‘A Useful Guide to Russia’s Hybrid Warfare’: My Latest ‘Hot Type’ Column in Byline
My weekly Hot Type column in Byline Supplement warns Europeans not to follow the US in falling prey to Russian sabotage of their democracies
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I wonder what the traitors paid to denigrate reporters investigating Trump-Russia are doing now that it’s clear to even MAGA that Trump is Moscow’s man.
They’re probably explaining why they suddenly find Putin so desirable.
Active measures are obvious to anyone who has faced ongoing personal attacks for reporting truth, so I thought I would make that the subject of this week’s column.
In Saturday’s Hot Type column for Byline Supplement, I wrote a guide to Russian provocations:
Walking through the streets of Europe, I see countries on the brink of losing what Americans so freely gave away, because too many drank the unreality being served by Putin and US traitors.
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Below is an excerpt from today’s Hot Type:
Hot Type: A Useful Guide to Russia's Hybrid War Against the West
American political columnist Heidi Siegmund Cuda offers a warning to Europeans not to follow the US in falling prey to Russian sabotage of their democracies
Don’t be like America. Don’t lose your democracy, because you’re too blind to see you’re in a war.
And the thing is, it’s not like independent investigative reporters didn’t tell Americans, we handed them the evidence, it was right before their eyes. Now, each day is loaded with painful regret, as even Republicans are increasingly aware they voted for Moscow’s man.
As a magazine cover of Trump plastered on a Paris storefront noted:
L’homme de Moscou (The man from Moscow)
Poutine et Trump, l’alliance des prédateu (Putin and Trump, the alliance of predators)
Walking through the streets of Paris on a recent visit, I saw extreme leftist graffiti tagged all over the statue of the Place de la République and my first thought was, “Nice work, Vlad.”
We know that organic disputes in democratic nations are amplified by Russian disinformation and provocations. During France’s ‘yellow vests’ protests, British and US media outlets reported that Russian trolls were posting fake protest pictures and pushing disinformation in an attempt to stoke civil war.
We see the same plays over and over again and a world none the wiser.
But with European nations standing alone against an increasingly authoritarian world, it’s key that they recognize their communities are littered with Russia’s lies of war:
Disinformation online and spread by paid hacks
Land and sea sabotage events
Protest provocations where both sides are funded by the Kremlin
Long-term investment in political leaders – through money, ideology, compromise, ego (MICE)
A steady river of Kremlin horseshit repeated by global influencers using repetition and frequency
Fake videos of political leaders or events in advance of elections
Fake movements that ensnare real people
Acts of Provocation
As geopolitical analyst Dr. Michael MacKay told Byline Supplement: “Russians are not very imaginative. When they engage in hybrid warfare, their acts of provocation are variations of the ‘Mainila Incident’.
“On 26 November 1939, Stalin's NKVD carried out an artillery bombardment of the village of Mainila on the USSR side of the border with Finland. Although it was an obvious fake, the Soviets claimed that Finland had carried out the attack. The Soviet Union invaded Finland four days later.”
Fast forward to the present day, and what’s old is new again.
“Putin's Russia does the same thing invading Ukraine,” said MacKay. “What comes to mind are repeated ‘Mainila Incident’ type attacks by the Russian invaders during the Battle of Donetsk Airport (2014-15). The way the Russians would violate the Minsk Agreement ceasefires was to first bombard Russian-occupied territory in the city of Donetsk – a place where civilians were gathered such as a marketplace.”
And they play the media exceedingly well.
“They would have TV propagandists pre-stationed to record the shelling and cover it as an attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Russians would subsequently fire artillery and rockets at Ukrainian defenders in Donetsk airport – which is what they wanted to do all along.”
He said Western media would then take the cynical fakery the way the Russians intended. They would "both sides" the story and give equal weight to the aggressor's lie that "the Kyiv government" had broken the ceasefire and "pro-Russian separatists" had responded in self-defence.
“Russian active measures work by pouring gasoline on already burning fires and then rushing to the rescue pretending to be firefighters,” MacKay explained. “Look at how they present themselves as being ‘security partners’ to gullible countries like the United States they are waging war against.”
Europe can expect non-stop ‘Mainila Incident’ attacks to come from Russia until Ukraine is victorious and the war can end, MacKay reflected.
The President in the Bubble
Last week, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Trump is operating inside a Russian disinformation bubble.
On Friday, a White House press conference ended before it started after Zelensky was ambushed by Trump and JD Vance, prompting Zelensky to respond: "During the war, everybody has problems, even you. But you have a nice ocean and don't feel [it] now, but you will feel it in the future."
The leader was pointing out their failure to comprehend the intrinsic danger of dealing with Russia. That Russian disinformation bubble Zelensky said Trump operates in was on full display…
Trump’s behavior follows a pattern of Western leaders co-opted by Russia, who rarely deviate from the pro-Kremlin narratives.
Trump functions like a Russian state TV host vying for the prize of Top Propagandist.
As I wrote in a previous Hot Type, America is not alone in being targeted in this way. Literally, we are one in dozens of countries and if only more people had read history or talked to people with lived experience, things might not be such an American horror story.
Disinformation analyst from the Czech Republic, Alexandra Alvarova, grew up under Soviet rule and has some thoughts on Trump’s pro-Russian outlook:
“He is a pathological con man, living in a world where lies and facts hold equal weight. To him, there is no need to distinguish between the two – both exist only to serve his interests, enrich his family and reinforce his image of strength.
“In reality, he had none of this. He was perpetually bankrupt, squeezed dry by Russian organized crime. If a fact or a lie doesn’t serve his purpose, he simply disregards it…” she said…
Alvarova recalls the Russian provocations that occurred in her childhood vividly and often documents these memories, as well as historic lessons in her Substack:
“The day before Soviet troops rolled into Prague on tanks in 1968, some unknown individuals just so happened to pile a heap of cobblestones onto the newly paved road in front of the soviet Aeroflot airline office in Prague,” Alvarova told Byline Supplement. “And, of course, completely ‘by chance’, unknown vandals smashed the display window and windows of the Aeroflot office, creating the perfect pretext for military intervention to ‘restore order’ — after all, the attack on a ‘peaceful Russian company’ was ‘proof’ of an uprising.”
She also recalled this important incident from history:
“In 1948, after the communist coup, Russian advisors, together with the communist state security, established resistance organizations that were then ‘accidentally uncovered’, leading to the arrest of their leaders,” she said. “They went so far as to set up a fake US Army station behind the barbed wire on the border with Germany—right where fleeing people would arrive first after making it past the wire, believing they had reached safety. They even interrogated them dressed in American uniforms.”
… With the Kremlin constantly focused on destabilization and always at war, the provocations are inexpensive, important for a crumbling empire that relies on hacks like Trump to prop them up…
The litany of examples is endless but the time to get up to speed on acts of sabotage is short.
As EU countries turn their attention to upcoming local and national elections, it’s critical that Europe as a whole finds a way to unite against hybrid warfare.
America simply lurched from crisis to crisis, seeing only trees and never a forest. The strongest military in the world left its people defenseless, allowing them to be defeated by KGB gossip.
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Being abandoned on the battlefield in service to my country, being a patriot now tagged a dissident, I fear for the rest of the world’s democracies. These cheap provocations by the fascist regime of Russia are effective only when Western leaders ignore them or worse, promote them.
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Thank you for reading the above excerpt from my Hot Type column. As always, I ask those who can afford to support a small global team of investigative reporters to please take out a subscription to Byline Supplement.
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