the CIA Times: Putin’s Personal Plans to destabilize Europe

Please consider this as a bit of an entertainment break from the current very dark global zeitgeist.

‘Propaganda 101: The New York Times pumps another ‘evil Russia’ plot’, Finian Cunningham, Oct. 10, 2019, RT.com

“The “newspaper of record” New York Times arguably holds the record for peddling anti-Russia scare stories. This week the NY Times delivered yet another classic spook tale dressed as serious news.
Among its splash articles, under the headline ‘Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say’, readers were told of an elite Russian spy team which has, allegedly, only recently been discovered.

It’s called “Unit 29155” and purportedly directed by the Kremlin to “destabilize Europe” with “subversion, sabotage and assassination.”

According to the NY Times, this crack squad of Russia’s most ruthless military intelligence agents were involved in an attempted assassination of an arms dealer in Bulgaria in 2015; the destabilization of Moldova; a failed coup against the Montenegrin government; and the alleged poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal in England last year.

The article states: “Western security officials have now concluded that these operations, and potentially many others, are part of a coordinated and ongoing campaign to destabilize Europe, executed by an elite unit inside the Russian intelligence system skilled in subversion, sabotage and assassination.”

The NY Times adds: “The purpose of Unit 29155, which has not been previously reported, underscores the degree to which the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, is actively fighting the West with his brand of so-called hybrid warfare — a blend of propaganda, hacking attacks and disinformation — as well as open military confrontation.”

This is all because, the readers are told, “The Kremlin sees Russia as being at war with a Western liberal order that it views as an existential threat.”

In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed it as more of the “pulp fiction category” which Western news media have manufactured with seeming increasing intensity over recent years. Peskov pointed out that Moscow has repeatedly stated its desire to normalize relations with Western states and the European Union in particular, contradicting the theme of the NY Times’ piece.”

Indeed, the Russian Embassy in Britain recently published a compilation of false articles peddled by Western media over the past four years. The NY Times features prominently as one of the main purveyors of scare stories about alleged malign Russian activities, from hacking into presidential elections, to targeting American power grids, to covert collusion with President Donald Trump.

For students of Propaganda 101, this week’s tale makes a case study of how disinformation is disseminated in the guise of “news reporting.” [snip]

“Then, the usual giveaway that the NY Times is engaging in disinformation, it quotes anonymous security officials for apparent verification of its claims about “Unit 29155”. This is tacit admission of who the real authors are: Western spooks.” [large snip]

Cunningham writes that the author if the CIA Times exposé throws around some names that have zip to do with any of it in order for the ‘story’ to have some legs as far as #FakeVerisimilitue. 

“You may wonder, if the Cold War ended nearly 30 years ago when the Soviet Union dissolved, why then do the NY Times and other Western media outlets continue to pump out anti-Russian propaganda? But that assumes the Cold War was primarily about the US opposing the ideology of communism. It wasn’t. It was, and still is, all about imposing control over the masses so they don’t ever challenge the power structure that deprives them of full democratic rights and decent livelihoods. ” [snip]

“The Cold War continues, and anti-Russia hysteria is but a distraction, as was the anti-Soviet hysteria. The aim is to distract the public from the real Cold War which is a war by the elites against democracy ever being actually realized among the masses.”The rest, again, is here.

He forgets to remind readers that another huge reason is:  the epic and growing repurposed 2.0 NATO.

bernhard at Moon of Alabama has a bit of fun with the new CIA Slimes exposé:

“Top Secret” Russian Unit That “Destabilizes Europe” Is A Well Known Small Arms Training Base’, Oct. 10, 2019

“Two days ago the New York Times published a sensational story about alleged Russian fiendishness. It was headlined:

Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say.” [snip]

“The author, Michael Schwirtz, promoted the story on Twitter:

Michael Schwirtz @mschwirtz – 15:57 UTC · Oct 8, 2019
The Russian operatives who poisoned Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent in Britain last year were members of a highly secretive spy unit that until recently was unknown to Western intelligence agencies. My latest dive into Russian spycraft.

“Western officials only recently discovered” the “highly secretive spy unit”. One wonders how they did that. The best guess is that they googled it:

Leonid Ragozin @leonidragozin – 1:31 UTC – 9 Oct 2019
One of Russia’s most prominent investigative journalists, Sergey Kanev, says there is nothing super-secret about unit 29155 of GRU which NYT reported on yesterday. When you google, the unit’s address and commander’s name pop up on numerous yellow pages type sites.

“If you searched the Internet better, you’d find his [commander Averyanov’s] home address, dacha near Istra and his car’s number plate. There is even his mobile phone, which you could call”, Kanev asks.

The Russian news outlet Vedomosti.ru looked further into the story (machine translated):

The GRU military unit of military unit 29155, which was named in the publication of The New York Times by the secret elite unit of the GRU, which is destabilizing the situation in Europe, is an ordinary intelligence training course. Vedomosti was informed about this by a former intelligence officer and a person close to the intelligence agencies.
…
According to a person close to the special services, military unit 29155, also known as the 161st training center and located in the Moscow district of Izmailovo (in the east of the city), is short-term military intelligence training courses that have existed since the Soviet Union, where its military personnel improve their skills in shooting training, radio communications and other special disciplines – unlike the Military Diplomatic Academy, where scouts receive fundamental training. Judging by the information on the website on the history of special services “History of Russian special services and law enforcement agencies”, military unit 29155 functioned as a GRU training center back in the 60s.

A publicly well known unit, which for more than 50 years acted as a small arms training center, is now ‘destabilizing Europe’ with operations that were, like the Skripal affair, obviously made up by ‘western’ spy services, or failed amateur coups attempts like in Montenegro. Its commander’s personal data are available on the net.” [snip]

“How the laughable Skripal story the MI6 spread or the unsuccessful attempts to kill some Bulgarian weapons dealer are supposed to “destabilize Europe” is hard to understand. How a training unit with a well known commander,  which existed for more than 50 years and has pictures of its premises publicized, can be “top secret” is a mystery. But what is understandable is that some author writes 2,000 words of such nonsense. It obviously pays well.”

Whaddaya wanna bet that Maylasian Flight MH17 over Ukraine was shot down from Area 51 GRU military unit 29155?

(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)