Bryansk incident & Implications for Ukraine |
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- First signals on Bryansk
- Broader context
- How to respond?
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Blinken and Lavrov Hold Meeting After Months of No Communication |
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- G-20 meeting
- Little Change in Stances in the U.S. and Russia
- What to do?
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Disinformation Narratives and Influence Operations |
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- Visual manipulation allegedly shows Elon Musk saying Bakhmut is "almost surrounded and it is good".
- Hackers published flags of Ukraine and Nazi Germany on the US consulate's Twitter page.
- A fake viral online story claims Zelensky said the US will have to send its troops to Ukraine.
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Bryansk incident & Implications for Ukraine |
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On 2 March several Russian state-owned news agencies RIA Novosti and TASS as well as the Governor of Russia's Bryansk Oblast Alexander Bogomaz reported that allegedly a Ukrainian Sabotage and reconnaissance group entered two villages in Russia’s Bryansk region from Ukraine and killed two people. The Bryansk region in Russia is bordering Ukraine’s Chernihiv region and Belarus. Later In the Klimovsky district of the Bryansk region, the FSB of Russia and the attached forces of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation were taking measures to destroy allegedly armed Ukrainian saboteurs who violated the state border.
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That day, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the activities in the border region of the Bryansk a “terrorist attack”. "Today they committed another terrorist act, another crime, they entered the border area and opened fire on civilians. They saw that it was a civilian car, they saw that civilians and children were sitting there, no, an ordinary Niva, they opened fire on them.”, the Russian President argued. Meanwhile, due to events in the Bryansk region, the president of the Russian Federation cancelled his trip to Stavropol Territory. Ukrainian officials, such as the Adviser to the Head of the Office of the Ukrainian President Mykhailo Podolyak, rebuffed the accusations as “a classic deliberate provocation”, to “scare its people to justify the attack on another country”, Podolyak said.
Shortly after the news started circulating through Russian and Ukrainian media and social media, a video was published in which allegedly the Russian Volunteer Corps admitted their responsibility for the attack. They noted that the information about the Ukrainian saboteurs, who killed children and took hostages was false. The Russian Volunteer Corps is a military unit consisting of ethnic Russians and/or Russian citizens fighting against the Russian Federation, and subordinate to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Verification of the video is not possible. According to their telegram post, the representatives of the group were motivated by showing their “Russian compatriots” that violent resistance against the “Russian regime” is possible. The intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine considered the reported clashes in the Bryansk region as "a continuation of the transformation of Russia, its purification and liberation from Putin's dictatorship." Finally, Initial reports by Russian media that the group took hostages or that a school bus came under fire have not been confirmed.
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Following the incident Viktor Sobolev, deputy of the Russian State Duma demanded to “declare war on Ukraine”. “We don't have any red lines with respect to Ukraine. And we definitely need to end the special military operation and start waging a real war. With the destruction of means and objects of communications, with coverage of the delivery of weapons. And it should have been done a long time ago,” Sobolev said. Such declarations should be considered by the Ukrainian government as a possible risk of further strengthening missile or drone attacks from the Russian side. Additionally, there are some risks that the Russian side could use the "Bryansk case" as a trigger for a new wave of mass mobilization. That is why the Ukrainian side should be keen on strengthening the air defence system as well as negotiating new packages of military equipment aid.
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Blinken and Lavrov Hold Meeting After Months of No Communication |
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During the March 2 G-20 meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov talked Thursday briefly on the sidelines. These talks break a months-long silence from either country since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. While these talks only lasted for 10 minutes, Blinken addressed many of the concerns within the U.S. such as ending the brutal war in Ukraine and the re-entering of the New START treaty by Moscow.
These talks come after months of heightened tensions between the United States and Russia over a range of issues only exacerbated by the war. “End this war of aggression, engage in meaningful diplomacy that can produce a just and durable peace,” Blinken said he told Lavrov. While Russia’s war held most of the conversation, Blinken has called on Moscow to release Paul Whelan and that the United States will continue to back Ukraine.
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Little Change in Stances in the U.S. and Russia |
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While these talks mark an important shift in the recent lack of communication between Moscow and Washington, they made little impact on their relationship or ending the Ukraine war. However, despite being at their lowest point since the Cold War, these talks do suggest a line of communication exists between Washington and Moscow.
Discussions from Blinken and Lavrov appear also to show no change in the stances between the U.S. and Russia as neither agreed to hold a joint conference and both parties took swipes at the other throughout the G-20 conference. During a security conference in New Delhi on March 3, Lavrov denounced the United States, incorrectly accusing them of hypocrisy, claiming that there was a “double standard” in questioning the actions of Russia in Ukraine when the United States has conducted military operations for its national security.
Blinken struck back at Lavrov, noting that 141 countries voted to support condemning Russia on the first anniversary of the war. Despite this support, several members of the G-20, notably the host nation India, abstained from the vote. While these talks may reveal a potential path toward normalizing relations in the distant future, there is still much more progress to be made.
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While this progress takes place, it is important for the United States and its allies to keep their present sanctions in place and continually issue new ones. Moreover, they should be more effective in applying those sanctions and not afraid of putting secondary ones on countries that are helping Russia (and Belarus) bypassing them. Additionally, unity must remain present through joint statements between these allies as well as pushing for more votes on the war in the UN and sanctions.
These actions are one of the most effective tools to pressure Russia to end its war in Ukraine. By putting economic pressure and publicly continuing to denounce their actions, it shows that allies stand firm in their commitment to Ukraine. While the best way to end this conflict is to push for diplomacy, it shouldn’t come at the cost of accepting nuclear threats and brutal force. Giving into this path would be to allow other would-be aggressors to take advantage of this precedent.
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Disinformation narratives and influence operations |
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Visual manipulation allegedly shows Elon Musk saying Bakhmut is "almost surrounded and it is good" |
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Last week some Russian-language users and pages published (1,2,3) a screenshot of the tweet, claiming that the founder of SpaceX and American billionaire Elon Musk allegedly welcomed the fact that the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was "almost surrounded" by Russian troops. The viral screenshot included Musk's reply to the tweet, reportedly saying that "It's good".
However, the screenshots disseminated by some pro-Russian social media accounts represent a visual manipulation and the listed comments were not connected. Indeed, Musk responded to the Bakhmut-related tweet published by the Twitter account War Mapper, noting that the city is "almost surrounded". Though his comment - "it's good" - was not referring to the war in Ukraine to a completely different story published by another Twitter account – Eight Sleep which featured the video about mattresses.
Notably, the comments from Twitter CEOs have become a subject of manipulation by pro-Kremlin users on various occasions, especially following his widely-criticized proposal about the “peace plan” for Ukraine that would mean the neutrality of Ukraine and giving up Crimea to Russia.
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Hackers published flags of Ukraine and Nazi Germany on the US consulate's Twitter page |
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Dozens of pro-Russian accounts have claimed recently that the US consulate in Milan published a picture with the flag of Ukraine, behind which the flag of Nazi Germany was hidden. Such viral posts on social media platforms featured visual material allegedly showing all this. Fact-checking organizations have checked the accuracy of the story and found out, that while the picture was indeed posted on the consulate’s Twitter page, it was published only after the hackers took control of the consulate’s social media account. The unauthorized picture was removed within a few hours after its appearance.
According to the US Consulate in Milan’s statement regarding the incident, their official Twitter page was the target of a cyberattack, and an investigation is currently underway to establish the identities of those behind the attack. The consulate actively supports Ukraine against Russian aggression and there is currently no anti-Ukraine Tweet on its Twitter page.
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A fake viral online story claims Zelensky said the US will have to send its troops to Ukraine |
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Another recent manipulative viral story claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, while meeting with the journalists, allegedly said that the US will have to send its children to die for Ukraine. However, Zelensky did not talk about the participation of the Americans in the defence of Ukraine – he simply meant that if for some reason Ukraine will not be able to win over Russia, the Kremlin will invade NATO member countries and that American troops will have to directly confront the Russian invaders the Baltic countries.
This is not the first time that the words of Volodymyr Zelensky were taken out of context and given a meaning opposite to what he meant. In January, pro-Russian propagandists claimed that Zelensky insisted on the need for Ukraine to join NATO, otherwise, Kyiv would have no motivation to fight as fact-checked by different organizations – as explained in FactCheck Georgia article, this claim too was manipulative.
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New Central European Program within EVC |
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The European Values Center for Security Policy has launched a new program dedicated to monitoring and analyzing hybrid threats, foreign influence, and strategic communications in Hungary and Slovakia. Within the program, with the base of operations in Prague, the European Values Center already publishes a bi-weekly newsletter "Orban Watch Briefing", which provides insights into the latest developments in Hungary.
"The Central European Program will focus on monitoring and analyzing hybrid threats, foreign influence, and strategic communications in Hungary and Slovakia, and will provide insights to policymakers and the wider public," said Victor Breiner, senior analyst of the Central European Program. "We aim to be a reliable source of information and analysis for those interested in the region."
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Karolína Mrázková – Dmytro Filonenko – Mariam Lashkhia - Skylar Young
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