Securing Democracy Dispatch

This is the Dispatch’s final edition of 2024. We will resume our usual publishing schedule on Thursday, January 9, 2025. Happy holidays to all our readers!

Russian diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week:

• Assassination of Russian General: Russian officials and state media implied that the United States assisted the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) with the assassination of Russian General Igor Kirillov. On the eve of the attack, Ukrainian prosecutors charged Kirillov, the head of the Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Defense Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, with using banned chemical weapons in Ukraine. Russian politician Aleksei Zhuravlev called this timing purposeful to “strengthen [the] effect” of Ukrainian “propaganda”. Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitri Medvedev labeled the assassination “the agony of the [Stepan] Bandera regime”, while the Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin described Ukraine as “a terrorist state led by an illegitimate Nazi president”. RT suggested several potential reasons for the assassination, including Kirillov’s “exposure” of the purported “US-funded biolabs in Ukraine”, his allegations that chemical elements were smuggled through NATO territory, and his warnings about Kyiv’s supposed false-flag operations in October. Pro-Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyev added that Kirillov also warned about Ukraine’s use of chemical weapons and exposed a laboratory for producing toxic substances near Adviivka in June. Russia’s permanent representative at the United Nations pledged to raise the assassination during the UN Security Council on Friday.
• Kalinka and Slepysh: According to Sputnik, the Russian Center for Unmanned Systems and Technologies (CBST) has developed a monitoring system called Kalinka that can purportedly detect satellite signals, including Starlink’s, and can help Russia identify Ukrainian unmanned boats and “Baba Yaga” drones that rely on these signals. Previously, the Russian army could only identify these objects visually, but the new system can supposedly spot such weapons at a distance of up to 15 kilometers.  According to Andrei Bezrukov, the chairman of the CBST board, Kalinka will be able to capture signals even from Starshield, a military version of Starlink used by the Ukrainian army. State media also touted the development of Slepysh (Russian for “a blind mole-rat”), another tool that the Russian army has started testing to fight Ukrainian drones by targeting the drone’s camera system to disorient the operator and disrupt the drone’s neural network.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week: 

• Nanjing Massacre Commemoration: Last week, PRC diplomats and state media commemorated the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, during which Japanese troops killed, depending on estimates, between 100,000 and 300,000 Chinese civilians. The PRC Embassy in Japan’s X post about the massacre which called for people to “remember history” was the second-most engaged-with PRC tweet last week. State media relayed the commemorations on all monitored platforms. PRC diplomats and state media promoted an American man’s donation of a “Japanese war crime photo album” along with his warnings that those who do not study history are destined to repeat it.
• Xinjiang: Xinhua published a nine–part series on a young woman’s trip to Xinjiang, China, where she witnesses the PRC’s efforts to preserve the region’s history, traditional dances, and “zero signs” of forced labor. A few PRC diplomats advertised the region’s cotton industry and economic development. Pro-PRC influencer Li Jingjing shared videos on TikTok, X, and Instagram that explain that reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang were fabricated by the West to destabilize China. She was in the region last week with two foreign pro-PRC commentators and promised “great contents coming up”. Li and CGTN employee Shen Shiwei also accused a US-based Uyghur activist of working for the US Central Intelligence Agency.

EU imposes first-ever sanctions to address Kremlin “hybrid threats”: The European Council announced sanctions for the first time against 16 individuals and three entities that have aided Russian “hybrid threats” abroad, including those involved in spreading pro-Kremlin narratives in Europe, Africa, and the United States, an individual who coordinated anti-Semitic graffiti in France last year, and a former aide to a German politician that gave classified information to Russian intelligence. Research Analyst Etienne Soula told the Dispatch, “In 2024, the Kremlin orchestrated a barrage of destabilizing operations that ranged from information manipulation campaigns to assassination attempts across all of Europe. It is therefore encouraging to see the EU take action against at least some of the individuals and entities involved in these activities. One would hope that these sanctions are just a warm-up act, and that 2025 will see the EU take more ambitious, as well as speedier, measures to push back against Russia’s brazen disrespect of its member states’ sovereignty.”

In Case You Missed It

• The US Supreme Court will rule on a law that would require TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company to sell the platform or face a ban in the United States.
• The bipartisan US House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) unveiled its report on how the United States can responsibly use the technology, which emphasized the need to counter deepfakes and clarify legal liabilities for those that create AI-generated content, among other prescriptions.
• The European Commission opened an investigation into TikTok over allegations that it failed to properly address efforts on the platform to meddle in Romania’s recent presidential election.
• The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency released new guidelines to advise members of the US government about how to safeguard their mobile communications following a PRC-linked group’s hack of US telecommunications.
• Kremlin-backed actors have spent €69 million to spread preferred narratives in Romania and Bulgaria in an operation dating back as far as 2010, according to a group of Bulgarian cybersecurity experts.
• Moldova’s parliament voted to impose a state of emergency over fears that Russia might cut off natural gas supply to the country this winter.

阿萨德倒台重创俄罗斯声望，彰显衰落或已不可逆转 (The fall of Assad has dealt a blow to Russia’s prestige, and it shows that the decline may be irreversible). Research Analyst Etienne Soula quoted in Voice of America Chinese

Ursula von der Leyen erneut mächtigste Frau der Welt – Taylor Swift weit abgeschlagen (Ursula von der Leyen once again the most powerful woman in the world – Taylor Swift far behind). Senior Manager for Europe and Fellow Vassilis Ntousas quoted in Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland

The future of democracy. ASD research cited in European Union Institute for Security Studies

“In some ways, we feel like we are back in 1921 as scenes are repeating themselves. … That is what explains the courage and determination with which the Georgian people are reacting today. They see what is happening as a deposition of their freedom, their future, and in some ways, their independence.”

—Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, during an address to the European Parliament on December 18.

The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone.