Infoguerre

The deadly Crocus City Hall attack drew the world’s attention to Central Asia, where the pro-Kremlin disinformation machine is contaminating the information space with classic disinfo narratives, tested in other parts of the world. In January 2024, the Kazakh government renamed several railway stations. Station 26 became Zhetitobe station, Koscheku station became Kosshoky station. Unremarkable. Until Tina Kandelaki, deputy head of Gazprom-Media and a prominent face supporting Russian aggression against Ukraine, claimed on her private Telegram channel that changing the spelling of some names from Russian to Kazakh revealed displacement of the Russian language in Kazakhstan.

The Kremlin’s disinformation outlets seek to discredit Ukraine’s legitimate attempts to secure a just and sustainable peace, muddying the waters with outdated proposals and feigning a genuine interest in negotiations. Meanwhile, at home, conspiracy theories about the Crocus City Hall still abound. Last week brought some unexpected challenges for the Kremlin’s information manipulators and disinformation launderers. On one hand, they had to keep up the momentum for shamelessly vilifying Ukraine and the West after the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. On the other hand, they had to pivot their attention to reconciling all the logical contradictions in pro-Kremlin narratives about peace. Ultimately, the Kremlin did what the Kremlin does best – doubling down on its own twisted Orwellian reality where war means peace and occupation is liberation.

From Kyiv’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations and Armenia’s geopolitical partnerships to North Korea: several ‘fronts’ are active in the pro-Kremlin disinfo ecosystem. In the not-so-distant past, the slogan ‘From Vancouver to Vladivostok’ epitomised(opens in a new tab) a system of international relations built on cooperation or at least a stable framework. In the large ‘OSCE Helsinki system’, the capitals of member states spanned from the North American west coast across Europe to Russia’s Far East. The approach in Russia has changed as the recent week demonstrated with activity across virtually the same geography. It has been a busy week for pro-Kremlin trolls and manipulators as they tried to stem a tide of developments that Moscow’s own actions stimulated.

For over a year, the civilian EU Mission in Armenia has been the target of disinformation coming from various sources and actors. In this article, we examine Moscow’s playbook to discredit the mission, its staff and its objectives to sour EU-Armenia relations. On 23 January 2023, the European Council announced the creation of the European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA). Its staff consist of unarmed civilian experts, including monitors, who conduct routine patrols in Armenian borders areas adjacent to Azerbaijan as a means of contributing to stability. The Mission’s task is clear: to observe and report on the security situation on the ground. Its founding built upon a previously established EU Monitoring Capacity, and the EU approved both entities in response to Armenian authorities’ requests. From the moment of its launch, EUMA was a target for disinformation coming from various sources and actors, mostly following the Kremlin’s standard narrative that ‘the West’ can and must be hostile and ultimately is aiming to encircle Russia.

The 2nd of April marks the International Fact-Check Day. Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine and war-mongering is wrapped in lies which need to be debunked to limit their pollution of the mind. Here on EUvsDisinfo we contribute by sharing our articles, research and examples of debunking as we have done since 2015.
Our database with more than 16,800 cases brings updated examples of pro-Kremlin disinfo and manipulation together with checks and responses to the claim. We also feature the sections Learn and Research with material relevant to fact-checking in an environment where disinformation and manipulation are integrated tools of warfare in all domains, not only the kinetic fighting on the ground.

Last week, the pro-Kremlin disinformation machine had already set its sights on one of its favourite targets, the EU and Ukraine, gearing up to ridicule and deride the EU Summit, and then the unthinkable happened. The largest terror attack on Russian soil in the past two decades took the lives of at least 137 unsuspecting people, attending a concert in the Crocus City Hall on the outskirts of Moscow on 22 March.
This tragic and deplorable act of terrorism sent the pro-Kremlin disinformation pundits into a frenzy of disinformation, conspiracies & manipulative rhetoric. The Kremlin’s disinformation is shifting from ridicu-ling the EU to spreading baseless accusations and conspiracy theories about the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow, using this tragic incident to further vilify Ukraine and divert attention from potentially mounting domestic turmoil.

We examine the major disinfo narratives claiming that Russia wants peace. In fact, war has become an almost desired state of affairs for Putin. Since the very beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the Kremlin has tried to pretend that someone else was doing the invading. For example, a year after that invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the West some-how started the war. Pro-Russian outlets also routinely assert that Ukraine is nothing more than a Western weapon against Russia and that the country itself does not exist. And if Ukraine does not exist, how could Russia have invaded it? Russian state and pro-Kremlin outlets have also tried to conjure an alternative reality in which Russia is interested in peace, but Ukraine and the West are determined to wage war.

The re-election of Putin is largely the result of the Kremlin’s scaremongering tactics, control of infor-mation spaces, and elimination of real alternatives in Russia. A lot has already been reported about the so-called presidential elections in Russia during 15-17 March. There were no surprises, and reactions from the EU and others offered clear condemnations of the predetermined result. The re-coronation of Putin is scheduled for 7 May, conveniently close to the yearly 9 May celebrations… Election numbers reveal an ice-cold reality cherished by disinformers and manipulators: you can sway a society. George Orwell’s 1984 was fictional, but here is the reality. If you lie, lie big and lie constantly. Destroy the notion of true and false. Even literate societies with all their art, literature, theatre, faith, and religion can be subdued. A thin veneer separates civilised behaviour from barbarism.

Censorship, conveyor-belt sentencing, gangster attacks, economic suffocation and waterfalls of disinfo flooding public discourse: revanchist, militant nationalism is drowning the Russian information space. The last remaining pretence of media freedom in Russia is quickly falling away. The suspicious death of Alexey Navalny has left Russian leader Vladimir Putin with few if any viable domestic opponents, and he seems to relish his strongman image. His state-of-the-nation address on 29 February set a new tone in the Kremlin’s information operations: that of a dictator seemingly confident that no one would dare oppose him. For Russians who believe that their country should be free, open, and prosperous, the current moment is bleak. As one mourner for Navalny said, ‘I don’t have any vision of the future.’… Putin’s institutionalised wrath against all his real or perceived enemies, continues to get crueller, pettier, deadlier, faster.