14 April 2023 18:15

Politics

How China violates U.S. sanctions and why Putin’s propaganda is thriving on Twitter

Authors

Hennadii Kats , Olexandr Zakharov

China violates U.S. sanctions and Musk lays off the Twitter counter-propaganda unit: highlights from news

Russia’s losses in Ukraine have been so severe that it would need years to reconstitute its special operations forces. Meanwhile, Germany spoke about helping the United States if China invaded Taiwan, and Serbia claimed that it didn’t supply weapons to either Ukraine or Russia.

A Chinese company risks being sanctioned by the U.S. for importing products from the occupied Donbass territory, while Twitter has been left without the people who would counter Russian propaganda and fakes.

offers a digest of Western mass media at the end of the April 10–14, 2023, business week.

Russia would need 10 years to rebuild its special operations forces

The Ukrainian army has almost rooted out Russian special operations forces. Photo: Getty Images

According to classified U.S. assessments obtained by The Washington Post, Russia’s clandestine spetsnaz forces suffered heavy losses in Ukraine, and it will take years to rebuild them.

The finding is among a cache of sensitive materials leaked online through the messaging platform Discord.

Typically, spetsnaz personnel are assigned the sorts of stealthy, high-risk missions — including an apparent order to capture Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. But when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion last year, senior commanders skeptical of their conventional fighters’ prowess extensively ordered elite forces into direct combat.

This resulted in rapid depletion of Russia’s commando units, severely limiting Moscow’s ability to employ clandestine tactics not only in Ukraine but also in other parts of the world where Russian forces operate.

The hollowing of these units appears to be evident in satellite imagery featured among the leaked materials. According to them, the 22nd and two other spetsnaz brigades suffered an estimated 90 to 95 percent attrition rate. Since spetsnaz soldiers require at least four years of specialized training, U.S. officials suggest that it could take as long as a decade for Moscow to reconstitute these units.

The U.S. government assessments dovetail with analysts’ observations. Rob Lee, a Russia military expert and senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that because Russia’s motorized rifle infantry soldiers proved ineffective, commanders have sought to compensate by pushing elite airborne units, naval infantry and spetsnaz to the front.

As a result, the best-trained fighters have been lost from the start of the invasion through last fall, crippling Russia’s ability to gather intelligence.

"That affected the rest of the war because Russia lost all these key capabilities up front that they couldn’t easily replace — both equipment-wise and talent-wise. That affected what they could and couldn’t do," says Lee.

Germany commented on the risks of a Chinese attack on Taiwan

Baerbock took a different stance on China than Macron. Photo: Getty Images

According to Politico, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on April 13 significantly distanced Berlin from contentious remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron on whether Europe would help the U.S. if China invades Taiwan.

Last weekend, Macron said that Europe should chart an independent course on Taiwan, by not acting as a "follower" to the U.S. and not getting involved in crises that were not its concern. His words sparked particular dismay among those who view the U.S. as Europe’s key security ally.

Speaking during a visit to China, Baerbock said the EU "cannot be indifferent" to tensions over Taiwan, while stressing that close partnerships with partners with shared values like the U.S. would be crucial "when we face our own security threats" such as with Russia.

"We are currently seeing how important it is to have partners around the world who share our values at our side when we face our own security threats. That is why it is so important for us, because we are vulnerable as Germany and as the European Union, that we cannot be indifferent to the tensions in the Taiwan Strait," Baerbock said in Tianjin, where she began a three-day trip to China.

She also stressed that free access in the Taiwan Strait is also in the EU’s own economic interest, since 50 percent of world trade and 70 percent of the global semiconductor production are being shipped through the region.

At the same time, Baerbock avoided a direct clash with Paris, by stressing that the coordination between Germany and France on the common internal market remains close.

Serbia denies supplying weapons to Ukraine

Vučić denied the supply of weapons to Kyiv. Photo: Getty Images

According to The Guardian, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić says his country has not sold arms to Ukraine and would not do so, after a leaked Pentagon report said Belgrade had agreed to provide arms to Kyiv.

He added that the Balkan nation, a traditional Russian ally, "has not nor will it" send ammunition to either Ukraine or Russia.

"There is no paper that would show something like that."

Reuters reported on Wednesday that the classified Pentagon document alleged that Serbia "has agreed to supply arms to Kyiv or has sent them already".

The Serbian defense minister, Miloš Vučević, quickly rejected the allegations and said his country "has not and will not sell weapons to either Ukraine or Russia".

"Someone obviously aims to drag Serbia into that conflict, but we adhere to our policy consistently," he said in a statement.

Apart from Belarus, Serbia is the only European nation that has not joined western sanctions against Moscow, although it has backed several UN resolutions condemning Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

A Chinese company imported copper from occupied Ukrainian territories

China imported copper from an occupied plant in Debaltseve. Photo: Unsplash

A Chinese company bought copper alloy ingots from a plant in a Russian-annexed region of Ukraine, Reuters reports, referring to Russian customs data.

The Chinese firm, Quzhou Nova, bought at least 3,220 tons of copper alloy in ingots worth a total of $7.4 million from the Debaltsevsky Plant of Metallurgical Engineering between October 8, 2022 and March 24, 2023. The copper alloy shipments from the plant were carried out via the port of Novorossiysk in southern Russia.

China has not imposed any restrictions on trade with Russia, but the United States has threatened to blacklist companies round the world for violating its sanctions and warned Beijing against supplying Moscow with goods banned by U.S. export rules.

Quzhou Nova told Reuters it does not have any import and export business related to the trade of copper alloy in ingots and also said that it "finds it hard to understand the document, because this document is not stamped and signed," although the database, which collects information on all shipments worldwide, never displays stamps or signatures on its information.

An anonymous source at the Debaltsevsky plant said there was a non-ferrous metallurgy workshop on the territory of the factory but declined to comment on the issue of copper alloy shipments to China, saying the information was a "trade secret."

U.S. sanctions imposed on February 21, 2022 prohibit U.S .imports from or exports to the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. Therefore, Chinese companies risk being added to Western blacklists.

The U.S. State Department said it was concerned about China's alignment with the Kremlin.

"We have warned the PRC (People's Republic of China) that assistance to Russia’s war effort would have serious consequences. We will not hesitate to move against entities, including PRC firms, that help Russia wage war against Ukraine or help Russia circumvent sanctions."

Musk laid off the team that fought Putin’s propaganda on Twitter

Musk blotted out the team that countered Russian propaganda and fakes on Twitter. Photo: Getty Images

Hundreds of Russian and Chinese state propaganda accounts are thriving on Twitter after Elon Musk wiped out the team that fought these networks, the BBC reports.

The unit worked to combat "information operations", coordinated campaigns by countries such as Russia, China, and Iran, made to influence public opinion and disrupt democracy. The majority of these specialists resigned or were laid off, leaving the platform vulnerable to foreign manipulation.

"The whole human layer has been wiped out. All Twitter has left are automated detections systems," a former employee said.

Now, a new group of Russian trolls is active on Twitter. It supports Putin's war in Ukraine, ridicules Kyiv and the West, and attacks independent Russian-language publications, including the BBC Russian Service. Many of these trolls' accounts have been suspended, but dozens are still active.

In 2018, the FBI said that fake accounts impersonating real Americans had played a central role in the Russian effort to meddle in the 2016 election. That was when Twitter and Facebook started hiring "information operations" specialists.

Although Twitter had a relatively small budget as compared to Facebook, it built a capable team of people with backgrounds in cybersecurity, journalism, government agencies, and NGOs.

One former employee of this unit says he resigned because his team did not fit into 'Twitter 2.0' that Musk was building.