2021-

2021-06-11 c
REAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE

“It’s all ops?”

“Always has been.”

Colour Revolutions have not gone away and will not be going away any time soon. Successes in places like Ukraine and Georgia have given the CIA ‘proof of concept’, even if it has gone rather wobbly since. This past summer’s attempt to overthrow Belarus’ Lukashenko was quite clumsy in that it sought to do so not just in such a blatant and obvious manner, but during a pandemic which allowed any government anywhere to shut down even the smallest social gatherings without a second thought.

With the USA firmly ensconced in Kiev, the CIA sought to plant another flag on Russia’s borders, this time in Minsk. Lukashenko provided an ‘in’ by way of a heavy-handed fixing of election results. The protests against this were not the ‘organic’ and ‘spontaneous’ ones as portrayed in western media, but were instead closely coordinated by the usual cut-outs, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) being most prominent. The fact that the anti-Russian Atlantic Council was all over the opposition only served to give Lukashenko even more justification in shutting it down.

As for NED:

A pair of notorious Russian pranksters posing as leading Belarusian opposition figures have duped the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) into revealing the extent of US involvement in Eastern European political movements.

In a video call posted on the online channel of pranksters Vovan and Lexus, senior representatives of the American agency disclosed that they have actively financed and supported anti-government campaigns in the region. The officials from the NED, which is funded by Congress and describes its role as “supporting freedom around the world,” also revealed that they are coordinating efforts with prominent political activists in a range of countries, including Russia.

The officials believed they were talking to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the figurehead of Belarus’ opposition movement, and one of her advisors.

During the call, Nina Ognianova, who oversees the NED's work with local groups in Belarus, outlined the wide-ranging programs the agency bankrolls in the country, insisting that “a lot of the people who have been trained by these hubs, who have been in touch with them and being educated, being involved in their work, have now taken the flag and started to lead in community organizing.”

“long time”

“We believe that this long-term trust-building that we have had with partners in Belarus has indeed brought the events, or the build-up to the events, of last summer,” Ognianova stated.

“We don't think that this movement that is so impressive and so inspiring came out of nowhere - that it just happened overnight,” she added, “but it has been developing and we have our modest but significant contribution in that by empowering the local actors to do the important work.”

Carl Gershman, the president of the US state-backed agency, told the pranksters that Washington-based funding and policy groups were already working with Tikhanovskaya and her team “very, very closely.” He then asked the opposition figure, who fled to neighboring Lithuania after the election, to set out her thinking on the situation “so we can understand what your strategy is... and how we can be helpful.”

Beyond Belarus:

The pranksters also pushed the NED’s top team to outline their current activity in Russia, asking what they were doing to support anti-Kremlin activists. Gershman replied that such initiatives are “obviously incredibly important and we've emphasized this, going back to the election in August when the demonstrations were taking place in the Russian Far East, and people were connecting with each other and saying we share the same ideals, so we're very committed to helping on that, and we will - working with our networks and our institutes.”

[...] Suffice it to say that caution is urged as NED and others have no incentive to stop trying to overthrow the government in Russia and will continue to try and destabilize it in the name of ‘democracy’. (read more)

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