Topics of the Week

An influential lobby group of Chinese businesses threatens that Britain will lose billions of pounds of investment and thousands of jobs unless it reverses its hostility to China

The city of Detroit's lawyers have urged a judge to rebuke President Donald Trump’s campaign for spreading disinformation

Kremlin's Current Narrative: Russia retaliates "absurd and groundless" Western sanctions

Good Old Soviet Joke

A farmworker greets Josef Stalin at his potato farm.

“Comrade Stalin, we have so many potatoes that, piled one on top of the other, they would reach all the way to God,” the farmer excitedly tells his leader.

“But God does not exist,” replies Stalin.

“Exactly,” says the farmer. “Neither do the potatoes.”

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Policy & Research News

Polish former intelligence officer and ex-Huawei-employee charged with espionage

As reported by Reuters, the former Polish domestic intelligence officer and Chinese senior manager at Huawei were arrested in Poland on espionage charges. The Warsaw District Court issued an indictment against both of them for carrying out espionage activities which undermine the interest of the Republic of Poland. The case escalated last year when Poland's Internal Security Agency arrested the two individuals suspected in Poland on suspicion of espionage.

In September, the Polish government started drafting a bill which might exclude Huawei from 5G networks.

Warsaw has also signed a joint declaration on 5G in 2019 with Washington to ensure secure and vibrant 5G ecosystem. 

The number of cases on Chinese and local citizens affiliated with Beijing over espionage has grown substantially over the last few years. From Washington to Brussels and Canberra Chinese malign intelligence activities are on the rise and the democratic Western countries should be ready to deal with growing Chinese espionage threat to international and national security.

Block us and Britain will suffer, Chinese business lobby warns

An influential lobby group of Chinese businesses threatens that Britain will lose billions of pounds of investment and thousands of jobs unless it reverses its hostility to China. It warned that the UK might face consumer backlash ‘against British companies such as Jaguar Land Rover and Burberry, which are heavily reliant on China’s middle-class customers’ if the UK government continues to ban Chinese companies. Besides, China’s investments which constitute a lion’s share in the UK government’s green plans and nuclear power might also be at stake. 

The vice-president of Huawei also advised that the recently adopted outright ban by the UK government over Huawei’s 5G should be reviewed, as Trump loses. In July due to mounting security concerns over China’s interference in the UK, the government imposed the ban and removed Huawei from the UK’s 5G mobile networks till 2027. 

Similar threatening tactics were recently employed in Australia. China targeted the Australian wine industry and announced that it will halt the export of wine as part of the trade war with Canberra. 

Beijing keeps leveraging its expanding economic deep-rooted ties with the Western democratic countries to project its foreign policy priorities onto them, and silence unfavourable opposition. 

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US Developments

Detroit asks judge to sanction Trump campaign for spreading 'disinformation'

The city of Detroit's lawyers have urged a judge to rebuke President Donald Trump’s campaign for spreading disinformation. Trump’s campaign had stated that their reasons for dropping a lawsuit contesting Michigan’s election results were that officials in Wayne County "declined to certify the results of the presidential election.” In reality, "Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers on Tuesday refused at first to certify the results, but then reversed themselves after a public outcry."

Election Disinformation Fears Came True for State Officials

Local election officials had long feared that President Donald Trump’s disinformation would cast dispersion upon the election results. The president's false claims of voter fraud have been echoed by state and local GOP officials with more than two-thirds of GOP voters now believing that the 2020 election was "neither free nor fair."

Kremlin's Current Narrative

Russia retaliates "absurd and groundless" Western sanctions

Russia has imposed individual sanctions against 25 representatives of the United Kingdom in retaliation to the sanctions over Magnitsky case from earlier this year. But also, Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to prolong for one more year the effect of “certain special economic measures” imposed since 2014 in response to a wider range of Western sanctions.

Such retaliation is accompanied by a range of narratives that criticize and present the sanctions of the EU, the US and other Western states as an “unjustified confrontation” that ought to be abandoned as an international political practice.

Ria News reinforces this message that Vladimir Putin has delivered during the G20 summit, claiming that sanctions support protectionism and prevent the development of multilateral relations in different areas of international interests.

More particularly, the sanctions that the United Kingdom has enforced in July 2014 over the Magnitsky case are based on “contrived and absurd pretexts” and merely aim to interfere in the Russian internal affairs and put more pressure on the judiciary system.

However, Moscow also has to support and coordinate the countersanctions of Belarus against the EU. In another piece from Ria News, in this regard, the author quotes Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Andrey Rudenko saying that “true partners do not impose sanctions.” 

Earlier this month, it was pointed out that the EU just continues to "stamp illegitimate sanctions against the Russian Federation.” Lifting sanctions, on the other hand, would improve the levels of trust and confidence not only between Russia and the Western states but also the parties in conflicts over which the measures were imposed in the first place, such as the conflict over Crimea, as discussed by RT. They also point to many countries including Italy, Germany, Slovakia, and Serbia calling to repeal the sanctions in 2018 and 2019, thus in this view Russia remains and has always been falsely accused of violating any of the international laws.

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Kremlin Watch is a strategic program of the European Values Center for Security Policy, which aims to expose and confront instruments of Russian influence and disinformation operations focused against the liberal-democratic system.

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