About an hour before the first US polls opened on Election Day, the Kremlin’s main news agency published an interview with Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, SVR, who helped orchestrating the attempted Russian interference in the 2016 election His prediction regarding the outcome of the 2020 vote was grim and he struggled to suppress a smile while uttering it
« It doesn’t matter who wins, » said Naryshkin, « the social crisis » in the US will only deepen. Whoever loses will refuse to accept the result, causing « radicals to take to the streets »
« There will be just this big base to challenge the whole system, » he added. « So this disease, this disease of American society, of the American state, is going to last »
This statement was more than a prognosis for Naryshkin, who took over the SVR in October 2016, at the height of the Russian effort to sabotage the US elections It was also a statement of intent. Russia in 2016 was not simply to help Donald Trump win the presidency, but to undermine public confidence in the democratic system as a whole Four years later, the president himself says and does things that have the same effect
Since election day, Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the democratic process He prematurely announced his own victory Wednesday morning and the next day tweeted: « STOP THE COUNT! » – even though millions of votes had yet to be counted and certified Thursday night at the White House, Trump said, « It’s a corrupt system, » sparking criticism from Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who said that the president’s statement « undermines the cause of freedom here and in the world »
This is precisely what US Russian propaganda experts worry about « Russians need to step back and think: this is beyond our wildest dreams, » says Marc Polymeropoulos, who oversaw CIA operations in Europe and Eurasia before retiring in 2019 « They have to distribute medals at SVR headquarters now »
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This sentiment may not last Joe Biden has pledged to « impose substantial and lasting costs » for any foreign interference in the vote if he emerges as the winner. Officials from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the United States ‘other agencies have repeatedly said Russia is interfering in 2020 vote, and Kremlin appears to have worried about risk of US backlash In an assessment released on September 3, the US Department of Homeland Security said the Kremlin’s goal in 2020 was to « undermine public confidence in the electoral process »
The Kremlin pursued the same goal in 2016, when it launched a coordinated campaign of hacks, leaks and disinformation that resulted in the publication of stolen Hillary Clinton campaign emails This time, Trump’s allies launched their own effort, with the president’s attorney Rudy Giuliani playing a leading role Giuliani advanced another email scandal, this one targeting Biden and his son, in the weeks before the vote
The operation was hardly secret Giuliani publicized it on his YouTube channel, where he questioned his sources on whiskey and cigars about the alleged corruption of what he called the « crime family Biden « One of those sources was Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Derkach, a graduate of Moscow’s main spy academy, whom the US government sanctioned in September as an » active Russian agent « In a final whirlwind on election day, Giuliani has appeared on RT, the Kremlin’s English-language broadcaster, to attack both the Bidens and the validity of postal voting
Giuliani’s appearance in Russian propaganda media looked particularly cheeky and bizarre on the day the Americans went to the polls.But from Moscow’s perspective, the show was part of the point, says Matthew Schmidt, studying Russian political warfare at the University of New Haven in Connecticut « Russia’s operations are often designed to get caught, » he says « Russia wants fingerprints everywhere » The point, he says, is to paint the US political system so weak and disorganized that Russia can. manipulate from a distance, using nothing more sophisticated than a social media campaign and a handful of willing provocateurs Changing the outcome of an election is not the only goal of these operations What matters is perception that the vote is vulnerable
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In the 2018 midterm elections, for example, one of the notions spread by Russian « malicious influence actors » was that Russia had taken control of US voting systems, according to the assessment September 3 DHS Such claims appear to have been a Russian bluff US Law enforcement said they found no evidence of vote tampering by foreign or domestic actors
But Russia is playing on its ability to play Western elections precisely to discredit them, says Alex Younger, former head of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service « Russia feels threatened by the quality of our alliances and, even in the current environment, by the quality of our democratic institutions, » Younger told TIME shortly after his retirement from espionage at the end of September. « He intends to denigrate them, and he uses the intelligence services to that end »
Polymeropoulos came away with the same impression during his interactions with Russian security officials. He recalls that they had « a strange insecurity of wanting to be equal, » which showed in the way they tried to argue , even in meetings on counterterrorism and other matters of mutual interest, that the US system of government was even more corrupt than that of Russia
« It was always about tearing us down, finding a way to say, ‘The American system is broken It’s incompetent,’ says Polymeropoulos As long as the US president continues to get this message out himself, Putin and his spy boss can sit down and enjoy the show
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, Dmitry Peskov
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