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.