Russian Central Bank Preparing for SWIFT ‘Nuclear Option’

(Photo Credit: Ludvig12 via Creative Commons 4.0)

 

Smaller banks have been encouraged to establish secondary arrangements for processing bank card transactions.

Preparing for new U.S. sanctions “early next year” that will likely target Russia’s access to the SWIFT international banking system—something that was just described as a “nuclear option” against Moscow just earlier this week—the Bank of Russia has urged the country’s smaller banks to prepare for a “worst-case scenario.”

Russia’s “Weaponization” of Information

Testimony Presented to the House Foreign Affairs Committee

April 15, 2015

Helle C. Dale

My name is Helle Dale. I am Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.

Audiences within reach of Russia’s growing media empire are increasingly subjected to manipulation and rampant anti-Americanism.[1] This trend has intensified since the Russian annexation of Crimea and its invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014. Through its global network, Russia Today (RT), the Kremlin broadcasts globally in five major languages, including on cable TV stations in the United States. Free Western media has no comparable presence in Russia.

Russian propaganda is corrosive to the image of the United States and to our values. Or as Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland described it before this committee on March 4, “the Kremlin’s pervasive propaganda campaign, where is truth is no obstacle.” And Russian propaganda is being spread aggressively around the world as we have not seen it since Soviet days. This is not just in Central Asia, and Eastern and Central Europe, but even here in the West. The daily content and commentary from RT and others is often polished and slickly produced. And it’s not like old-fashioned propaganda, aimed solely at making Putin and Russia look good. It’s a new kind of propaganda, aimed at sowing doubt about anything having to do with the U.S. and the West, and in a number of countries, unsophisticated audiences are eating it up.

Voice of America: “Europe and Russia should unite forces”

The Voice of America writes today about the expectations of Russia regarding the upcoming Syrian negotiations. Recent efforts made by the United Nations to resolve the crisis in Syria could lead to success in a united struggle against Islamic State. The fact is that the destabilization of the situation around ISIS is becoming a threat to the global community, and attempts by Syrian factions to join the terrorist organization, can serve as a prerequisite for the West and Russia to seek common solutions to the crisis.

Islamic State, a radical Sunni Muslim organization, holds militias in Syria and Iraq, and remains the most unpredictable force in the world, which threatens the stability of many countries in the Middle East. In order to face the very serious threat from ISIS, Europe and Russia should forget their differences and unite efforts, otherwise the world’s boundaries may change forever.

Russia outguns US in information war

Not only is the U.S. outgunned in the information war, it has allowed propaganda news outlets such as state-run (KGB) Russia Today to broadcast within the gates and manipulate the minds of American citizens for years already.

The Soviet propaganda factory Russia Today has gotten so bad that even one of the news anchors quit live in TV because she was sick of the lies she had to push forward on the Evil Empire’s behalf:

 

 

The West does not have one message and it’s up against a co-ordinated information war, academic says.

Washington: The troubled US agency responsible for delivering news around the world is being outgunned in Eastern Europe by Russian outlets unrestrained by notions of fact-based journalism.

The unequal competition raises fears among US officials that Moscow is winning the information war about events in Ukraine, even as the Russian economy staggers under economic sanctions imposed after the takeover of Crimea.

“Russia has engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I’ve seen since the very height of the Cold War,” US Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate subcommittee in late February. It’s “spending hugely on this vast propaganda machine”, he told another panel the same day, and it’s succeeding “because there’s nothing countering it”.

Russia Will Have an Answer Ready if US Supplies Arms to Ukraine

The original article is in German but for translation purposes a rough version courtesy of Google will remain here in its entirety.

What the Russians have in response is yet to be seen. But one thing is clear, the Russians do not warn, they act, which can make things quite dangerous when poking a big bear in the eye with a tiny stick.

Ankündigung: Wenn Sie Lust auf eine deutschen Version haben, bitte auf den originales Quelle klicken. Schön Dank.

 

The US Senate has passed a law that sanctions against Russia should be tightened. At the same time, the US government is to supply Ukraine with military equipment worth 350 million dollars. Russia summarizes the law as a provocation and has announced a reaction if the law comes into force. President Obama has for the time being denied the law his signature.

All signs point to confrontation when the diplomacy can not prevail: US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov will meet on 15 December in Rome. One of the Agenda items will form the Ukraine conflict.

Between the US and Russia worsened again the sound: The US Senate has decided arms supplies and sanctions against Gazprom. Even US President Barack Obama denied the law his signature. But it should come, Russia will show a reaction, notify the State channel Russia Today.

Russia Warns May Send Troops To Ukraine After Congress Unanimously Votes To Give Lethal Aid To Kiev

While the market, and America’s media, was focusing over the passage of the Cromnibus, and whether Wall Street would dump a few hundred trillion in derivatives on the laps of US taxpayers once again (it did), quietly and unanimously both houses passed The Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014, which authorizes “providing lethal assistance to Ukraine’s military” as well as sweeping sanctions on Russia’s energy sector.

The measure mandates sanctions against Rosoboronexport, the state agency that promotes Russia’s defense exports and arms trade. It also would require sanctions on OAO Gazprom (GAZP), the world’s largest extractor of natural gas, if the state-controlled company withholds supplies to other European nations (yes, the US is now in the pre-emptive punishment business, and is enforcing sanctions on a “what if” basis).