Kremlin Watch Briefing: EU sanctions 44 Belarus officials & Russian Entities

Elusive consensus: EU sanctions 44 Belarus officials & Russian Entities, Individuals Responsible For Kerch Strait Rail Bridge

Similarly, Canada and the U.K. announced sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko and Belarusian officials responsible for the election fraud and ongoing violent repressions. The U.S. also joined and imposed the sanctions on Interior Minister Karaev and seven other Belarusian officials. The reciprocal sanctions against the European Union were also adopted by Belarus and Russia.

However, among other sanctions-related achievements, the EU managed to expand sanctions against Russia. The Council singled out two individuals and the asset freeze on four companies responsible for the construction of the Kerch Strait railway bridge. The railway bridge was built to connect Russia mainland and the illegally Russia-occupied Crimean Peninsula and was put into operation in December 2019.

The first sanctions were introduced in 2014 and were updated right after the opening of the road bridge in 2018, which hit 6 companies involved in the road bridge construction. In total, the sanctions will target now 177 individuals and 48 entities.

As the demonstrations continue, Lukashenko’s apparatus keeps intimidating peaceful democratic protests, detaining political opponents, trying to silence the dissents by revoking the accreditation of all foreign media sources. Meanwhile, Russia keeps testing international rule of law and undermining the world order.

When it comes to Russia, the appeasement approach should not be even on the Western’s radar. Instead, ‘sanctions against Russia should be proportional to Moscow’s violations of international law and steadily increased until it changes course’. EU’s Sanctions Policy should remain at the vanguard of the deterrence toolkit employed in response to the Kremlin’s encroachment. So far EU consensus and credibility of the bloc’s foreign policy remains to be fairly vague. Only well-coordinated actions by Western allies against malign actions of authoritarian leaders will help to safeguard democratic values, hold Belarus and Russia accountable for their actions, and usher in a just peace in Ukraine.

Germany’s Huawei 5G retreat

Germany is about to impose new restrictions on Huawei to exclude this from the 5G rollout. The new bill should be passed shortly and this is ought to introduce new guidelines on political and technical assessment of telecoms’ ‘trustworthiness’. Such toughened security criteria will mainly target Huawei, and will likely to phase out Huawei’s 5G as the equipment provider from the German market. In such a way German joined a growing group of countries that have already imposed restrictions on Huawei.

Huawei’s 5G omnipresence in infrastructure rollout became on the flashpoint in the Transatlantic-China relationships. China is surrounded by allegations for leveraging Huawei’s 5G capabilities to conduct various espionage on Western countries. These raised concerns and debates on 5G potential to constitute multifold threats to the national security of Western allies.

These concerns were previously prompted by Trump’s administration, which executed an order banning Huawei from the U.S. market in May 2019. This decision has driven further confrontation over China’s 5G and forced other countries to choose their stance. The overall risk of vendor’s influence on a state’s security should not be ruled out given the rise of systematics Chinese espionage.

Using Pseudo-Academic Online Journals to Amplify Fringe Voices

A recent GEC report has explored Russia's use of pseudo-academic journals "to conceal Russian state involvement in disinformation outlets and use obscure Western fringe voices and conspiracy theorists as surrogate messengers." These pseudo-academic online journals are under Russian control but are portrayed as being independent. Russia’s foreign-facing information apparatus "gives increased circulation to what would otherwise be marginal anti-Western views" and allows Russia to circumvent easy attribution for their propaganda.

Managing the COVID-19 infodemic: Promoting healthy behaviours and mitigating the harm from misinformation and disinformation

WHO, UN, UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO, UNAIDS, ITU, UN Global Pulse, and IFRC have released a joint statement warning the public that the "infodemic" emanating from the coronavirus epidemic "continues to undermine the global response and jeopardizes measures to control the pandemic." The statement warns that misinformation and disinformation can be damaging to the public's mental health and will impede states' ability to deploy immunization campaigns. The statement urges the Member States to "engage and listen to their communities as they develop their national action plans, and to empower communities to develop solutions and resilience against mis- and disinformation."

So, who is afraid of whom? The latest narratives on NATO – Russia relations

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of the reunification of Germany, an event that Stephen Kinzer from The Boston Globe considers a critical point in the tensions between Russia and NATO. Even though it remains disputed whether or not the US Secretary of State James Baker actually “promised” to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not expand to Eastern Europe, Moscow seems to stand by the untrustworthy and aggressive image of the alliance.

These days Russian media dazzle with the headlines such as “West is scared: Russia is taking NATO in her pincers” or “Germany is playing at militarism, but in fact is under the hood of the United States,” all in an attempt to criticize the alliance and assure Russian impregnability. Some of their main ideas are outlined in this section of the briefing.

Several news outlets focused closely on the recent article from The Wall Street Journal pointing out that military cooperation between Russia and Belarus could increase the pressure on the “weak northeastern flank of the alliance.” On the one hand, Russian sources deemed the article as proof that NATO considers Moscow their real enemy. Thus, Putin should be prepared for aggression from the West as well as strengthen the military infrastructure on western borders.

On the other hand, they suggest that “western militaristic rhetoric” is inevitable, since the European countries are not only “forced to buy expensive liquefied gas from the United States, but to see NATO as the only security guarantor, or protector from aggressive Russia.” Federal News Agency (FAN) confirms that NATO is trying to create an “aggressive identity” for Russia because the West recognized Moscow’s combat capability as maximum. However, it could also be easier to increase NATO defence spending based on the myth of the "Russian threat".

Furthermore, this military dependence on NATO in the post-WWII period turned Germany into a “castrated nation.” Even if Merkel, as the source explains, wants to decrease the reliance on Washington (which is the whole “playing at militarism” idea), Germany, as well as Japan, cannot pursue an independent foreign policy when their armies are at best an addition to the NATO forces.

There is a final question regarding the credibility of the “Russian threat.” Dni.ru reports that Putin is preparing for the conflict with NATO, which is one of the main reasons for the recent joint military training “Slavic Brotherhood – 2020.” Nevertheless, FAN insists that Russia never threatened anyone and is not planning to, while the military reinforcements of the western borders are purely defensive.

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Policy & Research News

Elusive consensus: EU sanctions 44 Belarus officials & Russian Entities, Individuals Responsible For Kerch Strait Rail Bridge

Germany’s Huawei 5G retreat

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Using Pseudo-Academic Online Journals to Amplify Fringe Voices

Managing the COVID-19 infodemic: Promoting healthy behaviours and mitigating the harm from misinformation and disinformation

Kremlin's Current Narrative

So, who is afraid of whom? The latest narratives on NATO – Russia relations