The great escape of ‘KGBéla’, Hungarian MEP accused of spying for Russia
In 2014 Béla Kovács, a notoriously russophile Hungarian member of the European Parliament, dubbed as KGBéla even by his own far-right comrades, broke the law and made illegal contacts with Russian intelligence officers. The story of Kovács is the most accurate depiction of the complicated nature of Russian influence in Hungary. And it’s not that easy to understand what happened to him and today’s political landscape of Hungary.
A story of the snake that ate its own tail
There’s a large tattoo on Mateusz Piskorski’s body, a remainder of his nationalist past: it depicts a snake eating its own tail. For the past year, Piskorski has been Russia’s most important man in Poland – and he has worked in the zone of soft influence for years. Now he’s under arrest, due to accusations of espionage. He is thought to have cooperated with Russian intel, accept operational tasks and manipulate society’s attitudes. What happend to former Polish MP that push him behind the bars?
Information warfare. Journalists are the target, manipulation is a tool
Thanks to the development of the internet and new technologies, it’s now relatively easy to conduct a mass attack on entire societies – says Kamil Basaj from the Safe Cyberspace Foundation in an interview on Kremlin’s propaganda, information warfare and the new Russian doctrine.
The doctrine encapsulates a wide array of offensive capabilities – all hiding under a propaganda claim of defending Russia’s own society and information space from foreign invasion. The official pitch is a defensive one, but in practice, it opens up many paths for aggressive activities. It includes a number of clauses implying that Russia is under threat of foreign interference, which is in line with official propaganda messages presenting the country.
