Latest in Russia
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Dec. 3 hearing on the future of the U.S.-Russia relationship revealed stark differences in lawmakers’ views on the role sanctions should play in Washington’s strategy toward Moscow.
In the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Russian nationals Maksim V. Yakubets and Igor Turashev were indicted for conspiracy, fraud conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud and intentional damage to a computer. The indictment alleges the two men along with co-conspirators installed Bugat malware on victims' computers to obtain millions of dollars. The document is available here and below.
On Nov. 12, Russian national Aleksei Yurievich Burkov made an initial court appearance in Alexandria, Virginia. The appearance followed his extradition from Israel that had faced strong opposition from Russian officials. The indictment from 2016 alleges that Burkov ran a website called Cardplanet that contributed to more than $20 million in credit card fraud.
Democrats and Republicans alike should prioritize responding to interference from Beijing, imposing additional sanctions on malign actors, closing financial loopholes, raising standards for technology companies and improving election security.
The draft National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2020, currently in conference, includes three Arctic-specific provisions that show a continuing increase in congressional attention to the Arctic over the past five years.
The last treaty that limits the United States’s and Russia’s nuclear weapons, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), will expire in February 2021 unless both states agree to its extension. Opponents of extension, including some U.S. officials, have argued against extending the treaty by citing Russia’s new, developmental strategic weapons, which they claim will not be covered by the treaty. Yet the reality is more complex.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Order from Chaos.
Editor’s Note: With the exception of the president of the United States, we all know that Russia and other powers have run amok in their attempts to influence U.S. elections and those of other democracies around the world. Learning the scope of the problem, however, has proved difficult. In a groundbreaking study, Arya Goel, Diego Martin and Jacob Shapiro, all of Princeton University, find that more than 20 countries have been targeted. Russia (no surprise) is by far the most active, but Iran, China and Saudi Arabia all are joining the fray.
The question of Russian interference in the American political system is not going away. Even as the various investigations of Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election wind down, concerns about the security of the 2020 election abound. Alongside these concerns, another question has started to mature, mostly in legal circles for now: the question of Russian exploitation of the American and international legal systems.