SplitSoul posted:

"Ukraine and Poland have been one and the same country for 400 years. And that would be too easy propaganda fodder for the Russians. So we should be the last to do it," he said.

SplitSoul posted:

These shitheads are gonna get us all killed.

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-presence-of-foreign-troops-open-secret/live-68619249

www.defense.gov posted:

The strengths of the U.S. special operations community have always been agility, adaptability and innovation its service members demonstrated as they approached a mission. Special ops leaders are working to continue this process as the Defense Department drives forward, Army Command Sgt. Maj. Shane W. Shorter said.   

Shorter, the senior enlisted leader of U.S. Special Operations Command, sees special operators playing key roles across the military spectrum and using new domains, new technologies and new processes to do their crucial jobs better.   

Shorter accompanied Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, the Socom commander, to meet with Congressional leaders. Fenton will testify before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.   

He said many people are still unclear about the role special operations forces play in the National Defense Strategy. They do not understand what role these "quiet professionals" have in great power competition.   

"I think there [are] still folks that just relate SOF to counterterrorism," Shorter said. The prominent role that Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, Marine reconnaissance units, Army Rangers and more had in combat against terrorists in the years after the attacks on the U.S. after September 11, 2001, has skewed perceptions of the capabilities of these operators, the senior enlisted leader said.   

"SOF was formed long before the global war on terror and long before 9-11," he said. "Great power competition is in our roots from the [Office of Strategic Services] in World War II."  

Special operators played crucial roles in counterinsurgency during the Vietnam War, but operators were also in Europe during the Cold War, filling gaps in that great power confrontation that conventional forces couldn’t fill.  

Today, the National Defense Strategy calls China the pacing challenge for the department, with Russia an "acute threat." Special operators are working throughout the Indo-Pacific, building partners’ military capabilities and working with allies to deter aggression.    

In Europe, special operators worked with the Ukrainian military years before the Russian invasion. Shorter said the first teams worked with the Ukrainian military in the 1990s. The pace of training, obviously, picked up following Russia’s first invasion in 2014 when Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed Crimea.   

In addition to teaching Ukrainian forces about new technologies, new tactics and new procedures, special forces personnel worked with the Ukrainians to develop an empowered NCO corps in their military, an effort that was instrumental in stopping the Russian forces when they first moved into the nation in 2022, Shorter said.   

Today, there are no boots on the ground in Ukraine, but special operators maintain contact with their Ukrainian friends and advise them remotely. "It’s not ideal," Shorter said. "But it’s been working."  

The work with partners in the Indo-Pacific and Europe go back decades, Shorter said, and that demonstrates the first special operations truth; "Humans are more important than hardware and things."   

The relationships that special operators develop over these years pay dividends for all countries involved. But this takes time. "You can’t mass produce SOF in times of crisis," the command sergeant major said. "It takes time to develop these skill sets."

He said it is harder to build special operations forces today than in the past because "of the plethora of wide-ranging roles that technology plays."  

Shorter sees technology playing a key role, but not the key role for SOCOM. "It’s always going to come down to a special operator talking to a partner," he said. "The special operator has to know the culture, the language, the likes and dislikes and more. It’s going to be relationships."  

In short, people will always make the difference in SOCOM, he said. "In SOCOM, we don't think one more platform or thing is going to win the war," he said. "I think that creative thinking humans with the ability to interact with our partners and allies will make the difference."  

Combining that with what he calls the special operations-space-cyber nexus "is going to be very, very important for the future fight," Shorter said. "In the old days when a Special Forces [Operational Detachment-Alpha] went to Vietnam, they took their rucksacks, their weapons and their smarts."  

But today, deploying teams take the rucksack, the weapon, their smarts and 15 or 20 different computer systems, the sergeant major said. "Yes, the human is the most important, but if we can fold the technology around that individual, then that individual is much more proficient and that much more of a powerful weapons system," he said.   

This has changed training in the special operations community and changed the focus. "Does it mean that SOF will be less proficient in their weapons system, or less proficient in their physical capabilities or less proficient in their cognitive abilities," he said. "Absolutely not. It just means that they need to be cloaked with the technology, and they need to train in that technology." 

Working with allies and partners is second nature to special operators, and that will continue in a world of integrated deterrence, Shorter said. "For the past 20-plus years, we did a lot of work with our partners and allies, and they helped us immensely. It got to the point where you could intermix some of our partners and allies with U.S. SOF forces on operations and you couldn't tell the difference."  

Shorter said this experience is invaluable. "You can’t surge relationships, you can’t surge trust," he said. "That’s just the human element. It’s constantly deploying to that same area. It’s understanding the culture. It’s drinking the cups of tea, eating the dinners, singing karaoke."  

In addition to its role in great power competition, the counterterrorism mission did not go away. Terrorists still operate in shadowy areas around the world, and SOF personnel must be ready to confront them. "We can’t drop the ball on the CT fight," Shorter said. "What it means for us is that we have to modernize our CT efforts as well."  

For the CT fight, SOF personnel must continue to work with conventional forces, interagency partners and counterterrorism forces from other nations. The command sergeant major said U.S. forces have been able to fold in technology that wasn’t available three years ago. And it is making a difference. "It allows us to sense, see and strike anywhere on the planet," he said.    

U.S. special operations forces have a full plate, Shorter said, and they are approaching the various aspects of it with the same enthusiasm and morale that they have approached problems throughout their history. "It’s in our DNA," he said. "We will do what the country asks of us. The DOD’s main effort has always been SOCOM’s main effort."

SplitSoul posted:

These shitheads are gonna get us all killed.

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-presence-of-foreign-troops-open-secret/live-68619249

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

I wish I lived in the blissful eternal present liberals do

gradenko_2000 posted:

it was buttermilk fried chicken served with poutine fries. And I was able to order a "Coffee Crispy" ice cream bar for dessert, which I'm pretty sure isn't Coffee Crisp because that's supposed to be a chocolate bar on top of the misspelling.

SplitSoul posted:

These shitheads are gonna get us all killed.

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-presence-of-foreign-troops-open-secret/live-68619249

quote:

In addition to teaching Ukrainian forces about new technologies, new tactics and new procedures, special forces personnel worked with the Ukrainians to develop an empowered NCO corps in their military, an effort that was instrumental in stopping the Russian forces when they first moved into the nation in 2022, Shorter said.  

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

It's a thing, did it look like this?

SplitSoul posted:

These shitheads are gonna get us all killed.

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-presence-of-foreign-troops-open-secret/live-68619249

Zodium posted:

i miss it sometimes.

Organ Fiend posted:

With all of the Nazis absorbed by the west, and the fact that the Soviet Union never conquered all of Germany, I think you could argue that WW2 never ended.

www.nytimes.com - Tue, 19 Mar 2024 posted:

As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Kremlin has created increasingly complex fabrications online to discredit Ukraine’s leader and undercut aid. Some have a Hollywood-style plot twist.

A young man calling himself Mohamed al-Alawi appeared in a YouTube video in August. He described himself as an investigative journalist in Egypt with a big scoop: The mother-in-law of Ukraine’s president had purchased a villa near Angelina Jolie’s in El Gouna, a resort town on the Red Sea.

The story, it turned out, was not true. Ukraine denied it, and the owner of the villa refuted it. Also disconnected from reality: Alawi’s claim to being a journalist.

Still, his story caromed through social media and news outlets from Egypt to Nigeria and ultimately to Russia — which, according to researchers, is where the story all began.

The story seemed to fade, but not for long. Four months later, two new videos appeared on YouTube. They said Mohamed al-Alawi had been beaten to death in Hurghada, a town about 20 miles south of El Gouna. The suspected killers, according to the videos: Ukraine’s secret service agents.

These claims were no more factual than the first, but they gave new life to the old lie. Another round of posts and news reports ultimately reached millions of internet users around the world, elevating the narrative so much that it was even echoed by members of the U.S. Congress while debating continued military assistance to Ukraine.

Ever since its forces invaded two years ago, Russia has unleashed a torrent of disinformation to try to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine the country’s support in the West.

This saga, though, introduced a new gambit: a protracted and elaborately constructed narrative built online around a fictitious character and embellished with seemingly realistic detail and a plot twist worthy of Netflix.

“They never brought back a character before,” said Darren Linvill, a professor and director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, who has extensively studied Russian disinformation.

The campaign shows how deftly Russia’s information warriors have shifted to new tactics and targets as the war in Ukraine has dragged on, just as Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine have adjusted tactics after devastating battlefield losses.

Groups with ties to the Kremlin continue to float new narratives when old ones fail to stick or grow stale, using fake or altered videos or recordings and finding or creating new outlets to spread disinformation, including ones purporting to be American news sites.

A video appeared on TikTok last month claiming to show a Ukrainian doctor working for Pfizer accusing the company of conducting unlawful tests on children. On the social network X, a man claiming to be an associate producer for Paramount Pictures spun a tale about a Hollywood biopic on Mr. Zelensky’s life.

The tale attributed to Mohamed al-Alawi is not even the only baseless allegation that Mr. Zelensky had secretly purchased properties abroad using Western financial assistance. Other versions — each seemingly tailored for a specific geographic audience — have detailed a mansion in Vero Beach, Fla., and a retreat in Germany once used by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda.

The Russians have “demonstrated adaptability through the war on Ukraine,” Microsoft wrote in a recent report that disclosed Russia’s fraudulent use of recorded messages by famous actors and celebrities on the Cameo app to try to smear Mr. Zelensky as a drug addict.

Even when debunked, fabrications like these have proved exceedingly difficult to extinguish entirely.

YouTube took down the initial video of the character Mohamed al-Alawi, linking it to two other accounts that had previously violated the company’s policies. The accusation still circulates, however, especially on platforms, like X and Telegram, that experts say do little to block accounts generating inauthentic or automated activity. Some of the posts about the video appear to have used text or audio created with artificial intelligence tools; many are amplified by networks of bots intended to create the impression that the content is popular.

What links the narratives to Russia is not only the content disparaging Ukraine but also the networks that circulate them. They include news outlets and social media accounts that private and government researchers have linked to previous Kremlin campaigns.

“They’re trolling for a susceptible (and seemingly abundant) slice of citizens who amplify their garbage enough to muddy the waters of our discourse, and from there our policies,” said Rita Katz, the director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an American company that tracks extremist activity online and investigated the false claims about the villa.
---

## The Making of a Fake Journalist

The video first appeared on Aug. 20 on a newly created YouTube account that had no previous activity and almost no followers, according to the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a global nonprofit research organization in London, which traced the video’s spread.

The man appeared in a poorly lit room reading from his computer screen, which was reflected in his thick glasses. He appeared to be a real person, but it has not been possible to verify his actual identity. No one by the name of Mohamed al-Alawi appears to have produced any previous articles or videos, as would be expected of a journalist. According to ActiveFence, an internet security company, the character has no educational or work history, and no network of friends or social connections online.

The video, though, showed what purported to be photographs of a purchase contract and of the villa itself, creating a veneer of authenticity for credulous viewers. The property is, in fact, part of a resort owned by Orascom Development, whose website highlights El Gouna’s “year-round sunshine, shimmering lagoons, sandy beaches and azure waters.”

An article about the video’s claim appeared two days later as a paid advertisement, or branded content, on Punch, a news outlet in Nigeria, as well as three other Nigerian websites that aggregate news and entertainment content.

The article had the byline of Arthur Nkono, who according to internet searches does not appear to have written any other articles. The article quoted a political scientist, Abdrulrahman Alabassy, who likewise appears not to exist except in accounts linking the villa to the corrupt use of Western financial aid to Ukraine. (Punch, which later removed the post, did not respond to requests for comment.)

A day later, the claim made its first appearance on X in a post by Sonja van den Ende, an activist in the Netherlands, whose articles have previously appeared on propaganda outlets linked to the Russian government, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. (She also served as an election observer in an occupied territory of Ukraine during Russian parliamentary elections in September.)

Within days, reports about the villa appeared on X in French and Romanian, and in English on three different Reddit forums.

According to Roberta Duffield, director of intelligence for Blackbird.AI, an internet security company, nearly 29 percent of the accounts amplifying the reports appeared to be inauthentic bots, an unusually high number that would normally indicate a coordinated campaign.

Eight days after the video appeared, Russia state television networks like Channel One, Rossiya 24 and RT (in Arabic and German) reported it as a major revelation uncovered by a renowned Egyptian investigative journalist.

The story seemed to stall there. Naguib Sawiris, the scion of the Egyptian family that owned the development, curtly denied the sale in a reply on X.

And no more was heard from or about the character called Mohamed al-Alawi — until late December.

That was when two new videos emerged on a YouTube channel called “Egypt News,” claiming that he was dead.

The channel had been created the day before. One video showed a man identified as Alawi’s brother, Ahmed, answering questions from another man.

The police, he said, told him that they suspected his brother had been beaten to death by “Ukrainian special forces who acted on behalf of President Zelensky or another high-ranking official.”

He spoke with his hand cupped over his face to obscure his identity. The other video showed what was said to be the site of an attack, though the images were indistinct. “I can’t tell you anything else,” he said in the video, which YouTube later removed. “I’m afraid for my family.”

The video also tried to explain away some of the obvious holes in the initial story, including why there was no evidence online of Alawi’s previous work. “It was his first big assignment,” the man said.

The new episode spread as the first video had. A day later, an article about the death appeared on an obscure website created last year called El Mostaqbal, a name similar to but unrelated to the actual news organization in Lebanon.

“A reporter who announced that Zelensky’s mother-in-law brought a luxury villa has died under mysterious circumstances,” the headline read. Other reports that followed dropped any uncertainty and began referring to his “murder.”

In fact, Egypt’s Ministry of the Interior said there were no reports or evidence that anyone resembling the man in the video had been “subjected to harm.” The statement went on to note that the property itself had not been sold.

Still, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, posts about the supposed killing were viewed a million times on X on Dec. 25.

It also appeared on the website of the Middle East Monitor, or MEMO, operated by a well-known nonprofit organization in London and financed by the government of Qatar. A journalist who once reported from Moscow for The Telegraph of London, Ben Aris, cited it at length on the platform, though, when challenged, he said he had just made note of the rumor. “I don’t have time to check all this stuff myself,” he wrote.

It appeared in English on a site, Clear Story News, that Mr. Linvill of Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub had previously linked to Russia’s disinformation efforts. (The site lists no contact information)

Mr. Linvill described the process as a form of “narrative laundering” — moving false claims from unknown or not credible sources to ones that, to the unwitting at least, seem more legitimate.
---
## More Elaborate Narratives

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue studied three other complex narratives about Ukraine, as well.

One featured a French journalist who claimed that the son of George Soros — a regular target of Russian and far-right political attacks — had secretly acquired land for a toxic waste dump in Ukraine. An unnamed doctor in Africa said in another that an American medical charity, the Global Surgical and Medical Support Group, was harvesting the organs of wounded Ukrainian soldiers for transplants for NATO officers.

Then there was the case of a man calling himself Shahzad Nasir, whose profile on X identifies him as a journalist with Emirates 24/7, an English-language news outlet in Dubai, though he has no apparent bylines on the site.

In November, he claimed that cronies of Mr. Zelensky bought two yachts — Lucky Me and My Legacy — for $75 million. His evidence, like Mohamed al-Alawi’s, includes photographs of the vessels and purported purchase agreements.

In fact, as the BBC documented in December, the yachts had not been purchased and remained for sale. Despite numerous efforts by fact checkers to dispel it as rumor, the claim circulated extensively.

Last month, the character Nasir reappeared in another video. This time he had a new version of the tale, claiming that the purchases had been scuttled after he exposed the secret deal.

The ramifications of these campaigns are difficult to measure precisely. There are signs, though, that they resonate even when proved false.

Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican of Ohio and an outspoken critic of Ukraine aid, seemed to embrace the claim in December during an interview on “War Room,” the podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump.

“There are people who would cut Social Security — throw our grandparents into poverty — why?” Mr. Vance said. “So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?”

That prompted a public rebuke this month from a Republican colleague, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who ridiculed those who repeat unproven allegations.

“They’ve heard somebody say that if we pass this bill, that we’re all going to go ride to Kyiv with buckets full of money and let oligarchs buy yachts!” he said of critics of the assistance to Ukraine, in what he later called a reference to Mr. Vance’s comments. “I wonder how the spouses of the estimated 25,000 soldiers in Ukraine who have died feel about that? I mean, really, guys?”
…
Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation for The Times. He has worked in Washington, Moscow, Baghdad and Beijing, where he contributed to the articles that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2021. He is also the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.” More about Steven Lee Myers

SplitSoul posted:

These shitheads are gonna get us all killed.

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-presence-of-foreign-troops-open-secret/live-68619249

DaysBefore posted:

Whybwould the perfidious east slavs have to invent a fake journalist when they could just point to the very real properties and cash revealed in the Panama Papers lol

Soapy_Bumslap posted:

So is Ukkkraine attacking military targets in Russia, or just taking revenge on civilians

Hatebag posted:

well what if the western media simply ignored everything from the panama and paradise papers because of all the implicated faves?

VoicesCanBe posted:

I'm not gonna dismiss the possibility of nuclear war but I still don't think it happens. If France goes through with their "tripwire" force, Russia probably trips the wire, there's a brief outrage and demand for NATO escalation that goes nowhere, and then France quietly tried to pretend it never happened.

Ardennes posted:

The Russians made up this house, therefore all the random properties in the papers are all made up by the Russkis even if all of it was published by Western outlets.

Enjoy posted:

There are pictures and videos of this stuff going boom in Ukraine

Ardennes posted:

Not even close to match the numbers, even Oryx gave up because of it. The fact that Mediazona has been recording rapidly dropped numbers of deaths on the Russian side since November 2023 doesn't help either.

It isn't that the Russians haven't taken causalities or lost equipment, but they already had thousands of tanks and they modernized thousands of more, and they have even more in storage while they are making new ones from scratch. When the Ukrainians tried to move into Belgorod, they got smashed at the border. Also, the Russians have plenty of repair plants as well.

The math doesn't work. If anything, the fact that on the Western side, no one wants to admit it or take responsibility is rather catastrophic.

Nonsense posted:

France has no capacity for force projection or Niger would be on their knees. They are an unserious entity in NATO, which won't be around as we know it much longer anyhow. 2025 is the true start of history.

Comrade Koba posted:

can you even invoke article 5 if you send your troops into an active conflict between two non-nato states?

Corky Romanovsky posted:

Comrade Koba posted:

can you even invoke article 5 if you send your troops into an active conflict between two non-nato states?

Starsfan posted:

I think anyone in NATO can "invoke" article 5 over basically anything but ultimately it's up to the US and if they say "nope" then what is France going to do lol

Starsfan posted:

I think anyone in NATO can "invoke" article 5 over basically anything but ultimately it's up to the US and if they say "nope" then what is France going to do lol

VoicesCanBe posted:

The worst kept secret is that Article 5 is vague as hell and countries can freely ignore it without consequence.

comedyblissoption posted:

https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/1712289270667604078

Nonsense posted:

France has no capacity for force projection or Niger would be on their knees. They are an unserious entity in NATO, which won't be around as we know it much longer anyhow. 2025 is the true start of history.

Minenfeld! posted:

Does article 5 actually work if you send troops to an active war zone and they get shot at.