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Comment by eterevsky | Hacker News Reader

It looks genuine, but it could also be a fake written as part of Ukrainian information war.

While everything in this article looks very plausible, it could just as well be written by an outsider with good understanding of Russian politics. In that case it could be a bit skewed to paint a more optimistic picture (or if you will pessimistic from Russia's perspective).

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As mentioned a lot of places, Ukraine psy ops aren't as long. Longer = more chances for mistakes. This has been vouched for by multiple people with contacts in the FSB who all say this is most likely genuine. One of the people to vouch for it is a Bellingcat employee.

It also mentioned a false flag op to make Ukraine look like it's been developing nuclear weapons. News just broke of that today from Russian media, entirely in line with the letter. Huge coincidence if it's fake.

Russia has been stating ukraine was trying to develop nuclear weapons for a week now.

Sources for that? If so, it's not been pushed as major news until today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine...

At least Russian state media has been talking about it since "military exercises", that either they plan or some hazy they might have been making dirty bombs.

Longer than that:

This article from almost two weeks ago, noted that while it was at that time new for the claim to be used associated with urgent action, it had been made several times before.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine...

Your points could just as well reaffirm the theory that this is coordinated disinfo, could they not?

> This has been vouched for by multiple people with contacts in the FSB

I've only seen this being vouched by one guy on Twitter (Christo Grozev), or maybe I'm missing something? It seems very authentic, just very weird that an FSB guy would publicly post something like this.

That is who I'm referring to, yes.

It was sent to a contact who then published it on their behalf. They were operating as a whistleblower, as I understand it.

I just had a flight of fancy; a russian intelligence agent who is worn out and somewhat cynical. I suspect most whistleblowers would probably prefer not to have a "codename", but it brought back memories of books I read when younger; and the name "Smileskiy" came to mind. Maybe the name might raise a sardonic chuckle to its new owner.

Good point about the news of nuclear weapons. I missed the fact that this post was published before the news went live. It is conceivable that Ukrainian intelligence could know about these plans, but this post being a genuine FSB leak is a much more probable explanation.

For what it's worth, the talk about Ukrainian nuclear weapons was in Russian internet before this letter appeared. The idea doesn't originate from it.

(Not writing this to suggest anything about its authenticity, just adding information)

The Russians are using the old "Saddam Hussein has WMDs" meme. Just replace Saddam with Zelenski and throw in the "fighting facsism" theme to reuse some Cold War propaganda that the Soviets were brainwashing everyone East of the Iron Curtain with.

when was the last time bellingcat published anything that was not in favour of the western spin? Perhaps the houthi drone strike, but even then you could view it as downplaying houthi's capabilities.

The claimed "fact" that bellingcat somehow has FSB contacts that are willing to verify material seems like even bigger stretch.

Welcome to this website!

Yes, they publish very little that would upset their backers, but the nice thing about them is that they tend to share evidence. When there is not much public evidence (like in this case) they are the first to say so.

Grozev was a traditional investigative journalist before he worked for Bellingcat. They have also worked with The Insider and many other traditional investigative journalism outfits in the east. It is not at all implausible that they should be able to contact two FSB people for feedback (especially when one of them is retired).

Had you actually read Bellingcat recently, you’d be aware of their huge EU Frontex investigation

> Ukraine psy ops aren't as long. Longer = more chances for mistakes

But this piece isn't really long in information density. What mistakes could be made? This piece says very little except asserting that Russia cannot win this war and that their intelligence analysts were duped into preparing scenarios they were told wouldn't be used in practice. This can be told in a single paragraph or stretched with prose and "color", which is what happened here.

The piece is very short in this sense, and has very little content that could be botched by mistake.

Bellingcat is just as independent and believable as CrowdStrike or ThreatConnect. The usual CIA proxies with the business to verify lies and propaganda.

In this case it sounds like QAnon, just a bit better.

Whether fake or not, it is definitely adding some perspectives I didn't see up until now. For example, I have not considered the possibility of Kadyrov position not being very stable if he loses (or already lost) his soldiers in something that was supposed to be short and glorious war.

Same with how does Russia keep their Syria effort supplied when their logistics in Ukraine are already stretched.

So this is definitely written by some analyst, but who knows if from FSB.

If you would like to have more background information, here is a great thread about Chechen history and Kadirovs rise to power in view of this conflict. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1497612331953577991.html

I would recommend Kamil Galeev threads to anyone interested in the history of Russia and Ukraine, he has written a ton of threads about a lot of different aspects to the Russian/Ukrainian conflict, which all look very well researched to me. I'm not sure I agree with all of his conclusions though.

Here is the meta thread for all the sub threads: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711

Unrolled twitter threads:

1. Why Russia will lose this war? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1497993363076915204.html

2. Information Warfare https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498313116312080384.html

3. Kadyrov's kingdom https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1497612331953577991.html

4. "Ukrainian Nazism" - Putin's take https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1497306746330697738.html

5. How Putin came to power https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1496711906412933121.html

6. FSB: State Security as the core of Putin's regime https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1496506490202513413.html

7. Valentina Matvienko: a sociological portrait of Putin's elite https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1495790874235744258.html

8. Isn't Ukraine just a separatist Russian province? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1495469553136066572.html

9. Ukrainian Geography https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1495200579919958021.html

10. A crash introduction into ethnopolitical situation in Ukraine https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1494334415446577153.html

11. Russian demography https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1493602653586264076.html

12. Russian army https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1493968165717561346.html

13. Why Putin is afraid of Ukraine so much https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1492960693737463813.html

14. Russian assabiyahs https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1492549093771694082.html

15. The Horde and Russian Imperiogenesis https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1492164056962195457.html

16. Why honour matters - The War in Ukraine in American context https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498692916511924232.html

17. Russian parliamentarism https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1499048492358111235.html

18. VDV: Why Russia lost this war https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1499377671855292423.html

19. Russian exports https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1499855858456567809.html

20. Dynamics of nuclear deterrence https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1500168838356381703.html

Who is Kamil Galeev?

Two Clicks

"Galina Starovoitova Fellow @WoodrowWilsonCenter . MLitt in Early Modern History, St Andrews. MA in China Studies, Peking University"

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