photo #9423539

🚨 PUTIN’S war is also a war on the youth, in Russia, and abroad. We tend to think about Russia’s war in Ukraine in terms of territory, weapons, casualties and geopolitics. ⚠️But there is another battlefield that deserves far more attention: the next generation. Inside Russia, the Kremlin is increasingly militarizing young people—using schools, patriotic education and state propaganda to normalize war, sacrifice and confrontation with the West. 👇My latest column for @tmrwsaffairs came out in the UK over the weekend: “Weaponizing Youth: Putin’s War on the Next Generation.” Outside Russia, the methods are different but the objective is similar--distort, brainwash and mobilize the minds of the young--and their bodies, for the benefit of the ruling elite of Russia, the siloviki and security services. Russian intelligence and its proxies have increasingly looked to teenagers and young people abroad as targets for recruitment, manipulation and influence—using Telegram, gaming platforms, social media and other online spaces where traditional intelligence tradecraft can now operate at extraordinary scale. ⚠️ Young people can be approached for seemingly minor tasks that escalate into surveillance, sabotage or other criminal activity. At the same time, information operations seek something broader: to create cynicism, distrust and disengagement among the very generation that will inherit Western democratic institutions. This is one of the central realities of modern Russian intelligence operations: technology changes the delivery mechanism, but not necessarily the underlying method. 🔥Recruitment. Manipulation. Coercion. Propaganda. Exploitation of vulnerability. Those tools are old. The platforms are new. And that is why understanding Russian intelligence today requires looking not only at spies, soldiers and governments—but at who Moscow is trying to shape, recruit and influence for the future. 👉As I write in the conclusion to my piece: "The technology has changed. The willingness to sacrifice the future to preserve the regime has not." 👇👇Read the full article below, and Chapter 9 of my best-selling book, "Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks" where I focus on Russian active measures, their history and their adaptations with cognitive AI. #RussianIntelligence #Russia #Ukraine #NationalSecurity #Intelligence