Why the battle over Ukraine is so important
Every day the world is bombarded with news about the growing atrocities committed by Russia in its brutal, unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Many people are warning against a more forceful response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, arguing that we cannot risk going to war with Russia.
Yet what many Americans may not realize is that Vladimir Putin has been waging a brazen and successful war against the United States and liberal democracies for over a decade. The details of Putin’s attacks on America are buried inside of thousand-page bureaucratic documents. And yet his successful attacks on us have been met with almost no response.
I believe that it is critical for our government to pull back the curtain and communicate to the American public how aggressive and damaging Putin’s war on the United States has been. If the American people understood the breadth and impact his informational warfare campaigns against the United States have had, they would be shocked. A side benefit: Americans increasingly see each other as the enemy (which they are not). By redirecting people’s attention towards our real enemy, we may be able to dial back the animosity and clear a path for more productive dialogue between the two sides.
As we know, the war in Ukraine is a battle between people defending their freedom and a tyrant bent on reasserting his dominance over them. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the freely elected leader of Ukraine who is fighting alongside his fellow citizens to preserve his country’s independence. Vladimir Putin’s regime more closely resembles an organized crime syndicate than a government.
This war is far broader than Russia’s brutal unprovoked attack on Ukraine. The assault on Ukraine is the visible component of a covert war that the Putin regime has been waging for over a decade to destabilize liberal democracies.
We are in a battle between democracy and authoritarianism — between governments that pledge allegiance to a Constitution and those that swear blind fealty to a leader. Between leaders who act with integrity and abide by the rule of law, and those who worship raw power and embrace war crimes.
Russia has spent the past decade waging an aggressive information warfare campaign against the United States and liberal democracy. In January 2019, the Trump Administration’s Director of National Intelligence reported that U.S. adversaries will “almost certainly use online influence operations to try to weaken democratic institutions, undermine U.S. alliances and partnerships, and shape policy outcomes in the United States and elsewhere.” In particular, “Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians.”
Trust is the glue that holds our society together. Demonization, disinformation, and corruption dissolve that glue. Russia is the driving force behind each of these scourges — both financing and fomenting them.
INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY
The Internet Research Agency (IRA) is a Kremlin-backed Russian organization whose main job is to “conduct what it called ‘information warfare against the United States of America’…by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government” and “spread[ing] distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general.”
The agency has a $60 million annual budget and is staffed by hundreds of students from the prestigious St. Petersburg State University.
IRA-controlled Facebook accounts reached at least 29 million Americans with over 80,000 posts before their deactivation in August 2017. Their “United Muslims of America” Facebook group alone had over 300,000 followers, the “Don’t Shoot Us” Facebook group had over 250,000 followers, the “Being Patriotic” Facebook group had over 200,000 followers, and the “Secured Borders” Facebook group had over 130,000 followers.
Similarly, the 3,814 IRA-controlled Twitter accounts had tens of thousands of followers, including multiple U.S. politicians who retweeted IRA-created content. (Source: Mueller Report)
To reach larger U.S. audiences , the IRA spent $100,000 buying over 3,500 Facebook ads to promote their groups on people’s newsfeeds. Some of the rallying cries they initiated included:
- #HillaryClintonForPrison2016 (April 19, 2016)
- “Donald wants to defeat terrorism . . . Hillary wants to sponsor it” (May 10, 2016)
- “Vote Republican, vote Trump, and support the Second Amendment!” (May 19, 2016)
- “Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote” (May 24, 2016)
- “Trump is our only hope for a better future!” (June 7, 2016)
- “We cannot trust Hillary to take care of our veterans!” (August 10, 2016)
- “Among all the candidates Donald Trump is the one and only who can defend the police from terrorists.” (October 14, 2016)
The IRA organized and promoted dozens of political rallies inside the United States before and after the 2016 election. The earliest was a “confederate rally” in November 2015. To organize those rallies, IRA employees posed as local grassroots entities and persons and made contact with Trump supporters and Trump Campaign officials in the United States. The IRA also used social media to recruit Americans from across the political spectrum. For example, they targeted black social justice activists by posing as a grassroots group called “Black Matters US.”
RT AMERICA TV
RT America, a Kremlin-financed television channel operated from within the United States, is dedicated to undermining faith in the US Government and fueling political protest.
In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, the channel ran numerous reports on alleged election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities, contending that US election results cannot be trusted and do not reflect the popular will. It portrayed the US electoral process as undemocratic and featured calls by US protesters for the public to rise up and “take this government back.”
PUTIN’S BRAZEN ATTACKS ON UNITED STATES HAVE BEEN WILDLY SUCCESSFUL
Russia’s campaign of information warfare against the United States has been asymmetrical and met with almost no response. As a result, his brazen attacks have been wildly successful. Much of the language of distrust and hatred of the “other side” was implanted by Russian agents.
They have succeeded in turning Americans against one another, leaving the country more divided now than at any time since before the Civil War. 40% of Americans consider members of the other party to be “downright evil.” 36% of Americans believe violence may be necessary to “protect America”.
They have also succeeded in undermining confidence in our government. America’s faith in the integrity of the election system decreased from 59% in 2009 to 20% in January 2022.
Russia’s information war has succeeded in influencing American opinion and policy on Ukraine. Numerous key influencers now repeat Kremlin talking points regarding Ukraine:
“Ukraine’s not even a country. It’s kind of a concept. It’s not even a country .. It’s just a corrupt area that the Clinton’s turned into a colony where they can steal money out of.”
— Steve Bannon
“Ukraine isn’t a democracy. It’s a State Department client state.”
— Tucker Carlson
“Putin is smart. He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.”
— Former President Donald Trump
“So when you say stay out of it, you mean no sanctions, no military aid, just let Russia take the portion of Ukraine they want to take?” “Yes. Absolutely.”
— Retired Colonel Douglas MacGregor
“Why do I care, why do I care what is going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia? And I’m serious. Why do I care? Why shouldn’t I root for Russia, which I am.”
— Tucker Carlson
“Now we’ve already seen war erupt in Eastern Europe. Joe Biden did that. It’s fully Joe Biden’s fault.”
— Marjorie Taylor Greene (U.S. Congresswoman)
“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO.”
— Tulsi Gabbard (former U.S. Congresswoman)
“This ‘invasion’ was totally avoidable…President Biden and his failed foreign policy team… ignored and laughed at Putin’s legitimate security concerns, and legitimate ethnic problems in the Ukraine…instead we continue to demonize Russia.”
— Lt. General Michael Flynn
“I identify more with Putin’s Christian values than I do with Joe Biden.”
— Lauren Witzke (U.S. Senate candidate)
“The Biden Democrats say we have to choose. Either we are for them or we are against them. Okay, then, we are AGAINST. Moreover, I’ll go further and say they pose a far greater threat to our freedom and safety than #Putin. He’s the lesser evil. They are the greater one #Ukraine.”
— Dinesh D’Souza
HACKING AND INFILTRATION
Before becoming Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, Paul Manafort, spent more than a decade as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. He was also paid tens of millions of dollars by pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs.
According to the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, Manafort directly and indirectly communicated with Konstantin Kilimnik and sought to secretly share internal polling data with him. The FBI believes that Konstantin Kilimnik had ties to the GRU (Russian intelligence service) and may have been connected to its hack-and-leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election.
Over several meetings, Manafort and Kilimnik discussed a peace plan for eastern Ukraine that benefited the Kremlin. They also worked together on drafting narratives to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
The Trump campaign then worked behind the scenes and successfully removed language from the Republican party’s official platform in support of arming Ukraine to fight Russian intervention.
HOW U.S. POLICY EMBOLDENED PUTIN
Putin likely felt comfortable invading Ukraine after having faced no significant consequences from the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama for his prior aggression (Georgia in 2008, the Crimea and Donbas regions of Ukraine in 2014, Syria in 2015).
As president, Trump’s policy with respect to Ukraine was mixed. In contrast with the Obama administration, the Trump administration approved the sale of $47 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missile systems to Ukraine in 2018 to help them fight Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. Yet he then (illegally) blocked payment of a congressionally mandated $391 million military aid package to Ukraine. The funds were frozen from June through September 2019 and released only after the freeze became public and members of Congress from both parties made clear they wanted it released.
Putin may also have felt emboldened to invade Ukraine because he believed that both NATO and our relations with our allies had been weakened over the past five years. As a candidate in 2016, Trump cast doubt on America’s willingness to honor Article 5 of the NATO charter and defend the Baltic States if Russia attacked them. Two of his former national security advisers, John Bolton and John Kelly, also publicly confirmed that Trump wanted to withdraw from NATO should he win reelection.
In a March 2012 interview, Republican Senator Mitt Romney pointed out that “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. They — they fight every cause for the world’s worst actors.”
According to the 2019 DNI Threat Assessment, “Moscow continues to be a highly capable and effective adversary, integrating cyber espionage, attack, and influence operations to achieve its political and military objectives. Moscow is now staging cyber attack assets to allow it to disrupt or damage US civilian and military infrastructure during a crisis and poses a significant cyber influence threat.
Russia has the ability to execute cyber attacks in the United States that generate localized, temporary disruptive effects on critical infrastructure — such as disrupting an electrical distribution network for at least a few hours — similar to those demonstrated in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016. Moscow is mapping our critical infrastructure with the long-term goal of being able to cause substantial damage.”
In another interview, Romney declared, “how anybody in this country, which loves freedom — can side with Vladimir Putin — [who] is an oppressor, a dictator, he kills people, he imprisons his political opponents, he has been an adversary of America at every chance he’s had — it’s unthinkable to me. It’s almost treasonous.”
In order to defend the rule of law and the right to self-government we need to fight on two fronts:
- Battle against Russian funding, Russian troll farms, Russia’s external military campaigns
- Battle to counter their tools — demonization, disinformation, and corruption.
It is time for us to recognize that we are at war with the forces of autocracy. This is not a battle between conservatives and progressives. It is a global battle between authoritarianism and the rule of law — between unbridled power and democracy. Now is not the time to pursue a partisan agenda.
Now is the time for us to rally together to defend democracy and the rule of law from the nefarious forces lined up against them. We need to demonstrate our ability to stick together as a nation and weather the mild pain of sanctions (in the form of increased gas prices) or whatever else we may be called to do. The antidote to Disinformation, Corruption, and Demonization is Truth, and Justice, and a common belief in the American ideals upon which our country was founded.
