On Thursday, Stedman’s lawyers filed a petition in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., demanding testimony and records from former FBI agent Richard Frankel, who went to work in 2016 for Soriano’s firm USG Security Limited.

Frankel also worked for a time alongside Michael Flynn in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and after leaving government had a contributor gig with ABC News.

The new court filing says information from Frankel could help Stedman defend himself and the media outlet he founded, Forensic News. “Frankel … likely has in-depth knowledge of USG’s activities and connections — including many of the activities about which Forensic News reported in 2019 and 2020 relating to Russian election interference and the Russian oligarchy,” Stedman’s petition says.

Frankel, who now works as an attorney and a security consultant on Long Island, declined to comment Friday on the court action.

Stedman’s petition calls Soriano’s suit “an attack on American free speech and journalistic values” and contends it is an example of “libel tourism” — a phenomenon in which wealthy litigants sue U.S. journalists abroad in order to dodge the high standards the U.S. imposes to prove libel claims involving public figures. Stedman’s attorneys say information from Frankel could help Stedman prove that claims in his news reports are true.

Stedman’s filing says Soriano first came to his outlet’s attention through a POLITICO story indicating that Senate Intelligence Committee investigators were seeking to interview him. “Forensic News picked up on the Politico report and ran with it, ultimately discovering and reporting on a web of shadowy connections and secretive dealings with Russian oligarchs and others,” Stedman’s petition says.

A Senate Intelligence Committee report released in 2019 mentioned Soriano’s business dealings but made no allegations of election interference or wrongdoing.

In an email to POLITICO, a London-based attorney for Soriano noted that British courts have rejected the notion that the case there amounts to libel tourism.

“The High Court and Court of Appeal have ruled that Mr Soriano’s suit is not libel tourism. He is the first person to be given permission to bring a claim for libel against a foreign news organisation since the Defamation Act 2013 was brought in, and which sets a very high bar,” Soriano attorney Shlomo Rechtschaffen wrote. “Mr. Soriano brings the action to vindicate his reputation and prove that the unfounded allegations made by Forensic News are wholly untrue.”

In a ruling in December, a British appeals court upheld Soriano’s right to proceed with his libel claim. The appeals court also restored a claim a lower court had struck from the suit, that Stedman’s reporting violated the European Union rule known as the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR.

The prospect of U.S.-based news organizations being forced to conform to European data-privacy rules has prompted concern among First Amendment advocates.

Stedman said Friday that the litigation has been an ordeal.

“This process has been like nothing I’ve ever dealt with,” he said. “I’ve been put into debt, my health has suffered, and relationships have been strained. But I have my convictions intact. The work that we did is too important to be silenced.”

Individuals with alleged ties to Russia are under extreme scrutiny in the West due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and Soriano’s litigation is drawing the attention of some U.S. officials. Stedman is set to appear Wednesday before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, for a hearing entitled, “Countering Oligarchs, Enablers and Lawfare.”

Even if Stedman is ultimately found liable in the U.K. litigation, it’s unclear whether Soriano will ever be able to collect any judgment. A U.S. law passed in 2010 in an effort to combat libel tourism makes it difficult to enforce defamation judgments in the U.S. unless they come from countries that offer parallel free-speech protections.

The new petition was assigned Friday to U.S. District Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, an appointee of President George W. Bush, court records show.

By The Star Staff

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Agent Mark Thomas Rossini, who is co-accused with former Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced of public corruption, pleaded not guilty Tuesday before federal judge Camille Vélez Rivé.

Rossini, who voluntarily surrendered to federal agents, is charged with allegedly conspiring with the owner of Bancrédito, Julio Herrera Velutini, to bribe the former governor and commit electronic fraud.

Additionally, a $50,000 secured bond was set.

Rossini resides in Spain, where he is undergoing cancer treatment and, according to press reports, he could travel to continue his medical treatment.

The former FBI agent faces a jail sentence of 20 years in prison.

The former governor, who was arrested by federal authorities last Thursday, also pleaded not guilty to the alleged bribery and wire fraud scheme in her 2020 primary campaign.

According to the indictment, beginning in 2019, Herrera Velutini’s bank was the subject of an examination by Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions (OCIF), a regulatory agency that oversees financial institutions operating in Puerto Rico. Through intermediaries, Herrera Velutini and Rossini allegedly promised to provide funding to support Vázquez Garced’s 2020 gubernatorial election campaign in exchange for Vázquez Garced terminating the commissioner of OCIF, George Richard Joyner, and appointing a new commissioner of Herrera Velutini’s choosing, Víctor Rodríguez Bonilla, who worked at Bancrédito.

According to the indictment, Herrera Velutini attended a wedding of an individual identified as Individual C and was seated at the same table as Vázquez Garced. When Blakeman sent a text message to Herrera seeking support, Herrera replied “She has it! At this table she already has 2MM,” then later wrote “But she has to resolve OCIF.”

The indictment alleges that Vázquez Garced accepted the offer of a bribe and, in February 2020, took official action to demand the resignation of OCIF Commissioner A and, in May 2020, to appoint OCIF Commissioner B – a former consultant for the international bank owned by Herrera Velutini – who had been personally selected by Herrera Velutini. In return, Herrera Velutini and Rossini allegedly paid more than $300,000 to political consultants in support of Vázquez Garced’s campaign.

The indictment further alleges that following Vázquez Garced’s primary election loss in August.

2020, Herrera Velutini sought to bribe her successor, identified as Public Official A, presumably current Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia, by offering funding in support of Public Official A’s campaign in exchange for Public Official A ending OCIF’s audit of Herrera Velutini’s bank on terms favorable to Herrera Velutini.

According to the indictment, between April 2021 and August 2021, Herrera Velutini allegedly used intermediaries to convey his offer of a bribe to a witness, presumably Joseph Fuentes Fernández, who held himself out as a representative of Public Official A, but who was in fact acting at the direction of the FBI. As noted in the indictment, the witness was acting at the direction of the FBI during this timeframe and not actually serving as an intermediary of, or acting on behalf of, Public Official A, the officials said.

In August 2021, Herrera Velutini allegedly directed a $25,000 payment to a political action committee associated with Public Official A, with the understanding and expectation that Public Official A would resolve OCIF’s audit of Herrera Velutini’s bank in the manner requested by Herrera Velutini.

A senior member of UK Prime Minster Liz Truss’s government is cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a bribery investigation that led to the arrest of Puerto Rico’s former leader.

Mark Fullbrook, chief of staff for the new prime minister, is assisting US authorities as a witness and denied a report in the Times of London that he was a subject of the investigation, his spokesman said in a written statement Sunday. Fullbrook worked for CT Group, a political consultancy that had done opinion research on behalf of the banker that US authorities have charged with bribing Wanda Vazquez, Puerto Rico’s former governor.

Cracks are emerging among Vladimir Putin’s cronies over the Russian president’s military leadership and whether to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

As Ukrainian forces pummeled the city of Lyman over the weekend, Ramzan Kadyrov, a longtime Putin ally and leader of Chechnya, lashed out at Putin’s approach there, criticizing Russian troops’ withdrawal and the Russian commander of the Central Military District, Alexander Lapin.

“It’s not a shame that Lapin is mediocre, but the fact that he is covered at the top by the leaders in the General Staff,” he said on Saturday, taking a dig at the entire operation. “There is no place for nepotism in the army, especially in difficult times.”

Another key Putin ally, Evgeniy Prigozhin, Putin’s so-called “chef” who helped orchestrate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections in the United States and who heads up the mercenary group Wagner, seems to have also turned on Putin’s strategy in Ukraine.

“Send all these pieces of garbage barefoot with machine guns straight to the front,” Prigozhin said, referring to Putin’s army bosses.

The public criticism from key Putin supporters comes just as Russia is working to project unity and power on the world stage. After a series of defeats on the battlefield in Ukraine, Putin initiated a partial mobilization to bolster the war effort and held sham referenda in an attempt to illegally annex territories in Ukraine.

The internal divisions are mounting. Kadyrov also said that Russia should use a low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine. But the Kremlin is now jabbing back at him, suggesting that Kadyrov got too emotional and that cooler heads should prevail.

“The heads of Russia’s regions have the authority to express their point of view and to make assessments,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday. But “even in the most difficult moments emotions should probably be excluded from any comments.”

The Kremlin’s effort to distance itself from Kadyrov’s hawkish stance comes just days after Russia’s efforts to illegally annex several regions in Ukraine. The move has set off alarm bells over whether the Kremlin will consider Ukrainian counter-offensives to take back the regions as attacks on Russian territory.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine lays out that Russia’s use of nuclear weapons should be used in self-defense. But Russian officials have reiterated in recent weeks that Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if there is an existential threat to the country or if there is an attack against Russia, even if the attack uses conventional weapons alone.

And Russia has made it clear that it would defend the newly annexed regions in Ukraine—the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions—with “all means at its disposal.”

Putin himself has hinted at Russia’s potential interest in using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

The cleavage between Kadyrov, Prigozhin, and the Kremlin appears to be emblematic of larger problems in Moscow’s approach to Ukraine in the eighth month of the war. Although Russia hosted its sham referenda last week in Ukraine, the Kremlin acknowledged Monday that Russia is not necessarily confident in what territories it has specifically claimed as Russian, according to Peskov. Russia doesn’t control the territories it annexed, and Peskov suggested the Kremlin had to ask around about which borders it will claim as its own, an indication that the illegal annexation process may not be going as smoothly as Moscow expected.

“We are going to continue to consult the populations of these regions,” Peskov said.

Russian nuclear targeting reflects both doctrine and capabilities. Russia has the lowest nuclear weapons use threshold of the major nuclear weapons states. President Vladimir Putin’s June 2020 directive on nuclear deterrence described six circumstances for nuclear weapons use:

• In paragraph 4, nuclear deterrence is linked to threats to Russian sovereignty and territorial integrity.
• In paragraph 19, nuclear first use is specifically linked to launch under any type of ballistic missile attack, in response to nuclear attack or to attack by weapons of mass destruction, in response to kinetic or non-kinetic attack on Russian nuclear forces and command and control, and conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

This list is clearly incomplete. For example, in 2014, retired former Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Secretary of Russia’s National Security Council General of the Army Yuriy Baluevskiy said the “…conditions for pre-emptive nuclear strikes…is contained in classified policy documents.”[1]

We now know that the Soviet Warsaw Pact war plan involved the massive first use of nuclear weapons, including nuclear strikes not only on expected military targets but also against major European cities in support of a Russian invasion. Putin’s strategy involves the limited first use of nuclear weapons with target selection and weapons allocation designed to minimize collateral damage and, hence, the risk of nuclear escalation.

The Russian Defense Ministry describes the mission and targeting of the Strategic Nuclear Forces (the ICBM force) as follows: “…for defeat… of enemy military and military economic potential by means of large-scale, group or single nuclear missile attacks.”[2]

In December 1999, Colonel General Vladimir Muravyev, then-Deputy Commander of Russia’s Strategic Missiles Forces stated, “…the deterrent actions of strategic forces…[involve] strikes with both conventional and nuclear warheads with the goal of de-escalating the military conflict,” and Russian forces “…should be capable of conducting ‘surgical’ strikes…using both highly accurate, super-low yield nuclear weapons, as well as conventional ones…” The Russians call this “escalate to de-escalation” a conflict. A more accurate description of it is “escalate to win.” The Russian assumption is that the West will not respond to the limited nuclear attack and give Russia what it wants. This is similar to Putin’s expectation that Ukraine would not fight and meekly surrender. In 2017, then-Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart stated that Russia is “the only country that I know of that has this concept of escalate to terminate or escalate to deescalate but they do have that built into their operational concept, we’ve seen them exercise that idea and it’s really kind of a dangerous idea…”[3] He also said that he had seen no evidence that this policy was changing.

In December 2009, a more detailed statement of Russian targeting strategy was made by then-Commander of their Strategic Missile Forces Lieutenant General Andrey Shvaychenko. He outlined the role of the ICBM force in conventional and nuclear wars as follows: “In a conventional war, [they] ensure that the opponent is forced to cease hostilities, on advantageous conditions for Russia, by means of single or multiple preventive strikes against the aggressors’ most important facilities. In a nuclear war, they ensure the destruction of facilities of the opponent’s military and economic potential by means of an initial massive nuclear missile strike and subsequent multiple and single nuclear missile strikes.”[4] This is a classic statement of “escalate to de-escalate” or “escalate to win” from the perspective of an ICBM force commander.

In a September 13, 2007 interview in Moskovskiy Komsomolets, former ICBM force chief of staff Colonel General (ret.) Viktor Yesin described Russian Navy strategic nuclear targeting. He said, “The sailors…largely hit targets that do not have any serious protection, such as cities and enterprises, and therefore they don’t require a very high degree of accuracy.” However, this was said before Russia fielded its new and improved SLBMs, or at least more than a small number of them.

Many of the numerous high level Russian nuclear threats since 2007 have involved the targeting of NATO nations with Russian nuclear ICBMs. The most common targets are missile defense facilities, INF missile facilities in Europe (there are none yet) and recently hypersonic missile threats against the U.S. and NATO national command authorities.[5] Russian state television listed specific nuclear targets related to the attack on the U.S. National Command Authority.[6] According to President Putin, one of the main roles of Russian hypersonic missiles is to target the U.S. and allied National Command Authorities. I believe these threats are consistent with actual Russian nuclear targeting.

The only possible targets for the Poseidon (formerly called Status-6) nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed drone submarines are large port cities. In Russia, it is reported to have a 100 megaton warhead which would kill millions by blast and fallout. I believe its role is to deter a response to Russian first use of low-yield nuclear weapons.

While the Russians don’t speak about anything between the limited nuclear strikes and all out nuclear war, there must be something in between. It would be insane for them to go from a limited nuclear strike to all out nuclear war. This may be something similar to the type of large scale very low-yield nuclear targeting outlined by James Howe. It is noteworthy that in December 1999, Colonel General Vladimir Muravyev, Deputy Commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, said nuclear weapons “are capable of nullifying the combat qualities of all modern conventional systems.” STRATCOM Commander Admiral Charles Richard said that Russia had modernized 86% of its strategic nuclear forces compared to zero for the U.S. Russian modernization is continuous and it won’t stop when they reach 100 percent. As stated in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review report:

In addition to modernizing ‘legacy’ Soviet nuclear systems, Russia is developing and deploying new nuclear warheads and launchers. These efforts include multiple upgrades for every leg of the Russian nuclear triad of strategic bombers, sea-based missiles, and land-based missiles. Russia is also developing at least two new intercontinental range systems, a hypersonic glide vehicle, and a new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo.

We have no recent unclassified USG numbers for the Russian nuclear stockpile. If we did, they almost certainly would be a large underestimate. It is noteworthy that at the end of the Cold War we underestimated the Soviet nuclear arsenal by 17,000 weapons. Almost everything you see in the press about Russian nuclear warhead numbers is based on a single American source which does not document the numbers. Their numbers for Russian strategic systems appear to be a based on assumed compliance by Russia with the New START Treaty and numbers derived from very old Soviet START Treaty accountability data for legacy Soviet ICBMs and SLBMs applied to the new Russian replacement systems which are far more capable.

Russia probably has between two to four times as many active nuclear warheads as the U.S., most them currently non-strategic. A December 2019 statement by Russian Strategic Missile Forces Commander Colonel General Sergei Karakayev implied that Russia had over 3,300 deployed strategic nuclear warheads.[7] Russian expert Sergei Rogov has said the Russian strategic nuclear stockpile could be around 6,000 and assessments of Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons range between several thousand to over 10,000.

Noteworthy, there have not been any NEW START Treaty inspections in 30 months and Russia has just denied us our on-site inspection rights. Absent on-site inspections, Russia could have uploaded its entire strategic missile force or at least most of it. The remaining NEW START verification regime is less than what was in the 1979 SALT II Treaty.

In 2019, former Under Secretary of State Rose Gottmeoller said, “If released from the current 1,500 limit… the Russians could rapidly add several hundred more warheads, some say up to a thousand warheads, to their existing deployments of ICBMs…” With 30 months without inspections, at least this much or even more could have happened. James Howe has done some very good analysis on Russian breakout potential.

Russia is on the verge of deploying its new Sarmat heavy ICBMs. Deployment of the Sarmat will dramatically increase Russian cheating potential, absent on-site inspections. Conflicting Russian statements on its deployment plans indicate that there will be between 46 and 200 Sarmat missiles.[8] According to RT (Russian state media), the Russian Ministry of Defense said the “…Sarmat will be able to carry up to 20 warheads of small, medium, high power classes.”

What does Russia have to implement its nuclear strategy? Unfortunately, quite a bit. Russia has modernized its strategic nuclear forces since the end of the Cold War and now has a much more modern and larger strategic nuclear force than the U.S. In December 2021, President Putin stated that Russia had modernized 89% of its strategic nuclear forces. In August 2022, Putin’s Russia will likely claim it is deployed with 10. The Sarmat will be the main Russian weapon against hard targets although in recent years the Yars-S reportedly has been deployed with medium-yield weapons[9] which will enhance targeting capability against hard targets.

Russia is generally credited with 2,000 or 2,000+ non-strategic nuclear weapons. My estimate is over 5,000. This is based on Russian press reports like Pravda.ru which in 2014 said, “Russia, according to conservative estimates, has 5,000 pieces of different classes of TNW [tactical nuclear weapons] – from Iskander warheads to torpedo, aerial and artillery warheads!” and the official Russian claim that it has reduced its tactical nuclear weapons 75% from Cold War levels equates to about the same number. Russia repeated the 75% number in August 2022.

Whatever the total, Russian forces contain battlefield nuclear weapons, air and missile defense nuclear weapons, anti-ship and anti-submarine nuclear weapons and short-, medium- and long-range cruise, ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The very existence of these forces is clear evidence they plan on using them in theater war. These dual capable systems are routinely used in Russian exercises and in the war in Ukraine.

If Russia were to start a nuclear conflict, it would almost certainly be with low-yield nuclear weapons, where they have a massive advantage. According to then-Vice Chairman of the JCS General John Hyten, Russia had “thousands [of] low-yield … and tactical nuclear weapons that Russia is building and deploying…” By comparison, U.S. reportedly has under 25 low-yield Trident warheads and 200-230 tactical nuclear B-61s bombs and a total of 300 strategic B-61 bombs and nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Thus, Russia has a massive targeting advantage and it is growing.

There is some good news. The Ukraine war has demonstrated that Russian non-strategic and one of their strategic cruise missiles have significant reliability, quality control, accuracy and fusing problems. The Pentagon has confirmed press reports that various Russian missiles were experiencing a failure rate of 20 to 60 percent (failure was defined as the inability to launch or hit the target) with the lowest kill rates being in the “cruise missiles, particularly air-launched cruise missiles.” Even with these problems, the Russian missiles are still one of the biggest advantages they have over Ukraine.

Noted Russian journalist Pavel Felgenhauer observed, “The Iskander as well as other Russian non-strategic missiles can be truly effective only with a nuclear warhead—apparently the way it is intended to primarily be used in any peer-to-peer conflict.” Even with low-yield nuclear warheads, Russia does not need the same level of accuracy that it needs for conventional strikes and the fusing problems probably won’t apply because nuclear systems are the product of different design bureaus and nuclear fusing is significantly different.

Moreover, the relevant comparison is not between the latest and most advanced U.S. conventional cruise missiles and Russian nuclear cruise and non-strategic ballistic and hypersonic missiles, but with the only U.S. nuclear-armed cruise missile, the strategic AGM-86B, which is 40 years old, pre-stealth, pre-precision/near precision accuracy and has seriously eroded and declining reliability, according to General John Hyten when he was STRATCOM Commander.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is far from over and there is still the possibility of Russian use of nuclear weapons. If they do, it would almost certainly be against targets selected to have maximum military effect and low-collateral damage with very low-yield nuclear weapons. If the war were against NATO, the approach would be the same but the nuclear strikes could be against NATO Europe or the U.S. or even possibly both.

Dr. Mark B. Schneider is a Senior Analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy. Before his retirement from the Department of Defense Senior Executive Service, Dr. Schneider served as Principal Director for Forces Policy, Principal Director for Strategic Defense, Space and Verification Policy, Director for Strategic Arms Control Policy and Representative of the Secretary of Defense to the Nuclear Arms Control Implementation Commissions.  He also served in the senior Foreign Service as a Member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff.

Defense lawyers said the far-right militia had assembled ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to await what they hoped would be a decision by Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Top F.B.I. and National Security Agency officials said that Iran and China also remained potent threats, mounting their own campaigns to undermine American democracy.