Fun fact. The soviets and now Russians have a big hand in promoting this misinformation.
https://www.nord-stream.com/press-info/press-releases/conser...
That looks more like greenwashing than having a hand in promoting misinformation.
What do you mean by Russiagate exactly? (As in, which one?)
I honestly did not think it was debatable at this point that Putin's and Trump's interests were very vocally aligned. It's like you and I live in different multi-verses yet are somehow communicating. How truly bizarre.
This has to be one of the most blatant moments: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44852812
He also criticised Europeans for not meeting NATO defence obligations, although whether he would have been fine with them just increasing their expenditures or if this was just a rhetorical point to find support for leaving NATO is perhaps only known to him.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/russian-funded-en...
China is doing similar to prevent mines for rare earth minerals being built in the United States
"He declined to give details of those operations, saying: “That is my interpretation.”" LMAO
Firstly, it's incredibly difficult to track funding for entities like these, so when someone like the NATO chief isn't citing sources, it's probably because the sources aren't for the public to know.
Second, this is something that Russia has done dozens of times. It should be shocking to you if they aren't funding this sort of narrative in the countries they want to be dependent on them.
(And, yes, this kind of geopolitically-motivated propaganda works in all directions.)
https://www.nord-stream.com/press-info/press-releases/conser...
Many countries & people fund those NGOs, either thinking they are helping the environment, or they have ulterior motives (promoting their investments).
The NGOs are tricking people, they want to reduce nuclear to further solar/wind because they have investments in it.
Russia is playing into the NGOs because they have the same end goal, wanting to reduce nuclear, but for their nat. gas. investments.
2. Russia has long planned on a 'pivot to Asia' in the event Europe does ween itself off of natural gas. Not that that has panned out very well so far; the Power of Siberia pipeline has reportedly been quite unprofitable, allegedly because of the nepotism on the project regarding the contractors. Which brings me on to the next point...
3. It is a mistake to assume that leaders of countries are competent or their interests are inherently linked to 'national interests' or 'geopolitical strategy' (principal-agent problem).
3a. Even if Russia is out of money in 50 or 100 years because of some green energy revolution, nobody running the show today will be alive enough to care about it.
3b. Natural resources are easier and more profitable to exploit than human resources. If you want to build a technology-intensive industry, you need to keep the talent happy (or otherwise prevent them from leaving as the Soviets did) and keep up on innovation against competitors. E.g., Roscosmos has been coasting for decades off of the reliability of Soyuz, but have they designed anything good lately? SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and several other startups present a real risk to their business.
If you have something in the ground you can dig up, you don't have to keep anybody happy, you might have competition, but changes in the market won't come as any surprise. You don't even have to have local expertise in resource extraction - just hire Exxon to do it for you, like they did in Sakhalin. Whereas if you want to extract money from people, you're going to have to tax them, and if you do that too much, they'll get upset or leave.
If you're running a country and want to personally enrich yourself, the best way to do so is to prioritise resource extraction and exploitation.
You have a powerful misinformation team that can sway global opinion.
Out of all objectives that further Russian power, you have decided on the squashing new nuclear plants.
Why this and not some other objective? Why can't they sway the global opinion on Ukraine? Surely they are trying.
The Overton window is a thing, right? "Nuclear power might be really unsafe" is a much easier sell in the public discourse than "it's OK to invade your peaceful neighbors".
I mean, there is a sizeable minority who have been convinced by Russian propaganda on this; typically they refer to Euromaidan as a coup, blame the invasion on Ukraine for not implementing Minsk, claim Ukraine is banning the Russian language, and so forth.
If propaganda can bump this from zero to twenty percent, why not from 40 to 60?
Russia buying a politician would hopefully be a huge story. Russia buying advertising in the US to push for dis-unity or their abhorrent propaganda about Ukraine being full of nazis or that 1 billion dollars is a lot to pay (in old, out of date, expensive to decommission hardware) to absolutely defang the largest rival we had last century is derogatorily labeled as "Russiagate" and "conspiracy theory" and "liberal brainworms".
it's not like it's a team of five guys slogging away in the propaganda mines with pick axes. they can pursue a number of goals simultaneously, limited mostly by budget and probably other geopolitical concerns, rather than video game-esque restrictions on the total number of things they can propagandize about simultaneously.
> Why this and not some other objective? Why can't they sway the global opinion on Ukraine? Surely they are trying.
they've had a lot longer to work on nuclear than the current invasion.
they've also had plenty of success in the past with ukraine-related misinformation, see walter duranty.
You do both. Europeans are much more easily convinced that nuclear energy is scary.