The Crisis in Ukraine

About: In this series, I will share some personal observations about the war against Ukraine. I will look at the history leading up to the Russian invasion on several pathways, what I personally learned from my travel to Ukraine, and several large picture issues that I believe the world should consider when thinking about the invasion.

In early 2022, I traveled to Ukraine for an in person examination of a most amazing country. I was blessed with the opportunity to see many areas of the country, meet amazing people, eat fantastic food, learn my basics in the language and take thousands of photos of a country that will forever change my view of life.

I would visit Kyiv, Lviv, Uzhhorod, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kam’yanets’-Podil’s’kyi, and perhaps most important, Donetsk with the Ukrainian military. We spent plenty of time drinking coffee, listening to music and learning customs and language. Most important, we explored the history of each as we visited memorials to those killed in the 20th century’s wars and listened to guides walk us through the history of each city and region.

Though I knew I’d have a great experience, I didn’t know how much I’d fall in love with this country. This has so many layers to unpack including the primary question: what was my purpose in being here? But first, I start with a few thoughts on how my work in counter-terrorism and extremist studies intersected with the conflicts around Ukraine and Russia.

Scenic view of Kam’yanets’-Podil’s’kyi (Ка́м’яне́ць-Поді́льський) before the Russian attacks of February 24, 2022.

The hub of a revolution, Maidan in Kyiv.

THE BACKSTORY

A SERIES OF COINCIDENCES AND COMPARATIVES

While I have been studying conflicts involving Russia for many years, I specifically narrowed into the aggression against Ukraine after 2014. I paid attention to many post-Soviet revolutions and the showdown in Maidan was a particular interest to me. However, with limited bandwidth, I was heavily focused at the time on ISIS, the death cult that seized land between Iraq and Syria.

Largely by comparative work involving extremist propaganda, I was covering Al Qaida and ISIS propaganda for our team when I was asked about “how sophisticated the ISIS videos are.” I responded that ISIS videos were not really all that sophisticated and to see what sophisticated looked like one merely had to see the videos Russia was making against Ukraine. They involved full blown news studio level production that clearly had art direction, staff and resources to assemble. The productions were made during the offensive to take Crimea. Though I’d stay focused on ISIS nearly exclusively for the next couple of years, I did make it a habit to store the ongoing propaganda and news clips related to Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea.

A particular angle on the topic of Ukraine in 2014 was the use of disinformation and the confusion about “Little Green Men”. Who were the soldiers appearing at multiple locations without insignias or identifiable markings? While I did not actively deep dive the topic, I kept an eye on the topic as it evolved while also collecting samples of the videos being widely disseminated on YouTube. Later in this series I will explore the “little green men” and what was to become an obvious pattern of deception used by the Russians in their steady undermining of Ukrainian sovereignty. 

MY TRIBUTARIES TO UNDERSTANDING RUSSIA’S MODERN OBJECTIVES

Though Ukraine was really the largest objective for Russia, there would be other paths that drew me closer to the topic of modern Russian military offensives already in my sights, notably the civil war in Syria and hacking campaigns.

ON SYRIA: Because of the obvious lies spread by a small cluster of websites operating as if they were authentic news sources, we noticed specific narratives that were overtly fogging the oppression of the al-Assad regime and with it they obfuscated the Putin objective of attaining a path to the Mediterranean.

As someone watching the evolution of ISIS up close, I was paying attention to the conflict in Syria as multiple groups engaged in a full blown civil war. From early on, people would allege the United States were secretly backing Al-Qaida branches or later the US was allegedly backing founders of ISIS. I knew this was completely false but became increasingly interested in who was pushing this narrative and determining if it was semi-organic, a process of the conspiracy driven internet cultures or was there a more focused effort to distract from al-Assad’s ambitions. Increasingly it was obvious there was an orchestrated effort to fog the crimes of al-Assad and it didn’t take long to see it was driven by tools of the Kremlin.

 

St. Andrews church, built in the 18th century, located in heart of in Kyiv.

Evening falls in Rynok Square in Lviv

The brutality of the bombing raids against Al-Assad’s enemies became more and more ruthless. It was obvious that Putin was going to get his road to the Mediterranean Sea by any means necessary. The attacks were so devastating that I could even determine a narrative evolving in ISIS propaganda channels that were publishing videos of the regime’s attacks. You could always tell when the Russians were involved in the bombings. The targets included civilian structures including hospitals. While the American people were weary of US involvement in Syria, al-Assad openly welcomed the support of Putin.

When the al-Assad regime engaged in chemical weapons attacks, western propagandists worked overtime to fog the responsibility, to accuse rebel forces of the attack and attacked anyone who said otherwise. Further, they pushed the narrative that rescue workers, dubbed “the White Helmets”, were secretly members of ISIS or al-Qaida. Because of my proficiency on those groups, I knew it was a garbage narrative and spent most of that time using those narratives to trace out the individuals and resources promoting the lie.

People like Max Blumenthal, Vanessa Beeley, and others joined the narrative to give it an appearance of authority. Famed investigative writer Sy Hersh joined in the narrative too. However, I knew that the only source of that level of attack could have come from al-Assad and that the online sources pushing the lie had fully backed him as the rightful leader of Syria, and all others were evil. It wouldn’t take long for a relatively unknown representative to join the mix of voices, Tulsi Gabbard. She would visit Syria on a guided tour meant to give her the impression that al-Assad was up against various flavors of terrorist organizations and her return would be an effort to eliminate the grey area between him and any rebel forces. In her narrative, it was black and white, he was good and all others were terrorists. I knew this was not true as I had mapped out in detail the various militias in each city from al-Bab, ar-Raqqa, Idlib and more.

Morning in Kam’yanets’-Podil’s’kyi (Ка́м’яне́ць-Поді́льський) before the Russian attacks of February 24, 2022.

Moments before a bombing in Lviv, the lion takes a break.

THE CYBER OFFENSIVES

Along side the kinetic warfare to be observed, I accidentally learned more about the Russian hacking campaigns. In an argument between Americans I knew who covered ISIS with a disgraced analyst who specialized in Russia, the allegation was presented that all ISIS hackers were really the GRU, aka Russian military. Because I had infiltrated the comms of ISIS hackers along with my allies, I knew this simply couldn’t be true. But it did provide an explanation for two cyber attacks attributed to ISIS: the April 2015 hack of TV5Monde in France and later the hack of the German Bundestag. These were major escalations in skillsets for the hackers I knew were only prone to defacing sites and planting the shahada flag of the terrorist group. 

On June 16, 2016, I was tasked to examine not only the DNC hack, but I looked at a decade of hackings by the Russians according to multiple cyber security companies. What I didn’t rely upon, the reports from government intelligence or related firms. I knew the answers to the question were in the very competitive cyber industries. It took around 5 weeks of 18hr work days to tirelessly pull the data apart and examine overlapping command and control structures (C2) and targets. It was clear, Russia would attack anyone who opposed its imperial objectives. From Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia and of course, Ukraine.

 

THE DEEP DIVES INTO UKRAINE BEGIN

My better understanding of the conflict came our team to dive into the inner workings of Paul Manafort’s effort to prop up pro-Kremlin stooge Viktor Yanukovich and a look at how Putin was doing the same across Europe with fascists and Eurosceptics from Germany, France, UK, Italy, and of course, Hungary with Victor Orban. It was clear that Putin’s ambition to destroy the EU was to fuel the rise of the isolationists, the fascists and separatist movements. It was a logical move to exact revenge for the greatest slight against his people in modern times, the toppling of the Soviet Union.

In our work, we uncovered irrefutable evidence that the Kremlin backed campaigns to draw White Supremacists to St. Petersburg, to hold consortiums with American separatist movements like CalExit, TexIt, Hawaiian independence movements and other fringe groups, and to funnel financial support to right wing organizations and groups in Europe. The book, The Plot To Destroy Democracy is that story and I highly recommend reading that book. As a result of that work, I remained very aware of what Russia was planning as we continued to watch UK remove itself from Europe’s economic sphere with Brexit and now had a full court press effort to monitor Russian disinformation on a 24/7 basis.

TEAMWORK MAKES IT ALL HAPPEN

I am very fortunate to have fantastic team members who specialized in various areas of the research on Russia’s objectives. It was that team that identified multiple voices coming to the beck and call of Russia’s narrative that Donbas in eastern Ukraine was fertile ground for the continued fight to erode Ukraine’s national sovereignty. The team regularly monitored Americans who spread the Russian narrative of “separatists” in Luhansk and Donetsk. We were very familiar with their lies but still had more to learn on who was affected by these lies.

It was one thing to read about this area of the world, and another to go there and see for myself. It was in Donbas that there was still a long protracted battle as of 2022 and it was Donbas where I would go in early February 2022, weeks before the obscene invasion of a country and see for myself, the region that was part of an eight year offensive to destroy the sovereignty of Ukraine.

THE LIES BENEATH THE NARRATIVE

To justify its invasion on February 24, 2022, Russia laid the lies on the table with the claim that Ukraine was harboring Nazis and extremists. This included a presentation of the Kremlin’s security council and a utterly disturbing televised speech by Vladimir Putin. Putin looked disturbed and made bizarre claims that he would denazify Ukraine.

This was the inverted narrative of the truth about Russia, the real fertile ground for white supremacy. Nearly the first question I asked myself as I arrived was: “is my understanding of Azov Battalion accurate? Did I accept an easy narrative that was not as easy as it seems? Could my colleagues who called them Neo-Nazis be wrong? Could it have evolved?” Now, I would have the chance to examine this up close.

Additionally, when I arrived in Ukraine, I was relatively unaware of the history of the Ukrainian nationalists like Stepan Bandera. They were barely a note in my head at the beginning of our journey. But by the last day of March 2022, I was far more informed as I was then able to walk around the very ground haunted by years of pain and suffering surrounding that topic, the city of Lviv. Though I had lots of components of the story in my knowledge, there were layers to the story I’d need to explore and develop. More on that, in the next segments.

PART ONE CONCLUSION

In Part Two, I will explore my thoughts on Ukrainian nationalism and the implications of misunderstanding it from the American point of view. See you then.