Ukraine forces retake airport

[JimH52]

Heavy Gunfire as Ukrainian Army Retakes Airport from Pro-Russian Forces

Okay, Putin it is your move.

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd thinks dem commies been hackin' our computers...

Russia-Ukraine Crisis Could Trigger Cyber War
April 20, 2014: WASHINGTON — On the day Crimeans voted in a referendum in March on secession from Ukraine, hackers from a group calling itself the "Cyber Berkut" pelted NATO websites with online nuisance attacks designed to knock the pages offline.

While not technically sophisticated, the DDoS, or "denial of service" attacks, were enough to send several websites - including a cyber-security site in Estonia - into darkness for several hours. NATO quickly recovered: the sites came back online, the hack attack ebbed, and no serious damage was done. But it sent a clear message - a warning shot of sorts of things to come. As tensions have escalated between Kyiv and Moscow, so too has the frequency of online attacks targeting a variety of government, news, and financial sites located across Ukraine and several in Russia.

So far, these attacks have amounted to mere skirmishes rather than all out cyber war. However, with the possibility of further Russian military incursions into eastern Ukraine, a full-blown cyber war may be looming on the European continent. And that, in turn, could draw in many more nations into the Ukrainian crisis.

Destabilizing an unstable situation

"In terms of conflict between the Western-oriented parts of Ukraine and Russia, it’s a little surprising we haven’t seen more hacking already," former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Stewart Baker said. "Ukraine isn't a great power but they have some talented hackers," he said. "If there’s an area they can punch above their weight, it's cyber crime." Baker, now a parnter at the Steptoe and Johnson law firm, said that hacking and cyber mischief are nothing new for either nation. Ukraine is well known for harboring a large number of talented cyber criminals working for various organized crime syndicates. "They've learned how to buy protection with the government," Baker said; "and the connections are pretty tight."

For its part, Russia has not shied from flexing its cyber muscles, notably in Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008. Although the Kremlin never admitted responsibility, Internet analysts say that the attacks originated inside Russia and were organized by Russians. Those attacks were likely carried out by the Nashi, a semi-official nationalistic Russian youth movement tied to the Kremlin, analysts say. But Baker and other analysts note that since then Russia has invested considerable resources into building more sophisticated and potent offensive cyber capabilities, which would likely be deployed this time in a more serious cyber battle. Complicating matters further, much of Ukraine's telecommunications infrastructure runs through lines and switches controlled by Russia.

Already this March, Ukraine's Security Service accused pro-Russian activists in Crimea of shutting down mobile and landline phones in western Ukraine, especially targeting members of Parliament. That combination of Russian offensive capability and access to infrastructure makes Ukraine unusually vulnerable to cyber attack. And that's a situation the Kremlin may not be able to long resist. "You could definitely see a paired attack," Baker said, "with telecommunications shutdowns in the west crippling the government, and a more psychological warfare in the east where access to news is shut off and the zone flooded with inflammatory false reports." "In an already unstable situation, the situation could quickly become much worse," Baker said. "This may turn out to be a new tactical strategic approach, something we haven't seen before."

Lessons from Iran

See also:

A quick end won’t serve Vladimir Putin’s purposes in Ukraine
April 20, 2014 ~ With expectations low, it came as a surprise to Western diplomats when Russia signed off on an agreement calling for armed separatists in eastern Ukraine to lay down their weapons and surrender the public buildings they have been occupying for weeks.

What hasn’t been surprising in the days since is Russia’s apparent unwillingness to ensure that those terms are quickly and cleanly enforced. Russian President Vladimir Putin has two objectives in what the Ukrainian and Western governments say is his thinly disguised backing of the separatists. Neither is served by pushing for a quick end to the challenges to Ukraine’s interim government in Kiev. Putin wants to regain the influence he had over Ukraine before Kremlin-allied President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted by a popular rebellion in late February. He can do that by forcing constitutional reform that would reconfigure Ukraine into a federation of highly autonomous regions, in effect allowing Moscow veto power in the Russian-speaking border areas already under its sway. Failing that, he can invade and annex territory, as he did recently in Crimea.

Putin’s other objective is to muddy the Ukrainian presidential election scheduled for May 25. Balloting that is widely regarded as fair and inclusive would confer legitimacy on the central government in Kiev, undercutting Russia’s claim that it needs to look out for Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Continued defiance by pro-Russian gunmen would undermine the Kiev leadership’s ability to govern or organize polling places and international monitoring for the presidential vote in less than five weeks. Putin’s invasion and seizure of Crimea were wildly successful, according to polling by the independent Levada Center, which showed that support for the Russian president had soared to 80 percent days after the March 21 annexation.

Since then, Russian Cabinet ministers have begun sounding the alarm on the economic blow the Ukrainian unrest is dealing Russia. Economic growth this year is expected to be near zero, and huge amounts of foreign capital — $63 billion in the first quarter — are fleeing the country. But the bite on Russians’ buying power from those setbacks won’t be felt for months or years, providing little public pushback on Putin’s territorial ambitions.

Kremlin officials have feigned innocence in the armed takeovers of a dozen Ukrainian towns and cities since the Crimean gambit, even though many of the gunmen are armed with Russian army-issued rifles and wearing fatigues identical to those of Russian soldiers. “Blame for the Ukrainian crisis and its current deterioration is groundlessly apportioned to Russia,” the Foreign Ministry in Moscow complained in a statement Friday, echoing its denial of involvement in the Crimean seizure — until Putin last week conceded that Russian armed forces were involved in the operation. He said the takeover was necessary to defend Crimea’s majority Russian population.

The separatist leader in Donetsk, the most entrenched of the ongoing pro-Russia occupations, argued in interviews with journalists outside the regional government headquarters that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who endorsed the Geneva agreement for Russia, wasn’t empowered to make decisions for the self-proclaimed “Donetsk Republic.” “He did not sign anything for us, he signed on behalf of the Russian Federation,” Denis Pushilin said of his forces barricaded behind piles of bricks, tires and barbed-wire cordons.

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[Moonglow]

Ukraine is known as the bread basket of the region, without it Russia suffers food shortages...even with it in the past they still have food shortages..most wars are fought over religion or food.......