MOSCOW, March 12. /TASS/. Russia is bracing for increased cyberattacks on its online voting system ahead of the presidential election on March 15-17; the Russian Finance Ministry has released the details of a plan for swapping frozen assets with foreign investors; and proposals for putting Western "boots on the ground" in Ukraine may play against Kiev’s interests. These stories topped Tuesday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.

 

Izvestia: Russia facing increased DDoS attacks ahead of this week’s presidential election

Russia’s online voting system will be subject to increased malicious distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks coming from abroad, experts told Izvestia. However, the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) factored in such systemic stresses in developing the system to bulletproof it against such risks, making it fully prepared for carrying out online voting in the presidential election that starts this Friday, March 15, and runs through Sunday, March 17.

At midnight, the CEC stopped collecting citizens’ applications to vote online. This year, voters in 29 Russian regions, or one-third of the country’s constituent regions, will enjoy the option of casting electronic votes. As of Monday morning, as many as 4.5 mln Russians, excluding Muscovites, have applied for online voting rights, CEC Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said. At the start of 2024, Russia’s total electorate stood at 112.3 mln voters, including those in the new regions of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), the Zaporozhye Region and the Kherson Region.

However, the growing popularity of the new voting system is fraught with risks, experts warned. And Russia’s intelligence services have provided proof of that: In a statement released on March 11, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said that the administration of US President Joe Biden had instructed American NGOs to lead hacking attacks on Russia’s online voting system.

While it is impossible to completely eliminate cybersecurity risks, they can be minimized by using specialized services for repelling DDoS attacks, creating a backup system on a separate server or resorting to special means for detecting or preventing such attacks, Sergey Lipov, IT director at EdgeCenter, told Izvestia. Threats like these tend to intensify during an election period, given that the electoral process is a critical factor in the country’s political stability, the expert explained.

"In the past few years, the United States has been conducting cyberattacks against Russia, which we have witnessed since the online voting system was first introduced. And they are getting increasingly bigger," said Maxim Grigoryev, head of the Russian Civic Chamber’s working group specializing in public control over voting. "Our Central Election Commission and our law enforcement agencies realize that and are bracing for it. This is why the online voting system is quite well prepared. Moreover, it was built to repel such attacks. I know quite well that they prepared for such risks and included them in the work plan," he told Izvestia.

 

Media: Russian Finance Ministry rolls out plan for swapping frozen foreign assets

The Russian Finance Ministry has made public the key parameters of a plan to swap frozen foreign assets, in which Russian investors have placed trillions of rubles, for the assets of foreign investors. Under the plan, brokerage house Investment Chamber will oversee the swap. It will solicit applications from Russian private investors from March 25 to May 8. Key risks facing the plan are that foreigners may decline to buy assets from Russian nationals for fear of secondary sanctions and restrictions imposed by European financial regulators on such transactions.

The consensus among market players, brokers and asset management companies interviewed by Kommersant is that the infrastructure is ready to handle such operations.

The mechanism looks logical to Nikolay Shvaikovsky, head of government relations at Alfa Capital, who told Vedomosti that it could primarily be of interest to retail investors. The asset management company is confident that a substantial volume of assets will change hands as part of the plan, given the strong interest among Russian investors, and it expects similarly solid interest among foreign investors as well.

Dmitry Lesnov, head of client services at Finam, finds the plan quite functional, as well, but thinks its implementation will depend on a number of aspects, primarily the willingness of foreign investors to take part, according to Kommersant.

While the risks for Russian investors will not be very high as the swap will take place within Russian market infrastructure, Investment Chamber will face certain risks as the organizer, a senior executive at a major asset management company said. "The brokerage will be playing a special role in the mechanism for unblocking [the assets], which is not envisioned in the EU sanctions laws. These risks will intensify if sanctioned investors get access to the exchange program," Andrey Timchuk, co-head of the sanctions practice at the Delcredere law firm, warned.

Oleg Gruzdev, a lawyer at Forward Legal, told Vedomosti that the assets swap plan currently represents the only way out for both Russia and the West as an avenue for unblocking the assets. While many assets may remain frozen for some time to come, Russia’s proposed mechanism would make it possible to address the problem at least partially in the coming months, he added.

 

Izvestia: Proposals for Western 'boots on ground' in Ukraine could damage Zelensky regime

Discussions of French President Emmanuel Macron’s headline-making proposal to send NATO troops to Ukraine have exposed a split in the bloc, which will ultimately play against Kiev’s interests, experts say. Meanwhile, a remark by Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, who said that the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine "is not unthinkable," heightens concerns among Western countries that the Ukraine conflict may escalate to a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

In Europe, there are "many voices" calling on the continent to sit down at the negotiating table, Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, said. In Germany, as many as 56% of people polled believe that Berlin should do more to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine through talks, Bild reported. And experts believe that public sentiment in other countries is almost identical.

"The political elites in NATO countries are afraid of how both Brussels and Washington may react to calls for peace. And I guess the longer the conflict lasts, the more such calls will be heard," Denis Denisov, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia. Commenting on the proposal to send troops to Ukraine, he said: "Of course, everybody understands perfectly well that such a step would raise tensions between Russia and NATO countries. And many are actually afraid of that."

The North Atlantic Alliance has other fears, as well. The aggressive rhetoric on the part of France intensifies the visible split in public opinion within the bloc and the growing strife between political forces in individual members of the alliance. And the situation shows, on the one hand, the low level of effectiveness of decisions to send more military aid to Ukraine and, on the other hand, it reveals the lack of a well-designed strategy or any alternative "Plan B."

"In a strategic perspective, the intensified split will certainly play against the interests of the current Ukrainian authorities. Everyone understands perfectly well that the longer the conflict lasts, the more contradictions will arise," Denisov said.

"The Ukrainian authorities expected the West to support them endlessly and that this support would certainly be enough to defeat Russia. The fact that, in reality, things are turning out to be somewhat different from what they were promised has led to a strategic political crisis in Kiev, as Ukraine doesn’t seem to have any Plan B either," said Oleg Nemensky, leading expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies.

 

Kommersant: Russian Urals blend oil finds unexpected market

Russian oil companies have been exporting oil to Venezuela, on whose oil market the United States has eased sanctions until April, Kommersant has learned. The risk of renewed restrictions has encouraged Venezuela to increase its own oil imports as much as possible. In this light, the South American country, which exported more than 650,000 barrels of oil per day in February, decided to buy Russian oil for refining domestically.

The Ligera supertanker carrying 1.8 mln barrels of Russian crude is preparing to transport the shipment of Urals blend oil to Venezuela, Kpler told Kommersant. Also, Russia sent 260,000 barrels of diesel to Venezuela in February.

Russian oil and petroleum product shipments to Venezuela are a unique case as Venezuela mostly uses its own heavy crude for refining, mixing it with naphtha or gas condensate for a proper blend. In 2022-2023, the South American economy also purchased oil from Iran, which became its largest supplier. But those purchases were not large.

Venezuela will be the focus of global oil markets over the next month as the Biden administration will have to decide whether to extend its six-month sanctions waiver, Viktor Katona at Kpler predicts. At the same time, Venezuela’s state-run oil and gas major, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), is seeking to benefit from exporting as much of its own oil as possible, which is why its oil exports reached a four-year high in February. According to the analyst, PDVSA currently sells oil for hard currency, which is a much more preferable scenario than previous transactions under an oil-for-debt deal, mostly with Chinese companies. "Urals plays the role of a substitute for Venezuelan oil in this system of coordinates. Urals is easier to refine than any other [Venezuelan] oil, and PDVSA can buy it now that it has generated profits," Katona maintained. And the situation around purchases of Russian diesel meant for domestic consumption looks the same, he continued, as PDVSA has been exporting all its oil volumes to capitalize on the situation as it substitutes those with petroleum products from "friendly jurisdictions," he concluded.

 

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: State Duma to address German lawmakers

At a meeting later on Tuesday, the Russian State Duma will discuss a draft address to Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. Russian legislators are seeking to highlight to their German counterparts the recent leaked audio of a classified conversation among senior Bundeswehr (German armed forces) officers about sending long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine and their potential use for hitting targets inside Russia, including the Crimean Bridge.

Since early this year, the lower house of Russia’s parliament has issued half a dozen such statements addressed to specific overseas audiences. Previously, international relations were the prerogative of the president and the Foreign Ministry, with the Federation Council, or upper chamber of parliament, being involved only partially. Now, the Duma seems to have been given a major mandate for providing informational support for Russia’s foreign policy.

Alexey Makarkin, first vice president of the Center for Political Technologies, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta, that, in fact, the State Duma has been making statements on the country’s foreign policy since the start of the special military operation. "Before, everybody was interested in statements of the president and the Foreign Ministry, while [what] parliamentarians [said] was of lesser interest," he explained.

However, as Russia’s contacts with the majority of parliaments have been severed, Russian lawmakers now mostly visit China, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. And the Duma communicates with the West by issuing addresses. These target specific parties and politicians who either favor and support Russia, or are at least critical of their governments’ backing of Ukraine, Makarkin added.

"All these critics may use the very arguments that the State Duma transmits, albeit indirectly. Therefore, the signal from [the Duma headquarters on] Okhotny Ryad will find its audience," he concluded.

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