March 25, 2014 -- Updated 1407 GMT (2207 HKT)
Ukraine's Parliament dismissed the country's acting defense minister on Tuesday, a day after the acting president ordered Ukraine's military to leave Crimea. FULL STORY | TROOP PULLOUT | RUSSIA KICKED OUT OF G8
Flight 370 Mystery
Ukraine's Parliament dismissed the country's acting defense minister on
Tuesday, a day after the acting president ordered Ukraine's military to
leave the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea as Russian forces consolidated
their control there. FULL STORY
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ZAKARIA: PUTIN TRAPPED BY HISTORY
|
IS RUSSIA DONE?
Ukraine's parliament ousts defense minister
March 25, 2014 -- Updated 1416 GMT (2216 HKT)
Ukrainian marines wave as they
leave a base in Feodosia, Crimea, on Tuesday, March 25. After Russian
troops seized most of Ukraine's bases in Crimea, interim Ukrainian
President Oleksandr Turchynov ordered the withdrawal of armed forces
from the peninsula, citing Russian threats to the lives of military
staff and their families.
HIDE CAPTION
Crisis in Ukraine
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Ukraine's acting defense minister has tendered his resignation, report says
- Col.-Gen. Myhaylo Koval appointed as new defense minister
- Kremlin says it's interested in maintaining contacts with G8 partners
- Report: Ukrainian leader of a far-right group was shot dead
Parliament voted to
appoint Col.-Gen. Mykhailo Koval as his successor after his name was
submitted for parliamentary approval by acting President Oleksandr
Turchynov.
Tenyukh's dismissal was initiated by Turchynov. Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform said Tenyukh had tendered his resignation.
"Knowing that someone
does not like what I did as acting defense minister, as well as due to
disagreements in the issues that were offered from the first day until
present regarding the Autonomous Republic of Crimea ... I ... am handing
in my resignation," it quoted him as saying.
Tenyukh was Ukraine's
acting defense minister as troops wearing uniforms without insignia,
which the West said were Russian forces, surrounded Ukrainian bases in
Crimea this month. Russia annexed Crimea last week after a controversial
referendum that Ukraine and the West say was illegal.
What is Russia's next move?
Russian standoff in eleventh hour
NATO concerned about Russian buildup
Russia takes control of Ukrainian bases
The new leaders in Kiev
-- who took office after months of protests forced pro-Moscow President
Viktor Yanukovych from office -- say Crimea is still a part of Ukraine.
Russia snubbed at summit
Russia insists its
actions are legitimate. Crimea had belonged to Russia until 1954 when it
was given to Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. The region has a
majority ethnic Russian population and other long historic ties to
Russia.
Moscow has doggedly
pursued its own course, even as Western leaders have denounced its
actions as violations of Ukraine's sovereignty and a breach of
international law.
In what has become the
biggest East-West confrontation since the Cold War, the United States
and European Union have imposed visa bans and asset freezes on some of
Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest political and business
allies. Russia responded with its own list of sanctions against a number
of U.S. lawmakers and officials.
The G7 group of leading
industrialized countries has condemned both the Crimean vote to secede
and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Russia has now been excluded from
what was the G8. Moscow had joined the G7 group in 1998 to form the G8.
The group had met Monday for a summit at The Hague, the Netherlands, on threats to nuclear security.
Russia initially reacted
to the snub by saying "the G8 is an informal organization that does not
give out any membership cards and, by its definition, cannot remove
anyone."
But on Tuesday, the Kremlin said it was keen to maintain contact with G8 partners.
"As for the contacts
with the G8 countries, we are ready for them, we are interested in them,
but the unwillingness of other countries to continue the dialogue, in
our view, is counterproductive both for us and our partners,"
presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russia's state Itar-Tass news
agency.
Ahead of the G7
gathering, a representative for British Prime Minister David Cameron
said that no G8 meeting would take place in Russia this year as
previously planned.
The G7 had already
suspended preparations for a planned G8 summit in the Russian city of
Sochi. Monday's comment by Cameron's representative ruling out the
meeting altogether comes as the West tries to increase Moscow's
isolation over its actions in Ukraine.
Concerns over military buildup
Also at the nuclear
summit Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met his Ukrainian
counterpart, Andrii Deshchytsia, and, separately, U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry.
During his meeting with
Lavrov, Kerry expressed concern about Russian troops amassed on the
Ukrainian border, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
Other officials, including NATO's top military commander, have already expressed concern about the buildup of Russian forces on Ukraine's border.
Separately, a Ukrainian leader of a far-right group was shot dead in what officials describe as a special forces operation.
Oleksandr Muzychko,
better known as Sashko Bily, died in a shootout with police in a cafe in
Rivne in western Ukraine, Ukrinform news agency quoted Kiev's interior
ministry as saying.
He was a leader of Right Sector, a far-right group prominent in the recent anti-government protests.
A Ukrainian lawmaker, Oleksandr Doniy, whose constituency is in Rivne, gave a different version of events.
In a post on his
Facebook page, he said two vehicles had forced Muzychko's car to stop,
and he had then been dragged into one of the other cars.
"Then they threw him out
of the car on the ground, with hands handcuffed behind his back, and
shot twice in his heart," Doniy wrote, without saying where he got his
information.
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March 25, 2014 -- Updated 1349 GMT (2149 HKT)
More Europe
Hackers fight proxy war
Rival hackers fighting proxy war over Crimea
March 25, 2014 -- Updated 1329 GMT (2129 HKT)Cybersecurity meets modern warfare
STORY HIGHLIGHTS- The Ukraine-Russia crisis is playing out in cyberwarfare, says Jeffrey Carr
- Hackers have been causing service interruptions and breaching databases, he says
- Carr says the attacks have similarities to the resistance movement in WWII Europe
- He says the most powerful nations cannot reliably defend their infrastructure from attacks
Editor's note: Jeffrey Carr is the author of "Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld" and the founder of Suits and Spooks, an international security conference. He regularly speaks at conferences and seminars and consults on security matters for multinational corporations. He has addressed the U.S. Army War College, Air Force Institute of Technology, Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Study Group, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA's Open Source Center. The views expressed in this commentary are solely his.(CNN) -- Hackers have been busy causing service interruptions, breaching databases, and defacing hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian websites, as the crisis between the two countries plays out in cyberwarfare.
The attacks have similarities to the resistance movement that sprung up among German-occupied countries during World War II, which took many forms including sabotage, espionage, armed confrontation and counter-propaganda.In addition to that list, today we can add digital or web-based actions including Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which shut down key websites, the defacement of government websites, and breaching government or key industry networks to access sensitive documents and release them to the world.Services like Twitter and Instagram may be used to capture events in real-time, and YouTube may be used for recruitment, training and propaganda purposes.Today we see a 'super-resistance' composed of elite hackers, for whom cracking a secure network is certainly equal to and in some cases superior to that of a militarized cyberwarfare unit.
Jeffrey CarrThe global networks that enable the incredible global communication and information-sharing applications we have all come to enjoy, all use insecure hardware and software. Just like there's no human cell that is immune to every virus, there's no piece of software that is immune from being exploited.As a result, the most powerful nations in the world today cannot reliably defend their own information and communications infrastructure from targeted attacks, by even a single hacker.To make matters worse, many of today's best hackers aren't employed by their respective governments.While the resistance movement of World War II had fewer skills to bring to combat than members of the armed forces, today we see a "super-resistance" composed of elite hackers, for whom cracking a secure network is certainly equal to and in some cases superior to that of a militarized cyberwarfare unit.OpRussiaShortly after police cracked down on "Euromaidan" street protesters, who were calling for closer integration with the EU, in Kiev in November last year, Ukrainian security engineers began discussing the necessity of forming an all-volunteer cyberdefense force. By March 1, 2014, cyberattacks on both sides kicked into high gear.OpRussia, a hacker group formed under the Anonymous umbrella, posted a warning to Russian President Putin that his aggression against Ukraine would not stand on March 1, 2014.Since then, members of OpRussia have been attacking Russian business and government websites on a daily basis, including the website for the Russian Air Force, the website of the Kamchatka region, Russia's narcotics control service, and even a Russian escort service.Russian CyberCommand is another group of hackers, some of whom are Russian, who oppose Putin's annexation of Crimea and have been relentless in their attacks against Russian businesses and agencies such as Rosoboronexport -- Russia's sole agency authorized to sell defense and dual-use products and technologies to foreign entities -- and SearchInform.ru -- a Russian IT security company that provides services to Gazprom, Skolkovo, and other important organizations.Like OpRussia, Russian CyberCommand considers itself part of Anonymous.AnonymousWhile the name Anonymous is frequently associated with cyberoperations that support revolutionary movements, that wasn't the case with these next two groups: Anonymous Ukraine and CyberBerkut, both of whom are Pro-Russia groups.Anonymous Ukraine attacked NATO websites on November 7 when Ukraine was considering establishing closer ties with the EU as well as NATO membership.On March 15, CyberBerkut attacked NATO websites again, however those attacks were a small percentage of CyberBerkut's onslaught against several hundred Ukrainian government and commercial websites from March 3 up until the present.The group's logo and name come directly from Ukraine's old special police unit "Berkut" and there are rumors that the group is composed of either Ukrainian or Russian former security services personnel.As of March 18, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that Ukraine would not be seeking NATO membership, a move designed to placate Russia as well as Ukraine's large Russian-speaking population.Yatsenyuk also announced a willingness to maintain political ties with the EU but will delay signing any economic agreements for the time being.'Russian Cyber Playbook'Some Western pundits have drawn similarities between the current cyberattacks and those that happened during previous conflicts.'Hacktivism' on the rise in the Mideast
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Most of the Georgian government's communications systems were shut down by Russian hackers during the conflict there in 2008. But in fact there's very little similarity, and no actual evidence linking the Russian government to the current wave of cyberattacks against Ukrainian websites.This is not a page out of the "Russian Cyber Playbook" for several reasons:Firstly, the Nashi, a government-financed Russian youth organization that was responsible for the attacks against Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008 is no more.And secondly, in 2008, Russian hacker forums were actively recruiting volunteers for attacks against Georgia. Not so today. In fact, many Russian hackers are angry with Putin and are supporting an independent Ukraine.Time has not stood still since August 2008. In 2010, Russia published a new military doctrine which acknowledged the "intensification of the role of information warfare" and assigned as a task to "develop forces and resources for information warfare."Russia and most other nations have been investing hundreds of millions of dollars to improve their capabilities to conduct electronic warfare, information warfare, and cyber warfare via increasingly sophisticated means; and by that I mean techniques that include compromising a nation's electrical grid or GPS navigation system from the canopy of a combat helicopter.Russia, in particular, has spent the last few years developing dual-use technologies that will never be seen or defended against by its target -- for example, malware research that could be used to both defend against malware in peace time and use malware offensively as part of a military operation.But there will always be highly-skilled civilians who can quickly organize online, distribute easy-to-use denial of service tools, and cause mayhem and embarrassment to the enemy, whoever he may be.The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jeffrey Carr.TOP EUROPE STORIES
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