Letting it Go: Ukraine's Frozen Future
Posted: 15 Oct 2014 10:29 AM PDT

Emma Ashford

Secretary of State John Kerry met late yesterday in Paris with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Though somewhat overshadowed by Kerry’s meetings with Iran, the meeting nonetheless provided some fascinating clues as to where the Ukraine crisis is headed.

First, international tensions over Ukraine seem to be slowly relaxing, although violence continues to mar the ceasefire in the Donbas itself.
Russian troops are withdrawing from the border, as specified in the Minsk Protocol.
The United States is making encouraging noises about the possibility of sanction removal.
More importantly, Kerry made a clear point of emphasizing Russian-American cooperation and announced that the two countries would engage in intelligence sharing on ISIS. This represents a major about-face for the Obama administration, which just six months ago said its goal was to “isolate President Vladimir Putin.” It seems that faced with the difficulty of managing simultaneous conflicts – something the White House is not good at – officials are opting for a more conciliatory approach to Russia.

Second, Crimea wasn’t mentioned.
Though it calls for Ukrainian sovereignty to be respected, the protocol doesn’t explicitly discuss Crimea. In short, it looks like Crimea may be off the negotiating table, effectively ceded to Russia. Instead, the main point of contention between Kerry and Lavrov appears to have been the worry that Ukrainian separatists will hold another referendum on joining Russia, in place of Ukrainian parliamentary elections in late October.

Third, no Ukrainian representatives were present at the meeting, although President Poroshenko is set to meet with Vladimir Putin and several European heads of state tomorrow in Milan.
Ukraine is struggling to fund its fight against the separatists, and international assistance is drying up.
If Ukraine is being edged out of the process, it would be extremely bad for them, but could be positive for the United States, which gains little from a protracted cold war-style stand-off with Russia.

So where does this leave us?
Distracted by developments in the Middle East, America seems content to let the status quo triumph in Ukraine, turning the dispute into a fairly typical post-Soviet frozen conflict, like those found in Georgia or Azerbaijan. Crimea would remain a de facto but unrecognized part of Russia, while Donetsk and Luhansk would be part of Ukraine in name only. Low levels of conflict will continue, but as long as Russia doesn’t get involved, the international community will likely ignore it. This outcome is probably the best that Russia could hope for, as it has the secondary advantage of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO or the European Union.

But while a diplomatic solution in Ukraine is wise, it shouldn’t be allowed to metastasize into a frozen conflict. As we saw in Georgia in 2008, these situations are inherently unstable and have the potential to spring back to life unexpectedly. For the sake of long-term stability, it would be better to negotiate now a more long-lasting deal between Russia and Ukraine, one which provides for substantial autonomy of the disputed regions within a Ukrainian federal structure.

7 October 2014
The Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Cyber and Information Warfare in a Regional Context
What lessons can we learn from Russia’s cyber and information campaigns against Ukraine? According to Tim Maurer and Scott Janz, we should expect them to become more integrated, especially in hybrid conflicts, and we need to face facts – Russia has only revealed the tip of the iceberg when it comes to its cyber capabilities.

By Tim Maurer and Scott Janz for ISN

The violent conflict between Russia and Ukraine that broke out earlier this year has become a case study for hybrid conflict, where traditional kinetic actions are shadowed by cyber and information warfare activity. Now that the Ukrainian and Russian governments have agreed to terms on a peace plan, it is a good moment to reflect on how this conflict unfolded and what it can teach us about the use of cyberspace during a conflict that lasted several months.

First, it is important to remember that the Russian annexation of Crimea is not the first instance in the region where traditional military engagement occurred in parallel with Internet based hostile activity. During the 2008 Russia-Georgia War, for example, botnets were used while kinetic military operations were taking place to deface websites and to conduct Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which overwhelmed websites and rendered them inaccessible. These actions primarily targeted Georgian government and news media websites, disrupting communication channels and generating confusion at a time of crisis. It is evident that many of these strategies have been redeployed in Ukraine, while others have reached new levels of sophistication.

The use of cyberspace in the Ukrainian conflict is particularly interesting because it combines both cyber and information warfare tactics. This includes tampering with fiber-optic cables and with the cell phones of Ukrainian parliamentarians, as well as more common malicious tools such as DDoS attacks and web defacements. The range of this activity illustrates how cyber warfare can be distinguished from information warfare, and suggests that future kinetic actions are likely to be accompanied by both.

Background: The use of cyberspace as the conflict was escalating

The simmering political tension inside Ukraine escalated in November 2013, when former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych abandoned plans to sign a trade agreement with the EU. Many believed this was a sign that he was seeking closer ties with Moscow. Yanukovych’s decision incited mass protests that were met with a violent government crackdown. This sudden outbreak of violence deepened existing fault lines in the country split between those favoring Moscow in the east and those favoring the European Union in the west.

Long before Yanukovych’s flight in February and the buildup of Russian troops on the Crimean border, pro-Russian separatists began a concerted effort to discredit pro-European Ukrainians. Beginning in late November, reports emerged that Russian hacker groups were defacing and executing DDoS attacks on websites critical of the Yanukovych government’s relationship with Russia. This period was characterized by low-level hacking targeting highly visible websites, either rendering them unavailable or changing their content.

This activity took place as Yanukovych was trying to quell the growing civil unrest against his government. In addition to the use of police violence, the Yanukovych government also leveraged its control of the national telecommunications infrastructure to intimidate protestors. In late January, for example, people in the vicinity of clashes between riot police and protestors received an ominous text message on their cellphones containing the warning: “you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.” While unsigned, the messages were widely believed to have been sent by the Yanukovych government. This activity was part of a mounting information campaign aimed at creating or changing the content people were consuming to influence their opinion. This campaign would intensify as the conflict escalated over the coming months. However, Yanukovych was eventually forced to flee the country and Moscow became more involved.

Cybered conflict: The use of cyberspace during the hot conflict

On February 28, shortly after Yanukovych had left the country, unmarked soldiers, whom Russia’s President Putin later acknowledged to be Russian troops, seized a military airfield in Sevastopol and the Simferopol international airport. Concurrently, armed soldiers tampered with fiber optic cables, raiding the facilities of Ukrainian telecom firm Ukrtelecom, which stated afterward that it had “lost the technical capacity to provide connection between the peninsula and the rest of Ukraine and probably across the peninsula, too.” In addition, cell phones of Ukrainian parliamentarians were hacked and the main Ukrainian government website was shut down for 72 hours after Russian troops entered Crimea on March 2. Patriotic Ukrainian hacker groups such as Cyber Hundred and Null Sector retaliated with DDoS attacks of their own against websites of the Kremlin and the Central Bank of Russia.

While the jamming of communication channels has been a standard practice of militaries since the advent of communication technologies, cyberspace has enabled new ways to influence a conflict’s outcome. For example, a report released in March by BAE, a British defense and security firm, revealed that dozens of computers in the Ukrainian prime minister’s office and several embassies outside of Ukraine had been infected with malicious software called Snake capable of extracting sensitive information. While the operators of the Snake malware were located in the same time zone as Moscow, and Russian text was found in its code, the evidence that the malware originated in Russia is circumstantial . Nevertheless, these intrusions illustrate how the use of cyberspace became increasingly aggressive, shifting from trying to manipulate content to physically tampering with cables and targeted hacks that supported the Russian invasion.

As the March 16 referendum on the fate of Crimea neared, Russian hackers ramped up their campaign to discredit Ukrainian officials. This broader misinformation campaign sought to mobilize political support and discredit opponents leading up to the referendum on the region’s status in March. Similar tactics were used before the election in May to determine Yanukovych’s successor. As described by James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Russia’s strategy is [to] control the narrative, discredit opponents, and coerce.” In fact, the day before the presidential election, Ukraine’s Security Service discovered a virus in the systems of the Central Election Commission designed to compromise data collected on the results of the election, revealing how close Russian hackers had come to sabotaging the results. Cyber Berkut, the same group responsible for the DDoS attack against three NATO sites in March, claimed responsibility for the attack.

While Ukrainian government officials and many news reports blame the Russian government for indirectly orchestrating these operations, as well as for the crude ‘hack attacks’ on Ukrainian state websites, the Russian government has vehemently denied accusations that they have any influence over these groups. Details about the relationship between pro-Russian separatists or hacker groups such as Cyber Berkut and the Russian government remain lacking. However, paralleling the conflict in Georgia, the timing of the simultaneous cyber and kinetic attacks suggests a minimum level of coordination, raising doubts regarding the Russian government’s statements.

Other important pieces of this puzzle remain murky, as well: some speculate that the Russian government may possess unfettered access to the Ukrainian telecommunication system, as the Ukrainian intercept system closely resembles that used by Russia. Moreover, several observers have argued that the Russian government has demonstrated a considerable amount of restraint in the region in its use of cyberspace during the conflict. This seems plausible given that the Russian military has demonstrated that it can move in and out of the peninsula relatively unimpeded. Indeed, the Russian government has had little incentive to reveal its full military capabilities, including its cyber arsenal.

Implications

It is worth briefly discussing the broader international ramifications of this. In particular, it is worth noting that at the NATO summit in early September, NATO member states officially declared that “Cyber attacks can reach a threshold that threatens national and Euro-Atlantic prosperity, security, and stability. Their impact could be as harmful to modern societies as a conventional attack. We affirm therefore that cyber defence is part of NATO's core task of collective defence. A decision as to when a cyber attack would lead to the invocation of Article 5 would be taken by the North Atlantic Council on a case-by-case basis.” This declaration is the culmination of the debate over Article 5 and cyber attacks which started after the Estonian experience in 2007. NATO also provided $20 million in ‘non-lethal’ aid to Ukraine in September with a focus on cyberdefense.

In short, the events in Ukraine as well as in Georgia in 2008 and in Estonia in 2007 have offered the world a glimpse at Russia’s cyber capabilities. Moreover, the conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated that in the digital age, kinetic action is likely to be accompanied with information and cyberwarfare – in Eurasia and elsewhere.
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Tim Maurer is a non-resident fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) and a research fellow at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute in Washington DC. Prior to joining the New America Foundation, Tim was a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he continues to be an adjunct fellow.

Scott Janz is an intern at New America’s Open Technology Institute where he conducts research on cybersecurity and Internet governance. He is currently completing his M.A. in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, focusing on risk and uncertainty management.

Amnesty-Bericht zu Kämpfen in der Ostukraine Keine Beweise für Massengrab in Donezk
20.10.2014 11:01 Uhr
Die Menschenrechtsorganisation Amnesty International sieht "keine überzeugenden Beweise" für Massengräber im umkämpften ostukrainischen Donezk, wie sie prorussische Separatisten entdeckt haben wollen. Einige der Fälle, über die berichtet wurde, seien "besonders in russischen Medien enorm übertrieben" worden, erklärte John Dalhuisen von Amnesty. In einem Bericht über Hinrichtungen wirft die Organisation sowohl prorussischen als auch proukrainischen Kräften falsche Angaben über die Gräueltaten der jeweils anderen Seite vor.
M. Sambale, ARD Moskau

Stattdessen sei Amnesty auf Leichen von vier männlichen Zivilisten in zwei Gräbern in der Nähe des Dorfes Komunar bei Charkiw gestoßen, sagte Dalhuisen zum Ergebnis von Recherchen der Organisation von Ende September. "Was wir gesehen haben, sind einzelne Fälle von Hinrichtungen, die in einigen Fällen Kriegsverbrechen darstellen können." Solche gezielten Tötungen seien auf beiden Seiten nachgewiesen worden.
Seit Monaten kommt es in Donezk immer wieder zu heftigen Kämpfen.

Mit Berichten über rund 400 im Konfliktgebiet gefundene Leichen von Zivilisten hatten die Separatisten Ende September Druck auf die Führung in Kiew gemacht. Demnach befanden sich die Gräber in Gebieten, die zuvor von der ukrainischen Armee beherrscht worden waren.

Trotz Waffenruhe kommt es im Osten der Ukraine, wo Separatisten gegen die Armee kämpfen, immer wieder zu blutigen Gefechten. Beide Seiten werfen sich tödliche Angriffe auf Zivilisten vor.

Ukraine Der Schwulenhass nach dem Maidan
Auf einem der wichtigsten Filmfestivals der Ukraine haben homophobe Aktivisten eine Filmaufführung verhindert.
Was sagt das über das Erbe der Maidan-Proteste?
von Alice Bota - 6. November 2014 07:27 Uhr 56 Kommentare

Vor ein paar Tagen geschah in Kiew etwas, was den ausländischen Medien kaum einen Bericht wert war; vielleicht, weil aus der Ukraine mittlerweile nur noch Nachrichten über Tote, Gefechte oder Gas-Deals erwartet werden.
Diese Nachricht hingegen wirkte unscheinbar, denn niemand starb, niemand wurde verletzt. Doch das, was auf dem Molodist Filmfestival geschah, wirft wesentliche Fragen danach auf, wohin sich die Ukraine ein Jahr nach Beginn der Proteste auf dem Maidan entwickelt.

Das Filmfestival gehört zu den wichtigsten in der Ukraine, dort läuft auch die Reihe Sunny Bunny, die ausschließlich LGBT-Filme zeigt, das steht für Lesben, Schwule, Bisexuelle und Trans. Während der Aufführung eines LGBT-Filmes wurde das Kino angezündet.

Es ist abgebrannt, aber alle Anwesenden konnten sich rechtzeitig retten. Noch ist nicht klar, wer den Anschlag verübt hat und warum. Als zwei Tage später der Film Max und die Anderen des österreichischen Regisseurs Richard Rossmann gezeigt wurde, sammelte sich vor dem Kino ein rechter Mob. In Rossmanns Film geht es um Homosexualität, Aids und Familie, er spielt teilweise in der Ukraine. Das war für Männer der paramilitärischen und politischen Organisation Rechter Sektor offenbar zu viel.

Etwa zehn von ihnen bauten sich bewaffnet und in Uniformen vor dem Kinoeingang auf, 15 weitere trugen zivil. Sie verlangten, die Aufführung abzubrechen, diese sei anti-ukrainisch und unmoralisch, es sei "Päderasten-Propaganda". So erinnert sich Olena Schewtschenko, die in der Sunny-Bunny-Jury saß und an diesem Tag zugegen war. Sie sei geschockt gewesen, als sie bemerkte, dass sich der Anführer der Gruppe bestens mit der Polizei verstand.

Schewtschenko, 32 Jahre alt, leitet in Kiew die Organisation Insight, die gegen die Diskrimierung von Schwulen und Lesben kämpft. Sie war dabei, als die Proteste auf dem Maidan begannen, sie stand in der ungnädigen Kälte, weil sie eine freiere Gesellschaft wollte. Aber mittlerweile befürchtet sie einen Backlash: Die Gewalt gegen Schwule und Andersdenkende sei schlimmer geworden, sagt Schewtschenko.
Freiwillige Kämpfer wie die vom Rechten Sektor kehrten von der Front im Osten zurück, hielten sich für Helden und fühlten sich ermächtigt, ihre Positionen mit Gewalt zu vertreten. Und der Staat lasse sie gewähren.

Das ist die Meinung von Olena Schewtschenko, manche werden sie als hysterisch abtun – in beiden Vorfällen wird zwar ermittelt, zu Schaden gekommen ist aber niemand –, andere werden sie jedoch für untertrieben halten.

Was in Kiew passiert ist, könnte an sehr vielen Orten dieser Welt geschehen; in Serbien, in Russland, in Uganda oder Singapur, aber auch in Deutschland, Frankreich oder Polen. Schwulenhass ist, wenn man so will, eine internationale Größe, eine Chiffre für die Ängste und Niederlagen einer Gesellschaft, und selbst in etlichen demokratischen Ländern gibt es einen Mainstream, der es stumm hinnimmt, wenn andere verletzt oder ausgegrenzt werden.

Aber das eigentlich Beunruhigende an dem Vorfall in Kiew ist, dass rechte Schlägertruppen offenbar glauben, im Namen nationaler Ideale unbehelligt wüten zu können. Dass sie keine Angst haben, weil sie womöglich die Justiz tatsächlich nicht fürchten müssen.

Was vor fast einem Jahr auf dem Maidan begann, war – bei aller Gewalt und bei aller Beteiligung rechter Gruppierungen – ein Aufstand der Würde. Dieser Aufstand schuf kein neues System, keine neue Gesellschaft; er gab höchstens die Hoffnung, dass jetzt etwas Neues beginnen könnte. Die Werte, für die dort so viele einstanden, müssen jetzt, in Zeiten des Krieges, erst recht verteidigt werden.

Die Vorführung von Max und die Anderen wurde übrigens nach 30 Minuten abgebrochen, als sich der Rechte Sektor vor der Tür versammelte. Das Publikum verschwand durch den Hinterausgang in die Nacht. Verletzt wurde niemand, es wurde nur ein Film nicht fortgesetzt

Kiew: Russische Panzer dringen in Ukraine ein
Russische Panzer nahe der ukrainischen Grenze auf einem Archivbild
07.11.2014 | 13:50 | (DiePresse.com)

Die Lage im Osten der Ukraine spitzt sich weiter zu: Am Freitag drang laut Angaben von Kiew eine Kolonne von 32 russischen Panzern über die Grenze in die Ostukraine vor. Dies erklärte der ukrainische Militärsprecher Andrej Lyssenko. Auch 30 Lastwagen mit Kämpfern sowie weiteres Material überquerten demnach die Grenze zu der von prorussischen Separatisten kontrollierten Region Lugansk an mehreren Orten.

Die ukrainische Armee bereite sich auf eine "adäquate Reaktion" vor, sagte Lyssenko vor Journalisten. Er beschuldigte pro-russische Separatisten, die Regierungsruppen im Konfliktgebiet mit Grad-Raketen und Mörsern zu beschießen, wobei fünf Soldaten getötet worden seien.

Moskau hat die neuen Vorwürfe bezüglich der Panzer-Invasion als "Provokation" Kiews zurückgewiesen.
Solche Behauptungen würden in Kiew auf Grundlage irgendwelcher Gerüchte im Internet ohne jeden Beweis aufgestellt, sagte ein Sprecher des Verteidigungsministeriums in Moskau der Agentur Interfax am Freitag.

Kiew will Gebiete zurückerobern

Seit in den von Separatisten ausgerufenen "Volksrepubliken" Donezk und Luhansk am Sonntag "Wahlen" abgehalten wurden, ist die Situation weiter eskaliert. Der ukrainische Präsident Petro Poroschenko, der sich in den vergangenen Wochen eher konziliant und auf Ausgleich bedacht präsentiert hatte, hat angekündigt, ein Autonomiegesetz für die Ostukraine wieder zurückzunehmen. Außenminister Pavlo Klimkin hatte gedroht, man werde sich die an die Separatisten verlorenen Gebiete wieder zurückholen.

(APA/AFP)