The Russia watchThe Putinization of the world order; new trend in Kremlin propaganda; history of Russian hacking, and more

‘America First’ doesn’t work without American values (Josh Rogin, Washington Post)
To understand how U.S. policy failed in the Khashoggi case, we must grasp the larger context. Mohammad bin Salman is following Putin’s foreign policy script: concentrating power, bullying neighbors, killing critics abroad and pushing the limits of aggression to test whether the world will push back.
“What we are seeing is a sort of Putinization of world order,” said Vance Serchuk, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “Techniques the Russians pioneered and that went either unchallenged or appeared to be successful, others are now imitating.”

The feds have the Russian troll farm receipts (Adam Rawnsley, Daily beast)
New indictment sheds light on Russian election meddlers secretive “Project Lakhta.”

Russians follow playbook for sounding American in Facebook propaganda (Craig Timberg, Tony Romm, and Brian Fung, Washington Post)
The late Sen. John McCain was “an old geezer.” House Speaker Paul Ryan is “a complete and absolute nobody.” And the investigation into possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia is a “witch hunt” led by “an establishment puppet.”
Name the subject, and Russian disinformation operatives had a playbook on how to pass themselves off as politically active Americans as they secretly sought to manipulate U.S. voters online - on both the right and the left - with incendiary phrases, glib putdowns and appeals to pre-existing political biases. And the same tactics honed during the 2016 presidential election carried over into the runup toward the 2018 midterm congressional vote.
Those are the takeaways from a detailed, 38-page Justice Department indictment released Friday. Though officially targeting the actions of a 44-year-old St. Petersburg woman, Elena Khusyaynova, who allegedly played a key role in operations designed to mislead voters, large sections read like bullet points for manipulating Americans on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
For every segment of the political spectrum, Russian operatives had a plan.