By Justin Sherman & Anastasios Arampatzis, RealClearDefense: “Chaos, Confusion and a Severe disconnect from reality. These are just some of the side effects of gaslighting, a technique used in offensive information warfare.”
- Open Russia’s Mikhail Khodorkovsky: How to stop Putin’s mafia
By James Durso, RealClearDefense: “Why was Wagner Group there? Because the Russians may have drawn the wrong lessons from the U.S. use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
- The organizational structure of Russian intelligence services might resemble that of the West – dividing up responsibilities among multiple services – but the prevailing culture and authoritarian control over these services creates infighting for prestige and favor with Putin and his closest allies.
- Competition between overlapping Russian intelligence services can be a strength, as agencies are forced to be aggressive, innovative and achieve results. But there are disadvantages as well: the need for immediate and tangible results before other services often comes at the cost of with the integrity of the analytic process and hampers coordination and burden-sharing between services.
- While NATO was first conceived as a collective defense organizationagainst the threat of Soviet military aggressiveness, Russia’s modern turn toward “hybrid warfare” cannot be countered by merely conventional military means. The U.S. and other NATO members could seek to disrupt Russian information warfare, intelligence operations and cyber intrusions by inserting misinformation, conspiracy and doubt in Russia’s intelligence cycles, playing off their desire to please Putin’s worldview.