An ex-KGB chief suspected of helping the former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile his dossier on Donald Trump may have been murdered by the Kremlin and his death covered up. it has been claimed.
 
Oleg Erovinkin, a former general in the KGB and its successor the FSB, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow on Boxing Day in mysterious circumstances.
 
Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister and now head of Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, who is repeatedly named in the dossier.
 
Erovinkin has been described as a key liaison between Sechin and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Mr Steele writes in an intelligence report dated July 19, 2016, he has a source close to Sechin, who had disclosed alleged links between Mr Trump’s supporters and Moscow.
 
The death of Erovinkin has prompted speculation it is linked to Mr Steele’s explosive dossier, which was made public earlier this month. Mr Trump has dismissed the dossier as “fake news” and no evidence has emerged to support its lurid claims.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20 [...] ald-trump/

The arrest of several of Russia’s top cybersecurity figures has led to speculation that there’s a shakeup inside the country’s national security service related to hacks surrounding the US election.
A series of surprising arrests of some of Russia’s top cybersecurity figures has left the international cybersecurity officials and analysts wondering whether Russia is cleaning house of suspected spies, or going through an internal shakeup of the FSB, Russia’s national security service.

At some point in December, Ruslan Stoyanov, a well-respected researcher with the Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, and Sergei Mikhailov, head of the FSB’s Center of information Security, were arrested by Russian police as part of what Russia’s Kommersant newspaper described as a probe into possible treason. No date of arrest has been made public, though Kommersant reported that Stoyanov last logged into his private social media account on December 4, and Mikhailov on December 5. The Moscow-based Novaya Gazeta newspaper cited sources as saying Mikhailov was arrested during a meeting with other FSB officers in Moscow, and was taken from the room with a sack over his head.
 
On Thursday, REN-TV, a privately-owned TV channel in Russia, said a second FSB officer had also been arrested in December. They identified the man as Major Dmitry Dokuchayev, and reported he had served under Mikhailov in the the Center for Information Security. In another indication that Russia was seeing a high-level shakedown at the FSB, Kommersant reported that on January 13, the director of the Center for Information Security, Andrei Gerasimov, was fired. He was described as having close ties to cybersecurity companies, including Kaspersky Lab.
 
Kaspersky Lab confirmed that Stoyanov was under investigation for activity during a period predating his employment at the company, and added, in a public statement, “We do not possess details of the investigation. The work of Kaspersky Lab's Computer Incidents Investigation Team is unaffected by these developments."
 
Stoyanov’s LinkedIn page lists his previous employer as the Ministry of the Interior’s Cyber Crime Unit.
 
Four intelligence officers working in various branches of the US government told BuzzFeed News this week that they had no insight into the arrests of Stoyanov and Mikhailov, with one explaining, “it’s above my paygrade.”
 
“There are a small handful of people who would know if one or both of these men was a US asset or in any way involved in any intelligence operation, and I’m not one of them,” said the US intelligence officer, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the story. “Obviously, this could also be an internal struggle within the FSB, in which case we would have little daylight into what was happening.”
 
The case against Stoyanov and Mikhailov has been filed in a secret military tribunal under Article 275 of the country’s constitution, which allows the government to investigate individuals they suspect of spying for a foreign state.
 
Whether or not their cases have anything to do with the Russia’s involvement in the hacks targeting the US 2016 elections remains unclear. Fancy Bear, the group named by US cybersecurity companies as being behind the hacking and leaking of damaging emails from top DNC officials, has been tied back to the GRU, Russia’s main foreign intelligence agency. Cozy Bear, a group also believed to have been within the DNC’s system, has been linked to the FSB.
 
 
https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafren [...] ofg4wwZrqm

First and foremost, because this is such a sensitive topic, let me just say that I sympathize with rape victims not just in America, but around the world. I can only imagine what it must be like to experience such trauma,” he said. “However, that does not justify murder, not even that justifies murdering a baby, not in my book. Because what would happen? We’d then have an epidemic of women claiming to have been raped just so they could have an abortion. And that has to be stopped at all cost

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But there is another explanation, if something of a counterintuitive one: Documenting a Russian role in the electoral hacks could also serve Moscow’s foreign policy interests by underscoring the extent and power of the Kremlin’s reach in the world.
 
Cyberattacks, mixed with information warfare, have proven a vital tool for the Kremlin, used in Europe and the Baltics before the attack on the United States election. And now, there is evidence of new meddling in France and Germany, both of which have major elections this year.