The Washington Post, over the past week, has published a number of fascinating pieces looking into the U.S.’s fraying, increasingly combative, relationship with Russia.
Today, they reported that the reason for the increasing in hacking attempts stems from Vladimir Putin being embarrassed by the U.S. on the international stage.
The antics have also forced world attention back to Putin, giving him the aura of a superpower leader. On Wednesday, for example, three of the six front-page stories in the New York Times were about Russia — its role in Syria, its latest high-profile hack and its secret influence campaigns in Europe.
“Putin is still recovering from belittling remarks” that Obama made when he described the country as a regional power, said Angela Stent, national intelligence officer for Russia from 2004 to 2006. “It’s a way of reasserting Russia. Whatever the truth, Russia is back.”
Damn, yo. What a tiny dicked mother fucker. Yesterday, in another article, they broke the news that a CIA operative was beating by Russian police, so badly that he needed to be evacuated from the country.
The more brazen behavior by the CIA has been met with an intensifying campaign of harassment of American officials in Moscow. In the most recent case, an American official returning by taxi to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow after dark in June was tackled and thrown to the ground by a Russian guard stationed at the gate.
The American was formally identified as a U.S. diplomat, but current and former officials said that he was a CIA officer operating under diplomatic cover in Moscow and had to be evacuated from the country to have his injuries treated. State-owned Russian television subsequently aired video of the brawl, depicting it as an act of bravery by a Russian guard seeking to protect the embassy from a dangerous intruder — an interpretation denounced by U.S. officials as preposterous.
Give both pieces a read, because they are fascinating.
And definitely expect more election-related hacks. This shit is just getting started.