Category Archives: Russian Federation

Letter from Rappahannock: Rural Republicans Who Despise Biden More than Putin

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By Greg Rushford

July 16, 2022

Foreign affairs specialists will have seen various headlines in recent years suggesting that some American Republicans — Putin admirers like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson are usually the first national names to be mentioned — believe that Democrats like President Joe Biden are greater threats to U.S. national security than Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

And earlier this month, the Brookings Institution turned in an analysis of recent national polling data suggesting that more Democrats than Republicans are prepared to keep on providing military aid to help Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky defend his country from Putin’s bloody and unprovoked invasion.

We’ll get to that big-picture analysis. But first, a closer look at one small community in rural Virginia provides some insights into changing attitudes towards Russia that are playing out at grassroots levels of American politics.

Rappahannock County, Virginia, where I live, is nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains some 70 miles west of Washington, D.C. Our county is roughly the same size as Singapore, where the comparison ends. Singapore has skyscrapers and 5.7 million people. Rappahannock has idyllic country roads, lovely mountain views — and only about 7,400 residents, the majority of whom vote Republican.

This is Trump country. While the former president did not carry Virginia overall in 2020 in his losing re-election bid, he easily beat Joe Biden here in Rappahannock, 54-44 percent. In the 2016 presidential contest here, Trump thoroughly trounced Hillary Clinton, 59-40 percent. No Democratic presidential contender has carried Rappahannock in this century. Barack Obama came the closest in 2008, losing narrowly to Republican John McCain, 51-49.  

But when it comes to foreign affairs — notably concerning the importance of countering Vladimir Putin’s dreams to restore the Russian empire by force —  it appears that Rappahannock County Republicans are no longer the party of John McCain. McCain stood against authoritarians like Russia’s Vladimir Putin (and Donald Trump).

Our local Republican congressman has voted against providing military aid to help Ukraine defend itself from the Russian invaders. A Rappahannock lawyer has been flying the Russian flag —and the top Republican in the county won’t comment on whether Republicans should cheer or boo that. (Another local resident has been displaying a sign in his front yard that says F*ck Biden. Again, our local Republican chairman — who is also a Baptist deacon who teaches Bible classes — declines comment on whether Republicans should keep their mouths shut when faced with such indecency.) 

Even some prominent local Republicans who don’t admire Putin in the slightest — and consider him a dangerous threat — have said they believe that Joe Biden is the more immediate national security threat to America.

Still another current Republican candidate for Congress, a decorated Navy hero and a graduate of Annapolis, says that he is Joe Biden’s “worst nightmare” — but declines comment on whether he would be Putin’s.

That’s a mouthful. Let’s digest this more carefully, one grassroots bite at a time.

Waging culture wars on the Pentagon

Rep. Bob Good, the self-styled Biblical conservative who represents Rappahannock County in Virginia’s sprawling 5th congressional district, was one of 57 House Republicans who voted in May to deny the Biden administration’s request to provide an additional $40 billion in urgent military aid to Ukraine. Good was joined by such House members from the extreme-right wing of his party as Reps. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (GA), Lauren Boebert (CO), Matt Gaetz (FL), and Jim Jordan (OH). On the other side of the Hill, eleven Republican Senators from the nationalistic wing of the party also voted to pull the plug on Zelensky, including presidential wannabees Rand Paul (KY) and Josh Hawley (MO).

Good, an ardent America Firster, justified his anti-Ukraine vote by blaming “the Biden-Pelosi America-last agenda.” The Democrats, he said, “are ignoring the many crises plaguing our country, including family budget-busting inflation, supply chain shortages for baby formula and other essentials, surging violent crime in our cities, and millions of illegals trafficking across our Southern Border.”

Last week, Good voted — not for the first time — against the annual National Defense Authorization Act. NDAAs are at the core of congressional support for America’s national security fundamentals; without this legislation, the Defense Department could not function. The Pentagon could not support American troops and American weapons systems worldwide. This Fiscal 2023 NDAA bill that Good refused to support also authorizes more military support for Ukraine.

Good’s basic frame of reference when addressing U.S. national security priorities seems to be rooted in his enthusiasm for fighting America’s culture wars. He is outraged that U.S. military leaders keep insisting upon the importance of vaccinating “our men and women in uniform.” He also believes the top brass are intent upon brainwashing — there is no softer way to put it — American troops through misguided “woke indoctrination” on racial issues. And Good is further outraged over Defense Department analyses that point to climate change as a serious national security threat.

Flying foreign flags

Driving along our country roads, one sees that Rappahannock County residents, as in many other rural communities across the United States, are displaying an impressive number of blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags. Such indications of support come from local Republicans and Democrats who are united in their opposition to Russian aggression.

But conspicuously, along one of our charming roads where three scenic rivers converge, one well-known Rappahannock lawyer has been flying a Russian flag.

Lawyer David Konick has been anything but shy about publicly supporting Putin’s reasoning on why Russia has waged war on Ukraine.  Hey, it’s a free country! Konick enjoys a reputation as a skilled advocate, and as a man who relishes taking no prisoners when debating with those who have differing views. Despite such acrimony, though, Konick brings a valuable insider’s perspective to the debate. (I enjoy reading his online postings, as they provoke thought, which is what free speech is supposed to do.)

Notwithstanding, the point here is that traditionally, the leaders of the party of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan would have been quick to take sharp issue with Americans who would fly the Russian flag.  

Not the Republican Party of Rappahannock County, it seems. It’s chairman, Terry Dixon, refused repeated requests to say which side he thinks good Republicans should be rooting for: Russia or Ukraine.

Dixon also ignored questions asking about the national security logic driving Rep. Good’s vote to deny that $40 billion in additional military aid to Ukraine.

Nor did the Baptist deacon respond to questions about the angry Rappahannock neighbor who has been displaying “F*ck Biden” and “Let’s Go Brandon” signs on a village thoroughfare close to several local churches, including his own. (The offensive signs, at least, do not appear to have been displayed on Sunday mornings.)

Who’s more dangerous to America, Putin or Biden?

Even more traditional prominent Rappahannock Republicans who clearly are no admirers of Vladimir Putin seem to have more important concerns.

“America has three extremely dangerous enemies: The Chinese Communist Party. Vladimir Putin, and Joe Biden,” according to an online posting by one of Rappahannock County’s most well-known Republican opinion leaders. But “right now, Joe Biden is doing the most damage to America and Americans,” she contends.

Those were the words of Demaris Miller, whose husband Jim served as Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. She holds a PhD in psychology — and clearly doesn’t think much of Joe Biden’s psychological makeup.

Miller and local lawyer David Konick — the neighbor who supports the Russian side of the security equation — have at times exchanged sharply differing views on Rappnet, our local online community discussion forum that is an excellent place to try to understand local Republican attitudes.

(I’ve been monitoring Rappnet, with the consent of its administrator, since shortly after the January 6, 2021, Trump riots on Capitol Hill. It can serve up some pretty raw local opinions from the backwoods, such as those from one conservative gentleman who dismissed Central American children desperately trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican southern border as “wetback slime kids.”)

Miller told me that despite the appearance of acrimony, she and lawyer Konick remain “very good friends” As for “the sparring between us,” she said in one e-mail, “it is not as acrimonious as it seems to those who do not really know us. There is no real rancor there.”

In Miller’s view, while Putin is a far greater danger to America, meanwhile President Biden has “gutted our National Defense while continuing the Obama policy of weaponizing the IRS and the Justice Department against those not loyal to the Democrat party.”

In another posting, Miller contended that “Joe Biden never cared about anyone except his own power, bank account, and the Biden Crime Syndicate that made it all possible.” Since Biden’s earliest days in the presidency, Miller has also voiced her opinion that the “senile” American president is controlled by “a secret cabal” in the White House. She stands behind those sentiments.

Hung Cao to the Rescue?

A retired U.S. Navy Captain named Hung Cao is running in the forthcoming November mid-term elections to become Rappahannock County’s next Republican congressman. (Thanks to redistricting aimed at eliminating the undemocratic consequences of Bob Good’s 5th District, where the odds have been heavily gerrymanderd in favor of Republican candidates, Rappahannock has been moved to Virginia’s 10th congressional district. The tenth district includes some heavily populated suburban areas now represented by a Democrat, Jennifer Wexton, who lives in one of those adjacent counties. It looks to be a tight race.)

Cao is a recently retired U.S. Navy captain who says he was motivated to get into politics after watching President Biden’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Cao certainly has a most admirable life story. His family escaped from South Vietnam shortly before the communist takeover in April 1975. Armed with nothing other than his native intelligence and a driven desire to succeed in his new country, Cao went on to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. A Navy diver, he served with distinction in special-forces operations during a 25-year career — earning a chest-full of combat ribbons. His is the classic American immigrant success story.

Healing divisions, or exploiting them?

Cao — who declined to be interviewed for this article — has said that if elected, he would work to heal America’s divisions, as his hero Ronald Reagan once did. But the shrill tone of Cao’s campaign literature suggests otherwise.

Basically, Cao has been running against imaginary Democrats who don’t love their country. “My father was on the Communist Party’s kill list, but America welcomed him with open arms,” Cao declared in one recent fundraising pitch. “I am forever in debt to America, and I won’t let the country I owe my life to go down the same path as the communist horror I left behind.”

Cao did not respond to my written questions concerning whether he agreed with congressional Republicans like Bob Good who have voted to pull the plug on additional military assistance to Ukraine.

The closest answer to that question I was able to find in an extensive public record search was this ambiguous statement Cao recently posted on Twitter: “Biden economic advisor says American families should continue suffering with high gas prices to protect the liberal world order. Are you kidding me?”

To be sure, rising inflation is nothing to kid about, especially here in rural America where it can cost workmen well over a hundred dollars just to fill the tanks of their trucks. And nobody denies that the higher energy costs that are driving that inflation are part of the price for American support of Ukraine’s defense.

So far, as Brookings analyst Shibley Telhami wrote on July 5, most Americans are willing to pay that price, if that’s what it takes to draw the line against Russian aggression against its European neighbors.

But Telhami pointed to recent national polling that indicates there is a growing political divide. “There are substantial differences in the degree of preparedness to pay a price for supporting Ukraine between Democrats and Republicans, and the gap between the two is slowly growing, with Democrats expressing much greater willingness to pay a price,” the Brookings scholar wrote.

“While 78 percent of Democrats are prepared to see higher energy costs, only 44 percent of Republicans say the same; while 72 percent of Democrats are prepared to pay with higher inflation, only 39 percent of Republicans say the same.”

Democrats who support Ukraine

For readers who will be wondering where the Democrats stand on supporting Ukraine, there isn’t much news to report. The incumbent Democratic congresswoman from the 10th district, Jennifer Wexton, has voted consistently to support military assistance for Ukraine.  Her stance does not seem to have been controversial in her district’s Democratic circles. (Despite Hung Cao’s fundraising appeals, Wexton does not hate America. Readers will just have to trust me on this!)

In the congressional district next door, Democrat Abagail Spanberger, a respected former CIA officer, is considered to be one of her party’s bright lights when it comes to national security.

The political problem for congressional moderates like Wexton and Spanberger is that the forthcoming congressional elections are hardly shaping up as favorable to socially liberal candidates who don’t offer red meat to angry constituents.

Back to the Political Future?

In the olden days before America became so bitterly divided, two of Rappahannock’s most well-known residents were James Kilpatrick and Eugene McCarthy. Republican Kilpatrick was a very conservative newspaper columnist. Democrat McCarthy was a very liberal U.S. senator from Minnesota who in the 1960s challenged President Lyndon Johnson for his (mis)conduct during the Vietnam War.

But the two political opposites became fast friends and drinking buddies who told war stories over whiskey. And each could write beautifully.

Those days of political civility, alas, are long gone.

Surely, from his desk in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin — a man who has spared no efforts to exploit divisions in American society as he plots to restore Russia’s lost empire — must be smiling.

Putin Plays the Philippines: Part II

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By Greg Rushford

Late last year I began researching President Vladimir Putin’s use of secret intelligence to support Russia’s foreign policy goals. A substantial percentage of what the Soviets used to call “active measures” involves influence operations aimed at supporting foreign leaders who have pro-Moscow inclinations. Most of the digging involved piecing together the available public record from numerous locations worldwide: press clips, court records, academic course materials, official government documents, historical studies that provide valuable context, and such. But it wasn’t long before an experienced Putin-watcher who knew that I pay attention to Philippine politics, rather casually tipped me off to something new.

Putin, the source said with a knowing smile, was running “influence operations” in the Philippines aimed at helping his admirer President Rodrigo Duterte learn “how to do it.” The “it” referred to information-warfare methods aimed at discrediting Duterte’s many human-rights critics, both domestic and in Europe and the United States. That was the full extent of the tip: tantalizing, but clearly not enough to publish an article that would meet acceptable journalistic standards.

Months of digging have not turned up proof of such a Russian-directed influence operation in the Philippines. But still, enough bits and pieces have surfaced on the public record that, added together, raise disturbing questions.

As I reported in Part I of this article, Martin Andanar, Duterte’s communications director, has struck cooperative arrangement with TASS, Russia’s propaganda agency that includes “media training” for the official Philippine News Agency. Andanar insists this is merely standard cooperation with a friendly government, not part of a joint disinformation effort. “The Presidential Communications Operations Office does not engage in fake news,” Andanar has declared previously when other reporters have raised similar questions. And Duterte’s national security adviser, Hermogenes Esperon, maintains that any inferences of an ongoing agent-of-influence operation are going too far beyond the facts.

This report attempts to explain bits and pieces of the available public record in a context that will better enable readers to draw their own inferences.

Mutual anti-American feelings

For openers, it is not difficult to understand why, from Vladimir Putin’s point of view, Duterte would be an obvious candidate for an agent-of-influence operation.

Before he was sworn-in as president on June 30, 2016, the rough-edged Philippine politician had been a provincial mayor in Davao, a bustling city in Mindanao, the Philippines’ southern island. Little-travelled, he did not claim to be experienced in foreign affairs, much less a player in the world of international intrigue.

 But Duterte was hardly shy about proclaiming his two core beliefs in clear, personal language. One centers on his longstanding deep dislike for Americans, an animosity that apparently had festered since an unhappy childhood experience (never fully explained) with an American priest. The other was that Duterte considered Vladimir Putin “my favorite hero” (along with China’s Xi Jinping.)

It is difficult to imagine that Putin, a former KGB officer who is running clandestine operations in many countries aimed at cultivating prominent politicians, wouldn’t have immediately spotted a ripe opportunity. After all, one of the Russian president’s top priorities is to foster distrust between America and its allies.

The game begins

In this case, the game seems to have begun in November 2016, when Putin and Duterte first met, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Lima, Peru. The Russian strongman and his Philippine admirer clicked. Duterte told his Russian counterpart that he no longer wanted to be identified “with the Western world.” He told Putin that he considered the Philippines’ longstanding treaty ally, the United States, untrustworthy, Reuters reported. The Filipino railed against American “hypocrisy” and “bullying,” which are also two of Putin’s favorite subjects.

Three months later, Putin dispatched Nikolai Patrushev, one of his closest and most trusted advisers, to meet with Duterte in Davao. Patrushev heads Russia’s security council. After their meeting on February 15, 2017, Duterte and Patrushev announced that Russia and the Philippines had struck an intelligence-sharing relationship. As one news report put it, Patrushev had “offered the Philippines access to an intelligence database to help it fight crime and militancy, and training for the elite forces assigned to protect President Rodrigo Duterte.”

The Patrushev factor

If that were all, this story could stop here. But to seasoned Russia watchers, nothing Nikolai Patrushev is involved in is ever likely to be straightforward. Like Putin, Patrushev is a former KGB officer. And when Putin stepped down as head of the FSB — the Federal Security Service, which is the main intelligence agency that was spun off from the old Soviet KGB — Patrushev replaced him.

As Mikhail Zygar put it in his authoritative “All the Kremlin’s Men,” Patrushev “has been the nerve center of most of Putin’s special operations — the annexation of Crimea, for instance.” He’s virulently anti-American, and once told the state-owned newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta that he believed that the Soviet Union had “collapsed as a result of a plot hatched by Zbigniew Brzezinski and the CIA to weaken the Soviet economy.” The Russian spymaster also believes that Western intelligence operatives have sponsored violence in Chechnya. (We don’t know if Patrushev and Duterte talked about it, but the CIA happens to be another favorite Duterte target. If my plane ever goes down, “ask the CIA,” he has recently said — offering no reason for the fantasy.)

While such opinions suggest that objective intelligence analysis is not Patrushev’s strong suit, he’s considered more talented in so-called “wet” operations. A British official inquiry fingered both Putin and Patrushev as the most probable suspects in the 2006 murder-by-poison of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. Earlier this year, Patrushev was one of 24 Russians close to Putin who were subjected to sanctions by the United States for a variety of “malign” deeds.

At least for a man who has always been a civil servant, Patrushev seems to have the resources to ride out such sanctions, if reports that he owns a mansion outside Moscow worth upwards of $17 million are to be believed. Like Putin, Patrushev has also managed to avoid prosecution for suspected economic crimes, including the smuggling of rare Russian birch trees.

While the Patrushev-Duterte February 2017 meeting in Davao raised eyebrows, the “active measures” trail pretty much went cold again.  

An admission of a foreign intelligence operation

But a year later, Duterte — whose famously loose lips have often landed him in controversies — seemed to blow the whistle on himself.

On February 12, 2018, Duterte made headlines in Manila by boasting that “another country” had given him a transcript of a telephone conversation involving Loida Nicolas Lewis. Lewis is a well-regarded (and wealthy) Philippine-American lawyer and businesswoman who lives in New York City.  And she sure has gotten under Duterte’s skin.

First, Lewis supported the ultimately unsuccessful candidacy of Manual “Mar” Roxas, the Philippine politician who was beaten by Duterte in the 2016 presidential race. Since then, Lewis has become a prominent critic of Duterte’s controversial human-rights record. There is no evidence that Lewis — who is also on the board of the respected U.S.-Philippines Society, which promotes closer ties between the two traditional allies — has done anything beyond exercising her rights to engage in normal political discourse. She is also widely known for her charitable work.

That hasn’t prevented Duterte from fuming that Lewis has been part of a conspiracy to destabilize his government.

A few days before Duterte announced that he had been listening into Lewis’s telephone conversations, the International Criminal Court had announced it would open a preliminary inquiry into thousands of extra-judicial killings on his watch. Human rights advocates have estimated that some 12,000 Filipinos who somehow got caught up in Duterte’s war against illegal narcotics have been killed. The ICC, which is headquartered in The Hague, is charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity.

In his February 12 remarks, Duterte said that he had not been surprised by the announcement from The Hague, because he had been listening in on Lewis’s calls. “I knew in advance,” the Philippine president said. “I was already listening to the tapes of their conversation.” He added: “It was provided by me by another country but the conversation was somewhere between Philippines and New York.”

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque told reporters in February that he could not “annotate” Duterte’s remarks, adding: “Let’s take the President’s statement on its face value.” When I inquired again late last month, Duterte’s national security adviser, Hermogenes Esperon, informed me that he had “no comment on telephone transcript.” The secretary added: “But we all know Lewis supported another presidential candidate. She is one who wants the democratic way of electing presidents — if her candidate wins.”

Lewis says that she has no idea what Duterte was talking about, and that she is not in the business of plotting coups. She says that she only learned about the ICC’s inquiry when it was officially announced. “They can watch me as much as they want,” she told me. “Truth is the best defense.”

Clearly, the Russians aren’t the only ones who eavesdrop. The Philippines has its own telephone surveillance equipment (some of which has been purchased in the United Kingdom on Duterte’s watch, according to news reports). The Chinese, of course, have sophisticated surveillance capabilities — and Lewis has also upset Beijing with her public stance calling upon Duterte to take action against Chinese illegal seizures of reefs in the South China Sea that international law reserves exclusively for the Philippines.

Still, to anyone familiar with Russian spycraft, the wiretapping of an American citizen in the Big Apple has a distinctly familiar smell. But once again, there is no concrete proof — other than the “if it talks like a duck, walks like a duck…” version.

Russian propaganda hits the Philippines

In recent months, the Philippine press has been full of numerous reports of so-called “fake news” and various online disinformation campaigns that have targeted several of Duterte’s political opponents and human-rights critics: in the Philippine senate, the Supreme Court, and the ICC in The Hague. Proving where these campaigns originated, though, has been elusive.

The closest any journalist has come to documenting the suspicions of a Russian influence operation directed at the Philippines was published on February 26 in the Manila-based Rappler, an online publication that has earned a worldwide reputation for its quality investigative journalism.

The report, by Natashya Gutierrez, noted that a Spanish-based Russian Twitter account, @Ivan226622, had been exposed by authorities in Madrid as part of a Russian trolling operation. Ivan and other denizens of the bot-twitter universe had aimed at destabilizing Spain by supporting independence in Spain’s Catalonia region. “But it seems that” the Russian propaganda account “has since changed gears: it is now tweeting exclusively about the Philippines,” Gutierrez wrote.

While most of Ivan’s tweets were retweets of Philippine newspaper articles, the troll also circulated a “YouTube video on how trust in the press has dropped over time,” another staple of Russian propaganda. Shortly after the Rappler report, Twitter suspended Ivan’s account.

The headline to Gutierrez’ article asked the right question: “Has Russian propaganda infiltrated the Philippines?”

So far, there are more such questions than conclusive answers. Stay tuned.

Putin Plays the Philippines

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Kremlin spymasters have their eyes on Rodrigo Duterte. To understand why, first consider the long list of other foreign leaders the Russians have targeted.

(Part One of a Two-Part Series)

 By Greg Rushford

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been wooing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, in what appears to be a Kremlin-directed agent-of-influence operation. It is a matter of public record that Russia and the Philippines have established an intelligence-sharing arrangement. The publicly announced deal appears to be the standard fare: sharing intelligence on the threat the Philippines faces from Islamic terrorists in Southeast Asia, a gift of 5,000 Kalashnikov rifles and ammo, training of Duterte’s presidential guards. But whenever the Russians are involved, there are always, well, curiosities.

Curiosity number one: Duterte has boasted that a “foreign” power has given him telephone transcripts of one of the critics of his human-rights record, an American citizen of Philippine origin who lives in New York City. To anyone familiar with the tradecraft, that sounds straight out of the Putin playbook.

Curiosity number two: Duterte’s presidential communications office has sought “media training” for the official Philippine News Agency (PNA) from TASS, Moscow’s mouthpiece.  Why would the Philippines, a democracy with a free press, seek any journalistic assistance from one of the world’s most disreputable propaganda operations?

Curiosity number three: In February, a solidly-researched article by Natashya Gutierrez, a leading Philippine investigative reporter, revealed that “a Russian-linked Twitter account used to interfere in polls in Spain is now tweeting exclusively about the Philippines.” Gutierrez’s article, published in the online investigative news outlet, Rappler, also disclosed that this was “one of several disturbing developments that may suggest Kremlin influence.”

Add up the curiosities, and it appears that Putin and Duterte have been hiding in the open, which often comes with the territory in Moscow’s influence operations. But Philippine officials deny that, even as they acknowledge it is a matter of public record that their country has struck an intelligence-sharing relationship with Putin’s Russia.

Manila’s side of the story

Duterte’s national security adviser, Sec. Hermogenes Esperon, says he has “no comment on [the] telephone transcript.” And he brushed off a query about the Russian propaganda directed from Spain. But to insinuate that an agent-of-influence operation is going on “is really insinuating too much,” Esperon added. It’s in “our national interest” to deal with Russia, as well as neighboring China, the secretary noted. “It is always good to have friendly relations or, at the least, open lines of communications with neighboring Asian countries.”

Esperon also stressed that “retaining standing alliances is also beneficial,” referring to the close security ties the Philippines has enjoyed since the 1950s with the United States.

Martin Andanar, the head of the Philippines’s presidential communications operations office, insists there is nothing untoward about the Philippine News Agency’s relationship with Russia’s TASS. The PNA also has “a standing partnership with Kyodo News of Japan and Press Trust of India,” and other “media/information counterparts in South Korea, Japan, and Cambodia,” he adds.

Tradecraft can strengthen a weak hand

Before taking a closer look at the emerging Moscow-Manila intelligence ties, some essential background history illustrates the nuances of how Russia has long used secret intelligence in its dealings with many other foreign leaders.

Putin’s main goal in cultivating the Philippines’ Duterte is a familiar one: to exploit Duterte’s well-known visceral dislike of Americans, looking for opportunities to weaken the Philippines deep-rooted security ties with Uncle Sam. No wonder: Beyond their expertise in influence operations, the Russians don’t have much else to offer foreign leaders.

The anemic Russian economy (GDP of $1.3 trillion, and going nowhere fast) is puny compared to big players like China ($12 trillion GDP) and America ($19.3 trillion). In their dealings with foreign leaders anywhere in the world, the Russians — who were humiliated by the collapse of the Soviet Union — look to leverage their foreign policy aspirations to be taken seriously.  So they reach into their historically proven bag of dirty tricks to buy influence, and respect.

Vladimir Putin is only the latest Russian leader to play this game.

Indeed, there is a rich historical context associated with how the Kremlin’s spymasters have long practiced the art of cultivating the secret affections of foreign leaders.

Active Measures, Past…

Aktivnyye meropryiyatiya— Russian for active measures —isanold Soviet KGB term for an array of clandestine intelligence operations aimed at furthering the Kremlin’s foreign policy goals. The covert-operations toolkit includes a variety of dirty tricks. Classic subversion. Kompromat, Russian for blackmail operations. Under-the-table cash. An array of deceptions including propaganda, mis- and disinformation campaigns. Plus, thinly-disguised “little green men” like those who showed up in plain green uniforms to destabilize eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014.

Intelligence experts generally agree that a high percentage of the Kremlin’s active measures have traditionally involved information warfare and covert assistance aimed at supporting sympathetic foreign politicians who will toe the Moscow line.

The best-documented illustration of how Soviets operate stems from the Kremlin’s manipulations in India during the Cold War.

A now-declassified secret 1985 CIA assessment noted that “the Soviets enjoy nearly unfettered access to the pages of Indian newspapers,” planting more than 160,000 articles in the Indian press.” The American intelligence report added that “access to the Press Trust of India, New Delhi’s largest English language news agency, “has become so automatic that some Soviet officials have come to call it Press TASS of India.”

And renowned Cambridge University intelligence historian Christopher Andrew has written of the “suitcases” of cash that were routinely delivered to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who dominated Indian politics from 1967 until her assassination in 1984. Seems that Mrs. Gandhi even kept the suitcases.

Due to the inherent secrecy associated with clandestine operations, it took decades for such facts from Cold War intelligence battlegrounds to dribble out.

…and Present

But in recent years, Russian active measures have become the stuff of daily headlines. With varying degrees of success, Vladimir Putin has directed influence operations aimed at an array of politicians of both left and right.

The politicians who have been targeted share one thing in common: their anti-American, or anti-European Union, proclivities. True, the details of how these operations have played out will likely remain the stuff of history that will take years to be fully documented. But meanwhile, thanks to various press reports, academic studies, and official announcements, it doesn’t require access to secret intelligence information to perceive what the Russians have been up to.

On the left, those targeted have included British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (election help); South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma (whispers of those proverbial suitcases of cash); and Latin American strongmen like Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela (too many dirty tricks to summarize briefly).

And of course the Castro brothers, going way back. Just this week, a headline in Cuba’s communist mouthpiece, Prensa Latina, demonstrated that old-fashioned Russian propaganda is very much alive in the region: “Russia Condemns U.S. Interference in Latin American Affairs.”

In 2012, then-Ecuadorian President Rafel Correa gave Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder whose name always seems to come up when the subject is Russian influence operations, refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London. And two other anti-American populists, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega have paid their Moscow benefactors back shamelessly, expressing support for Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea, to cite just one example.  (As we will see in the second part of this series, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, an unashamed Putin admirer, is not known to have gone so far.)

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, another leftie who has termed American global influence as “monstrous,” while calling Putin a “flawless democrat,” went on the Russian payroll shortly after he left office in 2005. Schröder had championed the still-controversial Nord Stream natural gas pipeline that connects Germany to Russia. Today he chairs the board of the government-controlled Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company, which has close personal ties to Putin.

And on the right…

Putin works hard-right foreign leaders also. There’s the pro-Moscow Czech president, Milos Zeman. France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen (who has enjoyed Russian bank loans). Hungary’s anti-immigrant Viktor Orban. Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Several other right-wing parties from Italy and Germany to Scandinavia have also received Moscow’s support.

Of course, the world of secret intelligence being, umm, secret, the Kremlin’s successes in each of these individual cases remain speculative. Authoritarian-minded rightists like Erdogan and Orban, while their Eurosceptism would be pleasing to Moscow, also come from countries that are traditionally sensitive to any hints of untoward Russian influence. Plus, wily leaders like Erdogan and Orban have their own agendas. So it’s sometimes difficult for outside observers to determine exactly who is playing whom.

Putin’s most famous current success story is well-known to anyone who follows developing headlines. The U.S. intelligence community has identified the main goal of Putin’s several influence operations during America’s 2016 presidential elections: helping Donald Trump defeat rival Hillary Clinton. Clearly, the Russians had a hand in Trump’s victory (although there were other reasons for Clinton’s defeat, arguably the most important of which was her unattractiveness as a candidate).

But Putin didn’t fare so well last year during the United Kingdom’s general election, when his operatives energetically worked various social media outlets to promote the fortunes of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Labor lost the 2017 election.  As has America’s Trump, Corbyn has a history of denigrating British intelligence reports on the Kremlin’s political influence operations directed his way. And to complicate matters further, a lot of murky Russian money is also believed to have been directed towards supporting various British Conservative Party politicians.

Given such a history of active measures aimed at so many prominent world leaders, as we turn to Southeast Asia it is not surprising that Putin has also had his eyes on Rodrigo Duterte.

To be continued in Part Two…