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Turkey is accusing Saudi Arabia of dispatching agents to Istanbul last month with the express aim of covering up the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi inside Riyadh’s consulate.

A Turkish official, speaking anonymously, confirmed a report in Sabah, a newspaper close to Turkey’s government, that chemicals expert Ahmad Abdulaziz al-Janobi and toxicology expert Khaled Yahya al-Zahrani were part of a team sent from Saudi Arabia, supposedly to investigate Khashoggi’s October 2 killing.

The Sabah report said the two experts visited the consulate every day from their arrival on October 11 until October 17, with Saudi authorities allowing Turkish investigators to search the consulate on October 15.

“We believe that the two individuals came to Turkey for the sole purpose of covering up evidence of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder before the Turkish police were allowed to search the premises,” the Turkish official said.

Turkey said last week that Khashoggi, a U.S.-based journalist who had written columns for The Washington Post that were critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was strangled as soon as he entered the consulate, his body dismembered and then destroyed, possibly dissolved in acid.

Khashoggi had scheduled a visit to the consulate to pick up documents for his planned marriage to his fiancee, who waited outside in vain for his return.

No trace of Khashoggi’s remains has turned up, even as the 59-year-old journalist’s sons appealed on the U.S. television news network CNN on Sunday for the Saudis to return his body so he can be buried in the major Islamic pilgrimage city of Medina with the rest of his family.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia told a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva that it would prosecute those responsible for Khashoggi’s death, but continued to deflect reporters’ questions about Riyadh’s ongoing investigation.  The kingdom’s public prosecutor has called the killing premeditated, but has not said who planned or approved it.

Initially, Saudi Arabia said Khashoggi walked out of the consulate and that his whereabouts were unknown, then that he died in a fist fight and still later that he had died in a chokehold.

Bandar Al Aiban, the head of Riyadh’s delegation, told the U.N. hearing that King Salman had instructed the Saudi public prosecutor to “proceed with the investigation into this case according to the applicable laws,” and “bringing all the perpetrators to justice.”  Saudi Arabia has detained 18 Saudi nationals in connection with Khashoggi’s death, but Aiban gave no details on their status or whereabouts.

“The case is still under investigation, as you know … I think my statement was very clear,” Aiban said.

More than 40 nations, including the United States, called for a thorough investigation of Khashoggi’s death and human rights reforms in Saudi Arabia.  Numerous Western nations called for the abolition of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, an end to the system of male guardianship over women and a loosening of the definition of “terrorism” in the kingdom so that peaceful critics are not prosecuted.  The Saudis have until Friday to report back on whether they will accept any of the recommendations.

The United States pulled out of the 47-member Human Rights Council in June, accusing it of anti-Israel bias.

But U.S. Charge d’Affaires Mark Cassayre appeared at the meeting in an observer status, saying that a “thorough, conclusive and transparent investigation (of Khashoggi’s death) carried out in accordance with due process with results made public is essential.”

 
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As the world marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I in 1918, some in the Middle East mourn the fate of nations and peoples who came out losers in the ultimate dissection of the region and the division of the Ottoman Empire.

Armenians mourn their dead during a World War I genocide in which close to a million-and-a-half people were killed. Other peoples who suffered from that war, including Greeks, Assyrians, and Kurds, recall its memory with bitterness.

As the war ended, the Ottoman Empire was divided, leaving communities shattered and broken by ethnic cleansing.

University of Oklahoma Middle East program director Joshua Landis says the Ottoman Empire had allowed many ethnic communities to govern themselves.

“The Ottoman Empire was a Sunni dynastic empire, and it was a multi-religious, multi-ethnic empire,” he said. “The various religious and ethnic communities were not equal, but there was a stability and they got along within a framework of Ottoman authority. Once that was destroyed and the French and British imposed national identities and chopped the place up to nation states, many of these nation states included peoples who did not want to live together, and this has led to the recent civil wars.”

Minorities like Armenians and Kurds, who were not awarded nation states, paid a heavy price, as Haigazian University President Paul Haidostian tells VOA.

“World War I really changed the demographic picture so quickly. Twenty years after World War I, if you looked at the demography of many of the regions of Asia Minor and the Middle East and so on, they had been impacted, moved, deported and changed in dramatic ways, and there was no protection and there was no logic to what happened, except for the consequences of alliances, of wars, and so on,” he said.

But some minorities like Lebanon’s Maronite Christians or Syria’s Alawites, gained prominence in the period after World War I during the destruction of the old world order, says Landis.

“Both the French and the British pursued a minority policy, and in order to help them rule during the inter-war period, they gave a leg up to minorities across the Middle East,” he said. “In Lebanon it was the Maronites, in Syria it was the Alawites, in Iraq it was the Sunni minority, 20 percent, In Israel-Palestine, it was the Jews, who were only 14 percent of the population at World War I.”

Haidostian says despite the war’s aftermath, Armenians, Kurds, Jews and other minorities rebuilt their communities and struggled once again to flourish.

“So many nations, despite the major losses of land, homes, human lives, in the hundreds of thousands, in the case of the Armenians a million-and-a-half, the story of resilience is really very particular. No matter what some nations may do, minorities, ethnic or religious groups find a way of surviving,” he said.

A key lesson of World War I, concludes Paul Haidostian, “is the intersection of the interests of the major powers, the mightier powers, versus those of the smaller powers,” which he argues “ultimately pay the price.”
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Their pain has long gone. No odor from the gas warfare they endured remains. There are no echoes of the thump of artillery, no reverberation of the clash of arms, no sound of fusillades or the rat-a-tat of the machine guns. The trenches have long been filled; the entanglements of harsh wire gone, too. All is quiet on the Western Front.

But the memory remains of the industrial slaughter that was World War I. It echoes for later generations in fading black-and-white photographs, letters home stained with foxing and the poems of war poets like Wilfred Owen. And it echoes in the thoughts of the few surviving sons and daughters, frail and aged themselves, of the fathers who never came home.

And this week in the days leading up to November 11, the centenary of the end of World War I, one of the deadliest conflicts in the history of the human race, testimonies to the carnage are being pored over, discussed and debated.

On Sunday, hundreds of mourners turned up in the French village of Ors — some from as far away as the United States and New Zealand — to retrace the fateful last steps of Wilfred Owen, who died a week before Armistice Day along with hundreds of his fellows trying to cross a canal. They heard the plaintive notes of the Last Post being played on a bugle Owen retrieved from the battlefield.

His last letter home, written while he and his men rested before battle, included this final line: “You could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me.”

How best to commemorate the “band of friends”? Was it so sweet and fitting to die for one’s country in World War I? Should the victors of the war strike triumphant tones or downplay military victory in order to avoid offending vanquished European neighbors who are now allies?

Some 80 leaders from around the world, including U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, will fly into France this week to attend remembrance events marking a century since the guns fell silent on the Western Front. The culmination of the commemorations in France will come with a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Monday.

French President Emmanuel Macron has been keen to avoid any triumphalism. The tone of Macron’s speech at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier will be respectful of the millions, regardless of nationality, who died in the four-year conflict, say his officials.

That order has sparked disgruntlement from some military veterans, including Michel Goya, a historian and former colonel, who accused Macron of “insulting the soldiers of 1918.” Military historian Bénédicte Chéron told France’s French Le Figaro newspaper recently that Macron and his ministers misunderstand “the continuity between the engagement of 1914-18 soldiers, and that of soldiers today.”

Nearly 37 million soldiers and civilians are estimated to have been killed in World War I and Macron’s aides say that many people view the 1914-1918 war as an unnecessary slaughter rather than a victory that should be celebrated with too much military pomp. Many in France and across Europe seem to agree with him.

They include veterans like retired British general Richard Dannatt. “Triumphalism, victory, those sort of notions are inappropriate.There is no need for jingoistic reaction at all.” Britain will also mark the centenary with a week of commemorations, small and large. including a display of 10,000 flames illuminating the moat at the Tower of London and a remembrance at Westminster Abbey.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has also struck a note of reconciliation in the run-up to the centenary. “The killing fields of France and Belgium are scarred by the horrors of war, but the strength and closeness of our relationship today is a testament to the journey our countries have traveled together,” she said last week.

How to remember the Great War and its war dead have long been issues, going back even to the conflict itself and its immediate aftermath. The issues have been debated heatedly not only in France but the allied countries of Britain, Belgium, Italy and Russia as well as in the vanquished nations of Germany and Austria.

The sheer scale of the casualties meant that hardly a European household was left untouched by the war. The industrial nature of the killing, which saw young men scythed down by machine guns and obliterated by artillery barrages as well as being poisoned by clouds of noxious fumes, prompted rising despair and, as more men were hurled into the killing machine, accusations of massive miscalculation by national leaders and the senselessness of the fighting mounted.

As the war unfolded in all its horror, many wondered why they had been thrust into such a consuming, barbaric conflict by an assassination in a far-flung country in the Balkans. They questioned what the war was about. For some it was a case of imperial rivalry that had got out of hand. Others countered that right or wrong, one had to defend one’s country.

In Russia, World War I triggered the Bolshevik revolution. In other European countries fury over the carnage fueled the post-war rise of organized labor and parties of the far right and far left. The memory of the war was one of the prompts for Oxford University’s influential debating Union to approve the famous 1933 motion “that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.”

And there were disputes about the plans for formal remembrance of the conflict. In Britain, the authorities decided that there should be “equality of remembrance,” a revolutionary idea, and that all the men should be buried where they fell in war cemeteries on the battlefields of France and Belgium, ordinary soldiers laid to rest beside officers. Other nations followed suit.

Many applauded the idea. But many grief-stricken wives, inconsolable in their bereavement, “disagreed with the decision not to repatriate,” says historian Alison Fell. They wanted their husbands to be buried near to them in their local cemeteries at home and they organized a letter-writing campaign.

They pointed to the offer by the U.S. government to bereaved Americans to bear the costs of shipping bodies back to America, if families so wished. More than 300,000 of France’s dead were returned to their families. In Britain the government ignored repatriation demands.

One British widow wrote that perhaps it is not everyone’s wish to have their dead husbands repatriated, she noted, but I do. She wrote: “The country took him and the country should bring him back.”

 
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Cuban-American singer Camila Cabello was the big winner at the MTV EMAs gala in Spain on Sunday, while Janet Jackson used her acceptance speech for a life-time achievement award to take a stand for women’s rights.

Jackson was honored with the Global Icon Award for her four-decade, 11-album career that started when she was a child growing up in the family that also produced her music legend brother, Michael, and The Jackson Five.

The 52-year-old Jackson showed she still has her dance moves while performing a medley of “Made for Now,” ″All for You” and “Rhythm Nation” while accompanied by African drummers and torchbearers. She later said her award came with a responsibility.

“Tonight I feel moved to speak for those women whose voices have been silenced,” she said. “I am one of those voices, women who have been gagged, literally and metaphorically, women who have been abused, women who have lived with fear, I stand with you.

“Tonight I carry the hope that a new world is emerging. Women, our voices will be heard!”

Other than Jackson’s call for gender equality, the show was all about the dazzle provided by the costumes, choreography and the elaborate light and video displays on the huge circular stage.

With pop star Ariana Grande shut out despite her five nominations, Cabello was the undisputed star of the night.

The 21-year-old Cabello beat out Grande, Drake, Dua Lipa and Post Malone for best artist, while her sultry hit “Havana” took the trophy for best song and best video. She also topped the category for best act.

Last year, Cabello won the award for best pop artist at the edition held in London. Born in Havana before her family left for Miami, Cabello was discovered on the U.S. version of X-Factor and formed a part of the group Fifth Harmony.

The 25th edition of the awards, formerly known as the as the MTV Europe Music Awards, was as usual loaded with eye-catching performances, as well as references to Bilbao’s links to the art world, first and foremost thanks to the city’s Guggenheim Museum.

Host Hailee Steinfeld opened the show with a video sketch featuring her breaking into an art gallery to “steal” one of the MTV trophies, only to then emerge on stage in a tiny silver dress. Several costume changes later, she became a “work of art,” in her words, when she donned a long white dress and was sprayed with blue and yellow paint.

After Nicki Minaj and Little Mix got the music going, the singer of Panic! At The Disco made an action-movie entry. Frontman Brendon Urie was depicted in a video as climbing down the façade of the Bilbao Exhibition Centre before he was lowed from the hall’s ceiling while singing the opening of “High Hopes.”

When his group won the best alternative award, Urie announced “this is going in my bathroom.”

Minaj won for best hip-hop artist and best look. 5 Seconds of Summer left with the best rock award, Marshmello was voted best electronic artist, and best new artist went to Cardi B.

Shawn Mendes won for best live performer, and British singer-songwriter Dua Lipa was best pop artist.

The spectators went wild singing along to “Malamente” by Spanish sensation Rosalia, but the most moving performance belonged to Halsey. She delivered her heart-torn “Without Me” while chained inside a large transparent cube. When the cube lifted, water poured down on her like rain.

Boy duo Jack & Jack lifted spirits singing “Rise” while being hoisted aloft on wires, spinning and twisting over a stage that depicted a whirlpool until a friendly bunch of fans rushed in to cushion their landing.

On Saturday night, Muse kicked off the weekend’s festivities with guitar-driven rock concert at San Mames Stadium, home to local soccer club Athletic Bilbao.

The MTV EMAs is held in a different European city each year, with winners selected by fans across the continent.

 
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everal hundred people have gathered outside the Ukrainian Interior Ministry headquarters after the death of an anti-corruption activist who was attacked with acid three months ago.

Kateryna Handziuk died on Sunday in a hospital where she was being treated for burns from the July 31 attack.

Police detained five people in the case, including the alleged assailant.  They have not identified anyone suspected of ordering the attack on Handziuk, who was an aide to the mayor of the city of Kherson as well as an activist.

The people honoring Handziuk on Sunday called for intensified efforts to find those responsible.

Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in August that separatist organizations were believed to have been involved, with the aim of destabilizing southern Ukraine. Kherson is a significant port city.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) argued on Sunday over whether they should return to a more conservative agenda once she steps down as party chair as contenders to succeed her gear up for the leadership race.

Support for their Social Democrats (SPD) coalition partner meanwhile hit a record low, according to a poll published hours before senior members of both the CDU and the SPD were due to discuss the parties’ future courses in closed-door meetings.

Merkel announced last week that she would step down as CDU party leader in December, ending an era of nearly two decades in which she shifted Germany’s most powerful party gradually from the right to the center.

Her decision followed two regional votes in which Merkel’s center-right bloc and the left-leaning SPD suffered their worst election results in decades while the ecologist Greens and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained support.

Health Minister Jens Spahn, one of the three contenders to replace Merkel as party leader, said the CDU had watered down its profile by becoming too centrist in the past years.

“Parties must differ from another again more strongly,” Spahn told Welt am Sonntag newspaper. “The way we view people and society is fundamentally different from the one of the Social Democrats,” he added.

Spahn is one of the fiercest critics of Merkel’s decision in 2015 to welcome more than a million refugees, mainly Muslims from war zones in the Middle East.

Spahn ruled out a coalition with the anti-immigration AfD, saying the CDU could not work together with a party he called anti-American and which he said idolizes Russian autocrats.

CDU deputy chair Armin Laschet warned against moving the CDU more to the right. “I’m convinced that such a policy shift would be wrong,” Laschet told Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily. The CDU should stick to its centrist course, he added.

Speaking to reporters shortly before the CDU board meeting in Berlin, Laschet and CDU deputy leader Julia Kloeckner both suggested that the candidates to succeed Merkel should present themselves in several regional conferences in the coming weeks.

LEADERSHIP RACE

The candidate most likely to stand for a continuation of Merkel’s centrist course is CDU party secretary general Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer who is expected to comment on her candidacy in the coming days.

The third candidate is Friedrich Merz who would stand for a shift towards the low-tax, business-friendly right-wing conservatism that Merkel has pushed into the background.

The CDU seems to be split over its leadership question. An Emnid poll for Bild am Sonntag showed that 44 percent of party members backed Merz and 39 percent favored Kramp-Karrenbauer. Support for Spahn was at 9 percent.

SPD deputy chair Ralf Stegner said his party would not remain in the coalition “at any price”.

“If the coalition does not drastically and rapidly change its work mode and image, it cannot and will not last,” he said.

A Forsa poll for RTL/n-tv broadcasters showed on Sunday that support for the SPD plunged to a record low of 13 percent while Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc rose to 27 percent.

The pro-immigration Greens jumped to 24 percent to become the second-strongest party, the poll showed. The AfD fell to 13 percent while the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the party The Left both stood at 9 percent.
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France’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party jumped ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s LREM for the first time in a poll of voting intentions for May 2019 European Parliament elections.

An Ifop poll published Sunday showed the centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) with 19 percent of voting intentions compared with 20 percent at the end of August, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s RN, formerly the National Front, rose to 21 percent from 17 percent previously.

Together with the 7 percent score of sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and 1 percent each for “Frexit” parties led by former Le Pen associate Florian Philippot and Francois Asselineau, far-right parties won a combined 30 percent of voting intentions, up from 25 percent end August.

The poll asked nearly 1,000 French people on Oct 30-31 whom they would vote for if the European Parliament elections were to be held the next Sunday.

The conservative Les Republicains party led by Laurent Wauquiez slipped 2 percentage points to 13 percent, while the far-left France Insoumise led by Jean-Luc Melenchon fell from 14 to 11 percent.

Melenchon was widely criticized and mocked after yelling at police officers during a raid of his party offices as part of an anti-corruption inquiry.

In an Odoxa-Dentsu poll released mid-September, Macron and Le Pen’s parties were neck-and-neck around 21 percent, while the conservative Les Republicains came third with 14 percent and Melenchon’s France Insoumise fourth with 12.5 percent.

In an Ifop poll in May, the LREM was seen winning 27 percent of the EU parliament vote, well ahead of the far right’s 17 percent and more than Macron’s 24 percent in the first round of France’s April 2017 presidential elections.

The European elections are shaping up to be a major battle between centrist, pro-EU parties like Macron’s LREM and far-right formations that want to stop immigration and globalization.

The European Parliament elections determine who leads the major EU institutions, including the European Commission, the bloc’s civil service, and are also important as a bellwether of sentiment among the EU’s 500 million people.

In a YouGov poll published last week, Macron’s popularity fell to its lowest level since his 2017 election, with only 21 percent of those polled saying they were satisfied with him.

Macron’s reputation has been hit by the brusque departure of two high-profile ministers and a summer scandal over his bodyguard, while stubbornly high unemployment, high taxes and rising fuel prices add to a general feeling of discontent.
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Aquaculture is the world’s fastest growing food industry and now accounts for more than 50 percent of the total global seafood supply, according to the World Economic Forum. But farming fish requires food for those fish, and currently, it relies on a lot of ingredients that could be feeding people, including soybean, corn, rice and wheat. Faith Lapidus reports on some new sustainable ideas about feeding farmed fish, from Norway.
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Heavy rain and gales devastating parts of Italy have killed two more people, pushing the overall death toll to at least 17, and laid waste to vast swaths of forest. 

A German tourist died Friday when hit by lightning on the island of Sardinia, while another person struck by lightning several days ago died in a hospital, Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said Saturday. 

A spokeswoman said 17 deaths related to the severe weather had been reported to the agency so far. 

Many of the victims have been killed by falling trees. Coldiretti, the association of Italian agricultural companies, said in a statement that gales had destroyed about 14 million trees, many in the far north. 

Areas from the far northeast to Sicily in the southwest have been affected by the storms, with the worst damage in the northern regions of Trentino and Veneto — the region around Venice — where villages and roads have been cut off by landslides.

In the Alps near Belluno, 100 km (60 miles) north of Venice, pine trees and red spruces were snapped wholesale like matchsticks.

The surface of the Comelico Superiore dam, farther north near the Austrian border, was covered with the trunks of trees that had fallen into the Piave river.

“We’ll need at least a century to return to normality,” Coldiretti said. 

Many of the squares and walkways of Venice itself have been submerged in the highest floods the canal city has seen in a decade.

The governor of Veneto, Luca Zaia, said the region’s storm damage amounted to at least a billion euros ($1.1 billion).

Angelo Borrelli, head of the Civil Protection Department, said Veneto had seen winds of up to 180 kph (112 mph), and that the situation there was “apocalyptic.”

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini was due to visit the region Sunday. 
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With just days to go until the U.S. midterm elections, there are growing fears that Russia’s efforts to undermine U.S. democracy extend far beyond the polls on Nov. 6 or the presidential election in 2020.

Defense and security officials worry that as part of Moscow’s plan to sow division and discord, it is trying to conquer the U.S. military — not with bullets or missiles but with tweets and memes.

The tactic is an outgrowth of Russia’s overarching strategy to find seams within U.S. society where distrust or anger exist and widen those divisions with targeted messaging.

In the case of the U.S. military, according to current and former U.S. and Western officials, the Kremlin’s aim is likely to establish what is known as reflexive control. By seeding U.S. troops with the right type of disinformation, they say, Russia can predispose them to make choices or decisions that are favorable for Moscow.

The exact extent to which U.S. military personnel have been targeted or swayed is unclear.

VOA spoke with multiple defense and security officials, all of whom declined to comment on the nature or scope of Russia’s military-oriented influence operations. Still, almost all of the officials admitted Russia’s targeting of U.S. military personnel with influence operations, and the way it is being done, is a concern.

“We know it goes on,” said Ed Wilson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy. “That’s why we’ve amped up and increased the attention that we’re paying.

“We’re taking a renewed look at how we train and educate the broader force,” he said, noting that efforts go beyond just the military to the Defense Department’s partner agencies.

The former commanding general for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, Army Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, described the need to educate and shield troops from disinformation campaigns as a matter of “force protection.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a physical force or an information force,” Funk said. “Are you concerned about it? Of course. Do you have to have campaigns where you inform your soldiers of those kinds of things that happen? Sure.”

Reflexive control

Officials and experts say Russia’s use of influence operations to target the U.S. armed forces should come as no surprise. Russian President Vladimir Putin has tested the approach, using social media especially, in places like Ukraine, and since then it has become an ever more critical part of Russia’s overarching strategy.

“There’s nothing new with Russia or the Soviet Union wanting to have that degree of influence,” Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in September. “This is really kind of something that is in Putin’s DNA as a former KGB agent.”

U.S. officials have been aware of the effort for some time. At least as far back as March 2017, a Defense Information School presentation to Army public affairs officers identified disinformation on social media as a high-risk problem, capable of eroding “trust and confidence” in the ranks as well as in the Army as a whole.

But much of the military’s focus in dealing with social media, at least from what has been shared publicly, has concentrated on scams targeting military personnel, or on inappropriate or even unlawful behavior.

Some top U.S. officials have tried to downplay the dangers of Russia’s influence operation, saying in some ways the threat posed to U.S. troops is no different from the threat to anyone else.

“Like all Americans, we have to be alert to the people who would try to manipulate an election in the information age, when there’s so many feeds coming in to everybody,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said when asked about the threat in August.

“Certainly, we pay attention to that,” Mattis said. “But it’s part of the larger domain of protecting America.”

Already working?

Experts worry that simply treating the Russian influence operations targeting the military as an American problem and not a military problem has left the U.S. military vulnerable to Russia’s social media onslaught.

“U.S. military personnel and veterans — it is the uncovered stone in the Russian influence effort that no one is really taking enough of an interest in,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent and now a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.

And Watts, who has testified before Congress on Russian influence operations, thinks the Russians have already made considerable headway.

“At the enlisted ranks in the U.S. military, Russia won over a huge base of support in this country that still continues on today,” he said.

Some of the early Russian success could be traced back to the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, when their push to sway the election in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump, amplifying messages like “America First” and his tough talk on terrorism, may have resonated with rank-and-file members of the military.

A May 2016 unscientific survey by the Military Times found “Donald Trump emerged as active-duty service members’ preference to become the next U.S. president, topping Hillary Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin.”

More recent polling by Military Times and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University suggests opinions may be changing. More than 70 percent of troops surveyed said Russia was a significant threat, an increase of 18 percent from the previous year.

Yet experts and former officials say there is evidence to suggest Russian influence operations targeting U.S. military personnel and their families have continued unabated.

“Whether that’s Facebook, Twitter and others, we’re seeing where it [Russia] is focusing on identifying affinity groups,” said Heather Conley, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Now a senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia and the Arctic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Conley says the military is just one of several such groups in Russia’s sights, such as law enforcement and religious organizations.

“These unwittingly are being used to promote disinformation and malign influence,” she said. “It starts identifying the key voices within these broader groups.”

Phony military ties

At least in part, Russia has been trying to reach out to those voices on platforms like Twitter, using fake accounts purporting to be those of Americans with ties to the military.

In Twitter’s latest release of accounts linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (on Oct. 17), at least 39 had user descriptions promoting links to the military.

Some gained little to no traction, like one that described the user as “Fighting to Make America Great Again strong #military supporter. Combat #Vet ????#OORAH Ret. #Frogman ???? #Sheepdog #Patriot ???? Follow me,” which did not attract a single follower.

Others did better, getting hundreds of followers. One Russian account, describing the user as a “Proud AMERICAN, wife, mother, conservative, served my country in USMC,” had more than 2,000 followers.

“We certainly are still seeing a lot of the accounts that we’re looking at that continue to have what seemed to be clear military connections,” Bret Schafer, a social media analyst for the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Alliance for Securing Democracy, told VOA.

Schafer, along with his colleagues, have been studying Russia’s outreach on social media to U.S. military personnel and their families. He said the use of terms like “veteran” or “Navy mom” is not unusual.

“You’ll see a lot of banners on Twitter, the account pictures that will be kind of non-identifiable in terms of a specific person, but a member of the military or just some sort of graphic that connotes that person is part of the military or a family member,” he said.

Still, Schafer said it is difficult to determine just how much Russia has managed to penetrate the U.S. military community, whether on Twitter or other social media platforms, like Facebook.

“My guess is a lot of this probably would be happening more in closed Facebook groups in which there are many with the military, and frankly, nobody has any idea what’s really happening for those groups, because of course Facebook doesn’t share those with researchers,” he said.

Isolated community

And there are worries that the U.S. military may be especially vulnerable as officials admit the defense community’s connection to the rest of the country is as weak as it has been in a long time.

“My concern is the broader isolation from the community we serve, and that’s a discussion [in Congress] as well,” Army Secretary Mark Esper said during a breakfast forum in August. “On the Army staff alone, you look at any number of the senior leaders, I think they all have at least one son or daughter, if not more, who are army officers or who are serving.”

“We’ve become more segmented,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. “I’m very concerned about that.”

Reed, like Esper, downplayed concerns that the problem is one the Russians could exploit.

“I can’t think of an institution that’s more committed to America, one America and one that’s governed by the Constitution, than the military,” he said recently.

US allies already targeted by Moscow

But U.S. allies say there is reason to worry as they have seen Russia use disinformation to repeatedly target their forces.

“We have seen attempts to erode trust within the alliance,” NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu told VOA by email.

NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Latvia, working with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, has seen several large-scale disinformation campaigns and also smaller-scale attacks targeting NATO’s enhanced forward presence in the Baltics.

“Our personnel get guidance and instruction regarding misinformation and information security as part of their pre-deployment training and their arrival process in order to increase their resilience,” according to Maj. Mark Peebles with NATO’s Task Force Latvia Headquarters.

“They are aware that it’s out there and are advised to maintain a critical eye to what they see on social media,” he said.

The British, too, have seen indications that Russia and others may be trying to cause dissent in the ranks.

“Quite a few senior commanders, increasingly, I see now, having had evidence of false Facebook websites coming up routinely in their names,” said Lt. Gen. Nick Pope, British army deputy chief of the general staff, describing efforts to take the fake pages down as “whack a rat.”

“The fact is that our potential adversaries, hostile agencies, are using cybercrime, if you call it that, as a mechanism now to try to unhinge reliable, evidence-based platforms,” he said.
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Britain and Ireland will seek to hold regular summits between leaders and ministers after Brexit to maintain ties strained by Britain’s decision to leave the EU, senior ministers from both governments said on Friday.

Relations between the two have improved markedly since Ireland gained independence from Britain following a bloody struggle almost a century ago.

But ties have been tested over the last two years with Ireland a key player on the opposite side of the Brexit negotiating table to Britain. Arguments over how to manage the the border between EU-member state Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland have threatened the talks.

“What we’ve agreed is that we should aim for a model which is based upon a pattern of top level summits involving heads of government and senior ministers, probably alternating between the United Kingdom and Ireland year-by-year, and backed up by close bilateral work between ministers,” Britain’s Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington told a news conference.

“There is that shared commitment that we are not going to let political turbulence, which is a reality at the moment, deflect us from recognising that we have so much in common and so much both to gain from continued close work together.”

Lidington, Prime Minister Theresa May’s de facto deputy, was speaking after a meeting of a British-Irish cooperative body that was convened for the first time in a decade earlier this year as a result of a political deadlock in Northern Ireland.

Britain and Ireland are co-guarantors of the 1998 peace deal that ended 30 years of sectarian violence in the province and introduced devolved government. However the power-sharing executive has not met for almost two years following a breakdown between Irish nationalist and pro-British unionist politicians.

Lidington said officials would come up with proposals by early next year to replace the current regular meetings at EU meetings that helped improve the “indispensable relationship.”

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney also sought to play down a number of recent newspaper stories that highlighted a deterioration in relations between the neighbouring countries.

“Some of what you read about the stresses and strains that are sometimes reported between the British and Irish government, on a personal that is certainly not the case,” Coveney said.
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President Vladimir Putin congratulated Russia’s GRU military intelligence on its centenary Friday, hailing the agency that has been accused by the West of election meddling, nerve agent poisonings and hacking attacks against chemical weapons probes and anti-doping sports bodies.

“I’m confident of your professionalism, courage and determination,” the Russian leader said in a speech to GRU officers in Moscow.

Putin said he highly appreciates the intelligence information and the analytics produced by the GRU and also praised the agency for its actions in Syria, saying it strongly contributed to the success of Russia’s campaign there.

The United States and its allies have accused the GRU of involvement in the March nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy in Britain, hacking the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and disrupting anti-doping efforts in world sports. Russian authorities have rejected the accusations, calling them part of a Western smear campaign.

Putin made no reference to Western accusations against the GRU, but noted rising global tensions.

“The conflict potential in the world is growing,” Putin said in Friday’s speech. “There are provocations and blatant lies, as well as attempts to upset strategic parity.”

The GRU has recently faced a series of exposures that revealed its inner workings.

In September, British intelligence released surveillance images of GRU agents accused of the March nerve agent attack on former GRU officer and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury. The investigative group Bellingcat and the Russian site The Insider quickly exposed the agents’ real names. 

Dutch authorities also have recently identified four alleged GRU agents who tried to hack the world’s chemical weapons watchdog from a hotel parking lot.

While the GRU counts its history from 1918, when it was created in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution, Putin also mentioned its predecessors in imperial Russia. He noted that some imperial army officers helped the Bolsheviks organize military intelligence after the 1917 revolution. 

“They realized that there is no worse shame than to betray the Motherland, betray comrades, and at the time of turmoil and revolutionary upheavals helped preserve the continuity of the service’s traditions,” he said.

Putin added “military intelligence officers showed the same loyalty to their duty in the early 1990s following the breakup of the Soviet Union, helping preserve the GRU potential.”
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