https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h7biZ2b87Y

Hier nimmt Vittorio Feltri, einer der brilliantesten Journalisten des Landes, die neue Regierung auseinander: Sie sei nicht christdemokratisch, sondern einfach nur gruselig. Über di Maio als Außenminister: "Er muss jetzt nicht nur Geographie, sondern auch Englisch lernen, denn in der Farnesina (dem Außenministerium) spricht man Englisch." Wenn er Englisch lernte, wäre er auch von einer großen Last befreit, denn er müsste nicht immer Konjunktive (wie im Italienischen) erfinden." Noch nie ist ein Außenminister so schnell beerdigt worden.

Ich will nicht ungerecht gegenüber di Maio sein. Verglichen mit Heiko Maas ist er phantastisch.

Apropos Nazis.

Österreich 2019:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti...JEhASCU4tyykRkM

Österreich 1938:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRPlS4rG18U

https://www.facebook.com/salviniofficial...M3/?__tn__=%2Cd-]-h-R&eid=ARCgnm8i_NdemQyGXWjCA3smWKdFrPv3JyfSoC70BlyMhh2co4Qh34lckH0V4oiElB9b-NAE3PvOpobi

Und hier Italien (zum Vergleich mit dem Grölemeyer-Auftritt): Ein Fahnenmeer, schöne Musik (aus der Arie Nessun Dorma), Helligkeit und eine gelöste Stimmung.

Italian welcome for 82 migrants marks ‘end of Salvini’s propaganda,’ says minister
New government softens stance on opening ports.

https://www.politico.eu/article/italian-...-says-minister/

Trump poised to hit EU with billions in tariffs after victory in Airbus case
WTO ruling sets stage for early confrontation between US and new leaders in Brussels.

The United States has gotten the green light to impose billions of euros in punitive tariffs on EU products in retaliation for illegal subsidies granted to European aerospace giant Airbus.

Four EU officials told POLITICO that the World Trade Organization ruled in favor of the U.S. in the long-running transatlantic dispute and sent its confidential decision to Brussels and Washington on Friday.

The decision means that U.S. President Donald Trump will almost certainly soon announce tariffs on European products ranging from cheeses to Airbus planes. One official said Trump had won the right to collect a total of between €5 billion and €8 billion. Another said the maximum sum was close to $10 billion.
https://www.politico.eu/article/trump-po...ter-airbus-win/

Die italienischen Bürger werden dies zur Kenntnis nehmen. DER Verlierer bei den nächsten Wahlen wird nicht der PD sein, sondern das M5S. Und Salvini wird der nächste Premier mit Meloni als seiner Stellvertreterin.

Hier schon mal vorab eine Antwort an die neue "importierende" Regierung...
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...&type=3&theater

Für den 19.10. ist eine wirkliche Großdemonstration geplant.

Zitat von Maga-neu im Beitrag #1334

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Hier schon mal vorab eine Antwort an die neue "importierende" Regierung...
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...&type=3&theater

Für den 19.10. ist eine wirkliche Großdemonstration geplant.

---

Zitat von Leto_II. im Beitrag #1335

---

Zitat von Maga-neu im Beitrag #1334

---

Hier schon mal vorab eine Antwort an die neue "importierende" Regierung...
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...&type=3&theater

Für den 19.10. ist eine wirkliche Großdemonstration geplant.

---

Wenn "wir" alles für eine rechtskonservative Nachfolgeregierung in Italien tun, könnte man da glatt einen Plan dahinter vermuten. "Wir" waschen dann nämlich unsere Hände in Unschuld. Merkel ist nicht dumm.

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Niente più argine agli sbarchi

Malta lascia alla nostra Guardia Costiera l'onere di soccorre i migranti dentro le proprie acque, la Francia si defila dal meccanismo di redistribuzione automatica: l'Italia destinata a rimanere sola ad affrontare le emergenze anche con un governo pronto a piegarsi all'Europa
http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/l...ti-1754480.html

Business as usual... Der Damm ist verschwunden, Malta hat sich verabsentiert, Frankreich ebenfalls und Italien steht mit den Migranten alleine da. Grazie PD, grazie Cinque Stelle, grazie "Europa"...

Don Alphonso ist grade in Italien.
Twitter:

Don Alphonso
‏Verifizierter Account @_donalphonso
12 Std.Vor 12 Stunden

Ich weiss beim besten Willen nicht, wie die Entwicklungen seit der Regierungskrise etwas anderes als ein Scheitern der neuen Regierung, eine fundamentale PD-Krise und auf der anderen Seite den Durchmarsch von Salvini zur Folge haben können. Speziell, wenn die Häfen offen sind.
11 Antworten 49 Retweets 251 Gefällt mir
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Don Alphonso
‏Verifizierter Account @_donalphonso
12 Std.Vor 12 Stunden

"Allah Akbar" hat hier in Italien gerade Renzi als Toptrend abgelöst, wegen des Anschlags auf einen Soldaten in Mailand, mutmasslich durch einen illegalen Migranten aus dem Jemen. Arbeite jetzt den kommenden Beitrag um.
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Don Alphonso
‏Verifizierter Account @_donalphonso
16 Std.Vor 16 Stunden

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...&type=3&theater

Die erste Hochrechnung sieht so aus: Die ÖVP wird mit 37,2 Prozent der Stimmen deutlich stärkste Kraft und legt um fast sechs Prozentpunkte zu. Die ÖVP verbessert sich um 9 Mandate auf 71. Die SPÖ mit Pamela Rendi-Wagner als Spitzenkandidatin verliert rund fünf Prozentpunkte und erreichte 22 Prozent der Stimmen, sie verliert 11 Sitze und wird nur noch 41 Abgeordnete entsenden können. So schlecht hat die SPÖ bei einer Nationalratswahl noch nie abgeschnitten.

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/w...-a-1289208.html

Zitat von Corto im Beitrag #1340

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Die erste Hochrechnung sieht so aus: Die ÖVP wird mit 37,2 Prozent der Stimmen deutlich stärkste Kraft und legt um fast sechs Prozentpunkte zu. Die ÖVP verbessert sich um 9 Mandate auf 71. Die SPÖ mit Pamela Rendi-Wagner als Spitzenkandidatin verliert rund fünf Prozentpunkte und erreichte 22 Prozent der Stimmen, sie verliert 11 Sitze und wird nur noch 41 Abgeordnete entsenden können. So schlecht hat die SPÖ bei einer Nationalratswahl noch nie abgeschnitten.

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/w...-a-1289208.html

---

SPÖ hat 5% an die ÖVP abgegeben, FPÖ 10% an die Grünen ( zumindest rechnerisch ;)

Why Europe’s new populists tell so many lies – and do it so shamelessly
From Matteo Salvini to Boris Johnson, populist politicians brazenly distort the truth. Don’t think they do it to be believed

The torrent of lies that flows from the mouths of populists feels relentless: from Donald Trump’s routine lying about everything from Iran to the weather, to Boris Johnson’s fictitious £350m for the NHS, Turkey on the cusp of joining the EU or most sensationally misleading the Queen about why the UK parliament should be shut down.

My research on populism elsewhere in Europe confirms that lying is a constant feature of populist politics. In France, Marine Le Pen lies about how her party spends public money and her (fake) Twitter accounts. Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, lies gigantically and systematically about the migration to his country. As for Italy’s Matteo Salvini – from migration to sanctions against Russia – as the song goes, if his lips are moving, he’s lying. ...

... Populist lying, by contrast, is designed to be seen – it is the opposite of a cover-up. In the populist playbook, lying itself is glorified; it is an instrument of subversion, its purpose to demonstrate that the liar will stop at nothing to “serve the people”. The lies are signals that these politicians are not bound by the usual norms of the liberal democratic elite. Liberals have virtue signalling – populists have outrage signalling. This is the politics of appealing to the gut over the brain.

Above all, though, the lies are about taking one of representative democracy’s creeds – authenticity – and turning it on its head. The idea of authenticity is at the heart of the populist worldview, yet it is rarely studied as a political concept. In liberal democracies the notion that politicians will uphold basic values of honesty has long been a given. It means delivering on what you promise and doing as you said you would – or paying an electoral price if you fail. With ever closer media scrutiny and the growing reach of social media, an even deeper correlation between the private and public self has been demanded of politicians. They have to be true to themselves, not just true to their word.

Populists have been quick to turn the value placed on authenticity to their advantage. Not by striving to be truthful, but by demonstrating that they are authentic (or instinctively connected to the experience of “the people”, who are authentic) to the point of not caring about being shown to be liars – as long as the lies are told “in the interest of the people”. They tend to either sweep away the evidence that they lied with great nonchalance (well, I might have said that, but so what?), or flaunt the lie to show their chutzpah, their willingness to game the system – and to highlight the supposed hypocrisy or stupidity of whoever is being deceived.

The populist authenticity is not so much about being as good as you claim to be, but about being as shamelessly bad as people might imagine you could be. Shamelessness is populism’s debased form of authenticity.
The higher the stakes, the bigger the lies: as populists get closer to power, rules start to bite and institutions reassert themselves, and so grand gestural, destructive lying takes over. If you can’t join them, smash them. Whether it’s misleading the Queen, or, as with Salvini, delivering video commentary straight into people’s social media feeds to create an alternative version of reality.

Are there diminishing returns to all this lying? Two factors are at play. One is whether there is a limit to the lies that voters will tolerate – and the jury is still out. Polls have not registered a decline in the support base for either Johnson or Salvini. Support for the far-right Austrian Freedom party (FPO) slipped by a third in the weekend’s general election as voters apparently punished leader Heinz-Christian Strache for a corruption scandal that brought down the coalition government. The result might plausibly suggest though that the FPO paid a price for behaving like old-fashioned politicians, rather than modern populists. Had Strache adopted a more shameless Berlusconi/Johnson style, the FPO might well have done better. After all, the point is to own the bad behaviour. ...

... There may be little electoral cost to lying (think of Silvio Berlusconi) but there is a high price to be paid for drinking your own Kool-Aid.

In the UK, where irony is the currency of choice, populism is perhaps at its most dangerous because no one takes it seriously until it’s too late. It occurred to few on the pluralist side of politics that Nigel Farage and Johnson actually meant to do what they said. That they were, in other words, not being ironic. For all the sophistication of the British polity, few people took their authenticity as seriously as they ought to have. Until now.

We need to stop asking why voters believe populists’ untruths and why they let themselves be repeatedly swindled by them – because they don’t and they aren’t. The purpose of populist lying is not to be believed. Only very belatedly do we seem to be grasping that the politics of lying and shameless behaviour are powerful elements in populism’s corrosive ideology.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...salvini-johnson

Zitat von Willie im Beitrag #1343

---

Why Europe’s new populists tell so many lies – and do it so shamelessly
From Matteo Salvini to Boris Johnson, populist politicians brazenly distort the truth. Don’t think they do it to be believed

The torrent of lies that flows from the mouths of populists feels relentless: from Donald Trump’s routine lying about everything from Iran to the weather, to Boris Johnson’s fictitious £350m for the NHS, Turkey on the cusp of joining the EU or most sensationally misleading the Queen about why the UK parliament should be shut down.

My research on populism elsewhere in Europe confirms that lying is a constant feature of populist politics. In France, Marine Le Pen lies about how her party spends public money and her (fake) Twitter accounts. Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, lies gigantically and systematically about the migration to his country. As for Italy’s Matteo Salvini – from migration to sanctions against Russia – as the song goes, if his lips are moving, he’s lying. ...

... Populist lying, by contrast, is designed to be seen – it is the opposite of a cover-up. In the populist playbook, lying itself is glorified; it is an instrument of subversion, its purpose to demonstrate that the liar will stop at nothing to “serve the people”. The lies are signals that these politicians are not bound by the usual norms of the liberal democratic elite. Liberals have virtue signalling – populists have outrage signalling. This is the politics of appealing to the gut over the brain.

Above all, though, the lies are about taking one of representative democracy’s creeds – authenticity – and turning it on its head. The idea of authenticity is at the heart of the populist worldview, yet it is rarely studied as a political concept. In liberal democracies the notion that politicians will uphold basic values of honesty has long been a given. It means delivering on what you promise and doing as you said you would – or paying an electoral price if you fail. With ever closer media scrutiny and the growing reach of social media, an even deeper correlation between the private and public self has been demanded of politicians. They have to be true to themselves, not just true to their word.

Populists have been quick to turn the value placed on authenticity to their advantage. Not by striving to be truthful, but by demonstrating that they are authentic (or instinctively connected to the experience of “the people”, who are authentic) to the point of not caring about being shown to be liars – as long as the lies are told “in the interest of the people”. They tend to either sweep away the evidence that they lied with great nonchalance (well, I might have said that, but so what?), or flaunt the lie to show their chutzpah, their willingness to game the system – and to highlight the supposed hypocrisy or stupidity of whoever is being deceived.

The populist authenticity is not so much about being as good as you claim to be, but about being as shamelessly bad as people might imagine you could be. Shamelessness is populism’s debased form of authenticity.
The higher the stakes, the bigger the lies: as populists get closer to power, rules start to bite and institutions reassert themselves, and so grand gestural, destructive lying takes over. If you can’t join them, smash them. Whether it’s misleading the Queen, or, as with Salvini, delivering video commentary straight into people’s social media feeds to create an alternative version of reality.

Are there diminishing returns to all this lying? Two factors are at play. One is whether there is a limit to the lies that voters will tolerate – and the jury is still out. Polls have not registered a decline in the support base for either Johnson or Salvini. Support for the far-right Austrian Freedom party (FPO) slipped by a third in the weekend’s general election as voters apparently punished leader Heinz-Christian Strache for a corruption scandal that brought down the coalition government. The result might plausibly suggest though that the FPO paid a price for behaving like old-fashioned politicians, rather than modern populists. Had Strache adopted a more shameless Berlusconi/Johnson style, the FPO might well have done better. After all, the point is to own the bad behaviour. ...

... There may be little electoral cost to lying (think of Silvio Berlusconi) but there is a high price to be paid for drinking your own Kool-Aid.

In the UK, where irony is the currency of choice, populism is perhaps at its most dangerous because no one takes it seriously until it’s too late. It occurred to few on the pluralist side of politics that Nigel Farage and Johnson actually meant to do what they said. That they were, in other words, not being ironic. For all the sophistication of the British polity, few people took their authenticity as seriously as they ought to have. Until now.

We need to stop asking why voters believe populists’ untruths and why they let themselves be repeatedly swindled by them – because they don’t and they aren’t. The purpose of populist lying is not to be believed. Only very belatedly do we seem to be grasping that the politics of lying and shameless behaviour are powerful elements in populism’s corrosive ideology.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...salvini-johnson

---

Garry Kasparov@Kasparov63
They’ll attack the truth-tellers, accuse them of anything at all, because playing defense takes energy.
They’ll use whataboutism to distract from their crimes.
Keep following the money and repeating the truth.

10:21 AM - 29 Sep 2019

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFpf2tTU8AAbuCL.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFpmxAYXUAE7X2m.jpg

Trump set to hit EU with tariffs on $7.5B of goods after Airbus ruling
President Donald Trump is poised to hit Europe with tariffs on up to $7.5 billion of EU exports per year, setting the stage for an escalation of the transatlantic trade fight.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/02...-tariffs-020272

U.S. hits Scotch whisky, Italian cheese, French wine with 25% tariffs
The Trump administration put 25% tariffs on French wine, Italian cheese and single-malt Scotch whisky — but spared Italian wine, pasta and olive oil — in retaliation for European Union subsidies on large aircraft.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office released a list of hundreds of European products that will get new tariffs, including cookies, salami, butter and yogurt — but in many cases applied to only some EU countries, including German camera parts and UK-made blankets.

The list includes United Kingdom-made sweaters, pullovers, cashmere items and wool clothing, as well as olives from France, Germany and Spain, EU-produced pork sausage and other pork products other than ham, and German coffee. The new tariffs are to take effect as early as Oct. 18.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office said it would “continually re-evaluate these tariffs based on our discussions with the EU” and expects to enter talks in a bid to resolve the dispute.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wto-a...s-idUSKBN1WH2G7

Das erfreut die Trumski Fans in Europa sicherlich. Denn die wissen, ihr Messias will ihnen ja nur gut. :-)

Zitat von Willie im Beitrag #1347

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U.S. hits Scotch whisky, Italian cheese, French wine with 25% tariffs
The Trump administration put 25% tariffs on French wine, Italian cheese and single-malt Scotch whisky — but spared Italian wine, pasta and olive oil — in retaliation for European Union subsidies on large aircraft.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office released a list of hundreds of European products that will get new tariffs, including cookies, salami, butter and yogurt — but in many cases applied to only some EU countries, including German camera parts and UK-made blankets.

The list includes United Kingdom-made sweaters, pullovers, cashmere items and wool clothing, as well as olives from France, Germany and Spain, EU-produced pork sausage and other pork products other than ham, and German coffee. The new tariffs are to take effect as early as Oct. 18.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office said it would “continually re-evaluate these tariffs based on our discussions with the EU” and expects to enter talks in a bid to resolve the dispute.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wto-a...s-idUSKBN1WH2G7

Das erfreut die Trumski Fans in Europa sicherlich. Denn die wissen, ihr Messias will ihnen ja nur gut. :-)

---

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausl...1Bij1NAwWCqC7Lg

Nichts Neues im Westen...

Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say
First came a destabilization campaign in Moldova, followed by the poisoning of an arms dealer in Bulgaria and then a thwarted coup in Montenegro. Last year, there was an attempt to assassinate a former Russian spy in Britain using a nerve agent. Though the operations bore the fingerprints of Russia’s intelligence services, the authorities initially saw them as isolated, unconnected attacks.

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 group, known as Unit 29155, has operated for at least a decade, yet Western officials only recently discovered it. Intelligence officials in four Western countries say it is unclear how often the unit is mobilized and warn that it is impossible to know when and where its operatives will strike.
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.
“I think we had forgotten how organically ruthless the Russians could be,” said Peter Zwack, a retired military intelligence officer and former defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Moscow, who said he was not aware of the unit’s existence.

In a text message, Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, directed questions about the unit to the Russian Defense Ministry. The ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Hidden behind concrete walls at the headquarters of the 161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center in eastern Moscow, the unit sits within the command hierarchy of the Russian military intelligence agency, widely known as the G.R.U.
Though much about G.R.U. operations remains a mystery, Western intelligence agencies have begun to get a clearer picture of its underlying architecture. In the months before the 2016 presidential election, American officials say two G.R.U. cyber units, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and then published embarrassing internal communications.

Last year, Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, indicted more than a dozen officers from those units, though all still remain at large. The hacking teams mostly operate from Moscow, thousands of miles from their targets.

By contrast, officers from Unit 29155 travel to and from European countries. Some are decorated veterans of Russia’s bloodiest wars, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Ukraine. Its operations are so secret, according to assessments by Western intelligence services, that the unit’s existence is most likely unknown even to other G.R.U. operatives.
The unit appears to be a tight-knit community. A photograph taken in 2017 shows the unit’s commander, Maj. Gen. Andrei V. Averyanov, at his daughter’s wedding in a gray suit and bow tie. He is posing with Col. Anatoly V. Chepiga, one of two officers indicted in Britain over the poisoning of a former spy, Sergei V. Skripal.
“This is a unit of the G.R.U. that has been active over the years across Europe,” said one European security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe classified intelligence matters. “It’s been a surprise that the Russians, the G.R.U., this unit, have felt free to go ahead and carry out this extreme malign activity in friendly countries. That’s been a shock.”

To varying degrees, each of the four operations linked to the unit attracted public attention, even as it took time for the authorities to confirm that they were connected. Western intelligence agencies first identified the unit after the failed 2016 coup in Montenegro, which involved a plot by two unit officers to kill the country’s prime minister and seize the Parliament building.
But officials began to grasp the unit’s specific agenda of disruption only after the March 2018 poisoning of Mr. Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had betrayed Russia by spying for the British. Mr. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, fell grievously ill after exposure to a highly toxic nerve agent, but survived.
(Three other people were sickened, including a police officer and a man who found a small bottle that British officials believe was used to carry the nerve agent and gave it to his girlfriend. The girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess, died after spraying the nerve agent on her skin, mistaking the bottle for perfume.)
The poisoning led to a geopolitical standoff, with more than 20 nations, including the United States, expelling 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity with Britain.

Ultimately, the British authorities exposed two suspects, who had traveled under aliases but were later identified by the investigative site Bellingcat as Colonel Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. Six months after the poisoning, British prosecutors charged both men with transporting the nerve agent to Mr. Skripal’s home in Salisbury, England, and smearing it on his front door.
But the operation was more complex than officials revealed at the time.
Exactly a year before the poisoning, three Unit 29155 operatives traveled to Britain, possibly for a practice run, two European officials said. One was Mr. Mishkin. A second man used the alias Sergei Pavlov. Intelligence officials believe the third operative, who used the alias Sergei Fedotov, oversaw the mission.
Soon, officials established that two of these officers — the men using the names Fedotov and Pavlov — had been part of a team that attempted to poison the Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev in 2015. (The other operatives, also known only by their aliases, according to European intelligence officials, were Ivan Lebedev, Nikolai Kononikhin, Alexey Nikitin and Danil Stepanov.)
The team would twice try to kill Mr. Gebrev, once in Sofia, the capital, and again a month later at his home on the Black Sea.

Speaking to reporters in February at the Munich Security Conference, Alex Younger, the chief of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, spoke out against the growing Russian threat and hinted at coordination, without mentioning a specific unit.
“You can see there is a concerted program of activity — and, yes, it does often involve the same people,” Mr. Younger said, pointing specifically to the Skripal poisoning and the Montenegro coup attempt. He added: “We assess there is a standing threat from the G.R.U. and the other Russian intelligence services and that very little is off limits.”

The Kremlin sees Russia as being at war with a Western liberal order that it views as an existential threat.
At a ceremony in November for the G.R.U.’s centenary, Mr. Putin stood beneath a glowing backdrop of the agency’s logo — a red carnation and an exploding grenade — and described it as “legendary.” A former intelligence officer himself, Mr. Putin drew a direct line between the Red Army spies who helped defeat the Nazis in World War II and officers of the G.R.U., whose “unique capabilities” are now deployed against a different kind of enemy.
“Unfortunately, the potential for conflict is on the rise in the world,” Mr. Putin said during the ceremony. “Provocations and outright lies are being used and attempts are being made to disrupt strategic parity.”

In 2006, Mr. Putin signed a law legalizing targeted killings abroad, the same year a team of Russian assassins used a radioactive isotope to murder Aleksander V. Litvinenko, another former Russian spy, in London.
Unit 29155 is not the only group authorized to carry out such operations, officials said. The British authorities have attributed Mr. Litvinenko’s killing to the Federal Security Service, the intelligence agency once headed by Mr. Putin that often competes with the G.R.U.

Although little is known about Unit 29155 itself, there are clues in public Russian records that suggest links to the Kremlin’s broader hybrid strategy.
A 2012 directive from the Russian Defense Ministry assigned bonuses to three units for “special achievements in military service.” One was Unit 29155. Another was Unit 74455, which was involved in the 2016 election interference. The third was Unit 99450, whose officers are believed to have been involved in the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

A retired G.R.U. officer with knowledge of Unit 29155 said that it specialized in preparing for “diversionary” missions, “in groups or individually — bombings, murders, anything.”
“They were serious guys who served there,” the retired officer said. “They were officers who worked undercover and as international agents.”

Photographs of the unit’s dilapidated former headquarters, which has since been abandoned, show myriad gun racks with labels for an assortment of weapons, including Belgian FN-30 sniper rifles, German G3A3s, Austrian Steyr AUGs and American M16s. There was also a form outlining a training regimen, including exercises for hand-to-hand combat. The retired G.R.U. officer confirmed the authenticity of the photographs, which were published by a Russian blogger.

The current commander, General Averyanov, graduated in 1988 from the Tashkent Military Academy in what was then the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. It is likely that he would have fought in both the first and second Chechen wars, and he was awarded a Hero of Russia medal, the country’s highest honor, in January 2015. The two officers charged with the Skripal poisoning also received the same award.
Though an elite force, the unit appears to operate on a shoestring budget. According to Russian records, General Averyanov lives in a run-down Soviet-era building a few blocks from the unit’s headquarters and drives a 1996 VAZ 21053, a rattletrap Russia-made sedan. Operatives often share cheap accommodation to economize while on the road. British investigators say the suspects in the Skripal poisoning stayed in a low-cost hotel in Bow, a downtrodden neighborhood in East London.

But European security officials are also perplexed by the apparent sloppiness in the unit’s operations. Mr. Skripal survived the assassination attempt, as did Mr. Gebrev, the Bulgarian arms dealer. The attempted coup in Montenegro drew an enormous amount of attention, but ultimately failed. A year later, Montenegro joined NATO. It is possible, security officials say, that they have yet to discover other, more successful operations.

It is difficult to know if the messiness has bothered the Kremlin. Perhaps, intelligence experts say, it is part of the point.
“That kind of intelligence operation has become part of the psychological warfare,” said Eerik-Niiles Kross, a former intelligence chief in Estonia. “It’s not that they have become that much more aggressive. They want to be felt. It’s part of the game.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/world...russia-gru.html