Russia: Low turnout, fraud claims mar Russia local elections | AFP

Russians shunned the polls Sunday for local elections which are the last vote before the presidential elections in March next year, with very low turnout rates as the opposition cried foul. There were numerous cases of fraud in the some 6,000 polls organised in 82 regions to elect 16 regional governors and many municipal councils, the opposition claimed, saying things were worst in the capital Moscow. According to preliminary results, the vote went well for parties close to the ruling United Russia, which scored a resounding majority in legislative elections a year ago. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the results were “very favourable” for United Russia, of which he is president, according to comments given to Russian press agencies. Voter turnout rates were low, in particular in Moscow where the electoral commision said that only 14 to 15 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots, according to figures available two hours before polling stations closed.

Russia: A Guide to Russia’s High Tech Tool Box for Subverting US Democracy | WIRED

A dead dog in Moscow. A dead dissident in London. Twitter trolls run by the Kremlin’s Internet Research Agency. Denial of service attacks and ransomware deployed across Ukraine. News reports from the DC offices of Sputnik and RT. Spies hidden in the heart of Wall Street. The hacking of John Podesta’s creamy risotto recipe. And a century-old fabricated staple of anti-Semitic hate literature. At first glance these disparate phenomena might seem only vaguely connected. Sure, they can all be traced back to Russia. But is there any method to their badness? The definitive answer, according to Russia experts inside and outside the US government, is most certainly yes. In fact, they are part of an increasingly digital intelligence playbook known as “active measures,” a wide-ranging set of techniques and strategies that Russian military and intelligence services deploy to influence the affairs of nations across the globe.

Russia: ‘Big hunt’ for Russian hackers, but no obvious election link | Associated Press

Pyotr Levashov appeared to be just another comfortable member of Russia’s rising middle-class—an IT entrepreneur with a taste for upmarket restaurants, Thai massages and foreign travel. Then police raided his vacation rental in Barcelona, marching him out in handcuffs to face charges of being one of the world’s most notorious spam lords. Levashov’s April 7 arrest was one in a series of American-initiated operations over the past year to seize alleged Russian cybercriminals outside their homeland, which has no extradition agreement with the United States. They come at a fraught moment in relations between Moscow and Washington, where politicians are grappling with the allegation that Kremlin hackers intervened in the U.S. election to help President Donald Trump. Through their lawyers, several defendants have suggested their arrests are linked to the election turmoil. Experts say that’s possible, though an Associated Press review of the cases found no firm evidence to back the claim.

Russia: Congress’s retaliation over Russian election hacking prompts stark response from Moscow | The Washington Post

Senior Russian officials and lawmakers on Wednesday attacked new financial sanctions passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, saying they ended hopes for the detente between Moscow and Washington that President Trump promised during his campaign.  The new sanctions, which passed the House on Tuesday evening by an overwhelming vote of 419 to 3, targeted key Russian officials in retaliation for Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election. Iran and North Korea were also targets. The sanctions’ passage cemented views in Moscow that Trump’s election has provided few deliverables for the Kremlin and that the American president is being held hostage by a foreign policy establishment that seeks conflict with Russia. 

Russia: Alleged Russian Election Meddling Mirrors Tactics in Eastern Europe | Morning Consult

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign is looking outside U.S. borders as well — and shedding light on a number of targets in Eastern Europe that shows why and how Kremlin-affiliated agents went after specific Americans. A recent open hearing by the panel revealed influence campaigns aimed at countries across Europe and the Balkans, meant to disrupt pro-North Atlantic Treaty Organization candidates and parties. Those hearings are taking on new resonance amid an admission by Donald Trump Jr., son of President Donald Trump, that of a June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney, whom the younger Trump believed to be in possession of incriminating information about Hillary Clinton. Russian influence tactics used in the U.S. presidential election and in recent European contests have been used overtly by President Vladimir Putin to exert influence over pro-NATO neighbors in Eastern Europe, experts say.

Russia: Ex-UK spy chief says Russia causing cyber mayhem, should face retaliation | Reuters

Russia is causing cyberspace mayhem and should face retaliation if it continues to undermine democratic institutions in the West, the former head of Britain’s GCHQ spy agency said on Monday. Russia denies allegations from governments and intelligence services that it is behind a growing number of cyber attacks on commercial and political targets around the world, including the hackings of recent U.S. and French presidential election campaigns. Asked if the Russian authorities were a threat to the democratic process, Robert Hannigan, who stepped down as head of the UK’s intelligence service in March, said: “Yes … There is a disproportionate amount of mayhem in cyberspace coming from Russia from state activity.” In his first interview since leaving GCHQ, Hannigan told BBC radio that it was positive that French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had publicly “called this out recently”.

Russia: Russian investigators raid election offices of Putin critic Navalny | Reuters

Russian investigators raided the Moscow election headquarters of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Thursday and police entered a warehouse, where activists said they confiscated pre-election pamphlets. Navalny, who has organized two big anti-government street protests in recent months, is currently serving out a 25-day jail term for repeatedly violating the law on organizing public meetings. He is due out on Friday. Navalny says he wants to run for the presidency in March next year, but the Central Election Commission has said he is ineligible due to an embezzlement conviction which Navalny says was politically-motivated.

Russia: Putin critic Navalny has no chance of running for president: Election chief | Reuters

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has no chance of taking part in next year’s presidential election because of a previous conviction for embezzlement, the head of Russia’s election commission told TV Rain late on Wednesday. Navalny, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, has said he wants to run for the presidency in March 2018. Putin, who has dominated Russia’s political landscape for 17 years, is widely expected to run for what would be his fourth term, but has yet to confirm he will do so.

Russia: Putin critic Alexei Navalny jailed after calling for Moscow protests | The Guardian

More than 1,000 protesters were detained across Russia on Monday after the opposition leader Alexei Navalny raised the stakes in his battle with the Kremlin by calling on Muscovites to gatecrash a historical re-enactment fair being held on the Russian capital’s central street. As the president, Vladimir Putin, spoke of national unity at a ceremony in the Kremlin, a few hundred metres away on Tverskaya Street cordons of riot police moved against protesters.

Russia: Opposition Leader Tests Public Support for Bid to Topple Putin | The New York Times

It would be three days before the fierce Kremlin critic Aleksei A. Navalny would bring his against-all-odds presidential campaign to the provincial city of Vladimir, but officials at the local university were taking no chances. About 100 students were ordered into the main auditorium to watch two short films attacking the opposition leader as both a United States State Department stooge and a would-be Nazi-saluting Hitler. When several students accused the lecturer of fear-mongering and suggested screening Mr. Navalny’s latest, wildly popular anticorruption video to broaden the discussion, she scolded them, saying, “You have no respect!” “It was nonsense, a smear against Navalny,” one sophomore who attended the lecture said in an interview, not wanting to use his name, given the implicit threats. “The government talks all the time about what it is doing, but it really does not function. Its only real activity seems to be fighting the opposition.”

Russia: Russian Senator Predicts U.S. Will Interfere in Russia’s Presidential Election in 2018 | Newsweek

The U.S. and its NATO allies are preparing to influence Russia’s upcoming presidential election Russian senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee chief has said, as the U.S. continues to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the last U.S. election. Russian lawmakers and officials have begun to cast aspersions over U.S. influence on Russian elections in recent months, as the U.S.’ 17 intelligence agencies accused Russian hackers of targeting the Democratic party in last year’s vote. Parliamentary and presidential votes in Russia over the last 17 years have overwhelmingly favored leader Vladimir Putin, who has been elected for three presidential terms and one prime ministerial term in that time. None of the votes have fulfilled international criteria for free and fair elections. Lawmakers in Russia’s lower chamber have recently sought to investigate negative foreign media coverage of Russian elections as interference.

Russia: EU Court: Putin’s party rigged the 2011 Russian elections | Business Insider

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled last week that the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections were “unfair” and “compromised,” World Affairs Journal reported. “The seven-judge panel (that included a judge from Russia) unanimously ruled that there has been a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to free elections,” World Affairs said. In the case of Davydov and Others vs. Russia, the court concluded that the “fairness of the elections … was seriously compromised by the procedure in which the votes had been recounted. In particular, the extent of recounting, unclear reasons for ordering it, lack of transparency and breaches of procedural guarantees in carrying it out, as well as the results whereby the ruling party gained votes by large margins, strongly support the suspicion of unfairness.”

Russia: Putin Says ‘Patriotic Hackers’ May Have Targeted U.S. Election | The Atlantic

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday his country has “never engaged in” hacking another nation’s elections, but left open the possibility that hackers with “patriotic leanings … may try to add their contribution to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia.” “Hackers are free people, just like artists who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting,” Putin told news agencies at a meeting in St. Petersburg, the Associated Press reported. “The hackers are the same, they would wake up, read about something going on in interstate relations and if they have patriotic leanings, they may try to add their contribution to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia.”

Russia: Putin echoes Trump, Nunes lines on U.S. Russia investigation | The Hill

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have adopted President Trump’s rhetoric about the ongoing probes on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, calling it “fiction” and accusing the Democrats of inventing the allegations because they are still bitter about losing. The Kremlin leader told Le Figaro, a French newspaper, that the allegations were inspired by the “desire of those who lost the U.S. elections to improve their standing,” The Associated Press reported Tuesday. Putin also repeated his firm denial of Russian involvement with the hacking of members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee — hacks that negatively impacted the Democrats in the election.

Russia: Election Meddling Part Of A Long History Of ‘Active Measures’ | WAMU

In 1983, an explosive story appeared in an Indian newspaper, The Patriot: the AIDS virus was the result of American biological weapons research. Two years later a Soviet newspaper picked up the thread: The U.S. Army had developed AIDS as a bioweapon at Fort Detrick, Md. Other publications followed suit and by 1986, an East German biology professor was publishing “research” in which he explained that the virus had been tested on service members used as human guinea pigs — who then began spreading it among vulnerable populations. None of it was true. All of it was fiction created by Russian intelligence officers or their allies. But the storyline — that the U.S. government created AIDS — has proven one of the most durable examples of “dezinformatsiya,” as it was known to its practitioners in the Soviet intelligence world.

Russia: Inside Putin’s Campaign to Destroy U.S. Democracy | Newsweek

It was a few days after the start of the new millennium, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow was holding a reception at Spaso House, for decades the elegant residence of the American ambassador. Russia’s tumultuous Boris Yeltsin era had come to an abrupt, shocking end on New Year’s Day, when the Russian president who had brought down the Soviet Union and turned his country into a chaotic, fledgling democracy announced his resignation. His successor was the man he had named his prime minister just four months earlier, a man barely known to most Russians, let alone to the outside world: former KGB officer Vladimir Putin. As Jim Collins, a soft-spoken career diplomat who was then the U.S. ambassador to Russia, made the rounds at that reception, querying guests as to what they thought of the dramatic shift atop the Kremlin, the overwhelming sentiment was relief. The Yeltsin era, which had begun with so much promise, had turned into a shambolic, deeply corrupt dystopia.

Russia: Nato stages summit to counter alleged Russian interference in elections | The Guardian

Security specialists from 27 countries including Britain and the US will meet in Prague in what is being billed as the most concerted attempt yet to counter alleged Kremlin destabilisation measures aimed at undermining western elections. The Czech interior ministry is hosting the five-day summit staged by Stratcom – Nato’s strategic communications arm – in an effort to persuade governments and the European Union to strengthen electoral processes amid rising concern over suspected interference by the Russian government under Vladimir Putin. The event comes at a time of heightened sensitivity following Donald Trump’s sacking last week of the FBI director, James Comey, who had been overseeing an investigation into alleged links between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Russia: Countries Where the Kremlin Has Allegedly Sought to Sway Votes | Newsweek

French President-elect Emmanuel Macron’s campaign hack last week was directed by Russia, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers suggested Tuesday. adding that the Kremlin is showing no signs of slowing down its widespread meddling in elections. Speaking at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Rogers said the U.S. had earlier warned French intelligence about Russian interference. Just 36 hours before the presidential election, Macron’s campaign was targeted by what it called a “massive and coordinated” hacking attack. “If you take a look at the French election…we had become aware of Russian activity,” Rogers said in response to questions about allegations of Russia hacking the Macron campaign.

Russia: French Voters Defy Putin’s Meddling, but You’d Hardly Know It in Russia | The New York Times

The official tone from the Kremlin on Monday, the day after the pro-Europe Emmanuel Macron was elected France’s president, was that Russia can work with anybody. But the snow falling on Moscow was perhaps more reflective of the damp chill in the Kremlin’s relations with Europe after yet another fruitless attempt to influence an election abroad. For the last three years, since Europe slapped sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, the Kremlin has sought to undermine and weaken the Western, trans-Atlantic alliance arrayed against it. Elections in particular have been viewed as a prime moment to try to exploit Western weakness — and openness — to help bring to power leaders more sympathetic to Russia.

Russia: Court Bans Putin-Critic Alexei Navalny From Standing for President | Newsweek

A Russian court has upheld a ruling that now likely leaves the Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny barred from running for president in next year’s election. The regional court ruled in favor of a controversial embezzlement conviction Navalny received in February, the Interfax news agency reported. The court gave Navalny a five-year suspended sentence which, in accordance with Russian criminal law, prevents him from taking public office in the meantime and keeps him out of next year’s presidential race. Navalny considers the case to be politically motivated and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) called the case against him “arbitrary” and lacking a free trial last year. Navalny’s lawyer Vadim Kobzev told Interfax he intends to appeal the ruling in the ECHR, while Navalny’s campaign manager told the Mediazona news website that the campaign will continue as planned, regardless of the verdict.

Russia: State Duma Committee to Investigate U.S. Media Over ‘Election Meddling’ | Moscow Times

U.S. media outlets in Russia will face investigations into whether they illegally influenced the country’s parliamentary elections in 2016. Outlets such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe (RL/RFE) and CNN will all fall under the spotlight, said Leonid Levin, the head of the State Duma Committee on Information and Communication. He said that journalists’ work could have affected Russian elections. “The structures we are discussing are part of a larger American system of pressure on our country,” Levin said at a committee meeting on Tuesday. “They are using a variety of instruments in respect to both the Russian electoral process and on our country as a whole.” Levin also pointed to similar investigations on Russian state media in the United States.

Russia: Russia To Move 2018 Presidential Vote To Day Marking Seizure Of Crimea | RFERL

Russia is preparing to move the date of the 2018 election that is expected to hand President Vladimir Putin a new term from March 11 to March 18 — the day Russia celebrates its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. The State Duma approved a bill on the date change on April 12 in the first of three votes on the issue in the lower house of parliament. It is certain to pass. Russian law says that presidential elections are held on the second Sunday in March unless that is a working day, in which case the voting must be held a week earlier. The authors of the bill said that March 11 was likely to be a working day after the March 8 International Women’s Day holiday. But instead of holding the election a week earlier, they proposed March 18.

Russia: G7 voices concerns about cyber interference in elections | The Hill

Foreign ministers of the Group of 7 (G7) countries are voicing concerns about cyber interference in the democratic process, after their meeting in Italy on Tuesday. A declaration issued by the foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, and other member states on responsible behavior in cyber space all but singles out Russia for using cyber intrusions to meddle in democratic elections. “We are increasingly concerned about cyber-enabled interference in democratic political processes,” the declaration published on Tuesday states. The declaration says that international law and the United Nations Charter applies to the use of communications and information technology, and that states that fall victim to malicious cyber activities are under international law allowed to take “proportionate countermeasures.”

Russia: Russia wants India’s electronic voting machine technology for its 2018 presidential election | The Economic Times

Delhi’s close partner Russia is seeking to learn from India’s experience in conducting smooth polls through EVMs — this, at a time when the Opposition in India has raised the possibility of EVM tampering in the recently-concluded Assembly polls in five states. Moscow, it has been learnt, is keen to learn from India’s EVM technology experience ahead of the March 2018 presidential polls when Vladimir Putin will seek re-election.

Russia: Anti-Putin protesters plan next move as jailed opponent considers election bid | The Guardian

“Nobody is scared of going to jail, but we have work to do,” said Kira Yarmysh, spokeswoman for Alexei Navalny, as she waited for the Russian opposition politician to be delivered to court for an appeal hearing on Thursday. Navalny, who was marched to his hearing handcuffed to a stout police officer, saw his appeal rejected, and will spend the next week behind bars, serving out a 15-day sentence after he was arrested at last weekend’s protest in Moscow, one of more than 1,000 people detained by police in the capital alone. There were protests in dozens of Russian cities last Sunday, called by Navalny over allegations of corruption against prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. They were the biggest since a wave of protests in 2011 and 2012, and for the first time since that wave was crushed there is an air of uncertainty on the Russian political scene.

Russia: Senator: Russia used ‘thousands’ of internet trolls during US election | PCWorld

The Russian government used “thousands” of internet trolls and bots to spread fake news, in addition to hacking into political campaigns leading up to the 2016 U.S. election, according to one lawmaker. Disinformation spread on social media was designed to raise doubts about the U.S. election and the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat. “This Russian propaganda on steroids was designed to poison the national conversation in America,” Warner said Thursday during a Senate hearing on Russian election hacking. The Russian government used “thousands of paid internet trolls” and bots to spread disinformation on social media.

Russia: Why Russian protests are making the Kremlin rethink 2018 presidential elections | CSMonitor

By staging significant protest actions in almost 100 Russian cities Sunday, Alexei Navalny has laid down a serious challenge to Vladimir Putin. The anti-corruption blogger-turned-politician wants to run for president in elections that are barely a year off, and has been conducting himself as if his campaign were already under way. The Kremlin has the means to prevent him, by invoking a criminal conviction, recently upheld by a regional court, that could bar him from running for office. It has been standard procedure under Mr. Putin’s brand of “managed democracy” to cull the ballot, using various pretexts, to ensure that independent challengers are kept out and results are tailored to match the authorities’ expectations. That system has mostly worked in the Putin era, though it experienced a tough shock when tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest alleged fraud in the 2011 Duma (parliament) elections. To continue working, the system requires public acceptance of election results, or at least apathy.

Russia: Putin Aims to Undermine Western Democracies With Election Meddling, Experts Say | VoA News

Russian President Vladimir Putin is single-handedly trying to undermine democracy in the United States and Europe and rupture their decades-old NATO alliance by meddling in their elections, foreign affairs analysts and Estonia’s former president told a congressional hearing Thursday in Washington. One of the experts, Peter Doran, executive vice president of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a group promoting closer ties between central and eastern European countries and the United States, said U.S. lawmakers “should have no doubt, Russia is a rival to the United States.” Doran declared, “The Russian government is sharpening its use of state-sponsored propaganda against Western democracies. This puts democratic states and NATO at risk. The strategic aims of the Russian government are fundamentally incompatible with American interests in Europe.”

Russia: Cyber attacks and election interference by Russia are acts of aggression says Nato chief | International Business Times

Nato’s principle of collective defence, should be widened to include fake news and cyber hacking, the alliance’s top British officer has said, suggesting that recent moves by Russia be considered acts of aggression. In the wake of Russia’s alleged interference in the US election, European spy agencies fear that Moscow is also involved in meddling in ballots in Germany, France and the Netherlands amid concern that it seeks to promote populist parties. General Sir Adrian Bradshaw said that disinformation and interference could come under the remit of Article 5 of Nato’s treaty. The 1949 founding article specifies defence against an armed attack, but its critics argue that it does not take into account the nature of hybrid 21st century warfare.

Russia: US bill to target Russia’s possible influence in European elections | The Guardian

A bipartisan resolution in the House of Representatives targeting Russia for its role in election hacking will be announced on Wednesday. The bill, introduced by Republican congressman Peter Roskam of Illinois and Democrat congressman David Cicilline of Rhode Island, will declare that it is US policy “to sanction entities and individuals within Russia or associated with the Russian Government engaged in hacking, cyber-attacks, and propaganda campaigns with the intention of interfering in democratic elections”. The legislation comes after bipartisan concern about the Russian role in influencing the 2016 election through hacking, including of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. But the proposed legislation is forward-looking and is focused on potential Russian interference in European elections in 2017 including the upcoming presidential election in France, rather than the 2016 cyberattacks, which are currently being investigated by multiple congressional committees.