The Russia watchRussia aims at U.S. vulnerabilities; Russia’s “industrial scale disinformation”; Cohen’s Prague visit, and more

Russia readies to aim for U.S. nuclear and aerospace vulnerabilities (John A. Tures, Observer)
Last week, America delivered a new round of economic sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle for interfering in the U.S. elections, attacking Russia’s neighbors, and ramping up the conflict in Syria. Russia vows to retaliate and has a history of doing so, sometimes hitting back harder. With its economy quickly shrinking, the desperate country could aim for the U.S.’ vulnerabilities this time.

What I learned from briefing Robert Mueller (David Priess, Lawfare)
For more than a year, while serving as a CIA officer, I was his daily intelligence briefer in his role as director of the FBI. Five, often six, days a week I delivered to him the president’s daily brief (PDB) as well as voluminous other pieces of intelligence information and analytic assessments, primarily on terrorism. My experience with Mueller suggests that if anyone can manage this wide-ranging investigation, he can. He won’t give up or back down. Then as now, his persistence in seeking information that he assesses he needs has opened new doors that he won’t shut prematurely. He will continue—and, ultimately, conclude—this investigation thoroughly, without distraction, and with integrity.

GCHQ boss calls out Russia for ‘industrial scale disinformation’ (John Leyden, Register)
Kremlin ‘blurring boundaries between criminal and state activity’ – director

Disinformation and conspiracy trolling in the wake of the Syrian chemical attack (Bethania Palma, Snopes)
Kremlin propaganda led to questions and charges that an attack in the city of Douma that killed scores of civilians was a hoax.

Does the West have a vision for the Western Balkans? (Michael Carpenter and Mieczysław P. Boduszyński, War on the Rocks)

With nationalist-populist forces threatening to reverse decades of European integration across the continent — from Brexit in the United Kingdom to Catalan separatism in Spain to Lombard regionalism in Italy — European and American policymakers can no longer take for granted the security and stability of the Balkans, or Europe for that matter. In the aftermath of the Kremlin’s attempted coup in Montenegro in October 2016, which was organized by Russian military intelligence operatives using local mercenaries, signs of another Russian intervention in the Western Balkans should be raising alarm bells in the United States and the European Union.

Why the question of whether Michael Cohen visited Prague is massively important for Donald Trump (Andrew Prokop, Vox)
The Steele dossier claimed Cohen went to Prague to meet Russians. He’s said for more than a year that he didn’t.

Better defenses for our election systems (John Diaz, San Francisco Chronicle)
Americans cannot afford to wait for their president to acknowledge that a hostile foreign government meddled in the most fundamental act of democracy, an election, and is ready to do so again. That day may never come with President Trump, who seems to regard any admission of Russian interference on his behalf as delegitimizing his 2016 election. Most Popular

Myth busting: Why didn’t the Skripals die on the spot? (Dan Kaszeta, Politics)
An interesting question has been raised. If nerve agents -and in particular the so-called Novichok agents - are so deadly, why didn’t Sergie and Yulia Skripal die immediately? Instead, as countless internet conspiracy theorists have pointed out, both the daughter and father appear to be out of critical condition. This is a valid question that deserves an answer.

Robert Mueller may or may not go, but his work won’t go anywhere (Cristian Farias, New York Magazine)
There’s no telling what lessons from history Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating crimes associated with Russia’s interference in the presidential election, has adopted into his own investigative work. But if Donald Trump’s latest brooding and seething over the Russia inquiry is any indication, it is entirely within the realm of the possible that the president, a kind of Nixon-in-waiting, may fire Mueller before the investigation gets any hotter. As useless as that would be — investigations with a large bureaucracy behind them do not just disappear when the lead prosecutor leaves — it’s the reality of a president who remains ignorant about the firewalls within his own Executive branch.