Russia has playbook for ‘covert influence’

Military tests missiles

WASHINGTON, Oct 13, (Agencies): Russia has mounted a campaign of covert economic and political measures to manipulate five countries in central and eastern Europe, discredit the West’s liberal democratic model, and undermine trans-Atlantic ties, a report by a private US research group said.

The report released on Thursday said Moscow had co-opted sympathetic politicians, strived to dominate energy markets and other economic sectors, and undermined anti-corruption measures in an attempt to gain sway over governments in Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Serbia, and Slovakia.

“In certain countries, Russian influence has become so pervasive and endemic that it has challenged national stability as well as a country’s Western orientation and Euro-Atlantic stability,” said the report of a 16-month study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and the Sofia, Bulgaria-based Center for the Study of Democracy.

The publication of “The Kremlin Playbook: Understanding Russian Influence in Eastern and Central Europe” coincides with an unprecedented debate in the United States over whether Russia is attempting to interfere in the Nov. 8 presidential election with cyber attacks and the release of emails from the campaign of Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.

The former US Secretary of State’s campaign has said the Kremlin is trying to help Republican Donald Trump win the White House.

Putin

Hacking

On Friday, the U.S. government for the first time formally accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party organizations. Russian President

on Wednesday rejected allegations of meddling in the election.

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the report, which will be presented at CSIS in Washington on Thursday. Reuters received an advance copy.

On Sunday, however, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian state TV the United States was increasing its hostility toward Moscow. Lavrov complained that NATO had been steadily moving military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders with Eastern European countries and criticized sanctions imposed over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis.

A former U.S. State Department official is the report’s lead author and U.S. officials said they concur with the findings on Russia’s involvement in Eastern Europe.

“The Russians have been engaged in a sustained campaign to recapture what Putin considers their rightful buffer in Eastern Europe, and to undermine not just NATO and the EU, but the entire democratic foundation of both institutions,” said a US official who has studied Russian behavior since before the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.

military conducted a series of intercontinental ballistic missile tests on Wednesday, the latest flexing of its muscles as tensions with the spike over

Russian forces fired a nuclear-capable rocket from a Pacific Fleet submarine in the Sea of Okhotsk north of state-run RIA Novosti reported.

A Topol missile was shot off from a submarine in the Barents Sea, and a third was launched from an inland site in the north-west of the vast country, Russian agencies reported.

The latest display of might by Moscow -- which has been conducting regular military drills since ties with the West slumped in 2014 over -- comes as tensions have shot up in recent days.

Russia has pulled the plug on a series of deals with the US -- including a symbolic disarmament pact between the two nuclear powers to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium -- as has halted talks on Syria.

Russian authorities in annexed on Wednesday detained five Muslim Tatars on suspicion of belonging to a banned Islamist group, a move activists decried as the latest bid to intimidate the community.

Russian authorities in Crimea have cracked down on the region’s Tatar population, who were deported by Stalin and largely opposed Moscow’s takeover of the strategic Black Sea peninsula, banning their governing body and closing independent media.

Activists says several hundred Tatars have been detained or had their homes searched, while 14 were already being prosecuted for membership of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir group.

Russia’s FSB security services searched the homes of five men in two villages and “all five were taken away to the Crimean FSB headquarters,” lawyer told AFP.

Crimea’s prosecutor’s office and its FSB security service had not yet confirmed the arrests.

Crimean government official Zaur Smirnov told RIA Novosti state news agency earlier Wednesday that security forces were carrying out a special operation targeting Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) seeks to reestablish a Caliphate -- a pan-Islamic state based on Islamic rule harking back to medieval times -- and has been banned in Russia since 2003.

Kurbedinov, who has represented most of the arrested Crimean Tatars, said the men were detained on suspicion of orgnaising and membership of a cell of the Islamist group, adding that the searches of their houses turned up only “religious texts.”

The punishment for organising a terrorist group is between 15 and 20 years in prison, while membership is punishable by 10 to 20 years.

“This is yet another act of intimidation against Crimean Tatars,” Kurbedinov said. Crimea’s chief prosecutor

who has led the campaign against Tatars, took up a seat in Russia’s parliament representing the ruling party after September elections.