Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

[lordroel]

Jan 18, 2019 19:47:33 GMT James G said:

Sixteen

A court in St. Petersburg sentenced Professor Smith (* note 1) to three years imprisonment for the crimes he had been found guilty of. The British national had been granted the speediest of trials and it was one where he had little rights within. Justice for historical revisionism which defamed the Russian people, like it was for those charged with corruption and treason, was only going to have one outcome. That outcome was to be found guilty and to be punished accordingly. The history lecturer who had openly stated that Soviet soldiers during the Great Patriotic War had committed war crimes – the rape of tens of thousands of women & girls in Germany being foremost among them – was only one of many caught up in this latest crackdown which was a small part of a campaign of whipping up nationalistic feelings nationwide. His was the most high-profile case though with Professor Smith being an international figure. He had said these things before Putin, ruling by decree in all but name, had declared such comments to be a crime. This retroactive punishment was therefore the highlight of foreign attention upon the issue of the detention of Professor Smith. Russia was breaking with so many international norms with this behaviour. Other dictatorial regimes would have been a bit more creative and tried to hide behind lies with regard to procedural matters in doing something like this. Putin was doing no such thing. There were dozens of cases such as this where the actions taken by the Soviet Union and the modern Russian Federation which had been criticised in academia and the media afterwards were reacted to with arrests made and prison sentences given to those who had made such statements. The corruption charges against others, plus the treason accusations with regard to those supposedly behind the Medvedev assassination, were also working their way at rapid pace through the courts. There were other foreign nationals caught up in this though they in almost all other cases concerned those from former Soviet states. The Briton given three years in prison for something such as this, and the manner in which it was done, shone the international spotlight on Russia though. There had been a flight of foreign nationals out of Russia following Putin’s declaration of martial law and this only increased with events such as the conviction of Professor Smith. Many countries made public statements decrying such an act and once again urged their citizens to leave Russia. Few consulates in cities other than Moscow where Western diplomatic facilities where remained open now and at the embassies in the capital, there was only skeleton representation after non-essential staff and all family members had left. Employees of non-governmental organisations and businesses which were left operating within Russia generally followed this advice. Russia wasn’t a safe place to be for Westerners to be.

The Brown government in London protested as much as it possibly could to what happened with Professor Smith. The whole thing was recognised fully for what it was. This was highlighted in public statements, comments to the media, and remarks made in Parliament. Nothing could be done for him though. The pressure was kept up to keep international attention on Russia while at the same time make sure that no other Briton ended up facing a similar fate. In response, the prime minister had his government expel a multitude of Russian diplomats and instructed his foreign secretary to begin an extension to international efforts to punish the Kremlin for the actions taken here and with other issues. Miliband got to work on that though by this stage there were few things left that could be done where there would be multinational agreement to act any further than already done. Russia was still exporting oil and gas but that was limited and ‘complications among allies’ meant that it would continue to do so to several countries for the time being. At the same time, there were further matters when it come to Russian activities which concerned the Brown government. The exile community centred on London – those who had been in Britain for some time and the new arrivals – continued to make a lot of noise as well as engaging in disputes between themselves. They had the attention of the media plus many members of Parliament and quite honestly revelled in that too. The prime minister referred (in private) to the two groupings as ‘Berezovsky’s mob’ and ‘Nemtsov’s circle’. There were others but these were the two primary gatherings of Russians who used London as a base of operations to not just speak out against the Kremlin but actively plot and scheme against Putin to bring him down. Outside of these exiles themselves, they had their supporters and their critics. Among the latter, there was a lot of open displeasure from the critics at the actions taken by the exiles, especially Berezovsky’s mob. Saying and doing what they did naturally attracted the attention of Moscow. Kozak really was a far different character from his predecessor Lavrov: the new foreign minister issued threats against these people in response to their open talk of regime change. Moreover, he also repeated earlier warnings over the ‘dire consequences’ which Britain would suffer if any of these plotted actions spoken about took place with a base of operations for them being London. Some of those diplomats expelled from the Russian embassy were suspected of spying upon these exiles while another was strongly suspected to be preparing to kill Berezovsky within days of his forced expulsion from the country. Both groups of exiles were considered by the Brown government to be in very real danger. At Heathrow Airport, another suspected Russian hitman, this time without diplomatic cover and posing as a Belorussian tourist, was detained and put back on a flight to Moscow. MI-5 and the Met. Police found numbers of their officers pulled from anti-terror tasks to safeguard the lives of these opponents of the Kremlin. For one of those police officers, the end result for him personally would be fatal.

Detective Constable Jones (* note 2) was shot and killed on November 12th. The police officer was with the Met.’s Counter-Terrorism Command – also known as SO15, this element of Specialist Operations dealt with espionage matters too – and was an accidental crossfire victim of a shooting incident between a member of Berezovsky’s mob and a gunman sent by the Kremlin. DC Jones was unarmed when killed. The married officer with two young children received urgent medial attention but died in hospital from gunshot wounds; a bodyguard for the exile in question was also killed in this shootout in leafy Berkshire. As to the gunman, he was an SVR officer who’d entered the country on a false Ukrainian passport and got back out on a Slovakian one despite the best efforts of the British authorities to catch him. The entry and egress concerning him was the only part of this SVR mission which went to plan. Russia’s foreign intelligence agency was playing big with many tasks undertaken ranging from activities in Britain to elsewhere in the world too. That Chappaqua Connection was where it remained having most success yet there had been a recent expansion in scale of operations. The SVR had people in America and others elsewhere throughout Europe. Some were gathering intelligence while others were working to sew discord among the West in their standoff with Russia. Operations were going wrong in many areas despite many assurances given to the Kremlin that they were meeting success. The SVR was punching above its weight: this wasn’t the KGB of the Cold War era in terms of capability no matter how many boasts were made back in Moscow. The shooting in Britain was designed as ‘clean’ operation with a big payoff; that didn’t include the killing of DC Jones. The failure here would have many consequences in international relations though also later down the line for SVR operations through the coming months.


Imprisoning Professor Smith and shooting DC Jones did the Kremlin no favours in more than just Anglo-Russian relations. Britain was absolutely furious and the scale of public anger they whipped up was in many ways similar to what they were trying to achieve at home with their own people. That certainly wasn’t an intention of Putin. Nor was causing the diplomatic actions and military readiness preparations afterwards.

Senior British politicians have the attachment ‘the Right Honourable’ after their name when printed in official documents. To many people, whether they were honourable was a matter of contention! However, the point was that those considered to be such were because they were members of the Privy Council. Members of the government and the top ranks opposition were all technically advisers to the monarch who remained head of state. Membership of the Privy Council wasn’t a sinecure post: it was rather significant. Ministers shared information with their shadows with the other parties on Privy Council terms. This was done because the opposition was meant to be a government-in-waiting and there were things that their leaders should know. What they were informed of wasn’t meant to be used for petty party politics. Through the year, as events in Russia defied all previous worst fears, Brown authorised the extension of information sharing with the opposition through the Privy Council on matters relating to events there which affected Britain; Blair had done the same in the lead-up to the Iraq War. David Cameron and Nick Clegg each agreed to Brown’s request that these matters remain confidential especially since they concerned the highest matters of state. Shadow spokespeople with foreign, defence, home affairs and also national security briefs met with their counterparts from the Brown government or were briefed by civil servants. Despite the promises given by the leaders of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to the Labour leader, there were leaks made from their teams. These were unattributable to those involved and thus came with plausible deniability. Moreover, in several exchanges of unpleasantness behind the scenes, there came counter-allegations that the members of the Brown government were using events concerning Russia for their own end too and making leaks of their own. The acrimony over these leaks brought about an end to much of the information sharing beyond the basics by early November though the shooting of DC Jones the saw a course change and further meeting of Brown, Cameron and Clegg where they all once agreed to cut out the partisanship at a time like this. The country would be going to the polls next year and it didn’t look like before then the Russia issue was just going to vanish into the night. Admiral Lord West, Labour’s minister of state for security & counter-terrorism, established a good working relationship with his Conservative shadow in the form of Baroness Neville-Jones in the aftermath of the killing of DC Jones. At the other end of the scale of what was meant to be non-partisan cooperation on matters of national importance, the relationship between Bob Ainsworth and Liam Fox was fraught with continued acrimony.

Fox was the shadow defence secretary and was informed by Ainsworth ahead of the announcement that the Royal Navy was going to postpone next year’s planned refit of the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. This exchange of information was done to build cross-party support. From the Fox camp, there came comment made the very next day in anonymous terms in a newspaper article with regard to Conservative urging to do just this in light of international tensions where Russian military exercises had been conducted in the forceful manner that they had been against Britain. The political interpretation was that the Conservatives were arguing that this should be done and it looked to Labour that once the announcement was made that this was being done, Fox could claim that the Conservatives had forced this to occur. Brown made an angry call to Cameron with the latter denying that this had been the way of things; he said that the Conservatives weren’t playing politics with Britain’s national security. In response, Ainsworth would no longer meet Fox personally and instead do everything through civil servants. He made his announcement to the House of Commons concerning the matter of the Illustrious’ delayed refit and commented that this was a ‘reasonable precaution’. Fox stood up in reply to the statement and questioned whether the government was going to bring the Fleet Air Arm’s Sea Harriers back out of storage and fly them from that carrier and the others in service instead of just the RAF’s ground attack Harriers. That hadn’t been covered in the Privy Council meetings and was a valid question… but it was all politics really. The whole issue over a delayed refit of one small aircraft carrier and which aircraft would fly from it ignited a political storm which on the face of it, it really shouldn’t have. Journalists were then briefed on the background of the dispute between the minister and his shadow here, thus forcing out into the open the whole series of inter-party cooperation behind the scenes on the matter of Britain’s readiness to meet Russia’s aggressive behaviour. In turn, Russia declared the whole Illustrious matter to be ‘provocative’ and a ‘challenge which would be met’. Despite all of this domestic political rancour, the prime minister was meeting with Cameron and Clegg again, plus authorising more disclosures of information to them, before the end of the month once again concerning Russia. This was to do with the late 2009 simultaneous situations in both the Baltic States and the Ukraine.



(* note 1) - fictional person, placeholder name
(* note 2) - as above

Another food update James G

[sandyman]

Good update as always. It’s ironic that in your time lines I’m either posted to Germany or in this one posted to SHAPE quits funny really in the time lines so far I recon that I’ve been killed by a blood thirsty Spetnaz or Tank Commander for this time line I’ll go for Spetnaz please. If the time line goes right I’ll get a chance of using really really great personal weapon Mr Browning the fact it was a worn out peace of rubbish does not matter.

[James G]

Jan 19, 2019 8:03:27 GMT lordroel said:

Jan 18, 2019 19:47:33 GMT James G said:

Sixteen

A court in St. Petersburg sentenced Professor Smith (* note 1) to three years imprisonment for the crimes he had been found guilty of. The British national had been granted the speediest of trials and it was one where he had little rights within. Justice for historical revisionism which defamed the Russian people, like it was for those charged with corruption and treason, was only going to have one outcome. That outcome was to be found guilty and to be punished accordingly. The history lecturer who had openly stated that Soviet soldiers during the Great Patriotic War had committed war crimes – the rape of tens of thousands of women & girls in Germany being foremost among them – was only one of many caught up in this latest crackdown which was a small part of a campaign of whipping up nationalistic feelings nationwide. His was the most high-profile case though with Professor Smith being an international figure. He had said these things before Putin, ruling by decree in all but name, had declared such comments to be a crime. This retroactive punishment was therefore the highlight of foreign attention upon the issue of the detention of Professor Smith. Russia was breaking with so many international norms with this behaviour. Other dictatorial regimes would have been a bit more creative and tried to hide behind lies with regard to procedural matters in doing something like this. Putin was doing no such thing. There were dozens of cases such as this where the actions taken by the Soviet Union and the modern Russian Federation which had been criticised in academia and the media afterwards were reacted to with arrests made and prison sentences given to those who had made such statements. The corruption charges against others, plus the treason accusations with regard to those supposedly behind the Medvedev assassination, were also working their way at rapid pace through the courts. There were other foreign nationals caught up in this though they in almost all other cases concerned those from former Soviet states. The Briton given three years in prison for something such as this, and the manner in which it was done, shone the international spotlight on Russia though. There had been a flight of foreign nationals out of Russia following Putin’s declaration of martial law and this only increased with events such as the conviction of Professor Smith. Many countries made public statements decrying such an act and once again urged their citizens to leave Russia. Few consulates in cities other than Moscow where Western diplomatic facilities where remained open now and at the embassies in the capital, there was only skeleton representation after non-essential staff and all family members had left. Employees of non-governmental organisations and businesses which were left operating within Russia generally followed this advice. Russia wasn’t a safe place to be for Westerners to be.

The Brown government in London protested as much as it possibly could to what happened with Professor Smith. The whole thing was recognised fully for what it was. This was highlighted in public statements, comments to the media, and remarks made in Parliament. Nothing could be done for him though. The pressure was kept up to keep international attention on Russia while at the same time make sure that no other Briton ended up facing a similar fate. In response, the prime minister had his government expel a multitude of Russian diplomats and instructed his foreign secretary to begin an extension to international efforts to punish the Kremlin for the actions taken here and with other issues. Miliband got to work on that though by this stage there were few things left that could be done where there would be multinational agreement to act any further than already done. Russia was still exporting oil and gas but that was limited and ‘complications among allies’ meant that it would continue to do so to several countries for the time being. At the same time, there were further matters when it come to Russian activities which concerned the Brown government. The exile community centred on London – those who had been in Britain for some time and the new arrivals – continued to make a lot of noise as well as engaging in disputes between themselves. They had the attention of the media plus many members of Parliament and quite honestly revelled in that too. The prime minister referred (in private) to the two groupings as ‘Berezovsky’s mob’ and ‘Nemtsov’s circle’. There were others but these were the two primary gatherings of Russians who used London as a base of operations to not just speak out against the Kremlin but actively plot and scheme against Putin to bring him down. Outside of these exiles themselves, they had their supporters and their critics. Among the latter, there was a lot of open displeasure from the critics at the actions taken by the exiles, especially Berezovsky’s mob. Saying and doing what they did naturally attracted the attention of Moscow. Kozak really was a far different character from his predecessor Lavrov: the new foreign minister issued threats against these people in response to their open talk of regime change. Moreover, he also repeated earlier warnings over the ‘dire consequences’ which Britain would suffer if any of these plotted actions spoken about took place with a base of operations for them being London. Some of those diplomats expelled from the Russian embassy were suspected of spying upon these exiles while another was strongly suspected to be preparing to kill Berezovsky within days of his forced expulsion from the country. Both groups of exiles were considered by the Brown government to be in very real danger. At Heathrow Airport, another suspected Russian hitman, this time without diplomatic cover and posing as a Belorussian tourist, was detained and put back on a flight to Moscow. MI-5 and the Met. Police found numbers of their officers pulled from anti-terror tasks to safeguard the lives of these opponents of the Kremlin. For one of those police officers, the end result for him personally would be fatal.

Detective Constable Jones (* note 2) was shot and killed on November 12th. The police officer was with the Met.’s Counter-Terrorism Command – also known as SO15, this element of Specialist Operations dealt with espionage matters too – and was an accidental crossfire victim of a shooting incident between a member of Berezovsky’s mob and a gunman sent by the Kremlin. DC Jones was unarmed when killed. The married officer with two young children received urgent medial attention but died in hospital from gunshot wounds; a bodyguard for the exile in question was also killed in this shootout in leafy Berkshire. As to the gunman, he was an SVR officer who’d entered the country on a false Ukrainian passport and got back out on a Slovakian one despite the best efforts of the British authorities to catch him. The entry and egress concerning him was the only part of this SVR mission which went to plan. Russia’s foreign intelligence agency was playing big with many tasks undertaken ranging from activities in Britain to elsewhere in the world too. That Chappaqua Connection was where it remained having most success yet there had been a recent expansion in scale of operations. The SVR had people in America and others elsewhere throughout Europe. Some were gathering intelligence while others were working to sew discord among the West in their standoff with Russia. Operations were going wrong in many areas despite many assurances given to the Kremlin that they were meeting success. The SVR was punching above its weight: this wasn’t the KGB of the Cold War era in terms of capability no matter how many boasts were made back in Moscow. The shooting in Britain was designed as ‘clean’ operation with a big payoff; that didn’t include the killing of DC Jones. The failure here would have many consequences in international relations though also later down the line for SVR operations through the coming months.


Imprisoning Professor Smith and shooting DC Jones did the Kremlin no favours in more than just Anglo-Russian relations. Britain was absolutely furious and the scale of public anger they whipped up was in many ways similar to what they were trying to achieve at home with their own people. That certainly wasn’t an intention of Putin. Nor was causing the diplomatic actions and military readiness preparations afterwards.

Senior British politicians have the attachment ‘the Right Honourable’ after their name when printed in official documents. To many people, whether they were honourable was a matter of contention! However, the point was that those considered to be such were because they were members of the Privy Council. Members of the government and the top ranks opposition were all technically advisers to the monarch who remained head of state. Membership of the Privy Council wasn’t a sinecure post: it was rather significant. Ministers shared information with their shadows with the other parties on Privy Council terms. This was done because the opposition was meant to be a government-in-waiting and there were things that their leaders should know. What they were informed of wasn’t meant to be used for petty party politics. Through the year, as events in Russia defied all previous worst fears, Brown authorised the extension of information sharing with the opposition through the Privy Council on matters relating to events there which affected Britain; Blair had done the same in the lead-up to the Iraq War. David Cameron and Nick Clegg each agreed to Brown’s request that these matters remain confidential especially since they concerned the highest matters of state. Shadow spokespeople with foreign, defence, home affairs and also national security briefs met with their counterparts from the Brown government or were briefed by civil servants. Despite the promises given by the leaders of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to the Labour leader, there were leaks made from their teams. These were unattributable to those involved and thus came with plausible deniability. Moreover, in several exchanges of unpleasantness behind the scenes, there came counter-allegations that the members of the Brown government were using events concerning Russia for their own end too and making leaks of their own. The acrimony over these leaks brought about an end to much of the information sharing beyond the basics by early November though the shooting of DC Jones the saw a course change and further meeting of Brown, Cameron and Clegg where they all once agreed to cut out the partisanship at a time like this. The country would be going to the polls next year and it didn’t look like before then the Russia issue was just going to vanish into the night. Admiral Lord West, Labour’s minister of state for security & counter-terrorism, established a good working relationship with his Conservative shadow in the form of Baroness Neville-Jones in the aftermath of the killing of DC Jones. At the other end of the scale of what was meant to be non-partisan cooperation on matters of national importance, the relationship between Bob Ainsworth and Liam Fox was fraught with continued acrimony.

Fox was the shadow defence secretary and was informed by Ainsworth ahead of the announcement that the Royal Navy was going to postpone next year’s planned refit of the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. This exchange of information was done to build cross-party support. From the Fox camp, there came comment made the very next day in anonymous terms in a newspaper article with regard to Conservative urging to do just this in light of international tensions where Russian military exercises had been conducted in the forceful manner that they had been against Britain. The political interpretation was that the Conservatives were arguing that this should be done and it looked to Labour that once the announcement was made that this was being done, Fox could claim that the Conservatives had forced this to occur. Brown made an angry call to Cameron with the latter denying that this had been the way of things; he said that the Conservatives weren’t playing politics with Britain’s national security. In response, Ainsworth would no longer meet Fox personally and instead do everything through civil servants. He made his announcement to the House of Commons concerning the matter of the Illustrious’ delayed refit and commented that this was a ‘reasonable precaution’. Fox stood up in reply to the statement and questioned whether the government was going to bring the Fleet Air Arm’s Sea Harriers back out of storage and fly them from that carrier and the others in service instead of just the RAF’s ground attack Harriers. That hadn’t been covered in the Privy Council meetings and was a valid question… but it was all politics really. The whole issue over a delayed refit of one small aircraft carrier and which aircraft would fly from it ignited a political storm which on the face of it, it really shouldn’t have. Journalists were then briefed on the background of the dispute between the minister and his shadow here, thus forcing out into the open the whole series of inter-party cooperation behind the scenes on the matter of Britain’s readiness to meet Russia’s aggressive behaviour. In turn, Russia declared the whole Illustrious matter to be ‘provocative’ and a ‘challenge which would be met’. Despite all of this domestic political rancour, the prime minister was meeting with Cameron and Clegg again, plus authorising more disclosures of information to them, before the end of the month once again concerning Russia. This was to do with the late 2009 simultaneous situations in both the Baltic States and the Ukraine.



(* note 1) - fictional person, placeholder name
(* note 2) - as above

Another food update James G

'food' !?
I'm going to presume you mean 'good' and I give my thanks!

Jan 19, 2019 14:07:59 GMT sandyman said:

Good update as always. It’s ironic that in your time lines I’m either posted to Germany or in this one posted to SHAPE quits funny really in the time lines so far I recon that I’ve been killed by a blood thirsty Spetnaz or Tank Commander for this time line I’ll go for Spetnaz please. If the time line goes right I’ll get a chance of using really really great personal weapon Mr Browning the fact it was a worn out peace of rubbish does not matter.

Thank you.
There is a strong chance you will get your exact 'wish' with this.

[lordroel]

Jan 19, 2019 15:34:25 GMT James G said:

Jan 19, 2019 8:03:27 GMT lordroel said:

Another food update James G

'food' !?
I'm going to presume you mean 'good' and I give my thanks!

Dam you letter F.

[forcon]

Seventeen

An uneasy mood was present in the capitals of Europe over Christmas 2009. The reason for this was the apparent downward spiral of relations between NATO and Russia. The withdrawal of western ambassadors from Moscow was a fundamentally huge step backwards, diplomatically speaking. Even during the Cold War, diplomatic niceties and rules had been respected by both sides; the removal of such senior figures as ambassadors was practically unheard of as a result of diplomatic spats between nations with superpower or ‘great power’ status. With the shooting of a police officer in the United Kingdom and the continued imprisonment of a British professor in the notorious Lefortovo Prison, the whole post-Cold War world order was falling apart. Further concern hit the west when Russia had held the enormous WINTER STORM training exercise, during which Moscow had openly practiced an invasion of NATO territory without even attempting to conceal this fact. There was a divide growing in NATO over the nature and scale of the threat, however. The United States, Great Britain, France, Poland and all three of the Baltic States had considered Russia to be a hostile power since the MVD had slaughtered protestors in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the winter of 2008. Germany, Italy, Denmark, Spain, and other members of the Alliance, however, felt that while NATO territory should be protected, a confrontation with Russia in a military sense was extremely unlikely barring an overreaction by both sides. The hawks argued that refusing to strengthen NATO’s commitment to its eastern flank made an armed conflict more likely as a Russia that was facing economic collapse might seek to expand westwards. Diplomatic rivalries were aired as several meetings between NATO’s military and civilian leadership took place in Brussels.

There would soon be a need for further action to be taken though. All three of the Baltic States – particularly Estonia and Latvia – had significant minorities of Russian speakers inhabiting their countries, and many of those people felt they were being denied the same rights as naturalised citizens. This idea was not without merit. For example, the area of Daugavpils, laying in northern Latvia, was one of the poorest in the entirety of the European Union. Moscow saw an opportunity here to undermine an already fragile NATO by stirring up dissent within those regions. Over the Christmas period, a series of protests took place in both Estonia and Latvia. They involved mostly Russian-speakers who already lived in the Baltic States. Most of these demonstrations took place in the Ida-Viru and Harju regions of Estonia, as well as in the Daugavpils area in the neighbouring Latvia. The police services of Estonia and Latvia were not the MVD; with a few notable exceptions, they behaved very well under stressful conditions, allowing the protests to take place peacefully without violent intervention. In part this was due to the need to maintain NATO support; pulling off a similar massacre to those committed by the MVD would not only invite a Russian invasion, it would also be likely to drive away the two countries’ NATO allies. Nevertheless, there was some violence throughout the end of December, particularly in Latvia. Western intelligence agencies new full-well that this was all being sponsored by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence organisation, directly subordinate to the Chief of the General Staff. The faces of several of the more violent rioters had been recorded by surveillance cameras, and analysis by Frances’ DGSE had discovered that some of these individuals were former paratroopers and naval infantrymen who were now in the service of the Moran Security Group, a private military company run from within Russia. Further research would soon point to the fact that several million dollars had been wired to the Moran Security Group from an offshore company that the U.S. National Security Agency had long-since suspected of being a front run by the GRU to find deniable operations around the world.

The riots died down relatively quickly and without any major violent incidents. The Kremlin was all for splitting up NATO, but it had to be done covertly. Besides, Russia wasn’t get ready for military action that wasn’t totally necessary, and President Putin didn’t want to stir up his own people into a patriotic, pro-war fervour at a time like this. A second operation was carried out by the GRU as a way of testing NATO’s resolve before such active measures were implemented once again. This time it was not a physical attack but rather an offensive operation run through cyberspace. This time, Lithuania would become the victim rather than its two more easterly neighbours. The Lithuanian State Security Department, or VSD, was tasked with investigating and eliminating threats to the country’s national security and sovereignty. That remit was a far-reaching one, which gave the VSD the authorisation to carry out operations ranging from passport checks to investigating political corruption to counterintelligence work. The State Security Department came under a vicious cyber-attack on the first day of the New Year, one which exposed hundreds of documents to public viewing. Much of it was mundane information, classified as secret only by procedure. There was some information about flaws in Lithuania’s border security that was leaked, along with information about a pair of corrupt Members of Parliament who were under investigation by the VSD. It was news-worthy, but it was hardly the leak of the century. The police raided a flat in Klaipeda and arrested the individual in question, soon discovering for themselves that he had been on Moscow’s payroll.

NATO’s North Atlantic Council met several days later. It was a trying time for the alliance, with many nations split on how to respond, and several governments facing up-and-coming elections. Those that were going to have to take their nations’ to the polls in the coming months didn’t want to rock the boat by taking unnecessary military action. The British Labour government under Prime Minister Gordon Brown was particularly affected by this issue after Brown’s predecessor had, in the eyes of many, blindly followed the Americans into Iraq. Though there was outrage in Britain over Moscow’s recent actions, another bout of military adventurism was bound to be unpopular with many of the voters in the aftermath of the Iraq War. Issues such as this, though perhaps not as openly, also plagued many other European governments. Britain would agree to a military deployment should NATO decide to go down that road though; Foreign Secretary Miliband advised the Prime Minister to make the decision to do so if and when NATO’s political decision-making body could agree on the specifics. When NATO’s military leadership confronted the politicians with a strategy aimed at preventing Russian aggression, Turkey, Germany and Italy were the three biggest naysayers. Those governments, led by President Abdullah Gul, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, feared that any significant military moves were likely to push Moscow over the edge at the risk of causing a hot war between the alliance and Russia. The Germans had perhaps the most to lose, with their imports of petroleum coming largely from Russia. Yet, with WINTER STORM having only just finished and with Moscow having been responsible for two separate operations against the Baltic States both in cyberspace and in the streets, even the most dovish NATO countries were willing to make at least a small military commitment to the defence of Eastern Europe. The idea was that the deployment of a brigade of NATO troops to one of the Baltic States would deter any future aggression by serving as a ‘tripwire’ force.

Once the North Atlantic Council had decided on the plan to deploy a mechanised infantry brigade to the Baltic States, the actual military decision-making process fell into the hands of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). Admiral James Stavridis and his staff had had plans to do such a thing shelved since 2008, but they needed updating based on the actual forces that would be made available to commanders on the ground. Already, Tallinn, Riga & Vilnuis had been consulted about the plans and were very much in favour of them. The headquarters of the Baltic Mechanised Infantry Brigade (BMIB) was stood up at Latvia’s Lielvarde Airbase shortly after the decision was made back in Brussels. The brigade was to be stationed in Latvia, retaining the ability to deploy eastwards or westwards into Estonia and Lithuania respectively. It would include three multinational battalion-sized battlegroups, with one each operating under British, Czech, and German command. Admiral Stavridis’ latest plans called for the brigade to have troops from as many as nine Allied countries. As well as the three countries which would contribute a battalion headquarters, there were to be deployments of varying sizes from Croatia, Denmark, Romania, Canada, Holland, and Slovenia. The tripwire force would be a warning to Moscow that any military encroachment of the Baltic States would by default result in the deaths of NATO soldiers and thus bring the whole alliance into battle. There was also a smaller American contribution from United States Army Europe (USAREUR) in Germany. Though not to be deployed on a permanent basis, a squadron of soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment would soon deploy to Poland to carry out exercises alongside the BMIB. Deploying into Latvia – and also into Estonia and Lithuania, though the Pentagon neglected to inform the press of this fact – were a number of American commandos from the Europe-based 10th Special Forces Group. The ‘bread-and-butter’, so to speak, of the Green Berets, was to train, equip, and lead local resistance forces in enemy-held territory, thus making them an effective tool at creating behind-the-lines resistance should Russia ever really go ahead and invade the Baltic States. Over three hundred members of the 10th SFG, virtually all of them veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, would find themselves in the Baltic States in one capacity or another. American military intelligence personnel from the highly-classified Intelligence Support Activity, the ISA, were also flown into Latvia and Estonia. The ISA had been previously codenamed ‘Grey Fox’, and was being deployed to the region to assist local intelligence assets in identifying and preventing potential GRU & SVR active measures.

Of course, the Kremlin played this up for all it was worth, and more. Russia Today & RIA Novosti both ran nightly news broadcasts of NATO soldiers – especially Germans – deploying into Latvia by air and rail, showing vast columns of tanks and armoured vehicles and asking how such a thing could possibly be for defensive purposes. Many of the shots showed on Russian television, which was now firmly under FSB control, were actually taken from earlier NATO exercises dating as far back as the Cold War in order to drum up fear and resentment amongst viewers. The idea was to bring support to the Russian government by rallying people to face an outside threat, and, at least in part, it was working. There were pro-Kremlin, anti-NATO rallies in several regions of Russia which were again recorded and shown on the evening news. The civilian populations of the Baltic States were generally receptive to the idea of NATO soldiers deploying to their homelands on a semi-permanent basis. It meant not only protection but also profits as off-duty soldiers would be spending their money in Latvian shops and bars. However, there was some unrest when more GRU-organised rallies took place against the deployment. Pro-Russian groups often gathered outside railway yards and airports were the soldiers from the west were landing, chanting for them to go home. As they had before, the police behaved themselves and little violence took place, but the size of some of the protests was a concern to NATO and to the Latvian government nonetheless.

*

Baltic Mechanised Infantry Brigade – HQ at Lielvarde Airbase, Latvia

British Battlegroup (Based upon the British Army’s 1st Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment - British, Croat and Danish contingents)
UK: Two infantry companies from 1 YORKS with Warrior IFVs.
UK: One tank squadron from RDG [Royal Dragoon Guards] with Challenger-2 MBTs.
UK: One artillery battery from 3 RHA [3rd Royal Horse Artillery] with AS-90 SPHs.
CR: One mechanised infantry company from Tigrovi Battalion with Patria-AMV AIFVs.
DN: One light recon squadron from 3 Guard Hussars Regiment with Piranha-3s & Eagle AFVs.

Czech Battlegroup (Based upon the Czech Land Forces’ 43rd Airborne Battalion - Canadian, Czech and Romanian contingents)
CZ: Two infantry companies from 43rd Battalion of airmobile troops.
CZ: One parachute reconnaissance company from 102nd Recon Battalion of special forces troops.
CA: One infantry company from 2 PPCLI of light troops.
RM: One infantry company from 30th Mountain Troops Battalion of light troops.

German Battlegroup (Based upon the German Army’s Panzergrenadier Battalion 371 - Dutch, German and Slovenian contingents)
GE: Two armoured infantry companies from PG Battalion 371 with Marder IFVs.
GE: One armoured company from Panzer Battalion 393 with Leopard-2 MBTs.
NL: One light infantry company from Limburg Rifles with Fennek AFVs.
NL: One artillery battery from 13th Brigade with PzH-2000 SPHs.
SV: One anti-tank company from 1st Brigade with Spike man-portable ATGMs.

Canadian Support Battalion (Based upon the Canadian Land Forces’ 1st Service Battalion - British, Canadian, Danish, Dutch and German contingents)
UK: One armoured engineer company.
UK: One medical company.
CN: One medical company.
CN: One supply company.
DN: One light engineer company.
NL: One supply company.
GE: One signals & communications company.

[forcon]

Credit for the Order of Battle goes to James.

[redrobin65]

Looks good, though I think that even with reinforcement, the Baltic Brigade will probably be wiped out in the event of a conflict.

[James G]

Jan 19, 2019 16:10:29 GMT redrobin65 said:

Looks good, though I think that even with reinforcement, the Baltic Brigade will probably be wiped out in the event of a conflict.

Yep, when I wrote the ORBAT, I was well-aware of that. There are just two companies of tanks there and neither the infantry nor artillery components are strong. As Forcon notes, it is a tripwire force.

[hussar01]

Its a great tripwire force. Everyone is aware that its purpose is to symbolize NATO resolve but also fight and die. The die part to act as the ultimate casus belli. No one expects them to stop an invasion, jsut to make the poltical cost very high. And the great part about including small countries like Croatia and Slovenia is to shame the big countries in doing something when the samll ones are willing to fight and die for NATO.

[forcon]

Jan 19, 2019 17:12:47 GMT hussar01 said:

Its a great tripwire force. Everyone is aware that its purpose is to symbolize NATO resolve but also fight and die. The die part to act as the ultimate casus belli. No one expects them to stop an invasion, jsut to make the poltical cost very high. And the great part about including small countries like Croatia and Slovenia is to shame the big countries in doing something when the samll ones are willing to fight and die for NATO.

That pretty much sums it up; when it all kicks off they will be in a very bad position geographically as well as numerically. There will be a lot going on before then, however...

[lordroel]

Jan 19, 2019 15:43:13 GMT forcon said:

Credit for the Order of Battle goes to James.

Well thank you James G for the Orbat and thank you for the update forcon

[Dan]

Kaunas not Vilnius?

[forcon]

Jan 20, 2019 11:45:45 GMT Dan said:

Kaunas not Vilnius?

That's my mistake, thanks for catching it.

[forcon]

Jan 19, 2019 21:45:07 GMT lordroel said:

Jan 19, 2019 15:43:13 GMT forcon said:

Credit for the Order of Battle goes to James.

Well thank you James G for the Orbat and thank you for the update forcon

More to come!

[James G]

Eighteen

In January 2010, Russia ‘stole’ the Ukrainian presidential election. They made sure that it was won by their preferred candidate. The blatant, almost-open fraud took place to ensure that someone who wouldn’t act against Russia would lead the Ukraine. The wishes of the Ukrainian people, nor the views of the international community, mattered for nought. GRU operatives directed the efforts of Ukrainian traitors to stuff ballot boxes with false votes, destroy the contents of others and replace more boxes with new ones. Local officials signed off on the counting done when with their own eyes they had seen what had gone on. The country’s future was stolen and no one was able to do a thing about it.

Viktor Yanukovych was that preferred candidate and he won the first (and thus only) round of voting with fifty-three per cent of the vote due to this election rigging. Many predications had him winning the first round among a crowded field then preceding to a run-off with the second-place finisher. This former prime minister who had been denied victory six years earlier following the Orange Revolution on the streets of Kiev may have won that second round had he failed to achieve fifty per cent of the first round vote yet he might not have too. The Kremlin wasn’t willing to take the chance of the anti-Yanukovych vote winning out and a hostile Ukraine on its borders at a time like this with international tensions as they were. He wasn’t their man in the sense that he would be Moscow’s willing lapdog but the judgement was that he wouldn’t act against Putin-led Russia either. That was what mattered: putting a non-hostile candidate in power in Kiev. Yanukovych had plausible deniability in what occurred because he wasn’t directly involved in this and neither were his immediate staff though he knew full well what was happening as the methods to hide this became less and less shadowy. Without this vote rigging, he would have received somewhere between thirty-five and forty per cent of the vote allowing him to progress to a second round in February: not in his wildest dreams could he have believed to win outright in January and thus forgoing the need for the run-off. His main rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, another former prime minister whom during the election he had told to ‘go back to the kitchen’, received half the number of votes as Yanukovych did. This massive underperformance came alongside the number of votes for the sitting president, Viktor Yushchenko (who went into the election expecting to be crushed), being only just lower than hers when they should have been miles apart. Russian-backed interference had not just skewed the results when it came to the winner but had surprising effects throughout the numbers gained by his opponents. More than anything else with regards to the outcome where Yanukovych winning was clearly fraudulent, this here with Tymoshenko and Yushchenko highlighted the scale of the falsification of votes tallies.

There were election monitors on the ground who saw what happened. Ukrainians watched their fellow Ukrainians do what they did to give the election to Yanukovych. Moreover, international observers invited to watch proceedings – Yushchenko had invited them – came from the EU, the OSCE and other organisations. They too were witness to what occurred. The direction of the fraud by Russians operatives (the GRU did a better job here than the accident-prone SVR would have done if given the task) giving the orders to Ukrainians to violate electoral rules was out there in the open for these international observers to see. Foreign media teams in the country were aware of what was going on. Soon enough they broadcast the news from the Ukraine where the election had been stolen like it had. What was confidently predicted by the foreign correspondents inside the Ukraine was that in response to this, there would be another Orange Revolution.


Orange Revolution #2 didn’t occur though.

In 2010, there wasn’t the mood of revolution in the air as there had been back in ’04. When Yanukovych had tried to steal the last election from Yushchenko (doing it himself and not with Russian backing), the people had known in their hearts that Yanukovych wasn’t set to win for the support of the country had been for Yushchenko. The sitting president had by now lost all popularity and while Tymoshenko had her many supporters, they weren’t as dedicated as they could have been. Tymoshenko just didn’t have the popularity to command a base of supporters who were prepared to risk everything in trying to overturn the outcome of her defeat. Yanukovych was recognised as likely to win and that he did. Russia didn’t need to act as it did but even in doing what it did, the Ukraine didn’t rise up in arms against this. Another time, a different set of candidates and different external factors might have caused a second revolution but not now. The country was mentally prepared for a Yanukovych victory even if many people didn’t like him because they recognised that others did. Yanukovych didn’t inspire the widespread hatred like before either. As far as the people were concerned, there was no sign that he was prepared to act in concert with Russia. It was Tymoshenko who in her second term as prime minister had undertaken deals with Russia over gas disputes between the two countries and whom Yanukovych had many times ahead of the presidential election declared would be the benefit of any outside Russian election manipulation. She was a former oligarch and one that many Ukrainians considered had taken money from foreigners – the Berezovsky allegations where from London he had funnelled money towards her weren’t without merit – as well. Her relationship with Yushchenko was terrible too. Once this election was stolen, the two of them could conceivably have worked together to contest Yanukovych’s win though Yushchenko had even less love from the Ukrainian people as well as failing to have any meaningful relationship with Tymoshenko. What were they going to argue anyway – that yes, Yanukovych had won, but it was a case of him winning by too much? That wasn’t going to work.

There wouldn’t be a repeat colour revolution in the Ukraine. Moscow-Kiev ties weren’t going to be friendly though neither were they going to be terrible once Yanukovych was soon sworn into office at the beginning of February either. Prime Minister Ivanov turned up for Yanukovych’s inauguration after being sent to represent Russia. Putin had his prime minister echo was his foreign minister, Kozak, had told the new leader of the Ukraine. Russia was of mind to come to a new agreement on the issue of gas transit through Yanukovych’s country which would be of benefit for the Ukraine… and for the new president personally too. In return, the Kremlin had its own issues of concern which Kiev was requested to provide reassurance. These concerned an absolute cutting of the support which Yushchenko had given to the defeated Georgians, a final settlement to be made on the matter of Russian military use of Sevastopol naval base and also a complete severing of remaining ties between the Ukraine & the West. These were many things to ask for. If Tymoshenko had won – or even if Yushchenko had done the impossible and stayed in office –, Russia would never have received acquiescence to these despite the sweetener offers with gas prices or personal bribes. Yanukovych stalled on the matter of Sevastopol because there were further concerns there that he had over Russian influence in that city plus through the wider Crimea (the region had given him many legitimate votes whereas the Kremlin’s agents were busy handing out Russian passports to the people there) yet he agreed to the two other requests. Russia’s man in Kiev he now was.

Those confident predictions of a revolution in the Ukraine made by Western journalists on the ground and commentators back home had been shown to be false. They wouldn’t suffer any embarrassment for getting this wrong though. There were other things for them to discuss in relation to the country’s stolen election: this being the reaction from abroad to Yanukovych’s victory. The Kremlin sent Putin’s congratulations and from Minsk there were further congratulations too where Lukashenko praised the result. Other nations such as China, Syria, Libya and scattered regimes elsewhere in the world did so as well. However, most of the world, including the vast majority of the West, denounced what occurred. The cries of ‘farce’, ‘theft’ and ‘illegal’ came in response to the outrageous scale of the win which Yanukovych achieved. It was impossible for him to have won in the manner like he had and all of those election observers had seen what they had. As Putin’s recent re-inauguration was devoid of many foreign attendees, so was that held for the new Ukrainian president. The issue with Yanukovych being on course to win before the cheating was a factor in taking a lot of the sting out of these denunciations though. Those who defended his presidency made use of that to undermine the criticism coming towards both Kiev and Moscow. Counter-claims were made too against those who accused Russia of stealing the election and giving it on a plate to Yanukovych. Foremost among these were spearheaded by Dmitri Rogozin, acting in many ways as an attack-dog for Kozak on the Ukraine matter while the foreign minister was attending to the issue with NATO forces in-place in the Baltic States. Rogozin was Russia’s officially assigned permanent representative to NATO (an ambassadorial role in all but name) and he, like the senior military officer assigned too, General Maslov, had been banned from travelling through much of Europe since last year. He still held his position though and off the back of that, accused NATO of interference in the Ukrainian election. It was the West, not Russia, who had schemed to defraud the Ukrainian people. Thankfully, NATO’s schemes had failed! Furthermore, Rogozin explicitly threatened that Russia would act with ‘military force’ against any further attempts at ‘foreign adventurism’ – i.e. NATO activities – on Russia’s borders the next time around.