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US 'Orchestrated' Russian Spies Scandal, Says Kaspersky Founder (theguardian.com)
Alex Hern, writing for The Guardian: Eugene Kaspersky, chief executive and co-founder of the embattled Russian cybersecurity firm that bears his name, believes his company is at the centre of a "designed and orchestrated attack" to destroy its reputation. Over a short period in the summer of 2017, Kaspersky Labs was the subject of multiple media reports alleging that the company had helped Russian intelligence agencies spy on the US, a number of FBI raids on staff members, and a nationwide ban on the use of its software by federal government agencies. "This media attack and government attack from the United States, it was designed and orchestrated," Mr Kaspersky said at a press conference in London. "Because at the same time, there was government, there was FBI, there was media attack. That is expensive ... I mean all kinds of resources: political influence, money, lobbyists, the media etc." When asked directly whether he had ever been asked to help Russian intelligence agencies spy on the US, Kaspersky vehemently denied any such conversations had ever happened saying: "They have never asked us to spy on people. Never." "If the Russian government comes to me and asks me to do anything wrong, I will move the business out of Russia," he added. "We never helped the espionage agencies, the Russians or any other nation."
The files then somehow made their way to the KGB? Uh ... wasn't the KGB dissolved in 1991?
The files then somehow made their way to the KGB.
And we know that particular rendition of those bits came from Kaspersky how?
Since then he's said that there was a trojan on the PC he got the files from (but the trojan infection wasn't their fault because the PC user had turned off Ka[s]persky for awhile which they also knew) so Russian hackers must've gotten the information that way
And he extensively documented the reasons why he believes that to be the case. On the other side as far as I can tell, we basically have "Kaspersky and the KGB both ended up with copies of files and are both in Russia... oooooo."
Being the timely "annexation" of Crimea when Ukraine was in discussion of joining the EU
Uff, the annexation of Crimea by Russia was made possible by many stupid decisions of the "revolutionary" parliament of Ukraine, that passed a bill to remove the Russian language (and other minority languages) from the list of the official regional languages, while there are regions of Ukraine where a large part (or even the majority) of the population identify themselves as Russian (or some other minority). That was one of the reason of the counter-revolution in Ukraine, that was then exploited by Russia.
the invasion of Georgia
Same situation. Saakashvili, then president of Georgia, tried to deflect the attention from his own failures as a politician by militarily occupying South Ossetia, which was an autonomous region of Georgia under the control of a peace keeping force monitored by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Again, Russia exploited the situation "helping" South Ossetia, but you can say that Saakashvili had it coming.
Then we have proof that Russia has created Facebook groups creating dueling protests to reinforce Americans divides and stresses, there is a problem with racism in the US, so they bring up fake news or exaggerated news to play on these feelings of uncomfortable and turn it to fear.
Don't be naive, not just Russia. What about Saudi Arabia? Qatar? Israel? Corporations? The American government? They are all investing in the fake news business, and they are all, singularly, investing much more than Russia. The sum of their investments dwarfs the Russian investments. If you somewhat fear Russian fake news, you should accordingly be scared to death by your establishment fake news.
You seem Russian as those are Russian type explanations. First of all, the Russian language has been de-emphasized ever since Ukraine gained independence. While there was some stupid law like you mention, the reality is that Ukrainian education has been in Ukrainian, not Russian, for a very long time now. I remember over a decade ago meeting a lady who taught in what the US would call elementary school and she was an ethnic Russian, but she told me that she was required by law to teach in Ukrainian. Please note that she lived in a town currently under rebel control in East Ukraine where most people speak Russian by choice. Crimea has always had a chip on its shoulder about being given by Krushchev to Ukraine and Russia exploited this. The law change is just an excuse. They've been looking for a reason to go back to Russia for a very long time and the instability in the national government provided the pretext Putin needed to "liberate" them. And that liberation was really mostly to get control of the naval bases there. I have known for a very long time that Ukraine allowing Russians to keep ships there was a really bad idea, but government after government foolishly believed that they could pacify Mother Russia by doing so and she wouldn't attack them.
Do note that this so-called "peace keeping force monitored by the OSCE" is only Russian and other nations are not allowed to participate. The OCSE monitoring is theoretical at best. Your reason stated for Saakhasvili's invasion is correct, but note that you are forgetting to mention that Russian troops went there to "help" (wink wink) during a previous ethnic clash over a decade earlier and never left.
Then we have the usual "Don't single out Russia. Everybody else is doing it and doing it more!" argument. You lose on that one.
Crimea is where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based.