Information Warfare

The Kremlin is ramping up its outreach to deliver tailor-made disinformation about Ukraine’s peace efforts to global audiences and discredit any legitimate attempts to reach peace. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s propagandists are playing morality police to cry foul about the Paris Olympics opening ceremony. Yet another week of the Kremlin trying to have its cake and eat it too has gone by. For Russia, there is no contradiction between nuclear sabre-rattling, calling for the total eradication of Ukraine, and deploying its diplomatic network to feign concern before global audiences about the peaceful settle-ment of war. It can comfortably call for bombing European capitals in the morning and complain about the ‘aggressive West’ by the afternoon. This type of almost schizophrenic dichotomy is the key characte-ristic of the Kremlin’s disinformation apparatus.

Seen from Moscow, most elections are scams and the idea of free and fair competition is just Western propaganda. Some weeks have passed since the elections to the European Parliament and there are several months to go until the US presidential elections on 5 November. There are many other elections during the next half year, including presi-dential elections and an EU referendum in Moldova on 20 October. There is a sense of disillusion in the pro-Kremlin information ecosystem about the outcome of the European Parliament elections, the new European Commission that is taking shape, and about the new dynamics that Kamala Harris has added to the US presidential elections. EUvsDiSiNFO looks here at how the elections are presented in the Kremlin information ecosystem… The only reality is that Moscow pins all its hopes on a change of political direction in the US and on reduced US support for Ukraine.

Interview with Nino Dolidze, a civil activist and Executive Director of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), a key election watchdog in Georgia. She talked to EUvsDisinfo about the ramifications of the ‘foreign agents’ law for civil society and the increasing challenge of disinforma-tion and information manipulation targeting Georgia. The government reintroduced the so-called ‘foreign agents’ law. for several reasons. This legislation affects civil society and free media in the country directly. It also affects Georgia’s foreign policy trajectory towards EU integration. On top of that, it illustrates our democratic backsliding. Unfortunately, there is a lot of information manipulation and disin-formation in Georgia, especially on pro-government media and social networks. There are huge amounts of money spent on this propaganda and information manipulation.

The Kremlin pins its hopes on Trump/Vance while smearing Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, repression broadens in the Russian information sphere with more hefty prison sentences and ‘undesired’ orga-nisations. The news of US President Biden withdrawing and Kamala Harris entering as a candidate in the US presidential elections took the world by storm. It also dominated the Russian information landscape. The Kremlin and its commentators see US develop-ments through the prism of Ukraine: how this will affect US and Western support to Kyiv. The main line from Moscow is that Trump and JD Vance display wisdom, as they embrace Russian ideas adopting Moscow-lingo like ‘accepting realities on the ground’ and suggesting a quick deal involving Kyiv ceding substantial territory to Russia and agreeing to perpetual neutrality.

Moldova will hold presidential elections and a referendum on EU accession on the same day, 20 October 2024. Moscow will not ignore such a combination of targets. Moldova has been in the Kremlin’s crosshairs for a long time. Economic pressure, energy blackmail, staged protests, and generally polluting the information environment are some of the elements in the Kremlin’s playbook to destabilise Moldova and sabotage the country’s accelerating EU path. Iincidents are expected to beco-me ever more frequent as the country enters a crucial campaign period. Moldova will hold presiden-tial elections and an EU accession referendum on 20 October 2024. Next year, parliamentary elections will take place. The current, pro-European head of state, Maia Sandu, will seek re-election. For Russia, the country is a genuine information battlefield.

The recent NATO summit is portrayed as a failure and Washington the master of evil – if you follow pro-Kremlin sources. During this Summit, this ‘negative’ dynamic was much at work. Russian state and pro-Kremlin outlets took the most common-sense impressions and neatly reversed them all to create a nightmarish fantasy with the following disinformation narratives. In this reality-reversal, Western countries are apparently exploiting Ukraine. How? By treating Ukraine as a battleground that they use to attack Russia. A recent example alleged as much. Note the neat inversion of cause and effect, or white colours with dark colours. By helping Ukrainians defend themselves, NATO is ensuring that more Ukrainians die, right? Except NATO isn’t killing Ukrainians. Russia is. Replace ‘NATO’ with ‘Russia’, and you have a more accurate picture of the war in Ukraine.

Lavrov and pro-Kremlin propagandists continue their macabre dance on the graves of innocents, revealing once again the true, cruel nature of Putin’s regime. The more monstrous the crime, the less appetite the Kremlin and its henchmen show for remorse. Instead, they continue their macabre dance on the graves of those whom the Russian war machine has killed in cold blood. In his latest iteration of Bucha massacre denials, despite all the evidence, such as this recent heartbreaking Babel investigation, Lavrov conti-nued uttering the lies, deceit, and denials that we have come far too familiar with – as evidenced by 167 cases in our database on Bucha alone. While the Kremlin continues its heartless disinformation campaign about its past atrocities, it simultaneously exploits current events to further its agenda, as was well-exemplified by their coverage of the attempted assassination of former US President Trump.

July 17 marks the 10-year commemoration of the dramatic event in which Russia fired a BUK 9M83 surface-to-air missile from the temporarily occupied territories in Ukraine to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, killing all 298 civilians on board. The Netherlands and Australia have established(opens in a new tab) that Russia is responsible for the deployment of the Buk launcher that brought down flight MH17 and that this act constituted a violation of international law. Since that day, pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets have spread dozens of different disinformation narratives to distract from the fact that Russian authorities are responsible for these murders. The EU Member States have stated unequivocally(opens in a new tab) – no Russian disinformation operation can distract from these basic facts, established by a court of law.

The Kremlin knows even its most brutal tactics will not work against Ukraine if EU and NATO support continues. It continues trying to undermine the unity of these organisations and drive a wedge between them and Ukraine. The Kremlin also knows that even its most vicious intimidation tactics, like launching a cruise missile against a children’s hospital, will not break Ukrainian resistance as long as EU and NATO support continues. For that reason, a core goal of disinformation campaigns is to exploit any real or imaginary crack in the unity of EU and NATO members to weaken these organisations… A cynic might think the bombings on 8 July could have had something to do with the NATO summit on 9-11 July, perhaps to send some kind of sick message.

The pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem kicked into a higher gear to smear the newly appointed EU leadership, particularly honing in on HRVP-to-be Kaja Kallas. Meanwhile, others spun the French snap elections into doomsday stories about the EU and, of course, blamed Ukraine for it all. Last week, quite a few pivotal moments took place in the European political landscape. The European Council nominated a new EU political leadership for the next five years while France held a heated first round of snap parliamentary elections. None of these events went unnoticed by the pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem. It readily kicked into a higher gear to smear the new EU political leadership, peddle disinformation, and refurbish old conspiracy theories.