of weakening the values, defenses and self-belief of Western democracies, notes Sir Peter Westmacott, a former British Ambassador… Read more »

Soviet collapse ‘echoes’ in China’s Belt and Road Initiative

     

China’s increasingly image-conscious government has appointed a trusted member of the ruling Communist Party to head up its international propaganda operation, AP reports: Former top internet regulator Xu Lin will… Read more »

How to counter ‘asymmetric risk for democratic societies’

     

Hackers linked to Russia’s government tried to target the websites of two U.S. think-tanks, suggesting they were broadening their attacks in the build-up to November elections, according to Microsoft, Reuters… Read more »

Russian hackers target sites exposing Kremlin kleptocracy

     

Hackers linked to Russia’s government tried to target the websites of two U.S. think-tanks, suggesting they were broadening their attacks in the build-up to November elections, according to Microsoft, Reuters… Read more »

Counter influence strategies for combating disinformation

     

The potential for Russian hacking of election systems in the 2018 midterm elections has emerged as an urgent and destabilizing issue in the run-up to the U.S. elections, CodaStory reports…. Read more »

Why the West must confront Putin

     

Recent events have only strengthened hedge-fund manager Bill Browder’s case against the Kremlin, a prominent Moscow-based journalist writes. In order to advance the now-celebrated Magnitsky Act, Browder approached the Helsinki… Read more »

Russian ‘mood swing’? High level of dissent ‘points to trouble for Putin’

     

Economic conditions for most Russians are about to get much worse, say analysts [HT: Paul Goble]. That makes grim reading for the Kremlin alongside news that Vladimir Putin’s personal support hit… Read more »

Orban’s Hungary offers a ‘glimpse of Europe’s demise’?

     

At a bucolic border post, Western-trained Hungarian counterintelligence agents recently got word that a known operative of Russia’s foreign spy service was driving into Hungary, and asked headquarters for permission… Read more »

Putin’s conservative rhetoric fueling ‘demoskepticism’?

     

Does conservative support for such illiberal rulers as Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán indicate growing “demoskepticism” on the right? Some conservatives now dismiss policies that are infused with… Read more »