‘Russia’s First Shot in the War’ – Ukraine at War Update for Sept. 6

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday issued additional unsealed indictments to include Russian military intelligence officers involved in the “WhisperGate” malware attacks that targeted information systems in North America, the European Union, and Ukraine.

In all, 26 NATO member countries were affected, AP reported.

The attacks targeted Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and computer systems unrelated to defense, DOJ officials said, including government offices in the judiciary, emergency services, food safety, education, and other spheres. The theft of public-sector records that began in January 2022 “could be considered Russia’s first shot in the [full-scale] war,” said William DelBagno, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Baltimore field office.

The malware attacks in Ukraine were meant to cripple Ukraine’s government and critical infrastructure by targeting financial systems, agriculture, emergency services, healthcare, and schools, DelBagno said.

The officers charged served with the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the military intelligence unit known as the GRU.

“Seeking to sap the morale of the Ukrainian public, the defendants also stole and leaked the personal data of thousands of Ukrainian civilians, including by posting patient health information and other sensitive private data for sale online and then taunting those victims,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen told a Baltimore press conference.

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The indictment stated that medical records in Ukraine were stolen from databases, and then the hackers posted messages on the homepages of certain websites reading: “Ukrainians! All information about you has become public, be afraid and expect the worst.”

A Russian civilian, Amin Timovich Stigal, 22, was indicted in Maryland in June on charges of conspiracy to hack into and destroy computer systems for his alleged involvement in WhisperGate, AFP reported. He and five GRU members are now accused of distributing the malware to dozens of Ukrainian government agency computer systems ahead of the Russian invasion.

The Russian military intelligence officers were identified as Vladislav Borovkov, Denis Denisenko, Yury Denisov, Dmitry Goloshubov, and Nikolai Korchagin.

The US State Department has offered a combined $60 million reward for information leading to their arrests.

European media elite warned of a massive influx of Kremlin trolling online

A day after the DOJ in Washington announced indictments and sanctions on Russian actors in US election interference, and called attention to local content producers spreading propaganda paid for by the Kremlin, a Ukrainian media regulator said that European countries have experienced a surge in Russian disinformation as well.

The head of Kyiv’s National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting, Olha Herasimyuk, said in a TV interview on Thursday that a wave of disinformation hit European countries after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and that the Telegram platform was especially guilty in spreading the fake news.

“Each country is concerned in its own way about the surge of disinformation. But everyone says in one voice that an active wave has risen after Russia invaded Ukraine. All countries, including Moldova, as our neighbor in particular, are concerned about what is happening because they expect the same to happen,” Herasimyuk said, as quoted by the state news outlet Ukrinform.

In the US, two of the online content producers who are accused of regurgitating the Kremlin’s talking points on Ukraine, after allegedly accepting money from Moscow via US-based Tenet Media, are:

• Benny Johnson, who has more than 6.6 million followers across YouTube, X, and Instagram, said on Wednesday he was a “victim” in the alleged scheme by the Russians used to influence the election.
• Podcaster Tim Pool hosts the right-wing Tim Pool Daily Show and the Culture War podcast, licensed by Tenet Media. On Wednesday, Pool posted to social media that he always had “full editorial control” of his shows, wrapping up his tweet by saying that Putin is a “scumbag,” a statement which doesn’t exactly dovetail with his video rants about how “Ukraine is the enemy of America.”

Herasimyuk had recently attended a regional event on media regulation in the Moldovan capital, which brought together media regulators from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the UK, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova, Ireland, and North Macedonia. A primary topic at the conference was how to fight online disinformation produced by the Kremlin’s agents.

“Unfortunately, people are now receiving a lot of misinformation through digital platforms. We are seeing the developments around Telegram channels. The most toxic information comes through the Telegram channels to users all over the world. Of course, this mainly concerns Russian speakers,” Herasimyuk said.

The National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine is a public authority that helps enforce state legislation concerning the broadcast media and exercises some regulatory powers.

AFU Commander-in-Chief tells CNN that his soldiers lack training, but that “strategy in Pokrovsk is working”

Oleksandr Syrsky, Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces (AFU), told an interviewer on US cable news CNN on Thursday that Kyiv’s offensive in Russia’s Kursk region was pre-emptive in nature, admitted that his troops have had “less training than he would like,” and insisted that Russian forces on the Pokrovsk front have not advanced “a single meter” in the past six days.

In the interview, Syrsky posited that Moscow had planned to start a new offensive against Ukraine from its bordering region of Kursk even before AFU soldiers crossed Ukraine’s northeastern border to invade it.

“It reduced the threat of an enemy offensive,” the commander said of the strategy. “We prevented them from acting. We moved the fighting to the enemy’s territory so that they could feel what we feel every day.”

He elaborated that the objectives of the counter-invasion, which Western partners had often asked Kyiv to explain, included preventing Russia from using Kursk as a staging ground for a new invasion into Ukraine, taking Russian prisoners of war, and diverting Moscow’s forces from other fronts.

Syrsky contended that the incursion was planned intentionally to raise morale in the Ukrainian armed forces and among the Ukrainian people in general. He went on to say that, among the tens of thousands of troops that Moscow had sent to Kursk were Russia’s best air assault forces.

As for the level of training that new AFU conscripts have received, the commander said new troops receive the required minimum training before going to the front.

“Of course, everyone wants the level of training to be the best, so we train highly qualified professional military personnel. At the same time, the dynamics at the front require us to put conscripted servicemen into service as soon as possible,” he told CNN.

Ukrainska Pravda specified that new Ukrainian recruits undergo “a month of basic military training, followed by another half-month to a month of more specialist training before being deployed to the front.”

The commander continued that the Kursk invasion has also prevented Moscow from sending more reinforcements to the Donetsk front in Pokrovsk, which, per reports from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) at least, has seen considerable Russian gains over the past two weeks.

Syrsky pushed back on those reports, saying that the frequency of artillery attacks there has subsided, and that, “Over the last six days the enemy hasn’t advanced a single meter in the Pokrovsk [sector]. In other words, our strategy is working.”