The collapsing "Made man" state, as criminal Keplocratcy in the Kremlin, old and new eats Putin ,boss of bosses alive: Rand Paul's actions revealed
First of all, we will delve into the emergence of a faceless administrator state made of faceless yes men whom in reality are really Russian Mafia "Made men" in Russia. This phenomena is in part qualitatively similar to the early 1980s under Andropov, which had its demise when Gorbachev released repression a tiny notch. I.e. once the pressure eased off, the entire Keplocratsy collapsed. We are reaching a similar tipping point, in the 2020s
Secondly, is the rumblings of a rebellion in the Russian Army as of 2022, where soldiers are refusing to obey suicidal orders. That also in response to the famous 20 year old MRE (meals you can eat ) which is in tandem to the Russian Mafia state stealing its own army blind. The destruction of 25% of Russian combat power in Ukraine is not helping
Three, Putins body doubles readied as Putin, dying from cancer and Parkinson's disease prepares to go under the knife. I.e. the Boss of Bosses, Putin is at an acute level of vulnerability.
Four, the abysmal failure of Russian "information warfare" gamut. I.e. once solid refutation of Kremlin lies becomes a thing, the entire propaganda edifice grinds to a halt. Task and purpose shows how well THAT is working in Ukraine. Not at all
Five, in the mist of all this rumblings of a dying empire take off, Rand Paul's shout out to Putin in his blocking of 40 billion in USD aid, is what we would expect traitor Rand Paul to do, on bequest of his Kremlin master, Putin,
The four metrics outlined are of a dying empire, and Rand Paul is merely a hail Mary pass to keep the Putin empire afloat. His actions and timing reveal exactly whom Rand Paul really works for, and it 'aint' the American people
Let us now begin the honor roll.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2022-05-10/coup-kremlin?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_campaign=The%20Coup%20in%20the%20Kremlin&utm_content=20220513&utm_term=FA%20This%20Week%20-%20112017
quote
Coups in the Kremlin
On December 20, 1999, Vladimir Putin addressed senior officials of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) at its Lubyanka headquarters near Moscow’s Red Square. The recently appointed 47-year-old prime minister, who had held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the FSB, was visiting to mark the holiday honoring the Russian security services. “The task of infiltrating the highest level of government is accomplished,” Putin quipped.?
His former colleagues chuckled. But the joke was on Russia.?
Putin became interim president less than two weeks later. From the start of his rule, he has worked?to strengthen the state?to counteract the chaos of post-Soviet capitalism and unsteady democratization. To achieve that end, he saw it necessary to elevate the country’s security services and put former security officials in charge of critical government organs.?
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In recent years, however,?Putin’s approach has changed. More and more, bureaucracy has displaced the high-profile personalities that previously dominated. And as the Russian president has come to rely on these bureaucratic institutions to further his consolidation of control, their power has grown relative to other organs of the state. But it was not until February, when Putin gave the orders first to recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and then, a few days later, to?send Russian troops into Ukraine, that the complete takeover by the new security apparatus became apparent.
In the early days of the war, most branches of the Russian state seemed blindsided by?Putin’s determination to invade, and some prominent officials even seemed to question the wisdom of the decision, however timidly. But in the weeks since, government and society alike have lined up behind the Kremlin. Dissent is now a crime, and individuals who once held decision-making power—even if circumscribed—have found themselves hostages of institutions whose single-minded purpose is security and control. What has happened is, in effect, an FSB-on-FSB coup: Russia used to be a state dominated by security forces, but now a faceless security bureaucracy has become the state, with?Putin?sitting on top.?
THE SURVIVAL OF THE CHEKISTS
The modern FSB traces its beginnings to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, also known as the Cheka, hunted down enemies of the new Soviet state under the fierce leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky. Its subsequent iterations, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and the Ministry of State Security (MGB), evolved under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s rule and were led most notoriously by Genrikh Yagoda in the 1930s and Lavrenty Beria in the 1940s and 1950s.?The KGB?became the Soviet Union’s primary security agency in 1954 under Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor. Over the following decade, Khrushchev expanded the Communist Party’s oversight of the Soviet state’s institutions of control, limiting their influence. But after Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964, Yuri Andropov, the longtime head of the KGB, reclaimed the organization’s lost authority, bringing the security service to the height of its power in the 1970s.?
Andropov went on to lead the Soviet Union as general secretary of the Communist Party from 1982 to 1984. He was merciless in imposing ideological control. Any “diversion”—such as covert disagreement with Soviet politics—was grounds for prosecution. Some dissenters were imprisoned or placed in psychiatric wards for “retraining,” while others were forced to emigrate. Living in Moscow at the time, I remember police raids to catch indolent citizens and plain-clothes KGB officers—operating like Orwellian “thought police”—surreptitiously roaming city streets, detaining people suspected of skipping work or having too much leisure time. It was an atmosphere of total control, with Andropov’s KGB fully in charge.
By the late 1980s, reforms introduced by Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev loosened the grip of the security forces. Perestroika was supposed to renew the Soviet Union—some scholars even allege?Andropov had a hand in the program—but it ended up threatening the survival of the regime. The last Soviet leader turned against his KGB masters, exposing the crimes of Stalinism and proceeding with an opening to the West. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 and Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe left Moscow’s sphere of influence, the KGB turned on Gorbachev, two years later launching a failed coup that hastened the Soviet collapse.?
The security apparatus was humiliated—but it was not disbanded. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-Soviet Russia, considered communism, not the KGB, to be the greater evil. He thought that simply changing the name of the KGB to the FSB would change the organization, too, allowing it to become more benevolent and less controlling. This was wishful thinking. Russia’s security services trace their origins all the way back to Ivan the Terrible’s brutal bodyguard corps, the?oprichniki, in the sixteenth century and Peter the Great’s Secret Chancellery in the eighteenth century. Yeltsin’s attempt at reform could not permanently suppress a system with such?deep historical roots?any more than Khrushchev’s could four decades earlier.
Russia used to be a state dominated by security forces, but now the security bureaucracy has become the state.
In fact, KGB officers were relatively well equipped to endure the collapse of communism and the transition to capitalism. To the security services, the Soviet-era call for a classless society of proletarians had always been merely a slogan; ideology was a tool for controlling the public and strengthening the hand of the state. Former members applied that pragmatic approach as they rose to elite positions in post-Soviet Russia. As Leonid Shebarshin, a former high-level KGB operative, has explained, it was only natural that those who trained under Andropov for a secret war against external and internal enemies—NATO, the CIA, dissidents, and political opposition—should become the new Russian bourgeoisie. They could handle irregular working hours, succeed in hostile environments, and use interrogation and manipulation tactics when called for. They squeezed every last drop of labor out of their employees and subordinates.
One of their number, Putin, was himself lauded as a pragmatist by Western diplomats after he rose from obscurity to become president of Russia in 2000. Even then, he made no secret of his intention to establish Andropov-style absolute authority, quickly moving to limit the power of the capitalist barons who had flourished in the 1990s under Yeltsin’s frenzied presidency. In Putin’s mind, an independent oligarchy in control of strategic industries, such as oil and gas, threatened the stability of the state. He ensured that business decisions relevant to the national interest were made instead by a handful of trusted people—the so-called?siloviki, or affiliates of the state’s military and security agencies. These individuals effectively became managers or guardians of state-controlled assets. Many were from Putin’s native Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg) and most had served alongside him in the KGB. On the corporate side, their ranks include Igor Sechin (Rosneft), Sergey Chemezov (Rostec), and Alexey Miller (Gazprom), while matters of state protection are handled by Nikolai Patrushev (secretary of the Security Council), Alexander Bortnikov (director of the FSB), Sergei Naryshkin (director of the Foreign Intelligence Service), and Alexander Bastrykin (head of the Investigative Committee), among others.?
Putin has been convinced that strengthening the state’s “extraordinary organs” would prevent upheaval of the kind that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putting former KGB operatives in charge seemed to offer some?economic and political stability. In an effort to maintain that stability, Putin acted in 2020 to extend his presidency, proposing constitutional amendments to circumvent the term limits that would remove him from office in 2024.?
Since their ratification, the constitutional changes have given the state broad latitude to address problems?ranging from COVID-19?to?mass protests in Belarus?to Russian opposition lawyer?Alexei Navalny’s return to Moscow. As was the case in the Andropov era, all matters are now run through central regulatory bodies—federal organizations that oversee everything from taxation to science (the word?nadzor, meaning “supervision,” in many of their Russian names makes them easy to recognize). Criminal prosecutions are an increasingly common tactic used against Russian citizens who complain about abuses of power, request better services, or express support for Navalny, who himself was convicted based on false accusations of fraud and other supposed crimes. A punitive apparatus of control has tightened its grip, led by the technocratic Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, a former tax official, and an assortment of midlevel managers inside the regime bureaucracy.
THE FSB COUP
Putin’s decision to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, and subsequently to launch a “special military operation” to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, followed a similar pattern of punishment for political deviation: he sought to?penalize an entire country?for what he deemed its “anti-Russian” choice to align with the West. But within Russia, the events leading up to and following the invasion also marked the completion of a political shift that has been years in the making. They exposed the waning power of the?siloviki?who dominated the early Putin era—and their replacement by a faceless security-and-control bureaucracy.?
On February 21, during a?nationally broadcast Security Council session, the president’s closest confidants seemed completely in the dark as to what the Donetsk and Luhansk recognition would entail. Naryshkin, of the Foreign Intelligence Service, stumbled over his words as Putin demanded an affirmation of support for the decision. By the end of this exchange, Naryshkin appeared to be trembling with fear. Even Patrushev, a hardcore conservative Chekist, wanted to inform the United States of?Russia’s plans to send troops?to Ukraine—a suggestion that went unanswered.?
For a decision as consequential as the invasion of a neighboring country, it is remarkable how many organs of the state were out of the loop. Economic institutions were caught by surprise—when Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Russian central bank, tried to resign in early March, she was told to just buckle up and deal with the economic fallout. The military didn’t seem to be aware of the entire plan either, and spent months moving tens of thousands of troops around the border without knowing whether they would be asked to attack.
Putin with members of the Security Council in Moscow, February 2022
Sputnik Photo Agency / Reuters
Putin’s clandestine operation was even hidden from other clandestine operatives. Leaders of the FSB department?responsible?for providing the Kremlin with intelligence about Ukraine’s political situation, for instance, didn’t fully believe that an invasion would happen.?Many analysts had confidently argued?it would be against Russia’s national interests. Comfortable in the assumption that a large-scale attack was off the table, officials kept feeding Putin the story he wanted to hear: Ukrainians were Slavic brothers ready to be liberated from Nazi-collaborating, Western-controlled stooges in Kyiv. A source in the Kremlin told me that many officials now envision a disaster akin to the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which ended in a disgraceful withdrawal and helped precipitate the dissolution of the Soviet empire. But in a government that has become increasingly technocratic, institutionalized, and impersonal, such opinions are no longer permissible.
As the conflict continues into its third month and evidence of war crimes mounts, most officials and politicians continue to back Putin. Big business is largely silent. Economic elites, cut off from the West, have rallied around the flag. Even though some?may be grumbling in private, very few are vocal in public. Rare exceptions include the billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska, who has repeatedly called for peace; the former Putin associate Anatoly Chubais, known for leading Russia’s privatization under Yeltsin, who has fled to Turkey; the oligarch and former Chelsea soccer club owner, Roman Abramovich, who has tried to facilitate a negotiated settlement; and the entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov, who was forced to sell his shares in his hugely successful online bank, Tinkoff, for kopeks after speaking out against the “operation.”
Putin has never made a secret of his intention to establish absolute authority.
The rest of Russia’s 145 million citizens—except for those tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands who have fled abroad—are similarly falling in line. Having lost access to foreign flights, brands, and payment systems, most are forced to accept that their lives are tethered to the Kremlin. In a sharp departure from the early days of the Ukrainian operation, when public shock was palpable and people took to the streets expressing antiwar sentiment,?polling shows that around 80 percent?now support the war. The actual number is likely lower—when the state exercises total control, people give the answers that the regime wants. Still, my own conversations with relatives and friends across Russia confirm that speaking against the war is increasingly unpopular. An acquaintance in the resort town of Kislovodsk in the Northern Caucasus, for instance, insisted that Putin needs to complete “the mission of ‘de-Nazification,’ take care of the Donbas, and show Americans not to mess with Russia.”?
As the shock wears off, fear has taken its place. In a televised address?in mid-March, Putin insisted that Western countries “will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on national traitors,” implying that all opponents of his “operation” are the unpatriotic enemies. The government’s security branches had previously announced a new law: spreading “fake information,” or any narrative that contradicts the Ministry of Defense’s official story, is a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Independent media outlets were blocked or disbanded, including the?Novaya Gazeta?newspaper, liberal radio Ekho Moskvy, and Dozhd TV, all of which regularly criticized the government until two months ago.?The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, and other foreign media packed up and left the country. Since the end of February, more than 16,000 people have been detained, including 400 teenagers. People have been arrested for just being near a protest. For one Muscovite, merely showing up at Red Square holding a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s novel?War and Peace?was enough to warrant detention.?
In this atmosphere of complete repression, political figures who once seemed to offer alternative ideas now echo Putin’s uncompromising words.?Former President Dmitry Medvedev has insisted?that criticism of the operation amounts to treason. Even Naryshkin, a skeptic in February, has found his war footing and now?faithfully parrots the government line. People no longer speak with their own voices; the shadow of Putinist Chekism now covers the entire country.
THE NEW SECURITY STATE
The journalist and writer Masha Gessen once dubbed Putin “the man without a face.” Today, however, his is the only face, sitting atop an anonymous security bureaucracy that does his bidding. Another coup, either in the Kremlin corridors or on the streets of Moscow, is not likely. The only group that could?conceivably unseat the president?is the FSB, which is still technically run by nationalist?siloviki?who understand that some foreign policy flexibility is necessary for internal development. But such officials are no longer the FSB’s future. The indistinct body of security technocrats now in charge is obsessed with total control, no matter the national or international consequences.?
The last time the Kremlin built such an all-controlling state, under Andropov’s leadership in the early 1980s, it unraveled when the security forces relaxed their grip and allowed reform. Putin knows that story well and is unlikely to risk the same outcome. And even without him, the system he built would remain in place, sustained by the new security cohort—unless a 1980s Afghanistan-style debacle in Ukraine destroys it all. With this bureaucracy holding tight to power, Moscow’s foreign adventurism might abate. But as long as the structure holds steady, Russia will remain oppressed, isolated, and unfree.
end of quote
Also
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-has-military-rebellion-problem-his-hands-reports-say-1705729
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Putin Has a Military Rebellion Problem on His Hands, Reports Say
BY?JON JACKSON?ON 5/12/22 AT 11:18 AM EDT
Russian President?Vladimir Putin?may be seeing serious dissension in his military's ranks, if reports about?officer insubordination?and?low troop morale?in Ukraine are any indication.
On Monday, a senior official from the U.S. Defense Department said the agency had received anecdotal reports about officers in Russia's military refusing to follow orders in Ukraine. The statement came after numerous reports have surfaced since the beginning of the war about Russia's forces suffering from low morale.
The Pentagon official said the reports, which could not be independently confirmed, concerned officers in midgrade positions, including some at the battalion level. The claim about officers disobeying orders followed numerous reports like the one from a March 1?New York Times?story that cited a?Pentagon?official who said entire Russian units had laid down their weapons rather than fight Ukraine's forces. Some Russian troops had even sabotaged their own vehicles, according to the official. More recently, the Ukrainian government said last month it had learned of Russian troops who had?refused to fight.
"There are good reasons for low morale on the Russian side. The war isn't going well. Its purpose is unclear, and fighting a war against a neighbor—with whom it's easy to communicate—is psychologically burdensome to soldiers," said Michael Kimmage, a Catholic University history professor and former member of the secretary's policy planning staff at the State Department.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeing low morale and even dissension in his military ranks as a result of the Ukraine war, according to recent reports. Above, Putin speaks before the Council of Lawmakers on April 27 in St. Petersburg.
GETTY IMAGES
While Kimmage told?Newsweek?he has not seen any evidence to suggest a widespread rebellion among Putin's troops, he noted it is "possible that there are mutinous movements within the Russian army and not all of them on the lower levels."
Monday's comments from the Pentagon regarding officers not following orders came after?The New York Times?reported on May 4 that the U.S. intelligence community had provided information to Ukraine that helped it?find and kill Russian generals. The Pentagon?later denied?the U.S. had provided Ukraine with any intelligence regarding the location of Russian military officers.
Defense Intelligence Agency Director?Scott Berrier said?at a?Senate?hearing on Tuesday that an estimated eight to 10 Russian generals have been killed since Russia's attacks began in late February. Berrier, a lieutenant general, attributed the?large number of deaths?among Russian officers to the military's lack of NCOs, or noncommissioned officers, which results in higher-ranking military leaders being forced to the dangerous front lines.
Lawrence Reardon, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, told?Newsweek?that these sorts of realities in the war could lead to dissent among both officers and soldiers.
"I am not surprised at the stories depicting Russian soldiers and even midlevel officers refusing to follow orders, as they are facing a different form or warfare, where the soldiers not only worry about land mines but unseen, silent drones flying overhead launching missiles and dropping grenades on Russian armor and Russian generals," Reardon said.
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He added that the majority of soldiers in Ukraine "are conscripts from the Russian heartland who are dealing with old or defective equipment, lack the technological expertise" to counter the sophisticated Western arms going to Ukraine. Like Berrier, Reardon cited Russia's lack of noncommissioned officers as a problem, saying such leaders could help "keep the conscripts obeying their orders."
"Insubordination and low troop morale are things that happen in any war," Yuri Zhukov, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, said. "My own sense is that Russia almost certainly has a more serious morale problem than the Ukrainians do, and they are adapting to try to keep these cases contained."
He added, "In wartime, each side has an incentive to publicly minimize their own losses and inflate the losses of their opponent, including cases of soldiers surrendering, deserting and disobeying orders."
Northwestern University political science professor William Reno said he also feels statements from U.S. and European officials about Russia's low morale and officer dissent are being made, in part, as a strategic move.
"No doubt there are instances of insubordination," Reno said. "U.S. agencies pick up all sorts of Russian battlefield communications and observe movements on the ground, so I'd classify the Department of Defense statement as a 'not false' statement."
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Reno also said that while "Russia's military consistently underperforms," such statements "play to concerns among some Russians, members of the elite and otherwise, that their system is very poor at correcting course."
"Escalation and the nuclear shadow are real concerns in this context, given Moscow's very poor hand at this point," he said. "That also means the endgame from a?NATO?perspective would involve Russia's political system crumpling from within."
Newsweek?reached out to Russia's Defense Ministry for comment.
end of quote
Also
https://nypost.com/2022/05/12/body-doubles-will-replace-ailing-putin-during-surgery-report/amp/
quote
An oncologist, identified by the outlet as Evgeny Selivanov, has reportedly made dozens of secret visits to Putin’s Sochi getaway home over just four years.
Putin, whose sickly appearance and uncharacteristically fidgety behavior in public have raised questions about his health, also has been rumored to suffer from a host of other serious maladies, including Parkinson’s disease.
New questions were raised about?Putin’s physical state?last month when he was seen tightly gripping a desk during his meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
The Kremlin has adamantly denied that President Vladimir Putin suffers from any medical problems.
Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool via AP
On Wednesday,?Putin skipped his beloved annual ice hockey game in Sochi?— appearing instead on a video sporting mysterious marks on his face.
The Kremlin has adamantly denied that Putin suffers from any medical problems
End of quote
Also
https://taskandpurpose-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/taskandpurpose.com/analysis/russia-propaganda-war-ukraine/?amp
quote
Russia actually isn’t as good at information warfare as everyone thought
Russian memes are working about as well as Russian tanks.
BY?JEFF SCHOGOL?|?PUBLISHED MAY 11, 2022 8:45 AM
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the military parade during 77th anniversary of the Victory Day in Red Square in Moscow, Russia on May 09, 2022. (Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images).
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Prior to kicking off its mega-sized Charlie Foxtrot in Ukraine, the Russians were widely regarded as masters of deception and propaganda.
Whether it was Russian troops masquerading as?“little green men”?in Crimea in 2014 or the successful?hacking of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Kremlin set the gold standard for subterfuge. As Russian President Vladimir Putin was poised to send his forces into Ukraine in February, the State Department warned that Russia’s invasion could be preceded by an elaborately staged?“false flag” operation as a pretext for war, just as the Nazis had done in 1939 when they claimed Poland had attacked Germany.
But far from being the juggernaut of neo-Soviet disinformation that the West had expected, Russia’s information operations about the war in Ukraine have largely sucked. Just prior to the invasion,?Russia claimed that a Ukrainian roadside bomb had killed three people?inside separatist-held eastern Ukraine, yet the skull of one of the charred bodies that the Russians paraded in front of sympathetic media showed signs that it had undergone an autopsy procedure, meaning the person was dead before being placed at the scene of the alleged attack.
A Ukrainian man climbs over a destroyed Russian tank near Makariv, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine on May 2, 2022. (Wolfgang Schwan/Getty Images)
Since then, Russia has claimed that the reason its troops were forced to abandon their advance on Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv was that?Russia never wanted the city anyway, and the initial attacks were just part of an elaborate ruse meant to distract Ukrainian forces from Russia’s real military objectives in the Donets Basin. (As comebacks go, this is one step above: ‘Fine, I didn’t want to be your date to the stupid prom in the first place!’)
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More recently, Russia’s government has unconvincingly claimed that the Ukrainians did not?sink the cruiser Moskva, once the flagship Russia’s Black Sea Fleet; and Russian propaganda has accidentally used pictures of criminals?Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow?as well as?a Marine in World War II to honor the Soviet Union’s victory over the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War.
One reason why Russian information operations are flailing is “they don’t have a lot of material to work with,” said?Marek Posard, an expert on disinformation with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.
“There’s only so much you can do when?X number of your generals are being killed?in theater,” Posard told Task & Purpose. (In this case, the Ukrainians claim to have killed 12 Russian general officers.)
The United States and other Western nations tend to do better at information warfare when they tell the truth, and right now the facts are not in Russia’s favor, because the invasion of Ukraine has?revealed how the Russian military is not as professional as many thought it was.
“The military operations in Ukraine clearly are not going well for the Russians,” Posard said. “You can’t hide the fact that civilian casualties are high. You can’t hide the fact that the Russians are shelling targets that they should not be shelling. You can’t hide the fact that there are Russian soldiers lying dead and there’s?tanks on the side of the road that have been blown up.”
A Ukrainian serviceman walks on a destroyed Russian fighting vehicle in Bucha, Ukraine, Thursday, April 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
However, the Russians have often made mistakes and used flimsy claims as part of their propaganda efforts because their goal is to flood the airwaves with as much disinformation as possible, said?Olga Lautman, an expert on Russia and Ukraine.
Back in 2014, Russian media claimed without any evidence whatsoever that the Ukrainian military had?crucified a 3-year-old boy?in the city of Slovyansk, said Lautman, a senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis, a nonprofit research institution.
While?the story was discredited in western media, Russian information operations are not supposed to make sense, she said. Instead, these operations are intended to create confusion.
“It’s just meant to put out so much propaganda and so many different points to make the person throw their hands up and just say, ‘I don’t know what the truth is,’” Lautman told Task & Purpose.
A man looks at russian T-72 tank destroyed during Russia’s invasion to Uktaine, Ivanivka village, Chernihiv area, Ukraine, 20 April 2022 (Photo by Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In fact, sometimes the Russians will cook up completely contradictory narratives in which some propaganda claims discredit other propaganda assertions, Lautman said.
“It is not meant to direct you in any which way,” Lautman said. “It is not meant for a critical thinker. It is more meant to pollute the information space with so much disinformation that the person can’t get to the truth.”
Separately, the Russians also launch very targeted propaganda campaigns against specific people or on certain issues, and those efforts tend to be more thought out, she said. For example, the Russians are currently putting a lot of time and effort into claims that the Ukrainian government is kidnapping journalists to silence them.
Since Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, though, its information operations have been weaker than in the past because foreign media have been on the ground to discredit Russian propaganda, Lautman said. The New York Times recently exposed?Russia’s lies about the massacre of Ukrainian civilians?in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
As long as the media coverage continues, Russia’s propaganda campaign will remain weak, Lautman said. “When it wanes, then you will see Russia’s disinformation operations being a lot more successful because they’ll be able to get their message across,” she said.
end of quote
Five, Rand Paul veers off into the traitor zone
https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/marjorie-taylor-greene-rand-paul-need-registered-agents-beckwith/
You can read the litany right in the earlier Pulse article I wrote earlier
All this adds up to one thing. Rand Paul, Kremlin tool extrardinare has really outdone himself.
FTR
First of all, we will delve into the emergence of a faceless administrator state made of faceless yes men whom in reality are really Russian Mafia "Made men" in Russia. This phenomena is in part qualitatively similar to the early 1980s under Andropov, which had its demise when Gorbachev released repression a tiny notch. I.e. once the pressure eased off, the entire Keplocratsy collapsed. We are reaching a similar tipping point, in the 2020s
Secondly, is the rumblings of a rebellion in the Russian Army as of 2022, where soldiers are refusing to obey suicidal orders. That also in response to the famous 20 year old MRE (meals you can eat ) which is in tandem to the Russian Mafia state stealing its own army blind. The destruction of 25% of Russian combat power in Ukraine is not helping
Three, Putins body doubles readied as Putin, dying from cancer and Parkinson's disease prepares to go under the knife. I.e. the Boss of Bosses, Putin is at an acute level of vulnerability.
Four, the abysmal failure of Russian "information warfare" gamut. I.e. once solid refutation of Kremlin lies becomes a thing, the entire propaganda edifice grinds to a halt. Task and purpose shows how well THAT is working in Ukraine. Not at all
Five, in the mist of all this rumblings of a dying empire take off, Rand Paul's shout out to Putin in his blocking of 40 billion in USD aid, is what we would expect traitor Rand Paul to do, on bequest of his Kremlin master, Putin,
The four metrics outlined are of a dying empire, and Rand Paul is merely a hail Mary pass to keep the Putin empire afloat. His actions and timing reveal exactly whom Rand Paul really works for, and it 'aint' the American people
It is clear whom Rand Paul has allegiance to, that being the Boss of Bosses in the Kremlin and his dying empire
Andrew Beckwith, PhD