The Russian disinformation machine is one of the casualties of the war in Ukraine — at least so far.
Considered unbeatable, Russian propaganda has not resisted the digital activism of the Ukrainians and their media president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the pre-emptive unmasking operation undertaken by the US, European Union and volunteers from the open data intelligence community, which analyze satellite images. and public information to detect Moscow lies.
For years, Russia has managed to manipulate public opinion in different parts of the world through influence operations. Vladimir Putin’s country threw a ball in the West in the annexation of Crimea in 2014, in the US elections in 2016, in the Brexit referendum and in the elections of France and Germany in 2017.
The Russian Maskirovka doctrine, which for years has used camouflage, concealment and lies to confuse and deceive the enemy, found the internet to be the ideal environment for strategy. According to Keir Giles, an expert on Russia at the British think tank Chatham House, the objective is to change the perceptions that adversaries have of the world, inducing them to make decisions that benefit Russians.
To this end, troll farms — with human hires — and robots, as well as pseudo-news sites and state media, such as RT (Russia Today), Sputnik and Tass, unite to manufacture consensus, erode the adversary’s domestic legitimacy, spread chaos and leave people not knowing what is true.
During the annexation of Crimea, the Russian disinformation machine was at its height. There, the famous “little green men” — Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms — allowed the Kremlin to deny involvement in the military conflict for weeks and blame the aggression on the Ukrainians.
Russia also resorted to the tactic in an attempt to erase its fingerprints in the Malaysia Airlines plane crash, an episode that left nearly 300 dead in July 2014. It was only thanks to the investigation by the Bellingcat collective that it was possible to know that the aircraft had been shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile.
In the ongoing invasion, the Kremlin has again resorted to the strategy, although now the leading role is the state media, not so much troll farms on social networks. The Russians have tried to plant three “false flags” actions, in which incidents to blame the enemy and justify an invasion are fabricated.
To this end, they used anonymous channels on Telegram to spread rumors that were later amplified in state media. In the messages, Ukraine would be preparing an attack on the Donbass region with chemical weapons, and Western countries, a plot to attack Ukrainian nuclear plants and blame the Russians.
This is the traditional tactic of the “hose of falsehoods”: the narrative to be emblazoned is disseminated on various channels, such as TVs, state websites, social networks and messages via apps.
By flooding the internet, they obfuscate the truth. On every channel, they repeat that the Russian army is freeing the Ukrainian people from the yoke of neo-Nazis and that the Ukrainians would commit genocide.
In reaction, Facebook and Twitter removed accounts linked to the Russians, such as a website that attacked the Ukrainian government through fake columnists using computer-generated photos of people.
And this time, the West got ahead and did a “pre-emptive unmasking.” US President Joe Biden went on to release intelligence services information, revealing that the Russians were about to invade and that they would spread a video with doctored footage as a “false flag”.
The Russians, in turn, said that the Americans spread fake news and that there would be no invasion. Chinese made fun of the Biden administration, calling Americans hysterical. They took advantage of the distrust regarding the false discoveries of the US intelligence service, which, in 2003, “found” in Iraq weapons of mass destruction that never existed.
Deaths and eventual strategic blunders at the front, however, are more difficult to unmask. “The Kremlin tried to repeat what it had done in 2014, saying that there was Ukrainian aggression, but now there is a huge amount of verifiable data available,” he told sheet Tom Southern, director of the Information Resilience Center, who created a map showing, in real time, Russian and Ukrainian military movements, deaths, bombings, shootings and damage to infrastructure.
“They haven’t kept up with the technological evolution. There is so much open data that lies can be disproved immediately, and even actors who would help in influence operations have distanced themselves.”
To Christopher Paul, a social scientist at the RAND Corporation who studies Russian disinformation warfare, Moscow’s current efforts seem far less effective. “In 2014, the ‘little green men’ and uncertainty about Russian objectives created confusion that prevented a coherent response from the West.”
Furthermore, the tech giants have moved, after years of denunciations by Ukrainian activists of fake accounts spreading hate and misinformation. Twitter began to tag that a profile belongs to Russian state media, and Google, YouTube and Facebook, which blocked access to RT and Sputnik in the European Union, banned those outlets from buying ads.
The Russians obviously do not have a monopoly on online disinformation. The heroism of #ghostofkyiv, or “Ghost of Kiev”, an expert Ukrainian pilot who would have single-handedly shot down ten Russian fighter jets, helped boost Ukrainian morale. The alleged exploits were shared on Ukraine’s official government Twitter account, and videos with the hashtag on TikTok surpassed 200 million views. Only some of the videos shared were computer simulations, and the photos were from 2019.
Ukraine’s propaganda, however, focuses more on the virality of heroic acts by the population, such as grannies making Molotov cocktails, and on videos of citizens trying to block the passage of tanks, even though the Ukrainian government has released photos and videos of Russian soldiers. wounded, killed, charred and disemboweled, which many experts say is a violation of humanitarian law.
There are also videos and striking comments from the president — such as when he responded to Western leaders’ offer of help to be withdrawn from the country. “I don’t need a ride, I need ammo.” TikTok is the main platform for the informational battle of Ukraine’s war and is dominated by Ukrainians.
For PW Singer, a strategist at the New America research center, this propaganda is being very effective, in part because Ukrainian society did not collapse soon after the Russian invasion. However, the war of narratives is far from over, and the Russians can still turn the tide on that front.
A crucial point is the domestic audience. That is why the Kremlin tried to stifle what was left of the independent press in Russia, with the approval, on Friday (4), of a law that provides for up to 15 years in prison for those who spread “false information” about the Armed Forces, which includes calling the war Putin called a “special military operation” a “war”, urging other countries to impose sanctions or criticizing the invasion. Due to legislation, foreign vehicles such as CNN and ABC suspended operations in the country.
The government also blocked Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America — apparently in retaliation for the sanctions on RT and Sputnik. Finally, Putin blocked Facebook in the country and restricted access to Twitter, as well as arresting thousands of protesters who participated in protests.
Meanwhile, it continues to spread lies — TV shows say the images of Russian casualties and missiles against Ukrainian cities are false. Part of the population, however, accesses banned vehicles through Telegram or the VPN tool, which bypasses restrictions. So videos of captured Russian soldiers are reaching families who didn’t even know which relatives were at the front.
“Domestic communication has not been convincing, so much so that the authorities quickly resorted to censorship; the government insists that actions are limited, but many have had family members summoned and they know it is not true. On the other hand, protesters have been detained, and the Russians have been disengaged from politics for years,” he told sheet Emerson Brooking, a researcher at the Atlantic Council.
If indeed he fails to “censor by noise” of disinformation, Putin must try to recreate in Russia the wall that China has built to censor the internet and the media in the country. However, the volume of videos and photos of dead soldiers is increasing, and the population is facing the lack of food in supermarkets and the growth of queues at banks, as a result of the sanctions applied by Western countries.
It’s hard to get a narrative that overshadows this reality.
