Alligatorob
SF VIP
It appears now is the time to act, if we ever plan to.
What can the world do to punish Russia?
- Thread starter Bretrick
- Start date
Don M.
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- Location
- central Missouri
It appears that there have already been some small "protests" in Russia....and they have been quickly halted. If Anyone were to mount a serious protest against Putin, they would quickly "disappear". Putin's "hero" is probably Adolf Hitler.
spectratg
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- Location
- Adamstown, MD
PRAY!!!
Tish
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- Location
- Rural N.S.W. Australia
Absolutely nothing!
Kika
Member
- Location
- Northeast PA
Kika
Member
- Location
- Northeast PA
Here is the Bloomberg article
Businessweek
Technology
By
Michael Riley
January 26, 2022, 4:00 AM EST
Photo illustration: Yoshi Sodeoka; Photos: Getty Images
Five times over three years, a desperate scenario has played out on Plum Island, an isolated spit of land just off the northeastern tip of New York’s Long Island. A large part of the power grid has gone down, leaving the population in the dark and critical facilities such as hospitals growing desperate. A team of utility operators and cybersecurity experts scrambles to get the grid back up, while hackers try to keep it down.
Each emergency was a drill held by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon’s moonshot research arm. Its goal was to expose utilities accustomed to dealing with hurricanes, blizzards, and other challenges to the reality of a successful cyberattack on the U.S. electrical grid.
Concern about such an event has been mounting within the U.S. government for years. Darpa began laying the groundwork for its drills in mid-2015, part of a five-year, $118 million project called Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems—or Radics—after chilling congressional testimony the previous year from then-National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers. Rogers told lawmakers that hackers had been breaking into U.S. power utilities to probe for weaknesses and that Russia had been caught planting malware in the same kind of industrial computers used by power utilities. “All of that leads me to believe it is only a matter of when, not if, we are going to see something dramatic,” he said.
Illustrations: Chris Philpot
The problem has seemed especially urgent in recent months, following a series of ransomware attacks on U.S. facilities and rising tension with China and Russia. Russian troops are massed on the border of Ukraine, a country whose power grid has been hit twice by Russian cyberattacks. Last year the White House launched a 100‑day sprint to accelerate longer-term projects fortifying America’s power infrastructure against similar attacks.
In late December, U.S. officials privately warned utilities they could be targeted if relations with Russia deteriorate, telling them their security teams shouldn’t take the holidays off, according to two people familiar with the briefing. On Jan. 11, U.S. officials publicly called on utilities to comb their networks for signs of Russian intrusions. Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth recently told reporters that the power grid would also be a target in a conflict with China over Taiwan.
The drills on Plum Island starkly illustrated the chaos hackers could unleash. Attackers hijacked critical safety equipment, shut down communications, and sent fake data to confuse operators making crucial decisions. Utilities that were once confident they could keep from being hacked are no longer so sure. “What we’ve seen as a country is the adversary is going to be successful,” says Walter Weiss, Radics’ program manager. “The issue then is, what do you do next?”
A view of Plum Island from the Cross Sound Ferry in Orient, N.Y.
Photographer: Bryan Anselm for Bloomberg Businessweek
While the government periodically practices such scenarios, utility operators rarely do. Until it ended in 2020, Radics offered the 15 utilities that participated near-real-world conditions to test new technologies, some of which they’ve since implemented. It also jolted them out of any complacency they may have had, says Brian Lynn, a lead trainer for PJM Interconnection LLC, the country’s largest grid operator, who advised Darpa throughout the program. “Anyone who was there really had their eyes opened up,” he says. “And they were able to go back as a firsthand witness to each of their companies and say, ‘Hey, this is a real thing.’ ”
Most histories of cyberattacks on physical infrastructure start with Stuxnet. The 2010 attack, believed to have been carried out by the U.S. and Israel, destroyed more than 1,000 Iranian nuclear centrifuges by manipulating the industrial computers that controlled them. Modern power grids are also heavily computerized, making them more resilient during storms and other weather-related disruptions but also opening new vulnerabilities for cyberattacks.
Russian hackers carried out the first major cyberattack on a nation’s electricity grid in late 2015, taking down part of the Ukrainian national grid for six hours. The following year they staged another attack on Ukraine, infiltrating a transmission substation north of Kyiv and tripping every circuit breaker, briefly severing the flow of power to a section of the city. The hack was meant not only to punish Ukrainians but also to show what Russia could do to other adversaries, according to Andy Bochman, senior grid strategist at the Idaho National Laboratory and one of the top U.S. experts on cyberthreats to the grid. “Both attacks in Ukraine were demonstrations,” he says. “And the whole world was watching.”
Shortly afterward, Russian malware was discovered inside as many as 10 U.S. utilities, including the operator of a nuclear plant in Kansas. Government officials hastily convened a series of secret briefings with utility executives, prompting the power companies to spend months scrubbing their systems, according to three people familiar with the incident. The U.S. Department of Energy continued briefing power company executives, warning that, among other things, potential adversaries had been caught manipulating grid components during manufacture, according to two people familiar with the briefings’ contents.
Cui
Photographer: Bryan Anselm for Bloomberg Businessweek
Although the most sophisticated attacks are likely to come from nation-states, the spate of ransomware attacks over the past year shows how widely the ability to paralyze physical infrastructure through cyberattacks has spread, says Ang Cui, founder of Red Balloon Security and a participant in the Plum Island exercises. “What an attacker can do to these embedded devices today makes Stuxnet look like caveman technology,” Cui says.
Hackers who want to bring down a grid would likely manipulate the computers that keep it in balance. Operating a modern grid requires constant realignment to make sure the amount of power sent into the system is equal to the power that households, businesses, and other customers pull from it. Eric Hittinger, an expert in energy policy who’s an associate professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, likens this process to a bicycle rider constantly shifting her weight to stay upright. If that balance is disrupted badly enough, he says, “everything starts to fall apart. Different parts of the system will start to turn off in unpredictable ways. You end up with cascading failures. You fall off the bike.”
This can happen because of natural events, such as the winter storms in Texas last year, when electricity heading into the grid fell after the weather took power stations offline. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the organization that operates the grid, responded by shutting off power in major population centers, averting a cascading collapse by just minutes, according to three people who reviewed data from the incident.
Illustrations: Chris Philpot
One of the hardest parts of a grid failure is repowering it following a collapse, and the biggest outages could require a tricky maneuver known as a black start, which involves restarting the grid without power from outside the blackout zone. A particularly nightmarish scenario—and the one that Darpa simulated in its drills—would be a cyberattack where hackers stay in the system and repeatedly disrupt the restart process. In this situation, a blackout that would’ve lasted hours could extend to weeks. “When it comes to cyber, it’s like you’re repairing the damage from the hurricane while it’s still on top of you,” says PJM’s Lynn. “And I just can’t fix it and know it’s going to hold. I’ve got to keep asking, ‘Did I miss something? Is something still infected?’ ”
“You have to get your systems operations guys, who don’t speak cyber, to talk to your cyber guys, who don’t speak systems operations”
The first drill on Plum Island took place in 2018, with subsequent exercises occurring until October 2020. The action centered on Fort Terry, a now-abandoned part of New York City’s coastal defenses. The remote island, which is also home to a high-security lab used to study contagious animal diseases, is accessible only by a ferry behind a guard post; the 100 or so participants in each drill spent a week to 10 days there, returning each evening to hotels on Long Island. Employees from utilities and people from National Guard units role-played at their day jobs, while Darpa brought in cyberwarfare experts to act as the hackers.
Participants are loath to reveal many details for fear of giving attackers useful information, but among the biggest challenges was a culture clash between seasoned utility operators and experts in cybersecurity. “You have to get your systems operations guys, who don’t speak cyber, to talk to your cyber guys, who don’t speak systems operations. And that’s just very challenging,” says Donnie Bielak, a colleague of Lynn’s at PJM who also consulted on the exercises. He remembers the initial attitude of a shift operator from New York as typical: “Basically, he arrived saying, ‘All right, all you cyber nerds, hands off, I got this.’ ”
Bielak
Photographer: Photographer: Bryan Anselm for Bloomberg Businessweek
Once the exercise started and the power went off, though, the inadequacy of the typical recovery techniques became clear. The attackers manipulated data coming from sensors—showing a circuit breaker as open when it was closed, for example. Even unsophisticated-seeming tricks were disruptive. In one case, attackers dimmed the brightness on a device’s screen, leading recovery crews to waste time misdiagnosing what seemed like dead equipment. In another, operators accustomed to checking the status of components with an online app were flummoxed when the hackers disabled the portal so they couldn’t log in.
At the beginning of one exercise, Weiss reminded a group of cybersecurity experts of their own lack of preparedness by simply flipping the circuit breaker to the conference room where they were gathered. Anyone who hadn’t brought extra laptop batteries or had forgotten a headlamp was basically out of commission.
The exercises generally started with failure, followed by slow progress as the defenders learned to work with experimental technology developed for Radics—and how to operate in their new, contested environment. Eventually, Bielak says, the utility workers who initially brushed off the cybersecurity experts began to work closely with them. Defenders had to come up with procedures to clean each substation of malware, for instance, before connecting it to the larger grid. If they missed anything, the hackers might flip a breaker at the wrong moment or send manipulated data that could confound the recovery effort.
Even seeming victories were fleeting. During one exercise, defenders managed to restore the grid and reestablish the operations of the model utilities. Power began flowing again to key sites across the island, Weiss recalls, and everyone involved erupted in cheers. A few moments later the grid came crashing down again.
“The collateral damage can sometimes be far different than what the intent was”
Radics, like many Darpa programs, had a limited run, and the exercises ended when the program did. Some of the test equipment remains, and the Energy Department continues to test cybersecurity technologies on the island. But most of the utility workers are no longer involved, a situation that Lynn worries will result in participants letting their newfound skills go stale. “You want that muscle memory,” he says.
Even if they were to continue, the Plum Island exercises involved a small number of utilities, and experts are concerned that the country remains unprepared for a dangerous and unpredictable threat. The situation on the Ukrainian border highlights how foreign conflict raises the likelihood of an attack. Even an attempt to apply political pressure by conducting a limited cyber operation could set off failures beyond the attackers’ control, according to Tim Roxey, former security chief for North American Electric Reliability Corp., the grid regulator. “The collateral damage,” he says, “can sometimes be far different than what the intent was.”
A scale model of Manhattan used by Cui’s team in a cyberattack simulation.
Photographer: Bryan Anselm for Bloomberg Businessweek
Plum Island has had some lasting tangible effects. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, whose members are mostly small, not-for-profit operators, recently began using a new security tool that it first tested on Plum Island, according to NRECA Chief Scientist Emma Stewart. Once fully deployed, the tool, called Essence, will help the co-op members, which have comparatively small security budgets, detect cyberattacks on some of their most sensitive equipment.
Cui, whose company makes some of the tools that were tested on Plum Island, says the U.S. has a long way to go in preparing for cyberattacks and in training the utility workers who will be on the front lines. His team recently examined several common industrial computers used to control the grid and uncovered serious design flaws that could be leveraged by hackers. To prove his point, his team remotely hijacked one of the devices and shut off power to a scale model he built of Manhattan.
“How at risk is this country? Maybe a better question is: How much have we done to prevent something like those scenarios at Radics from happening?” Cui says. “I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t done nearly enough.” —With Jordan Robertson and William Turton
Businessweek
Technology
What Happens When Russian Hackers Come for the Electrical Grid
Emergency training at a restricted facility off Long Island has aimed to minimize the potentially catastrophic effects of a cyberattack on U.S. power infrastructure.By
Michael Riley
January 26, 2022, 4:00 AM EST
Photo illustration: Yoshi Sodeoka; Photos: Getty Images
Share this article
Five times over three years, a desperate scenario has played out on Plum Island, an isolated spit of land just off the northeastern tip of New York’s Long Island. A large part of the power grid has gone down, leaving the population in the dark and critical facilities such as hospitals growing desperate. A team of utility operators and cybersecurity experts scrambles to get the grid back up, while hackers try to keep it down.
Each emergency was a drill held by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon’s moonshot research arm. Its goal was to expose utilities accustomed to dealing with hurricanes, blizzards, and other challenges to the reality of a successful cyberattack on the U.S. electrical grid.
Concern about such an event has been mounting within the U.S. government for years. Darpa began laying the groundwork for its drills in mid-2015, part of a five-year, $118 million project called Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems—or Radics—after chilling congressional testimony the previous year from then-National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers. Rogers told lawmakers that hackers had been breaking into U.S. power utilities to probe for weaknesses and that Russia had been caught planting malware in the same kind of industrial computers used by power utilities. “All of that leads me to believe it is only a matter of when, not if, we are going to see something dramatic,” he said.
Illustrations: Chris Philpot
The problem has seemed especially urgent in recent months, following a series of ransomware attacks on U.S. facilities and rising tension with China and Russia. Russian troops are massed on the border of Ukraine, a country whose power grid has been hit twice by Russian cyberattacks. Last year the White House launched a 100‑day sprint to accelerate longer-term projects fortifying America’s power infrastructure against similar attacks.
In late December, U.S. officials privately warned utilities they could be targeted if relations with Russia deteriorate, telling them their security teams shouldn’t take the holidays off, according to two people familiar with the briefing. On Jan. 11, U.S. officials publicly called on utilities to comb their networks for signs of Russian intrusions. Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth recently told reporters that the power grid would also be a target in a conflict with China over Taiwan.
The drills on Plum Island starkly illustrated the chaos hackers could unleash. Attackers hijacked critical safety equipment, shut down communications, and sent fake data to confuse operators making crucial decisions. Utilities that were once confident they could keep from being hacked are no longer so sure. “What we’ve seen as a country is the adversary is going to be successful,” says Walter Weiss, Radics’ program manager. “The issue then is, what do you do next?”
A view of Plum Island from the Cross Sound Ferry in Orient, N.Y.
Photographer: Bryan Anselm for Bloomberg Businessweek
While the government periodically practices such scenarios, utility operators rarely do. Until it ended in 2020, Radics offered the 15 utilities that participated near-real-world conditions to test new technologies, some of which they’ve since implemented. It also jolted them out of any complacency they may have had, says Brian Lynn, a lead trainer for PJM Interconnection LLC, the country’s largest grid operator, who advised Darpa throughout the program. “Anyone who was there really had their eyes opened up,” he says. “And they were able to go back as a firsthand witness to each of their companies and say, ‘Hey, this is a real thing.’ ”
Most histories of cyberattacks on physical infrastructure start with Stuxnet. The 2010 attack, believed to have been carried out by the U.S. and Israel, destroyed more than 1,000 Iranian nuclear centrifuges by manipulating the industrial computers that controlled them. Modern power grids are also heavily computerized, making them more resilient during storms and other weather-related disruptions but also opening new vulnerabilities for cyberattacks.
Russian hackers carried out the first major cyberattack on a nation’s electricity grid in late 2015, taking down part of the Ukrainian national grid for six hours. The following year they staged another attack on Ukraine, infiltrating a transmission substation north of Kyiv and tripping every circuit breaker, briefly severing the flow of power to a section of the city. The hack was meant not only to punish Ukrainians but also to show what Russia could do to other adversaries, according to Andy Bochman, senior grid strategist at the Idaho National Laboratory and one of the top U.S. experts on cyberthreats to the grid. “Both attacks in Ukraine were demonstrations,” he says. “And the whole world was watching.”
Shortly afterward, Russian malware was discovered inside as many as 10 U.S. utilities, including the operator of a nuclear plant in Kansas. Government officials hastily convened a series of secret briefings with utility executives, prompting the power companies to spend months scrubbing their systems, according to three people familiar with the incident. The U.S. Department of Energy continued briefing power company executives, warning that, among other things, potential adversaries had been caught manipulating grid components during manufacture, according to two people familiar with the briefings’ contents.
Cui
Photographer: Bryan Anselm for Bloomberg Businessweek
Although the most sophisticated attacks are likely to come from nation-states, the spate of ransomware attacks over the past year shows how widely the ability to paralyze physical infrastructure through cyberattacks has spread, says Ang Cui, founder of Red Balloon Security and a participant in the Plum Island exercises. “What an attacker can do to these embedded devices today makes Stuxnet look like caveman technology,” Cui says.
Hackers who want to bring down a grid would likely manipulate the computers that keep it in balance. Operating a modern grid requires constant realignment to make sure the amount of power sent into the system is equal to the power that households, businesses, and other customers pull from it. Eric Hittinger, an expert in energy policy who’s an associate professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, likens this process to a bicycle rider constantly shifting her weight to stay upright. If that balance is disrupted badly enough, he says, “everything starts to fall apart. Different parts of the system will start to turn off in unpredictable ways. You end up with cascading failures. You fall off the bike.”
This can happen because of natural events, such as the winter storms in Texas last year, when electricity heading into the grid fell after the weather took power stations offline. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the organization that operates the grid, responded by shutting off power in major population centers, averting a cascading collapse by just minutes, according to three people who reviewed data from the incident.
Illustrations: Chris Philpot
One of the hardest parts of a grid failure is repowering it following a collapse, and the biggest outages could require a tricky maneuver known as a black start, which involves restarting the grid without power from outside the blackout zone. A particularly nightmarish scenario—and the one that Darpa simulated in its drills—would be a cyberattack where hackers stay in the system and repeatedly disrupt the restart process. In this situation, a blackout that would’ve lasted hours could extend to weeks. “When it comes to cyber, it’s like you’re repairing the damage from the hurricane while it’s still on top of you,” says PJM’s Lynn. “And I just can’t fix it and know it’s going to hold. I’ve got to keep asking, ‘Did I miss something? Is something still infected?’ ”
“You have to get your systems operations guys, who don’t speak cyber, to talk to your cyber guys, who don’t speak systems operations”
The first drill on Plum Island took place in 2018, with subsequent exercises occurring until October 2020. The action centered on Fort Terry, a now-abandoned part of New York City’s coastal defenses. The remote island, which is also home to a high-security lab used to study contagious animal diseases, is accessible only by a ferry behind a guard post; the 100 or so participants in each drill spent a week to 10 days there, returning each evening to hotels on Long Island. Employees from utilities and people from National Guard units role-played at their day jobs, while Darpa brought in cyberwarfare experts to act as the hackers.
Participants are loath to reveal many details for fear of giving attackers useful information, but among the biggest challenges was a culture clash between seasoned utility operators and experts in cybersecurity. “You have to get your systems operations guys, who don’t speak cyber, to talk to your cyber guys, who don’t speak systems operations. And that’s just very challenging,” says Donnie Bielak, a colleague of Lynn’s at PJM who also consulted on the exercises. He remembers the initial attitude of a shift operator from New York as typical: “Basically, he arrived saying, ‘All right, all you cyber nerds, hands off, I got this.’ ”
Bielak
Photographer: Photographer: Bryan Anselm for Bloomberg Businessweek
Once the exercise started and the power went off, though, the inadequacy of the typical recovery techniques became clear. The attackers manipulated data coming from sensors—showing a circuit breaker as open when it was closed, for example. Even unsophisticated-seeming tricks were disruptive. In one case, attackers dimmed the brightness on a device’s screen, leading recovery crews to waste time misdiagnosing what seemed like dead equipment. In another, operators accustomed to checking the status of components with an online app were flummoxed when the hackers disabled the portal so they couldn’t log in.
At the beginning of one exercise, Weiss reminded a group of cybersecurity experts of their own lack of preparedness by simply flipping the circuit breaker to the conference room where they were gathered. Anyone who hadn’t brought extra laptop batteries or had forgotten a headlamp was basically out of commission.
The exercises generally started with failure, followed by slow progress as the defenders learned to work with experimental technology developed for Radics—and how to operate in their new, contested environment. Eventually, Bielak says, the utility workers who initially brushed off the cybersecurity experts began to work closely with them. Defenders had to come up with procedures to clean each substation of malware, for instance, before connecting it to the larger grid. If they missed anything, the hackers might flip a breaker at the wrong moment or send manipulated data that could confound the recovery effort.
Even seeming victories were fleeting. During one exercise, defenders managed to restore the grid and reestablish the operations of the model utilities. Power began flowing again to key sites across the island, Weiss recalls, and everyone involved erupted in cheers. A few moments later the grid came crashing down again.
“The collateral damage can sometimes be far different than what the intent was”
Radics, like many Darpa programs, had a limited run, and the exercises ended when the program did. Some of the test equipment remains, and the Energy Department continues to test cybersecurity technologies on the island. But most of the utility workers are no longer involved, a situation that Lynn worries will result in participants letting their newfound skills go stale. “You want that muscle memory,” he says.
Even if they were to continue, the Plum Island exercises involved a small number of utilities, and experts are concerned that the country remains unprepared for a dangerous and unpredictable threat. The situation on the Ukrainian border highlights how foreign conflict raises the likelihood of an attack. Even an attempt to apply political pressure by conducting a limited cyber operation could set off failures beyond the attackers’ control, according to Tim Roxey, former security chief for North American Electric Reliability Corp., the grid regulator. “The collateral damage,” he says, “can sometimes be far different than what the intent was.”
A scale model of Manhattan used by Cui’s team in a cyberattack simulation.
Photographer: Bryan Anselm for Bloomberg Businessweek
Plum Island has had some lasting tangible effects. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, whose members are mostly small, not-for-profit operators, recently began using a new security tool that it first tested on Plum Island, according to NRECA Chief Scientist Emma Stewart. Once fully deployed, the tool, called Essence, will help the co-op members, which have comparatively small security budgets, detect cyberattacks on some of their most sensitive equipment.
Cui, whose company makes some of the tools that were tested on Plum Island, says the U.S. has a long way to go in preparing for cyberattacks and in training the utility workers who will be on the front lines. His team recently examined several common industrial computers used to control the grid and uncovered serious design flaws that could be leveraged by hackers. To prove his point, his team remotely hijacked one of the devices and shut off power to a scale model he built of Manhattan.
“How at risk is this country? Maybe a better question is: How much have we done to prevent something like those scenarios at Radics from happening?” Cui says. “I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t done nearly enough.” —With Jordan Robertson and William Turton
Signe The Survivor
On Hiatus until unknown time
The thing is these protests of the people need to be more than just small. Once it gets bad enough and the country becomes unrest and it is just more than just small pockets of people than things might start taking effect. I do feel a large part of the Russian people don't want this and once they start feeling the harsh effects of the sanctions they will have no choice but to voice that.
.....check back in a month or so...lol, no I don't know anymore than anyone else what's going to happen but I feel that the Russian people are very used to their smart phones/tvs and shinny new cars and that the oligarchs are going to be very pi**ed when all their assets are gone and they can not longer use a credit card.....I guess we will all see just how much damage sanctions can do.
Last edited:
Alligatorob
SF VIP
Unless you count lots of bluster in press conferences I am afraid you are likely right...
Yes, I agree, I read that there was protest in St Petersburg with approximately 4000 people and the sanctions have not even set in yet.
hollydolly
SF VIP
- Location
- London England
Britain may not yet be at war with Russia - but the invasion of Ukraine could see the Kremlin try to knock out UK TV, broadband and phone networks as well as online banking and NHS systems in an all-out cyber-conflict with the West at the dawn of a new Cold War, experts told MailOnline today.
Vladimir Putin could also try to force internet giants such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp offline - although US sources have said that any major Russian global cyber attack could trigger NATO Article 5 and spark World War Three.
Ed Arnold, Research Fellow in European Security at RUSI, the UK's leading defence and security think tank, told MailOnline: 'If cyber activities escalate, businesses and people in the UK can expect disruption of websites, communication platforms, networks and in extremis, UK critical national infrastructure'.
Russia's 'dictator' President is not expected to launch a military attack on the UK or its Nato allies unless they set foot on Ukrainian soil and engage with his armed forces.
But his first strike on Britain will already have happened, using his GRU spies in the UK and US to steal intelligence about what the West's response to today's invasion will be.
Boris Johnson has promised a 'massive' package of economic measures in tandem with the US and European Union, due to be announced at 5pm. And Putin is expected to hit back immediately.
Vladimir Putin could also try to force internet giants such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp offline - although US sources have said that any major Russian global cyber attack could trigger NATO Article 5 and spark World War Three.
Ed Arnold, Research Fellow in European Security at RUSI, the UK's leading defence and security think tank, told MailOnline: 'If cyber activities escalate, businesses and people in the UK can expect disruption of websites, communication platforms, networks and in extremis, UK critical national infrastructure'.
Russia's 'dictator' President is not expected to launch a military attack on the UK or its Nato allies unless they set foot on Ukrainian soil and engage with his armed forces.
But his first strike on Britain will already have happened, using his GRU spies in the UK and US to steal intelligence about what the West's response to today's invasion will be.
Boris Johnson has promised a 'massive' package of economic measures in tandem with the US and European Union, due to be announced at 5pm. And Putin is expected to hit back immediately.
hollydolly
SF VIP
- Location
- London England
Boris Johnson today unveiled 'unprecedented' sanctions against Russian banks, firms and oligarchs as he vowed to cripple 'bloodstained aggressor' Vladimir Putin after the Ukraine invasion.
The PM announced 10 separate strands of measures to inflict 'significant' impact on Moscow's economy - with officials saying they should knock several percentage points off its GDP.
Mr Johnson told MPs Mr Putin was flouting 'every principle of civilised behaviour' and will 'never be able to cleanse the blood of Ukraine from his hands' - even though Ukrainians are 'offering a fierce defence'. He insisted the world now saw the Russian president for what he is: 'A bloodstained aggressor who believes in imperial conquest.'
The assets of all major Russian banks - including VTB - will be frozen, while new legislation will block the state and all the country's major firms from being able to raise money on London markets.
Mr Johnson pointed out that half Russia's trade is currently in dollars and sterling.
The government says over 100 people, entities and subsidiaries will be subject to sanctions, including defence giant Rostec. There will be travel bans and asset restrictions on five more named individuals - including Kirill Shamalov, Russia's youngest billionaire and previously married to Putin's daughter.
Ministers intend to put a fixed limit on how much Russian nationals can have in accounts in the UK. Aeroflot planes will be immediately prevented from landing anywhere in Britain, while crucial defence exports of semi-conductors and aircraft spare parts will end.
The PM is also committing to shut Russia out of the SWIFT international financial messaging system, although that still has to be thrashed out with other Western powers. And the government is aiming to extend all the measures to Belarus, which has joined Russia in the invasion.
Mr Johnson said it was 'the largest and most severe package of economic sanctions that Russia has ever seen'. Officials said the UK was taking a 'maximalist' approach to sanctions and would look to go further where possible. Some of the measures come in immediately, but others could take weeks and will need legislation.
A UK diplomatic source said in relation to the five oligarchs sanctioned: 'These are people who have international lifestyles.
'They come to Harrods to shop, they stay in our best hotels when they like, they send their children to our best public schools, and that is what's being stopped.
'So that these people are essentially persona non grata in every major Western European capital in the world. That really bites.'
The sanctions package was generally welcomed by Keir Starmer, while Theresa May said Russia needs to feel the 'cold wind of isolation'.
However, Russia has already shrugged off the action - with one Moscow ambassador swiping previously that Mr Putin could not 'give a 'sh**' about the punishments.
More here... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...anctions-against-Russia-Ukraine-invasion.html
The PM announced 10 separate strands of measures to inflict 'significant' impact on Moscow's economy - with officials saying they should knock several percentage points off its GDP.
Mr Johnson told MPs Mr Putin was flouting 'every principle of civilised behaviour' and will 'never be able to cleanse the blood of Ukraine from his hands' - even though Ukrainians are 'offering a fierce defence'. He insisted the world now saw the Russian president for what he is: 'A bloodstained aggressor who believes in imperial conquest.'
The assets of all major Russian banks - including VTB - will be frozen, while new legislation will block the state and all the country's major firms from being able to raise money on London markets.
Mr Johnson pointed out that half Russia's trade is currently in dollars and sterling.
The government says over 100 people, entities and subsidiaries will be subject to sanctions, including defence giant Rostec. There will be travel bans and asset restrictions on five more named individuals - including Kirill Shamalov, Russia's youngest billionaire and previously married to Putin's daughter.
Ministers intend to put a fixed limit on how much Russian nationals can have in accounts in the UK. Aeroflot planes will be immediately prevented from landing anywhere in Britain, while crucial defence exports of semi-conductors and aircraft spare parts will end.
The PM is also committing to shut Russia out of the SWIFT international financial messaging system, although that still has to be thrashed out with other Western powers. And the government is aiming to extend all the measures to Belarus, which has joined Russia in the invasion.
Mr Johnson said it was 'the largest and most severe package of economic sanctions that Russia has ever seen'. Officials said the UK was taking a 'maximalist' approach to sanctions and would look to go further where possible. Some of the measures come in immediately, but others could take weeks and will need legislation.
A UK diplomatic source said in relation to the five oligarchs sanctioned: 'These are people who have international lifestyles.
'They come to Harrods to shop, they stay in our best hotels when they like, they send their children to our best public schools, and that is what's being stopped.
'So that these people are essentially persona non grata in every major Western European capital in the world. That really bites.'
The sanctions package was generally welcomed by Keir Starmer, while Theresa May said Russia needs to feel the 'cold wind of isolation'.
However, Russia has already shrugged off the action - with one Moscow ambassador swiping previously that Mr Putin could not 'give a 'sh**' about the punishments.
More here... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...anctions-against-Russia-Ukraine-invasion.html
jujube
SF VIP
From your mouth to God's ear, 1955. My nephew teaches in a high school in Taiwan and I worry about that all the time. He used to teach in China but was expelled from that country when some official got mad at the school and kicked all it's American teachers out.
Nathan
SF VIP
- Location
- High Desert- Calif.
Did someone say "sanctions"? I expect that the sanctions are going to hurt the Western nation's consumers alot more than they will hurt Putin.
Nosy Bee-54
Senior Member
Aren't we all supposed to share in the pain?
Irwin
Well-known Member
- Location
- Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
They'll hurt the people of Russia more than they'll hurt Putin, but maybe that will be the impetus for a massive uprising and the overthrow of his dictatorship.
Nosy Bee-54
Senior Member
"UEFA will take the 2022 Champions League final away from St Petersburg following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The decision will be made at Friday's emergency meeting of European football's governing body."
Russia and Ukraine are both scheduled to play World Cup play-off matches in March, and Fifa said it would monitor the situation.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino says football's world governing body has "a duty to look into the footballing consequences of what is happening".
"Fifa condemns the use of force by Russia in Ukraine and any type of violence to resolve conflicts. Violence is never a solution and Fifa calls on all parties to restore peace through constructive dialogue," Infantino said.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/60504979
Most people in the US may not agree with this because at least for the past 5 years all the talk was about: "keep politics out of sports."
The decision will be made at Friday's emergency meeting of European football's governing body."
Russia and Ukraine are both scheduled to play World Cup play-off matches in March, and Fifa said it would monitor the situation.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino says football's world governing body has "a duty to look into the footballing consequences of what is happening".
"Fifa condemns the use of force by Russia in Ukraine and any type of violence to resolve conflicts. Violence is never a solution and Fifa calls on all parties to restore peace through constructive dialogue," Infantino said.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/60504979
Most people in the US may not agree with this because at least for the past 5 years all the talk was about: "keep politics out of sports."
as we said in 1939?
We are not the world's policemen, we assumed that role after WW II, not to successfully-review our history from 1950-2019: lot of dead
soldiers- for what gain?
Nathan
SF VIP
- Location
- High Desert- Calif.
That would certainly be a welcome scenario, but one that I fear would instead yield a lot of dead Russian citizens.
Actually, I was thinking that myself. I just want to see the extent of Europe's outrage. It is their turf and it is not the same Europe as in the 1930's.