Possible “Hybrid War” if talks fail, Archbishop of Latvia

Matthew 24:6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.

Important Takeaways:

  • Latvian Archbishop: If Putin Attacks Ukraine ‘We Will Be Next’
  • “If Vladimir Putin attacks Ukraine, we — the Baltic states — will be next, and then Poland too,” said Stankiewicz, the archbishop of Riga, Latvia’s capital. “If there is no dialogue, it will be very dangerous and could lead to a military situation.”
  • The archbishop said that Latvia fears a possible “hybrid war” combining military and non-military measures, such as propaganda and cyberattacks, used to destabilize the country.

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Poland declares state of emergency on Belarus border

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland’s president has declared a state of emergency in parts of two regions bordering Belarus, his spokesman said on Thursday, an unprecedented move in the country’s post-communist history that follows a surge in illegal migration.

The European Union has accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of using migrants from countries like Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a “hybrid war” designed to put pressure on the bloc over sanctions it has imposed on Minsk.

Poland has been trying to improve security along its frontier by building a fence and deploying troops.

“The situation on the border with Belarus is difficult and dangerous,” presidential spokesman Blazej Spychalski told a news conference. “Today, we as Poland, being responsible for our own borders, but also for the borders of the European Union, must take measures to ensure the security of Poland and the (EU).”

The Polish Border Guard said on Wednesday there had been around 3,500 attempts to illegally cross the border in August alone, 2,500 of which it had managed to thwart.

The government has also said it needs to be prepared for “provocations” that could transpire during military exercises organized by the Russian army that will be held on Russian and Belarusian territory near Poland from Sept. 10.

The “West-2021” drills will involve thousands of servicemen, including those from Kazakhstan, a member of the Moscow-led defense bloc, as well as tanks, artillery and aircraft.

“The second reason for bringing in the state of emergency in this area is the military exercises…that will take place on our border,” Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said. “We must be prepared for every scenario.”

The state of emergency, which will restrict the movement of people and ban mass gatherings, is to apply to a 3-km-(1.9-mile)-deep swathe along the border for 30 days.

NGOs have sharply criticized the government’s approach to the issue and have said Warsaw must provide more humanitarian aid to migrants stranded on the border.

“This state of emergency is a nuclear solution that is to move us away from this border, not only us but also the media, and make sure that no one…will document what is happening there,” said Marianna Wartecka of the Ocalenie Foundation refugee charity.

Poland says the migrants are the responsibility of Belarus and it has also accused Minsk of refusing a convoy of humanitarian aid meant for them.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz, Alicja Ptak and Anna Koper; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Poland says Belarus lets migrants cross border in ‘hybrid war’ with EU

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland accused Belarus of sending a growing number of migrants over the border in retaliation for Warsaw’s decision this week to give refuge to Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a Belarusian athlete who refused to return home from the Tokyo Olympics.

A deputy interior minister, Maciej Wasik, said on Thursday that Minsk was “waging a hybrid war with the European Union with the help of illegal immigrants.”

In recent weeks, neighbor and fellow EU member state Lithuania has reported a surge in illegal border crossings from Belarus and said Minsk was flying in migrants from abroad and dispatching them into the EU.

“There are both young men and women with children. Belarus is using these immigrants as a living weapon,” Wasik told online broadcaster Telewizja wPolsce.

“In recent days we have seen an increase (in migrants). We treat it as a reaction to the granting of asylum to the Belarusian sprinter.”

Tsimanouskaya’s Cold War-style defection has ratcheted up Western tensions with Minsk at a time when the EU has accused President Alexander Lukashenko of using migrants to hit back against EU sanctions.

Officials in the Belarusian government could not immediately be reached for comment.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday accused Lithuania and Poland of fueling the migrant issue on the border, saying Lithuania wanted to drive migrants into Belarusian territory by force.

Belarus in May decided to let migrants enter Lithuania in retaliation for EU sanctions meted out after Minsk forced a Ryanair flight to land on its soil and arrested a dissident blogger who was on board.

Lukashenko at the time said Belarus would not become a “holding site” for migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

The Polish Border Guard told Reuters it had detained a group of 71 migrants on the border with Belarus during the night from Wednesday to Thursday and another group of 62, mostly Iraqis, on Wednesday.

That is more that the total of 122 illegal migrants the Border Guard said were detained along the frontier in the whole of last year. Last month, 242 migrants were intercepted.

Wasik said migrants arriving recently had mainly been from Iraq but also from Afghanistan.

The interior ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

The EU has summoned the Belarusian envoy in Brussels and held talks with the Iraqi government over the issue of illegal migration to the bloc.

(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Agnieszka Barteczko in Warsaw, Matthias Williams in London, writing by Alan Charlish, Editing by William Maclean, Mark Heinrich and Steve Orlofsky)

Belarus leader says detained journalist was plotting ‘bloody rebellion’

By Tom Balmforth and Maria Kiselyova

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Wednesday a journalist pulled off a plane that was forced to land in Minsk had been plotting a rebellion, and he accused the West of waging a hybrid war against him.

In his first public remarks since a Belarusian warplane intercepted a Ryanair flight on Sunday between European Union members Greece and Lithuania, he showed no hint of backing down from confrontation with countries that accuse him of air piracy.

“As we predicted, our ill-wishers from outside the country and from inside the country changed their methods of attack on the state,” Lukashenko told parliament.

“They have crossed many red lines and have abandoned common sense and human morals,” he said, referring to a “hybrid war” without giving any details.

Belarus has been subject to EU and U.S. sanctions since Lukashenko cracked down on pro-democracy protests after a disputed election last year. But his decision to intercept an international airliner in Belarusian airspace and arrest a 26-year-old dissident journalist has brought vows of much more serious action.

In his speech to parliament, Lukashenko gave no details of the “bloody rebellion” he accused journalist Roman Protasevich of planning.

Protasevich, whose social media feed from exile had been one of the last remaining independent sources of news about Belarus, was shown on state TV on Monday confessing to organizing demonstrations.

But Belarus opposition figures dismissed the confession, seeing the video as evidence Protasevich had been tortured, an allegation repeated by his mother, Natalia.

“I simply plead with all the international community… please, world, stand up and help, I beg you so much because they will kill him,” she told Polish broadcaster TVN.

Late on Tuesday, state TV broadcast a similar confession video of Sophia Sapega, a 23-year-old student arrested with Protasevich.

Germany led condemnation of Belarus over the videotapes, which Lukashenko’s opponents said were recorded under coercion.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Belarusian rulers’ practice of parading their prisoners in public with so-called ‘confessions,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

Belarus denies it mistreats detainees. Rights groups have documented what they say are hundreds of cases of abuse and forced confessions since last year.

FLIGHTS RE-ROUTED

Europe’s aviation regulator issued a bulletin on Wednesday urging all airlines to avoid Belarus airspace for safety reasons, saying the forced diversion of the Ryanair flight had put in question its ability to provide safe skies.

Western governments have told their airlines to re-route flights to avoid Belarus’s airspace and have announced plans to ban Belarusian planes. The European Union says other unspecified sanctions are also in the works.

Credit rating agency S&P Global signalled it could downgrade Belarus’ credit rating if Western governments impose stronger economic sanctions.

Lukashenko said he would respond harshly to any sanctions. His prime minister said the country could ban some imports and restrict transit in response, without giving details.

Landlocked Belarus is located between its ally Russia and the EU, and some Russian oil and gas flows through it. Last year, it retaliated for sanctions by limiting some oil export traffic through a port in Lithuania.

In his remarks to parliament, Lukashenko, 66, said street protests were no longer possible in Belarus. Most known opposition figures are now in jail or exile.

In power since 1994, Lukashenko faced weeks of mass protests after he was declared the winner of a presidential election that his opponents said was rigged. The protests lost momentum after thousands of arrests in a police crackdown.

Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said the opposition was now preparing a new phase of active protests.

“There’s nothing more to wait for – we have to stop the terror once and for all,” she said.

ATTEMPTS TO ISOLATE BELARUS

Western powers are seeking ways to increase the isolation of Lukashenko, who has previously shrugged off Western sanctions, which mostly consisted of placing officials on black lists. The West is wary of upsetting Moscow, which regards Belarus as a strategically important buffer.

U.S. President Joe Biden will discuss the incident with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit next month but the White House said it does not believe Moscow played any role in the incident.

Belarusian authorities on Tuesday released a transcript of a conversation between the Ryanair plane and an air traffic controller. In it, the controller tells the pilot of a bomb threat and advises him to land in Minsk. The pilot repeatedly questions the source of the information before agreeing to divert the plane.

The transcript, which Reuters could not independently verify, differed from excerpts released by Belarus state TV, which reported that the pilot had asked to land in Minsk, rather than that the controller advised him to do so.

The Ryanair plane remains in the Lithuanian capital’s airport, where it flew after Minsk, while data is collected form it, the Lithuanian prosecutor’s office said.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Peter Graff and Angus MacSwan)

Exclusive: Ukraine says Russia hackers laying groundwork for massive strike

A message demanding money is seen on a monitor of a payment terminal at a branch of Ukraine's state-owned bank Oschadbank after Ukrainian institutions were hit by cyber attacks, in Kiev, Ukraine June 27, 2017. Picture taken June 27, 2017. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

By Pavel Polityuk

KIEV (Reuters) – Hackers from Russia are infecting Ukrainian companies with malware to create so-called ‘back doors’ for a large coordinated attack, Ukraine’s cyber police chief told Reuters on Tuesday, almost a year after a strike on Ukraine spread around the world.

Affected companies range across various industries, such as banks or energy infrastructure. The pattern of the malware being rolled out suggests the people behind it want to activate it on a particular day, Serhiy Demedyuk said.

Demedyuk said his staff were cooperating with foreign agencies to track the hackers, without naming the agencies.

Police had identified viruses designed to hit Ukraine since the start of the year, including phishing emails sent from legitimate domains of state institutions whose systems were hacked, or a fake webpage mimicking that of a real state body.

They had intercepted hackers sending malware from different sources and broken into various components so as to remain undetected by antivirus software until activated as a single unit, Demedyuk said.

“Analysis of the malicious software that has already been identified and the targeting of attacks on Ukraine suggest that this is all being done for a specific day,” he said.

Relations between Ukraine and Russia plunged following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and Kiev has accused Russia of orchestrating large-scale cyber attacks as part of a “hybrid war” against Ukraine, which Moscow repeatedly denies.

Some attacks coincided with major Ukrainian holidays and Demedyuk said another strike could be launched on Thursday — Constitution Day — or on Independence Day in August.

On June 27 last year, the country was hit by a massive strike known as “NotPetya”, which knocked out Ukrainian IT systems before spreading around the world. The United States and Britain joined Ukraine in blaming Russia for the attack.

Demedyuk said the scale of the latest detected preparations was the same as NotPetya.

“This is support on a government level – very expensive and very synchronized. Without the help of government bodies it would not be possible. We’re talking now about the Russian Federation,” he said.

“Everything we’re seeing, everything we’ve intercepted in this period: 99 percent of the traces come from Russia.”

The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ukraine is better prepared to withstand such attacks thanks to cooperation with foreign allies since the NotPetya strike, Demedyuk said. Ukraine has received support from the U.S., Britain and NATO among others to beef up its cyber defenses.

But Demedyuk said some Ukrainian companies had not bothered to clean their computers after NotPetya struck, leaving machines still infected by the virus and vulnerable to being used for another attack.

“We are sounding the alarm to remind people – come to your senses, check your equipment,” he said. “It’s better to be on the safe side than clean up a mess like last time.”

He also appealed to global companies who were hit by NotPetya, including U.S. and European firms in Ukraine, to share details of their investigations and steps to localize the hack.

“They have a huge amount of very interesting evidence, which they store themselves. We would like it if they weren’t scared and approached us.”

(Additional reporting by Margarita Popova in Moscow; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Philippa Fletcher)