[Salon] The information war over Ukraine. Military intelligence is usually a cloak and dagger matter so why the public release of such information as Russian troop movements?

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/global-affairs-the-information-war-over-ukraine

OPINION

Global Affairs

The information war over Ukraine

Military intelligence is usually a cloak and dagger matter so why the public release of such information as Russian troop movements?

Jonathan Eyal    February 7-8, 2022
Global Affairs Correspondent

It is still possible that the showdown between Russia and the West will not end up with a war in the heart of Europe. Nonetheless, one form of warfare has already gripped the continent: an intense information war in which Western intelligence agencies - principally those of the United States and of Britain - are doing most of the "shooting".

Not a week passes by without a new revelation from a US or British official about how Russia is preparing to destabilise Ukraine.

The British recently warned that Russia was planning to overthrow the Ukrainian authorities and replace them with a pro-Russian puppet government. The information - which Prime Minister Boris Johnson said came from "compelling intelligence" - even included a list of individuals Russia apparently selected to include in that puppet Cabinet.

Last week, it was the turn of the US, which said it had "reliable information" that Russia was planning to produce and release a fake video supposedly showing a Ukrainian attack on Russian military outposts - complete with "victims" covered in artificial blood - in order to justify an imminent Russian invasion.

And there are plenty of other revelations on a daily basis, such as assessments of military gear Russia is moving towards its Ukraine border, the sort of stuff which until now used to land only on Western ministerial tables, all labelled "Secret".

Lifting the veil of secrecy

Indeed, the torrent of supposedly secret information released by key Western governments is so large that it is easy to forget how remarkably unusual such a phenomenon really is.

Governments rarely make public the intelligence information they possess, because releasing it endangers spies and their various contacts who provided it.

Making public such intelligence knowledge can also fatally compromise the technical capabilities of a country in intercepting transmissions or deciphering the communication codes of its opponents. Two decades after the end of World War II and long after Nazi Germany ceased to exist, the British still kept secret the fact that they succeeded in breaking Germany's wartime military codes, largely because they were using the same capabilities in trying to break into Soviet cyphered communications during the subsequent Cold War.

Governments also remain deeply reluctant to release such information because knowledge is power; the more data a country has and the fewer other parties know it has it, the more options that nation enjoys.

Still, the recent and repeated disclosures of intelligence on Ukraine are not as unprecedented as they may seem.

Back in the 1920s, for instance, British intelligence revealed to the public intercepted diplomatic telegrams between the Soviet Union and its agents in Britain in order to force the new communist state to stop undermining Western governments.

Then, in October 1962, then US President John Kennedy decided to confront the Soviet Union with intelligence information about the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba and, when the Soviets tried to deny this, he released more intelligence material.

And, of course, there were the 2002-2003 "wars of the dossiers" of supposed intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, when the US and British intelligence services asserted with great certainty that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

It is important to note that governments paid a heavy price for each one of these decisions to release intelligence information.

The 1920s British revelations of Soviet telegrams prompted the Soviet Union to shift its communications to the so-called one-time pad system, an encryption technique that, if applied correctly, could not be cracked, thereby complicating the work of subsequent generations of Western intelligence officers.

President Kennedy's release of information on Soviet missiles in Cuba contributed to the arrest and execution in Moscow of Oleg Penkovsky - a Soviet intelligence colonel who was a Western spy - who provided the all-important human intelligence corroborating the Soviet missiles in Cuba.

The infamous "dodgy dossiers" of Iraq have inflicted serious damage on the credibility of the British and US governments, as well as unleashed a very painful debate about the uses and abuses of intelligence information by politicians, and the corresponding responsibilities of spy chiefs to prevent their material from being used for such dubious purposes.

Given all the proven hazards of the past, why would governments - and especially the American and British ones - resort again to such dangerous practices? Partly because the material being released carries less danger of exposing sources, but also because the act of releasing it serves more objectives than previous cases.

It would be surprising if any of the material purposely given now to journalists covering the Ukraine crisis can be traced to only one source. Revelations about the concentration of Russian troops at Ukraine's borders technically come from either commercial satellite companies that have been "guided" to look in the "right places", or from aerial surveillance capabilities that Western governments have long been known to possess.

And many of the allegations about Russia's activities on the ground inside Ukraine could come from a variety of sources unrelated to Western spies. For instance, the British-supplied list of those allegedly handpicked by Russia to form a future Ukrainian puppet government includes people long identified as Moscow's allies inside Ukraine, either because of their political convictions or their business interests.

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And the US allegations about Moscow allegedly staging incidents designed to justify a Russian invasion involve so many potential players as to make the identification of the source that could have supplied the Americans with the information irrelevant. Nor did either of these revelations require some sophisticated spying technique; a local lowly informant could have theoretically revealed all of this.

In short, therefore, the public disclosures are hardly the "crown jewels" of Western intelligence information, but just judiciously-selected scraps, designed to minimise the costs that spying agencies may have to pay for the revelations. What we are treated to instead is a radically new way of using intelligence revelations for policy purposes.

Dominating the narrative

It is worth recalling that without the release of Western intelligence information we may have not been aware to this day of just how serious the crisis in Europe is.

The Russian troops started assembling on Ukraine's borders as early as last November, and their numbers kept growing. But Moscow initially said nothing about these troop movements and articulated no political demands. So, by making information public on repeated occasions, Western governments have succeeded in raising the alarm about the crisis much earlier than Moscow would have preferred.

And by continuing to leak bits of intelligence information, Western leaders are also trying to dominate the narrative of the crisis. Much of what is now common knowledge in the media - such as the rapid rise in numbers of Russian troops in neighbouring Belarus and the recent rise in Russian troop numbers in Crimea, the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory - comes from Western intelligence sources and suggests an evolving Russian plan to crush Ukraine in a pincer movement.

Troop deployments aside, what is one to make of British intelligence revelations about plans to create a puppet Ukrainian government or US claims about Russian attempts to create fake violent incidents? They do serve a purpose, which is to deprive Russia of the use of such tactics.

The fact remains that there are precedents - the imposition of communist rule in Eastern Europe, the invasion of Hungary in 1956, of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and of Afghanistan in 1979 - have all involved the creation of puppet or "national salvation" governments that, as if by magic, then asked Moscow for military support. And the creation of fake violent incidents has justified Russian military interventions in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014.

So, by aiming to put the spotlight on attempts to apply similar methods in Ukraine today, Western governments are seeking to delegitimise their repetition. Thus, even if journalists around the world are refusing to take these Western revelations at face value, decision-makers in Moscow know that if they do repeat the trick of sponsoring a fake "national salvation" government in Ukraine that then appeals for Russian military intervention, the claim will automatically be questioned.

Lesson learnt from attack on Crimea

But the biggest reason for the current information campaign is that Western intelligence services were caught unawares in 2014 when Russia first invaded Ukraine and are determined not to fall into the same trap again.

Back in 2014, the Crimea peninsula was occupied by people in uniform with no national markings - the "Green Men" - while other parts of Ukraine were seized by bands of heavily armed civilians who claimed to be defending themselves against "genocide" attempts by the Ukrainian government.

Throughout the incursion into Crimea, Western intelligence agencies were one step behind the Russians, and often unable to comprehend what was happening. The initiative remained with Moscow throughout. Russia's President Vladimir Putin even had the luxury of claiming that he did not know who the "Green Men" were, although a few months later, he decorated each one of them.

By constantly feeding the media with juicy morsels of information now, Western spying organisations are determined not to relive the same sorry experience. The Russians know that what surfaces in the public domain is merely the tip of the iceberg. So, Moscow has to consider that whatever brazen operations it may be planning in Ukraine now, these may not go as well as they did back in 2014, simply because the West may know about them and stands ready to expose them.

The spectacular nature of what we are witnessing now is, therefore, not in the quality of the information being released but in its quantity, and in the sustained political objectives it seeks to hit.

The risks

Of course, the effort entails big risks. Western intelligence services will suffer another blow to their credibility if it subsequently emerges that they allowed their material to be "spun" by politicians.

And, as an angry public exchange last Friday between a news agency correspondent and US State Department spokesman Ned Price indicated, journalists are already beginning to ask for proof over some of the allegations about Russian deeds and are no longer prepared to swallow stories from "trusted sources" nobody can verify.

Furthermore, if no Russian military operation ultimately takes place, commentators around the world will start claiming that the entire crisis was just a Western invention; the paradox intelligence services often have to grapple with is that it is impossible for them to prove that they prevented a conflict which, by definition, did not happen because it was prevented.

There is also the danger that the more intelligence material is leaked, the more it becomes routine, so journalists will expect the same treatment in future conflicts, thereby putting both governments and intelligence services under greater strain.

Yet at least for the moment, top Western spooks are reasonably satisfied with the outcome of their campaign. They forced the Russians to reveal their hand in Ukraine much earlier than Moscow probably wanted.

And they may have helped reduce the options available to Russian forces inside Ukraine.

Still, these are early days. For Russia's intelligence services are more than a match when it comes to springing their own surprises.