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Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski speaks during a press conference.
Poland sounds the Russia cyber alarm
Georgia, a former Soviet republic that’s now independent, has facedpolitical crisis and social unrest over claims that Russia is manipulating its politics. Romania was forced to void an election result andrerun the vote late last year on similar charges of Russian meddling.
The charge isn’t new. Ukraine’sOrange Revolution (2004-05) began in response to an election result that protesters asserted had been determined by Vladimir Putin. And the charges of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential race made headlines, though there was no evidence the Russians were successful enough to determine the outcome.
Today, Europeans are particularly on edge, because new elections are coming in both Germany and the Czech Republic. Russia has suffered more than700,000 casualties in Ukraine, according to US officials. Its ability to wage conventional war has sustained enormous damage. All the more reason, European officials fear, for Russia to use cyber strikes and sabotage attacks to pressure their governments to cut their backing for Ukraine.Yevgeny Prigozhin, left, serves Vladimir Putin dinner at a Moscow restaurant in 2011.
A dangerous game for “Putin’s Chef”
In November, we profiled the uber-controversial Russian mercenary chieftain, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a man once determined to remain in the shadows who, since Russia invaded Ukraine, seems eager to become the war’s most famous man.
Who is this guy? In the Soviet Union’s dying days, Prigozhin spent nine years in prison on robbery and fraud charges, and after his release, he opened a profitable hot dog stand in St. Petersburg. His business then expanded into catering, which allowed Prigozhin to meet wealthy and well-connected people for whom he could do (possibly criminal and highly dangerous) favors. He was eventually introduced to Vladimir Putin – earning the nickname “Putin’s chef” – who rewarded Prigozhin’s loyalty with Kremlin catering contracts.
In 2014, the enterprising Prigozhin spotted an opportunity to move full-time into the business of violence by forming the Wagner Group, a private militia named after Hitler’s favorite composer. In 2016, profits from Wagner and other projects helped him form a troll farm to try to manipulate US public opinion via cyberspace ahead of US elections, bringing him a higher level of scrutiny from US law enforcement.
But it’s the Wagner Group’s role in Ukraine that has brought him to a new level of prominence – and now leaves him in a potentially precarious position with the Kremlin. Prigozhin has repeatedly claimed that Wagner, which he owns, is responsible for important battlefield advances while the Russian Defense Ministry remains embarrassingly and dangerously incompetent.
That he feels free to make these comments and hasn’t yet been punished by the Kremlin suggests Prigozhin has some degree of protection from Putin or someone close to him. But how long is his leash? Tatiana Stanovaya, writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warns that “Prigozhin is still only acting as a private individual. His relationship with the state is informal, and therefore fragile, and could end without warning.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based military think tank, has reported that Prigozhin appears to have overplayed his hand in recent weeks. The Kremlin, according to ISW, is “continuing to dim Prigozhin’s star by depriving him of the right to recruit in prisons and by targeting his influence in the information space.” It also reports that a Wagner-affiliated blogger has “obtained a document that outlines rules for covering the war in Ukraine with explicit requirements to refrain from mentioning Wagner and Prigozhin in the media.”
Prigozhin has used friends in Russian media to push back against speculation he’s on the outs with Putin, but he appears to be playing an increasingly dangerous game.
The Russians Are Proud of Their Operation
The Russians are "proud of their operation". Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia discusses the meddling in the presidential election on GZERO World. "That was a giant party in Moscow."