Friday, October 14, 2016

Is There A Covert Russian Plan To Influence Central And Eastern Europe?

Russia's President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of the Security Council. One European expert estimates that at least a third of Russia's diplomats work for Putin's intelligence agencies. Alexei Nikolskyi/RIA Novosti/Kremlin/Reuters

Reuters: Russia has 'playbook' for covert influence in Eastern Europe: study

Russia has mounted a campaign of covert economic and political measures to manipulate five countries in central and eastern Europe, discredit the West's liberal democratic model, and undermine trans-Atlantic ties, a report by a private U.S. research group said.

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

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

Read more ....

Update: Survey: Russia's Campaign To Influence Central, Eastern Europe (Novinite)

WNU Editor: You can add Montenegro to the list .... Montenegro PM accuses Russia of financing anti-NATO campaign (Reuters). But is there a plan .... I am sure that every major power in the world has a plan to influence other nations .... Russia included.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Imagine Wang Yi or Sergey Lavrov standing on a stage in Mexico City encouraging protesters to topple their pro-U.S. government for one that was pro-Chinese and pro-Russian...Texans would boil.

B.Poster said...

The Mexican government can hardly be classified realistically as "pro-US." On a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being in an active shooting war state and 10 being like best friends the Mexican government is between 2.5 and 3.. This would not come close to being "pro-US."

I'm not sure why Texans are singled out as people who would "boil." There are multiple states that border Mexico who are being adversely affected. This why the wall resonates with a large number of Americans. When faced with a nation to the south that is generally hostile, such policies seem sensible to a large number of people.

Now you may be referring to the encouragement Ukrainian rebels received from the US when the pro-Russian government was removed. To say such was bad optics in the eyes of the Russians would likely be an understatement along with foolishly likening the Russian leader to Hitler. (To the Democrats and the media allies anyone who is not down with their agenda is either "Hitler", a "Nazi", "neo-Nazi", "fascist", or all of the above.

Very respectfully there really isn't any comparison between the current Mexican government and the former Ukrainian one. Mexico's government is not pro-US. While they may cooperate in areas of common interests as all nation states generally do, that government is not pro-US by any means.