Russia’s Cyber Assault – USA Gov Policy

The news is filled with horrific images of the physical destruction of Ukraine by Russian troops and missiles. What is missing from the picture is the untold story of the battle inside the cyber and information domains. US intelligence officials have known that the Kremlin has been using “soft” and “hard” tactics to target Ukrainian military, government, and private sites for years. Russia’s attacks on the sovereign nation’s critical infrastructure, including government websites, affiliated organizations, media, and critical financial infrastructure have intensified since the start of President Putin’s current “special military operation,” according to Jamestown Foundation’s Alla Hurka. The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) announced in late March its “cyber units managed to shut down an inter-regional network of five enemy bot farms with the capacity to direct over 100,000 fake social media accounts,” according to Hurka. The Kremlin is using this invisible bot army to support the war in Ukraine with a highly organized and unprecedented disinformation campaign.

One goal of the cyber attacks is to spread disinformation across a wide sector of the Ukrainian population to incite panic and disrupt the country’s effort to combat Russian aggression. Stories include false narratives about Ukraine’s top leadership. A series of fallacious reports suggested President Zelensky fled the country with his family, leaving the citizenry to fend for themselves. Another reportedly provided false data on the morale of Ukrainian troops indicating they were defecting and soon would be defeated by superior Russian forces. Another provided information that Ukraine over-inflated the number of civilians killed in the country. Repeating the pattern casts doubts into the minds of civilians in Ukraine and in other countries, including the United States. Social media accounts also are filled with suggestions by Russian trolls that “the West doesn’t really know what is happening” or the identity of the bad guys. The SSU acknowledged in a recent report that the network is “supervised by the Russian special services, used various social networks, including those banned in Ukraine, to carry out large-scale information sabotage activities to destabilize the socio-political situation in various regions of Ukraine.”

In a physical search of the bot farm sites conducting cyber warfare, law enforcement officers seized numerous pieces of special equipment, including around “100 GMS gateways, 10,000 mobile phone SIM cards of various mobile operators used to disguise the activities of the bot farms, and an unspecified number of computers and laptops used to run cyber operations,” according to the SSU. Three weeks ago, Ukraine eliminated a bot farm that sent 5,000 cellphone text messages to Ukrainian military and law enforcement personnel pushing them to defect and surrender to the Russians. As fast as Ukraine can identify and neutralize a Russian cyber campaign another springs up to replace it. Artem Dekhtyarenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Security Service said “The most interesting thing is that all the equipment was placed in Dnipropetrovsk region, but remotely controlled from the Russian Federation.”

More than 7,000 cell phones inside Russia are part of Putin’s ongoing disinformation campaign and includes apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Viber. The SSU points out in a recent report that one bot farm can create over 10,000 fake social media accounts in a month using Russian domains forbidden in Ukraine, while also conducting attacks on systems of critical infrastructure facilities, sending malware phishing emails and executing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on government information resources. Farid Safarov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of energy for digital development, digital transformation, and digitization, estimated that the number of cyberattacks against Ukraine’s energy sector during the first 40 days of the ongoing war exceeded 200,000. Hurka points out that during the week of April 4 alone, there were “approximately 20,000 cybersecurity incidents.” Over 50 of the recorded attacks were directed at Ukraine’s electric supply. In 2021, there were only two such recorded attempts by foreign entities. These attacks aimed to damage high-voltage electrical substations, computers, and networking equipment.

In response, the Ukrainian government’s Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy recently created an all volunteer “Internet Army,” which includes an international IT legion of more than 310,000 Ukrainian and foreign IT professionals willing to go to war against Russian’s cyber forces. To join the army, a volunteer goes on Telegram or Discord channels where tasks are assigned. One also can use Viber, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit to help pressure Russian outlets and urge companies to withdraw doing business in Russia. While kinetic warfare rages on the ground in Ukraine, an invisible army is hard at work opposing Putin’s special military operation in cyber space.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. and teaches at a major university

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.