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The British Prime Minister often turned to the example of President Ronald Reagan and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who worked together through the end of the Cold War. Their actions, she said, would be helpful when considering a relationship with Russia.
“When it comes to Russia, as so often it is wise to turn to the example of President Reagan who — during his negotiations with his opposite number Mikhail Gorbachev — used to abide by the adage ‘trust but verify.’ With President Putin, my advice is to ‘engage but beware,'” May said.
This comes down to the scheduled phone call between President Trump and Vladimir Putin on Saturday. Due to the take over of Crimea, the hostilities of Russia towards Ukraine and the failed peace talks regarding Syria coupled with supplying Iran with missile systems, Trump cannot lift the Russian sanctions.
When it comes to the Russian encroachment in the Arctic, it is completely under reported, that is a mistake and President Trump will soon need to address with Secretary of Defense Mattis.
The numbers don’t lie. In recent years, Russia unveiled a new Arctic command, four new Arctic brigade combat teams, 14 new operational airfields, 16 deepwater ports, and 40 icebreakers with an additional 11 in development. (The United States has one working icebreaker for the Arctic — it’s only other one is broken.) More here from Foreign Policy magazine.
Further there is the Russian military expansion in Syria.
*** Further, with the genocide of innocent people in Aleppo at the hands of Bashir al Assad and Vladimir Putin, Russia has deployed Chechens to Aleppo for local policing.
Why Are Chechen Military Police Patrolling Aleppo? Ain al-Medina explains the reason Moscow sent non-Russian special forces to a foreign country as part of a special mission for the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Chechen police forces, which include about 400 soldiers, have deployed in some Aleppo districts, especially those with mixed demographics — Al-Midan, Bustan al-Pasha, Al-Hallak, Sheikh Khodr, Sheikh Maqsood, and in the area of the international Aleppo airport. More here.
There is no behavior by the current Moscow leadership that has altered any course of history going back to Truman or Reagan.
***
April 7, 1950, Cold War document crafted by President Truman as a presidential directive:
The page to the left is but one page of 72 page directive, of which the full document is found here.
If after reading in full context that is not enough for not lifting sanctions on Russia due to history versus contemporary actions….we can move on to the Reagan era. The text of President Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’ speech.
January 17, 1983, President Reagan issued Directive #75.
A Black Site is one thing, Interrogations another, but applications of enhanced interrogation methods, yet a third…
The Washington Post reports they are in possession of an early draft copy of an executive order to review the black site(s) program for captured terrorists. Under Barack Obama, terrorists were rarely if ever sought for detention and interrogated but rather, Obama ordered escalated use of drone strikes.
Reuters/WaPo: U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to order a review that could lead to bringing back a CIA program for holding terrorism suspects in secret overseas “black site” prisons where interrogation techniques often condemned as torture were used, two U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
The black sites were used to detain suspects captured in President George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism” after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and were formally closed by former President Barack Obama.
Any return to the Bush administration’s initial anti-terrorism tactics – including secret prisons and interrogation methods considered torture under international law – would likely alienate key U.S. allies in the fight against militant groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Aides to Obama said during his tenure that his prohibition against torture and efforts to close the Guantanamo prison in Cuba helped increase counterterrorism cooperation from U.S. allies in the Arab world.
The now-defunct program’s practices dubbed enhanced interrogation techniques, which included simulated drowning known as waterboarding, were criticized around the world and denounced by Obama and other senior U.S. officials as torture.
The officials said Trump is expected to sign an executive order in the next few days. It would call for a high-level review into “whether to reinitiate a program of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States” and whether the CIA should run the facilities,” according to a copy of the draft published by the Washington Post.
The document ignited a bipartisan outcry in Congress. Many people in U.S. intelligence agencies and within the military are opposed to reopening the harsh interrogation program, according to multiple serving officers.
“The President can sign whatever executive orders he likes. But the law is the law. We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America,” Senator John McCain, a Republican who underwent torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said in a statement.
Trump administration spokesman Sean Spicer said the draft was not a White House document. The draft published by the Washington Post appeared to have sections missing, suggesting that it may not have been a full version ready for Trump to sign.
The CIA black sites were located in Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Thailand and Afghanistan.
In 2006, Bush ended the use of harsh interrogation techniques and closed all the black sites except for one in Kabul.
Asked whether he wants waterboarding as president, Trump answered in an interview with ABC News:
“I will rely on (CIA director Mike) Pompeo and (Defense Secretary James) Mattis and my group. And if they don’t want to do it, that’s fine. If they do want to do it, then I will work toward that end,” Trump said.
“I want to do everything within the bounds of what we’re allowed to do if it’s legal. If they don’t want to do it, that’s fine. Do I feel it works? Absolutely I feel it works.”
Mattis and Pompeo had not been aware such plans were in the works, according to a congressional source.
KEEP GUANTANAMO OPEN
Trump’s draft order would authorize a review of interrogation techniques that U.S. officials could use on terrorism suspects, keep open the detention center at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and send new prisoners there.
Trump’s draft also revokes directives by Obama to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all detainees in U.S. custody and restrict interrogation methods to those in a U.S. Army field manual.
Trump vowed during the 2016 election campaign to resume waterboarding and a “hell of a lot worse” because even if torture does not work, “they deserve it anyway.”
He has also said that he wanted to keep Guantanamo open and “load it up with some bad dudes.”
Of the 41 prisoners left at Guantanamo, 10 face charges in war-crimes proceedings known as military commissions, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and his alleged co-conspirators. Bush established the military commissions, which Obama later changed.
The draft order said that, “No person in the custody of the United States shall at any time be subjected to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, as proscribed by U.S. law.” It does not mention international laws to which the United States is a signatory that prohibit torture.
Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act in 2015, which reaffirmed a prohibition on torture and required U.S. interrogators to adhere to techniques in the Army field manual.
However, the Justice Department under Trump could issue an interpretation of U.S. law that allows for the use of harsh interrogation techniques as occurred in the so-called “torture memos” drafted under the Bush administration in 2002 and subsequently withdrawn.
Despite the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during Obama’s presidency, the dramatic spread of groups like Islamic State has exacerbated the threat from violent Islamist organizations.
In a statement accompanying the draft order, the administration criticizes Obama’s policies, saying, “The United States has refrained from exercising certain authorities critical to its defense.” But it acknowledges that the National Defense Authorization Act “provides a significant statutory barrier to the resumption of the CIA interrogation program”.
“WORRISOME”
Human rights groups decried any attempt to bring back the black sites.
“This is an extremely disturbing and outrageous attempt to open the door again to systematic torture and secret detention. This is the Trump administration making good on its most worrisome comments during the campaign,” said Naureen Shah, Amnesty International USA’s director of national security and human rights.
Critics say a return to harsh interrogations would enflame tensions in Muslim countries and be counterproductive.
In the draft document, references to the “global war on terrorism” were edited and replaced with the phrase “fight against radical Islamism,” reflecting language Trump often uses.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official, who requested anonymity, said many CIA officers would oppose reinstatement of “black site” interrogations, in part because they were forced to obtain lawyers after the withdrawal of the Justice Department memos that legalized the harsh techniques.
“People felt they were hung out to dry,” the former official said. “There is a lack of trust there.”
Moreover, he said, it would be extremely difficult to persuade other governments to allow the CIA to establish secret prisons on their soil.
“Where are you going to do this?” he asked. “How many countries are going to jump back into the U.S. lap?
Trump’s order, if enacted, could put new CIA Director Pompeo in a tight spot given that his workforce, according to multiple serving officers, largely opposes reinstating the “black sites” program. It could also complicate the confirmation of Trump’s nominee for the job of director of national intelligence, former U.S. senator Dan Coats.
As a conservative Republican congressman from Kansas, Pompeo defended the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques, arguing that they produced useful intelligence.
During his confirmation hearing for CIA director, he pledged he would “absolutely not” reinstate those methods. Yet in written responses to questions from Senate Intelligence Committee members, he appeared to leave the door open to restoring them.
“If experts believed the current law was an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country, I would want to understand such impediments and whether any recommendations were appropriate for changing current law,” Pompeo wrote.
(Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Additional reporting by Warren Strobel, Matt Spetalnick and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis)
Secretary of Defense James Mattis will embark on his first trip as secretary Feb. 1-4 to meet with his counterparts from two critical allies, Japan and the Republic of Korea. The four day trip will include stops in Seoul and Tokyo. Departing on Feb. 1, Secretary Mattis will begin his trip in the Republic of Korea, where he will meet Minister of National Defense Han Min Koo and other senior Korean officials. On Feb. 3, Secretary Mattis will travel to Tokyo for meetings with Minister of Defense Tomomi Inada and other senior Japanese officials. The trip will underscore the commitment of the United States to our enduring alliances with Japan and the Republic of Korea, and further strengthen U.S.-Japan-Republic of Korea security cooperation.
***
NORAD responds after Russian bombers zoom around Japan
A pair of Russian Tu-95 Bear nuclear-capable bombers flew around Japan on Tuesday, prompting the Japanese military to scramble fighter jets as the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) increased its threat posture, two U.S. defense officials revealed to Fox News.
The Russian bombers stayed in international airspace, the officials said. News of this latest Russian provocation came shortly after the Pentagon announced that new Defense Secretary James Mattis would make his first visit overseas to Japan and South Korea early next month.
A third Russian Tu-95 bomber took off from a base in eastern Russia near the Pacific Ocean but it did not fly around Japan. Instead, it acted as a “communications relay” to pass radio traffic between the bombers flying around Japan, the officials said.
NORAD did not immediately respond for comment when reached by Fox News.
All three Russian strategic bombers took off outside the Pacific coastal city of Anadyr in eastern Russia. They returned to the eastern Russian airbase Ukrainka, roughly 1,000 miles from Japan.
Three Russian refueling tankers (IL-78) were also part of the flight. Two airborne radar and communications planes known as Beriev A-50 AWACs were also part of the Russian flying armada.
Only two Russian bombers made the flight around Japan’s major islands, according to officials.
The increase in threat posture from 5 to 4 meant the U.S. Air Force would place an extra tanker crew on standby ready to refuel the Japanese jets if necessary, according to officials.
It was the first time Russian bombers had circumnavigated Japan’s major islands in a year, the officials said.
***
The last time JASDF had to scramble fighter jets in response to Russian bomber incursions occurred a year ago, in January 2016, when two Russian Tu-95 bombers circled Japan’s major islands on a similar flight path to yesterday’s patrol. In March 2015, Russian strategic bombers also patrolled the skies in close vicinity to the Ryukyu Islands.
Russia stopped conducting regular bomber patrols in the 1990s and early 2000s, but has increased its patrol activities in the Pacific Ocean following the Ukraine crisis in 2014 amid the resulting isolation from the West. As I reported in October 2016 (See: “Russia to Set up Heavy Bomber Division to Patrol Japan, Hawaii, and Guam”), the Russian Aerospace Forces are in the process of setting up a new long-range heavy bomber division in Russia’s Far East to patrol the Pacific Ocean inside the Japan-Hawaii-Guam triangle.
The new unit will eventually consist of several dozen Tu-95MS strategic missile bombers and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers. “The Tupolev Tu-95MS, an improved variant of the older Tu-95, is a four-engine, long-range, turboprop, strategic bomber that can be armed with a wide range of weapons including stand-off cruise missiles. Russia intends to operate 20 Tu-95MS by the end of 2016,” I explained. The new division is based on the 6953rd Guards’ Red Banner, Pacific Air Group, which conducted patrols within the Japan-Hawaii-Guam triangle during the Cold War. More here.
This site has posted often on General Gerasimov and his doctrine. The games and propaganda that the Kremlin applies is still not taken seriously by the American people as they continue to scoff at Russian intrusions into our culture.
Russia is playing a double game and it is time to set aside manufactured notions and seek the expertise of countless Russian scholars as well as what the Pentagon and intelligence communities are publishing.
«Military-industrial courier» is a weekly illustrated All-Russian newspaper. The main topics of the newspaper are politics and economics, role of legislative and executive power in the process of military reform providing. «Military-industrial courier» is position on the newspaper market as a respectable edition which highlights defence industries and institutions, adds to military products promotion to the domestic and foreign markets.
The newspaper boasts of domestic military chiefs and defence leaders interviews in which most important issues of that sector of the economy are raised.
For a short period of time «Military- industrial courier» has achieved recognition with the Russian high-ranking military officials.
The newspaper is distributed on a subscription and by retail within the Russian Federation and abroad. The circulation is more than 50000 copies.
In February 2013, an article insipidly entitled “The Value of Science in Prediction” appeared in the Russian publication Military-Industrial Courier. The article was penned by Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian Federation. Few in the West recognized the article at all, much less its significance, at the time of its publication.
In the article, Gerasimov analyzed “new-type conflicts.” These conflicts entail an array of strategies and tactics employed in the gray zone to achieve national interests, even military, without a declaration of war and without crossing the threshold that would provoke a kinetic response.
“The very ‘rules of war’ have changed,” Gerasimov wrote.
Dr. Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian history and security issues who annotated an English translation of Gerasimov’s article, identified the most important line as, “The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.”
Gerasimov’s “nonmilitary means” included “broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian and other nonmilitary measures – applied with the protest potential of the population.”
Experts see one hybrid tactic – narrative and cyber – playing an increasingly prominent role in current conflicts.
War Narratives
An old Wall Street adage goes, “You’d have to be a paranoid Russian poet to understand global finance.” Today, that maxim might be paraphrased for an equally unexpected insight: “It helps to be a literary critic in understanding contemporary warfare.”
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu described the “five constant factors” of conventional warfare, but none included narrative. Experts now point to the influential role of narrative in military, geopolitical and ideological “new-type conflicts.”
Nations like Russia and China, as well as terrorist organizations like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), are using narrative to motivate audiences, advance agendas and engage adversaries.
Scholars have long argued that literary techniques are not the special purview of novelists, poets and playwrights. From philosophers’ research on metaphor to cognitive scientists’ investigations into parable, literary devices reveal and appeal to basic human cognition. Perhaps that’s why narrative’s use by governments, institutions, businesses and ideologues is not new.
When employed in military or geopolitical conflicts, Brad Allenby and Joel Garreau, co-directors of The Weaponized Narrative Initiative of the Center on the Future of War, call it “weaponized narrative.” And they believe its recent effectiveness will encourage further use.
In an email interview, Allenby said, “Weaponized narrative is not a temporary or passing phenomenon. It is based on significant recent advances in science, technology and social use of technology.”
Combined with tactics afforded by cyberspace, narrative’s influence broadens. But Dr. Ajit Maan, affiliate scholar at the Center for Narrative and Conflict Resolution and CEO of Narrative Strategies, notes that narrative’s power precedes technology.
In an email interview with Fifth Domain, Maan said:
Advanced technologies work to disseminate messages farther and wider than they would be otherwise, but narratives are already there, on the ground, in people’s heads. The enemies of the U.S. and her allies understand this very well. Advanced technology is a tool. The center of gravity is the narrative.
The “Era of Cybered Conflict”
Current conflicts play out, at least partly, in cyberspace.
Dr. Chris C. Demchak, RDML Grace Murray Hopper professor of cybersecurity and director of the Center for Cyber Conflict Studies at the U.S. Naval War College, characterizes today’s environment as one of “cybered conflict.”
In an interview – in which she offered her views and not the views of the U.S. government, U.S. Navy or U.S. Naval War College – Demchak said:
Due to the massively insecure technology of the global cyberspace, we in the West have created a widely spread, poorly secured cyberspace “substrate” that allows attackers in any numbers, from anywhere, with any tools and for any reason to cheaply reach into our critical systems with minimal chances of being punished. The result is that the world has been thrust into an era of “cybered conflict.”
Like Gerasimov’s blurred line between war and peace, Demchak described cybered conflicts as “stretch[ing] from peace through traditional war.” Importantly, Demchak highlighted the strategic advantages of cybered conflict relative to conventional war:
Most cybered conflict – which can have existential consequences – does not involve killing anyone or destroying something explosively. Rather, it is marked by exceptional advantage to deception in what tools are used and opaqueness in who, in what numbers, are using them. Going to the end of the spectrum – to “cyberwar” – is relatively inefficient and opens oneself up to direct retaliation throughout one’s own societal systems. Instead, one can slowly demolish an opponent without ever killing someone or destroying something with a kinetic tool traceable back to oneself … [which] is much safer, reliable and easier to outsource.
Russia, China and ISIS are all leveraging the advantages afforded by cybered conflict to employ hybrid warfare tactics – from hacking to weaponized narrative.
Russia and the Grand Nationalist Narrative
Russia’s use of hybrid warfare long predates Gerasimov’s article. Noting the Soviet Union’s traditional outward posture since the Cold War’s advent, Demchak said, “Russia innovated the strategy of disinformation and personalized brutality to ‘eat a democracy from the inside out’ … producing the involuntary servitude of the former Warsaw Pact.”
Allenby noted favorable conditions for disinformation persist today: “The Russian system tends to reward the cynical, morally relativistic psychology that best aligns with developing and deploying weaponized narratives.”
As foreshadowed by Gerasimov, Russia has displayed its hybrid capabilities during the Ukraine conflict. Allenby points to Russia resurrecting the historical “Novorossiya” and adopting the newer “Russian Eurasian Empire” narratives.
Such narratives matter, Allenby explained, “Because suborning an adversary through weaponized narrative is far, far less costly than a conventional attack. Weaponized narrative offered an important way to achieve Russian ends while not justifying a conventional response under the UN charter.”
Allenby also noted the hybrid approach, which included narrative and “fomenting insurrection and insurgency, and judicious application of ‘little green men,’” or suspected Russian troops.
Allenby added, “Was the invasion [of Crimea] effective? Absolutely. Was it a strategic success? For that, we’ll have to wait and see.”
Asked about the similarities and differences between Russia’s tactics in Ukraine and the alleged activities carried out during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Allenby said:
The two are similar, in that causing a degree of confusion and social fragmentation in the target is a major strategic goal. The tools are different because the cultures are very different, and the follow through is different … Nonetheless, the underlying processes, operations and design of weaponized narrative campaigns must be similar because they are based on the same advanced science, new technologies and rapidly evolving understanding of human psychology.
China and the Sovereignty Narrative
China is also using narrative to further its geopolitical agenda. China’s interest in expanding territorial sovereignty in the South China Seas is well known. Less so is China’s “cyber sovereignty” narrative, which Demchak has examined.
At issue is, Demchak wrote, “China wants her borders in cyberspace and will take nothing less.” Whereas the West sees the internet as a tool for global democratization, “the Chinese narrative accentuates the instability and greater dissent that can accrue with a border-spanning open internet.”
China’s view implicitly acknowledges Gerasimov’s “protest potential of the population.”
To achieve cyber sovereignty, China has employed hybrid gray-zone tactics.
“China,” Demchak wrote, “is also hoping to hurry along the [U.S.’s] apparent decline with narratives, money and stealth and yet control the narrative of a no-threat peaceful rise well enough to stay short of physical conflict.”
China’s cyber sovereignty is part of a grander narrative. “China justifies its rise in the world – its ‘rightful place’ – on the basis of its population,” Demchak said. “China will not over time tolerate U.S. obstruction of its ‘rightful’ rise as the global hegemon.”
ISIS and the Narrative of the Islamic Caliphate
The rise of ISIS surprised many in the West. Narrative and cyberspace played a central role, experts say.
Counterterrorism scholars have studied the “messaging and counter-messaging” of ISIS. Maan thinks ISIS’s narratives are more “profound and pervasive” than simple messaging.
“It is through narrative that identity is constructed: Personal identity, communal/clan identity and national identity,” she said. “It is formative in the identity layers of all parties to communication long before any communication has taken place between them.”
In her writing, Maan has examined a common idea across ISIS’s communications: “Islam is under attack.” That is a title, not the narrative, she explained.
Despite the West’s claims otherwise, “Islam is under attack” resonates with ISIS followers in many forms. “Narrative provides and determines the meaning of events,” Maan said. “Events don’t speak for themselves. Narratives speak for events.”
Maan argues, rather than focusing on counter-narrative, which oftentimes “emboldens” the original, the West should develop its own. To succeed, Maan thinks the West’s narratives must be credible and based on the “production of common sense.”
“That is how successful narratives appear. They don’t seem like a construction. They seem to reflect ‘just the way things are,’” she said.
Few appear to remember the brazen, corruption and deceptive operation when pro-Russian separatists invaded Crimea. The world was in shock and now Ukraine is falling victim to the same operation as NATO fights against this.
If you want to understand the Russian operation in Eastern Europe and how the Kremlin game is played, one must begin with the twisting of information, news and propaganda.
Much has been debated as to the penetration of Russia into the U.S. election system. This is not a new phenomenon for the Kremlin.
The survival of Ukraine as a sovereign, democratic nation was at stake. And the presidential election needed to go smoothly—thus making it a prime target for a Russian cyberattack.
Four days prior to the election, on May 21, 2014, a pro-Russian hacktivist group called CyberBerkut launched a cyberattack against Ukraine’s Central Election Commission computers. According to Ukrainian news reports, the attack destroyed both hardware and software, and for 20 hours shut down programs to monitor voter turnout and tally votes.
On election day, 12 minutes before polls closed, CyberBerkut hackers posted false election results to the election commission’s website. Russia’s TV Channel One promptly aired the bogus results. More here.
Newsweek: Ukraine’s former top security official has gone from tracking down Russian spies to fighting what he perceives to be the country’s greatest threat—corruption.
“The question is, are we going to survive or not?” Valentyn Nalyvaichenko told The Daily Signal from his offices in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.
Nalyvaichenko, 50, is the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, which is Ukraine’s successor agency to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’s branch of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s main security agency.
“At stake is survival of the country,” Nalyvaichenko said. “At stake is whether we’ll finally get rule of law and a functioning state instead of chaos, corruption, weakness and [being] not capable to defend our territory and the country. So, at stake is the country, its independence.”
During his interview with The Daily Signal, Nalyvaichenko wore a well-appointed suit and tie. He spoke fluent English, evidence of his university degree in linguistics.
His affable demeanor and emotive manner of talking hinted more at his background as a diplomat and member of parliament than his years in charge of Ukraine’s successor agency to the KGB.
Nalyvaichenko led the SBU for the first time from 2006 to 2010. He took over the security agency for a second time on Feb. 24, 2014, two days after deposed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia in the closing days of the revolution.
Nalyvaichenko has also served as a member of parliament and as Ukraine’s deputy minister of foreign affairs.
Nalyvaichenko’s 2015 departure from the SBU was controversial. In June 2015, while the security agency was investigating high-level Ukrainian officials for financial crimes, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sacked Nalyvaichenko from his leadership post at the SBU.
Today, Nalyvaichenko is the leader of two upstart anti-corruption political platforms: the Justice Civil-Political Movement, and the Nalyvaichenko Anti-Corruption Movement.
“Our people, our common people, are suffering because of corruption, corruption at the top,” Nalyvaichenko said, pounding his fist on the table for emphasis.
“I really like what [Winston] Churchill said in the Second World War,” Nalyvaichenko said. “‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.’ If we’re corrupt, it doesn’t mean we have to say, ‘OK, we’re a failed state.’ No, it’s not true.”
Purge
True to his diplomatic roots, Nalyvaichenko recently traveled to Washington to present evidence to Congress about Russia’s involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine and to press for U.S. assistance in anti-corruption efforts.
As part of his anti-corruption platform, Nalyvaichenko has called for the FBI to investigate the financial crimes of Ukraine’s current and former political leaders.
He also wants U.S. and EU prosecutors to oversee the adjudication of corruption investigations, and for the U.S. to press Ukrainian officials to make Ukraine’s newly minted National Anti-Corruption Bureau independent from the executive and judicial branches.
People look out over the Maidan, or Independence, Square on May 22, 2014, in Kiev, Ukraine. Nolan Peterson writes that corruption still taints almost every aspect of Ukrainian life. University students in Kiev, for example, say it’s still common practice to pay their professors a bribe to pass exams. Dan Kitwood/Getty
Nalyvaichenko said Ukraine has a chance to “show for the whole world, especially to the Russian people, that there is an opportunity, there is a plan B, to such nations after the Soviet Union time to be democratic, to be not corrupt, to live in a not corrupt state, to be independent.”
“Ukraine belongs to the Western world,” he added.
Nalyvaichenko added that Ukraine has “several months, two or three months” to show real progress in anti-corruption measures before Western partners begin to break ranks on measures such as maintaining punitive sanctions against Russia.
“It will be no tolerance from the new administration in the United States,” Nalyvaichenko said. And next year, “there might be many changes in the European Union,” he said. “That’s, I think, what is at stake when we’re talking about the European Union and the United States.”
Within Ukraine, Nalyvaichenko’s strategy is to reach out to civil society leaders working at the grassroots level. He wants to convince Ukrainians to believe in the democratic process, despite a quarter-century of oligarchic thug rule after the fall of the Soviet Union.
To that end, Nalyvaichenko’s two anti-corruption organizations—which comprise 10,000 activists across Ukraine—have provided pro bono legal assistance to more than 3,000 Ukrainian citizens involved in court cases against allegedly corrupt government officials.
Nalyvaichenko’s groups have also given free medical care to more than 9,000 civilians in the war zone.
“If you would like to stop Russian aggression, if you would like to get back not only territories but people…we have to show them what?” Nalyvaichenko said. “Believe me, not Kalashnikovs and not tanks. We have to show them a better life.”
Lifestyle
That better life has not yet materialized for many Ukrainians.
For one, the hryvnia, Ukraine’s national currency, is currently less than one-third its value against the dollar than it was before the revolution. Wages have not concurrently risen to match the falling currency, dramatically reducing Ukrainians’ spending power.
Also, corruption still taints almost every aspect of Ukrainian life. University students in Kiev, as an example, say it’s still common practice to pay their professors a bribe to pass exams.
According to an October 2016 public opinion poll conducted by the International Republican Institute, and funded by the government of Canada, 30 percent of Ukrainians surveyed who had visited a doctor in the previous 12 months said they paid a bribe for service.
Among those who interacted with the police, 25 percent said they paid a bribe.
A large part of Ukraine’s economy is off the books—what Ukrainians refer to as the “shadow economy.” Ukraine’s Economic Development and Trade Ministry said the shadow economy was 40 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2015.
This black market economy robs the government of valuable tax revenue. It also leaves many returning combat veterans, many of whom were drafted, no legal recourse to recover their jobs at the conclusion of their military service.
Many veterans previously worked off the books and were paid in cash so their employers could skirt payroll taxes.
According to the 2016 International Republican Institute study, 72 percent of Ukrainians surveyed said the country was moving in the wrong direction, while 11 percent said the country was on the right track.
As a point of comparison, a year prior to the revolution in May 2013, 69 percent of Ukrainians surveyed said the country was moving in the wrong direction, and 15 percent said the country was moving in the right direction.
According to the same poll, 73 percent of Ukrainians disapprove of Poroshenko’s performance as president, and 87 percent of Ukrainians have an unfavorable opinion of their parliament.
Nalyvaichenko said he no longer has faith in Poroshenko.
“For me this is not personal,” he said. “Whoever becomes president or prime minister is immediately part of a corrupt and not transparent system. Immediately they are reproducing the same Soviet or simply corrupt practices and environment…. So, to get rid of that, to dismantle, to change the system, to reboot the country [we need to] get new people with absolutely different minds and mentality into the governmental offices.”
A New Fight
Nalyvaichenko is among a new breed of Ukrainian reformers who have emerged after the 2014 revolution.
Among Nalyvaichenko’s allies is former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who resigned as governor of Ukraine’s Odessa Oblast in November. The move was a protest against what Saakashvili claimed was stonewalling by Poroshenko and the majority of Ukraine’s political class in implementing anti-corruption reforms.
Saakashvili has since launched his own anti-corruption, opposition party called Wave.
“We had a revolution with lots of casualties,” Saakashvili told The Daily Signal in an earlier interview. “And every time a revolution happens, people have a right to expect revolutionary changes.”
One bright spot for Ukraine is its budding civil society. Across the country, political activists and humanitarian workers, including many millennials, have enabled the spread of democratic norms and are pushing for government accountability at the grassroots level.
“Across the country there is real willingness at the local level, at the grassroots level to stop corruption,” Nalyvaichenko said. “Fifteen or 20 years ago it was unimaginable that Ukraine would have such a powerful civil society.”
He continued:
I remember my parents and how modest the family used to be. How we young, young kids in Zaporizhia and other regions dreamed about another life. And to really have a chance with a free market, with the rule of law … for our children to create a new country with more opportunities. Our better future is here, and we should fight for that. I will not take no for an answer—from anyone.
Sacked
As head of the SBU, Nalyvaichenko endeavored to purge the security agency of its Soviet KGB past. He booted many personnel who had served in the SBU when it was the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’s branch of the KGB.
Nalyvaichenko spearheaded an effort to open up the SBU’s KGB archives, launching fresh investigations into Soviet crimes in Ukraine, including Joseph Stalin’s organized mass famine in the 1930s known as the Holodomor.
He also hunted down and expelled Russian spies in Ukraine who were working for Russia’s successor agency to the KGB, the Federal Security Service of Russia, or FSB.
“With SBU, what I started with was to stop KGB practices,” Nalyvaichenko said. “I was the first and only chief of the SBU who actually started to detain FSB officers in Ukraine.”
The intent of Nalyvaichenko’s personnel scrub at the SBU went beyond security concerns. He wanted to shed the agency of its “Soviet mindset.”
To fill out the SBU’s thinned ranks, Nalyvaichenko tapped young political activists and reformers who had no living memory of life in the Soviet Union.
“That is my approach and my understanding of how it could be done in all the country,” Nalyvaichenko said, explaining how his SBU scrub could be used as a model for nationwide reforms.
The solution to beating corruption in Ukraine, according to Nalyvaichenko, is to elevate a new generation of political and business leaders.
“Let the generation shift happen in Ukraine,” Nalyvaichenko said. “For the new generation to be in the offices, to let them finally rule the country … it’s high time to finally stop with old practices.”
Nalyvaichenko’s second term as head of the SBU came at a tumultuous time for Ukraine. In the months following the February 2014 revolution, Russia launched a hybrid invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, ultimately annexing the territory.
Russia followed up the seizure of Crimea with a proxy war in the Donbas. A combined force of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars was on the march in eastern Ukraine in 2014, and there were worries then that Ukraine could be cleaved in two, or that Russian forces massed on Ukraine’s borders might stage a large-scale invasion.
In Kiev, the post-revolution government was at the time trying to establish its legitimacy and follow through on the pro-democratic promise of the revolution.
Meanwhile, officials were piecing together a military campaign out of the remnants of Ukraine’s armed forces, which had been gutted by decades of corruption and purposeful neglect.
Amid all of this, Nalyvaichenko pushed to prosecute corrupt government officials.
A New Fight
In Ukraine, opinions diverge about the hierarchy of threats facing the country.
A nearly three-year-old war between Ukrainian troops and a combined force of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars continues to simmer in the Donbas, Ukraine’s embattled eastern territory on the border with Russia.
About 10,000 Ukrainians have so far died in the conflict, which has also displaced about 1.7 million people. The war cost Ukraine an equivalent 20 percent of its gross national product in 2015, according to a 2016 report by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
The February 2015 cease-fire has failed. Military and civilian casualties still occur almost every day from landmines, artillery fire, rocket attacks, and small arms gun battles.
Ukraine’s military has rebuilt itself since 2014, but many front-line soldiers complain that after nearly three years of combat, they still aren’t getting basic supplies.
Despite the war’s cost in blood and treasure, Nalyvaichenko said the greatest threat facing Ukraine today is not on the battlefields of the Donbas, but within Kiev’s government halls.
“If you don’t understand how deep and how destroying the corruption is, you’ll never win the war,” Nalyvaichenko said. “This system, as I understand it, is not workable anymore. And because of war, because of Russian aggression, we now understand why. We simply, as a country, as a nation, have no time and no space anymore to continue with such corrupt practices.”
There is, however, a countervailing, quieter faction, particularly among Ukraine’s military brass, which says the war effort should take priority over any anti-corruption crusades.
Ukrainian military officials who spoke to The Daily Signal on background cautioned against ambitious anti-corruption agendas while the country is still at war.
And, according to the October 2016 International Republican Institute poll, most Ukrainians consider the war to be the biggest threat to the country.
Of the Ukrainians surveyed in the poll, 53 percent said the war in the Donbas was the country’s most important issue, compared with 38 percent who singled out corruption as the top issue.
“The tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, tanks, and artillery sitting along Ukraine’s southern and eastern borders are Ukraine’s sole existential threat,” Alexander Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark, wrote in OZY. “If [Russian President] Vladimir Putin gives the command, they could invade and possibly destroy large parts of the country. Corruption, by comparison, could eviscerate Ukraine’s institutions, but only in the long term.”
Outsider
As SBU chief, Nalyvaichenko spearheaded an investigation into a June 8, 2015, fire at an oil depot near Vasylkiv, Ukraine. The investigation allegedly implicated government officials in financial crimes, according to Nalyvaichenko’s account of events.
The investigation also revealed the undisclosed involvement of a Russian company in the oil depot.
Nalyvaichenko said he personally presented Poroshenko with the evidence and pushed for the issuance of arrest warrants.
Then, on June 15, 2015, Poroshenko fired Nalyvaichenko as head of the SBU. And three days later, Ukraine’s parliament voted to approve Nalyvaichenko’s ouster.
“That’s why I decided to be outside the government,” Nalyvaichenko said. “I really understood and understand for sure that to be subordinated and to fight the corruption, which is above you, is impossible. You become a part of this corrupt group of people, or you are outside. Here’s a red line. For me it was a clear decision.”
The Poroshenko administration declined a request for comment for this article. But, in an emailed statement to The Daily Signal, the SBU defended its track record of investigating and prosecuting corrupt officials.
“After the Revolution of Dignity, state leadership gave a clear indication to law enforcement authorities to begin the real fight against corruption, regardless of position, party affiliation, and the number of stars on one’s epaulets,” the SBU wrote in its statement to The Daily Signal.
According to the SBU, the security agency investigated 673 Ukrainian officials for corruption in 2016, compared with 545 in 2015, and 359 in 2014. The SBU said its investigations led to 256 convictions in 2016, an increase from 184 in 2015, and 181 in 2014.
“This suggests an increase in the intensity of the intelligence agencies in this cause,” the SBU said in its statement.
Nalyvaichenko acknowledged that Ukraine has made some progress in fighting corruption, but he said the past few years of investigations have largely targeted mid- and low-level government officials.
“The worst thing, I think, is that no single person from the top of the previous government [has been] prosecuted,” Nalyvaichenko said. “No single trial, or public hearings, or other procedures were organized by this government, by these officials. That’s I think the worst thing for the country and for Ukrainians.”
Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal’s foreign correspondent based in Ukraine.
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