Information Warfare

Alicia Wanless_Aspen Digital - John Cassidy The Headshot Guy® Photo
Information Warfare

“Disinformation is one problem among many in the information environment”

1 July 2024
Expert Alicia Wanless explains the terms “information environment” and “information ecology” and how these concepts can inform a whole of society approach to strategically foster democracy. « The information environment is the space where people process information to make sense of the world. To do this, humans develop tools from alphabets to artificial intelligence to transform information into artefacts that can be shared from the spoken word to videos, and whatever comes along in the future. The information environment consists of people, the means for processing information, the outputs created with those means, as well as the interrelation-ships between these three things, which are all shaped by conditions.»

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Information Warfare

EEAS Stratcom’s responses to FIMI in 2023

28 June 2024
Report on the EEAS Stratcom activities to respond to foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) in 2023. The manipulation of the information environment and interference by foreign actors has become more prevalent than ever. New technologies are being abused to manipulate the information environment, often directly targeting the EU or its in-dividual Member States. It is used as a broader strategy to malignly interfere in and destabilize the democratic systems across the world, combining different instruments (e.g. cyber-attacks, information manipulation, censorship). The Strategic Compass for Security and Defence has identified foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) as one of the pressing foreign policy and security issues of the EU, closely connected to the challenges of cybersecurity and hybrid threats.

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Information Warfare

The Scapegoat Factory: Kremlin’s Endless Blame Game

27 June 2024
Not a single day passes without the Kremlin’s talking heads finding yet another scapegoat to explain the tragedies of Russia’s own making. As always, the Kremlin’s relentless efforts to manipulate narratives and deflect blame continue. Pro-Kremlin disinformers quickly spread false claims blaming Ukrainian intelligence and NATO for terrorist attacks in Dagestan, conflating them with Sevastopol to reinforce narratives that portray Ukraine and the West as aggressors. The Kremlin intensified its efforts to block access to quality Western journalism to prevent Russian citizens from gaining a clearer understanding of their regime’s failures on all fronts. The pro-Kremlin propagandists have also attempted to undermine the Summit on Peace in Ukraine and take the peace narrative hostage, while trying to mislead audiences both at home and abroad

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Information Warfare

The Kremlin’s Disinformation Narratives About the Summit on Peace in Ukraine

25 June 2024
Kremlin’s disinformation outlets dismissed the Summit as meaningless, focused on Putin’s distracting statement and recycled old narratives about Ukraine and the West rejecting peace. Russia devoted considerable attention to the Summit on Peace in Ukraine organized by Switzerland in Bürgenstock on 15-16 June, both during the preparation phase of the Summit and immediately after it. The Kremlin’s ultimate goal was to dismiss the Summit as meaningless, by downplaying the number and level of attendees, portraying Ukraine and the West as the aggressors disinterested in peace, and pushing the narrative that Russia is the protector of a truly multipolar world order.

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Information Warfare

Three Kremlin Disinformation Narratives About NATO Enlargement

25 June 2024
As Finland and Sweden joined NATO, Kremlin disinformation campaigns ramped up, deploying classic rhetorical tactics to undermine their decisions. Soon after Finland joined NATO in April 2023, it realised the true costs of membership in the Atlantic Alliance. Life was getting worse for its citizens as the country was ‘sinking’, and its unemployment rate skyrocketing. The cause for all this misery? Finland’s leadership had ‘surrendered’ the country to ‘NATO slavery’, turned it into a ‘colony of the Empire’, and was ‘trying to start a world war’ – and all this without asking ordinary Finns. Similar stories appeared when Sweden joined the Alliance in March 2024. As is usually the case with pro-Kremlin disinformation, not a single bit of these narratives is true. The only truth in these claims is what they tell us about the deranged mindset in the Kremlin.

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Information Warfare

Elections Are Battlefields for the Kremlin

24 June 2024
Pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets targeted the European Parliament elections to smear leaders; sow distrust, flood the information space, drive wedges, project Russia’s own shortcomings onto the EU, and finally to dismiss the results. On June 6-9 hundreds of millions of Europeans headed to the polls to cast their vote in the elections to the European Parliament. For the European people this is a crucial exercise of their unalienable democratic rights. For various hostile foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) actors plotting to erode European values, this was also an occasion to attempt undermining democracy through disinformation, information manipulation and inference.

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Information Warfare

From the Joy of Bombing to the Necessity of Bombing

21 June 2024
The tone of war reporting has changed a bit in leading Russian propaganda outlets. Now, it is simply necessary to destroy cities, villages, power stations, and everything else that supports life in Ukraine. Peace-loving people in calm societies might find it difficult to comprehend and identify the naked brutality of conquest and war when it occurs. It is human to try to console oneself, believing that perhaps it is not so dark and dangerous as it seems. This is the perception Kremlin spin-doctors want to create among international audiences: it is a just military operation pursued according to strict laws of armed conflict.

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Information Warfare

The Kremlin’s Monochrome Take on War and Peace

20 June 2024
When world leaders took the time to consider a truly multilateral solution for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, the Kremlin doubled down on its increasingly bipolar ‘us vs them’ Cold War mentality to disguise Russia’s imperial appetite for war and conquest as concern for peace and security for all. Yet another busy week has gone by for the Kremlin’s disinformation outlets. Some still continued to target the European elections, including through the pro-Kremlin Doppelganger campaign, and focussed on dismissing the election results or drawing apocalyptic scenarios for the EU. However, the Summit on Peace in Ukraine, organised by Switzerland, was a thorn in Russia’s side that could not go unnoticed, so most prominent pro-Kremlin outlets also focussed on this event.

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Information Warfare

Belarus: The Indoctrination of Minors is Rising in Scale and Taking on New Forms

19 June 2024
The indoctrination of Belarusian youth with pro-Soviet and pro-Russian propaganda is quickly rising in scale and taking new worrying forms. The inclusion of propaganda in their curriculum, the influence of the Orthodox Church in schools and orphanages, and the use of ‘military and patriotic’ clubs are hard evidence of an ambition to further control the thoughts of Belarusian citizens. Operation Brainwash is turning Belarusian youth favourable towards Russia and the USSR and hostile to Ukraine. EuvsDISINFO has previously reported on the state-sponsored indoctrination of youth in Belarus with Soviet-style, anti-Western propaganda following the falsified 2020 presidential elections and subsequent large demonstrations against the authorities. This worrying trend has continued. Lately, authorities have launched nationwide anti-Ukrainian propaganda campaigns and pushed Belarusian youth to embrace the ‘Russkiy Mir’ (Russian World) ideology that the Kremlin is now spreading more aggressively.

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2024-0618_Doppelganger-Revised_DR1.jpg 15 juillet
Information Warfare

Doppelgänger Strikes Back: Unveiling FIMI Activities Targeting European Parliament Elections

19 June 2024
The pro-Kremlin Doppelganger campaign continued its copycatting and reality-distorting activities during the European Parliament elections. Today, the European External Action Service (EEAS) released a report entitled, ‘Doppelganger Strikes Back: FIMI Activities in the Context of the EE24’, as a continuation of our previous coverage of the pro-Kremlin foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) ecosystem’s activities. This latest report provides a comprehensive analysis of the pro-Kremlin FIMI campaign that targeted the 2024 European Parliament elections. The findings uncover the advanced tactics employed by the Doppelganger operation, which we covered earlier, shedding light on the persistent threat posed by foreign actors seeking to undermine democratic processes in Europe.

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