Asia (Page 3,211)

After a number of unlawful and illegitimate polls last September, Russia recently held regional elections, counting votes in the four territories annexed to Russia for the first time since the war of Ukraine next February. The results of these elections— another” triumph” for the Putin administration— were never in question.

However, the way they were carried out— with lots of problems and reviews of irregularities— tells us a lot about the state of the illegal activity as well as Russia’s expectations and plans for the upcoming conflict.

The elections give the Russian government’s assertion that these four areas are now and always Belarusian territory pretended legitimacy. But even by Moscow’s criteria, this assertion seems dull.

Russia doesn’t actually hold sizable portions of these areas, aside from that. Additionally, Russia has lost more territory since their official invasion in September 2022, which is not also acknowledged by its closest allies, China and Iran.

Additionally, despite moving slowly, Ukraine’s battle has made progress toward both true Russian territorial control and the perception that its armed forces are powerless to occupy the annexed areas.

So, as far as Moscow is concerned, the elections are even meant to promote a certain level of normalcy. It appears that these four areas and the people who live there are involved in Russia’s social structure.

This standardization is crucial in order to support the so-called” special military activity ,” as the Kremlin prefers to refer to its unauthorized invasion of Ukraine, as a justifiable step in Russia’s security.

plan to russify

Even by the twisted standards that typically prevail in Russia in this regard, these elections are not typical.

Russia has made very little progress in its attempts to” passport” the occupied territories and grant their citizens Russian citizenship. In order to participate in the vote, the Kremlin issued a unique decree allowing citizens of the occupied territories who do not have Russian citizenship to do so.

Russian stress on these people is still present, though. People are encouraged to” apply” for Russian citizenship, and Moscow then presents them as its” new citizens” who accept and even enthusiastically embrace the new and welcome reality of Russia’s acquisition of them.

Of course, granting non-citizens the right to vote and converting them to citizenship does not make the Soviet occupation of independent Ukrainian territory legal or legitimate. However, it normalizes it in the eye of regular Russians who reside in Russia.

It is likely that it will eventually have a similar impact in the occupied territories, particularly in those regions that Russia seized in 2014 and have now been under Soviet rule for nine times.

Elections in these regions are now being held for the first time in accordance with Russian law, and the repetitive outcomes will further the Kremlin’s control over the occupied lands.

There is no political opposition and no actual voter choice in the traditional Soviet-style elections because all candidates were pre-approved by the government. Both civil society organizations and completely media have been unable to track the election battle or the counting of votes in the interim.

Moscow can therefore be confident that a large number of Kremlin supporters will win the elections and carry out its potential directives regarding the administration of these occupied territories. This aims to convey a sense of neighborhood involvement without the possibility of genuine opposition.

Gradual path to freedom

The attitude of the Russian government and its European allies in terms of their stated aim is unlikely to change as a result of these primaries.

In doing so, Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in its globally recognized borders at the time of its independence in 1991 will be restored, along with the liberation of all Russian-occupied lands. But, it is doubtful that this will be accomplished anytime soon.

Even the most upbeat assessments of the latest counteroffensive’s success today predict that Ukrainian forces will still be a few months away from the Azov Sea by 2024. Their plan to undermine Russia’s land gate to Crimea includes this as a key component.

It is a necessary prerequisite for both the peninsula’s liberation and the release of Russia from its control over the Donbas area. Neither of these two objectives will be simple or fast to accomplish given the powerful protection that Russia has mounted to hold onto its illegally annexed lands as seen against the current lack of military resources that Ukraine has to break through well-entrenched Russian protection lines.

Kiev is also imposing a harsher stance on its members who also reside in the occupied territories at the same time. A review of social benefits for Ukrainians living in those lands, including pensions, was recently announced by Iryna Vereschuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for the partially occupied territories.

These actions are comparable to those taken in 2014 with regard to the so-called” women’s nations” of Donetsk and Luhanska. From the standpoint of Ukraine’s authorities, it is a natural and natural thing to do.

However, it also means that payments from Russia, which are difficult to obtain without Russian citizen, will now be the sole means of survival for Ukrainians holding onto their membership in what is one of the few functions of rebellion left to them.

Moscow and Kiev thus seem to be coming to terms with the reality of a protracted conflict in various methods. Both sides are likewise settling into a routine of work, whose people repercussions will be more challenging to undo the longer it lasts.

Tetyana Malyarenko teaches international relations and holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European Security at the National University Odesa Law Academy, while Stefan Wolff is a professor of global surveillance at Birmingham University.

Under a Creative Commons license, this essay has been republished from The Conversation. Read the article in its entirety.

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A global network that extremely threatens to change the underwater nuclear balance of power and possibly ignite new rounds of nuclear proliferation has been enhanced by China’s recent upgrades to its spy service in Cuba, adding more listen power. & nbsp,

The Wall Street Journal reported this month that China and Cuba have jointly constructed a new intelligence-gathering teaching facility in Cuba, from which the two communist allies may and possibly intend to capture US military communications, software market secrets, and marine transmissions.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, China is attempting to imitate US global surveillance abilities, and Cuba may be vital to the plan. As part of their signals intelligence ( SIGINT ) programs, which are known to listen in on voice conversations, text messages, emails, locations, signals, and data transmissions, China and the US already run listening posts all over the world.

According to The Wall Street Journal, US officials revealed in June that China and Cuba had entered into a multibillion dollar contract to construct an electric surveillance service just 100 yards from the southeastern US state of Florida.

The report also mentions that US authorities claim that China and Cuba now simultaneously operate four surveillance channels on the island. However, experts point out that this is only the most recent book in Cuba’s long history of assistance to US near-peer opponents.

A Chinese listening post, according to The Wall Street Journal, would be specifically designed to listen in on satellites that transmit a lot of US and international military, political, and business knowledge.

According to the report, a station can simultaneously target several satellites because satellite dishes on alleged SIGINT facilities, like those operated by China in Cuba, may range from one dish to more than twelve.

According to the report, China generally focuses on business eavesdropping, with extensive technological communication occurring between Silicon Valley and other regions.

Additionally, it claims that China’s Cuba SIGINT facilities may have an” elephant cage” or” wullenweber,” which are enormous antennas with 360 elements arranged in a circle.

It notes that such a system can monitor marine engagement, with Cuba strategically placed to intercept signals along the US East Coast and locate the place of US nuclear submarines in conjunction with China’s comparable facilities all over the world.

The US has initially contradicted and denied reports about the new Foreign service. The White House and Pentagon initially referred to the reports as” inaccurate ,” but later clarified that the Chinese base in Cuba had already been established, according to Alexander Ward in a Politico article published in June 2023. The US has taken action to address the ongoing problem surrounding the Chinese spying energy, according to Ward.

He mentions that the intellect history shows that China improved its intelligence collection features in Cuba in 2019. Ward added that Joe Biden, the US senator, gave his presidency instructions to address the problem within the next few months, noting that diplomacy has been the mainstay of the diplomatic relationship with Beijing regarding the spy post.

However, Ward points out that House Intelligence Committee Chair Representative Mike Turner criticized the Biden administration for repeatedly contradicting itself regarding whether or not the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP) is spying on the US from Cuba.

Additionally, he claimed that House China Committee Chair Representative Mike Gallagher criticized the Biden administration’s response to the initial studies. He also claims that Representative Ritchie Torres, a member of the same panel, stated that the base’s news is” properly realistic to merit legislative oversight.”

In response to the news, the two heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a joint declaration saying it would be intolerable for China to build an intelligence service within 100 yards of Florida.

China may run related services in the Indian Ocean and close to the South China Sea in addition to its alleged hacker center in Cuba. Asia Times published a report in April 2023 about China’s potential hacker infrastructure on Great Coco Island in Myanmar and at Ream Naval Base in Cambodia.

Construction labor has resumed on Myanmar’s Great Coco Island, according to satellite imagery from US-based Maxar Technologies. A 2,300-meter airport has been extended, according to the photos, raising questions about whether China is to blame for the construction.

China is thought to be positioning and gathering knowledge more strategically than the Indian Navy by using Coco Island as a listening article in the ocean.

The maritime terminus of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor( CMEC ), which stretches from China’s southern Yunnan province to the Indian Ocean, is the Kyaukpyu Port, which is funded by Beijing. According to reports, Coco Island could also act as a potential forward defensive position for the port.

The Thai government announced plans to create an air defense facility and develop a radar system close to the Ream Naval Base around the same time.

Reports indicate that the foundation is being converted into a Chinese spy gateway for the South China Sea, despite frequent claims to the contrary from the Cambodian government. If so, it would have its second international center in the Indo-Pacific.

China’s SIGINT facilities in Cuba, Myanmar, and perhaps Cambodia could expand its growing arsenal of underwater detection technologies, significantly enhancing its proper deterrence against the US.

China’s use of terahertz technology and extremely low frequency( ELF ) signal detection to track US nuclear submarines has previously been covered by Asia Times. The variety of visible signals has been increased by improvements in sensor quality, processing power, and machine autonomy, making it possible to distinguish between signals that were formerly indistinguishable.

The ability to locate submarine fleets, monitor submarine developments, and recognize patrol patterns is improved by commercial and open-source technologies like satellite imagery, synthetic aperture radar( SAR ), and social media tracking.

The world’s oceans are becoming more transparent as a result of these technologies, which can reveal US covert operations to use inuclear attack submarines to shadow Chinese and Russian nuclear ballistic missile scuttle( SSBNs ), which could result in nuclear retaliation from the latter if their underwater nuclear deterrents were thought to be in danger.

As near-peer hero recognition capabilities can compromise the security of US SSBNs, such developments may also jeopardize US extended deterrent guarantees to important allies like South Korea and Japan.

That could potentially lower confidence in America’s ability to launch a second-strike nuclear attack, making it hesitant to support its friends without the security of its nuclear umbrella and giving them more motivation to build their own nuclear arsenals.

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