12/12/2024
By Ishtwan Kamel
Russia is waging war against Ukraine in the forests of Kharkiv, the steppes of Kherson and the rubbish heaps of Donbass. But the fighting goes beyond eastern and southern Ukraine. The Russians are not only using missiles and precision bombs, tanks and artillery in their war against the Ukrainians. Faced with a disastrous defeat in Syria and failing to achieve military success in Ukraine, the Kremlin is going all-in – the battle for the hearts and minds of Western democracies has begun.
For Putin, the information front is no less important, and huge amounts of money are being set aside to fight it. The draft budget for 2025 earmarks 137,200,000,000 roubles ($1.42 billion) for state propaganda. Compared to 2024, media spending will increase by 15.9 billion roubles, or 13 per cent, and its total amount will exceed the annual budgets of average Russian regions (e.g. 135 billion roubles in the Kaliningrad region, 110 billion roubles in the Perm region).
Moscow is trying to discredit Ukraine’s military and political leadership in the eyes of Russians and the international community, to erode the confidence of leaders in the West, Africa, Latin America and Asia, to split Ukraine’s elite and to demoralise the people of Ukraine.
According to anonymous, informed sources familiar with Russian hybrid activities overseas, Russian information operations to discredit the Ukrainian President, the leadership of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration and other representatives of the Ukrainian military and political leadership have intensified. Against the backdrop of the failure of the so-called ‘Special Military Operation’ to achieve its objectives on the battlefield, the Russian propaganda machine, led by Sergei Kiriyenko, is planning to launch a large-scale anti-Ukrainian information campaign in the near future in order to and spread manipulative messages and outright lies about the alleged ‘illegitimacy of the Ukrainian leadership’, its ‘lack of negotiating skills and will to fight to the last Ukrainian’, ‘tolerance of Nazism’ and ‘support for international terrorism’, ‘total corruption in the government’, ‘inefficient use of Western aid’, etc.
On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration and in the first months after he officially takes office, the campaign is expected to reach its peak. The stepping up of propaganda efforts is connected with an attempt to prevent the establishment of a constructive dialogue between Ukraine and the new US presidential administration, in order to prevent the end of the war on terms disadvantageous to Russia.
It is also possible that the Russian special services may resort to radical measures, including assassinations of Ukrainian oppositionists, in order to provoke and incite Ukrainian society into demonstrations. Creating an image of the Ukrainian leadership as incompetent, corrupt and incapable of effective governance is the main goal of Russian information and psychological operations. That is why in recent months Russian propagandists have been trying to spread such ‘news’ as ‘the refusal to hold elections made the Kyiv authorities illegitimate’, ‘the Ukrainian nation may disappear completely’, ‘Zelenskyy bought a hotel in Courchevel for 88 million euros’, ‘the son of the former Ukrainian foreign minister bought the iron throne from Game of Thrones’…
According to the Washington Post, the main curator of such campaigns is Russian presidential chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko, who is close to Vladimir Putin. He actually created two disinformation groups.
The campaign aimed at destabilising the situation in Ukraine was led by one of Kiriyenko’s closest associates, the head of the Russian presidential department for monitoring and analysis of social processes, Alexander Kharichev. And Tatyana Matveyeva, head of the Russian Presidential Directorate for the Development of Information and Communication Technologies and Communications Infrastructure, led the group working to undermine support for Ukraine in Western countries.
To achieve this, the Kremlin and Russian propagandists use several methods to manipulate what the international media say. Firstly, they take sentences out of context. Second, they manipulate interpretations, distorting the meaning. Third, they shift emphasis when critical analysis or commentary becomes accusations. Fourth, they create fakes based on real Western published material.
In the world created by Russian propagandists, Foreign Policy’s article on Ukraine’s exhaustion from war is presented as the West’s call for an end to the ‘senseless war’. The article in Newsweek about the lack of personnel is presented as a ‘willingness to fight to the last Ukrainian’. The Spectator’s analysis of Ukraine’s corruption challenges is turned into ‘evidence’ of the need to stop supporting Ukraine.
In December 2022, the Washington Post published an analytical article on the challenges facing Zelenskyy, including internal debates on how long the war needs to last. The article focused on the complexity of the president’s decisions in the face of external pressure. However, Russian propaganda used this material to portray Zelenskyy as a ‘puppet of the West’, allegedly acting against Ukraine’s interests. Headlines on Russian websites such as RT and Vzglyad claimed that ‘the West is disappointed with Zelenskyy’ and ‘Zelenskyy is not up to running the country’. At the same time, the context, which indicated the support of the international community, was completely ignored.
This kind of interpretation is aimed at undermining Ukrainian society’s confidence in its leaders. The Russian media have widely circulated allegations of ‘chaos at the top’, which, according to their plan, should demoralise both Ukrainian citizens and military personnel. But above all, it manipulates Western media publications to create stories targeting Ukrainian allies. This is intended to sow doubt about the competence of the Ukrainian leadership and to demonstrate that Western support continues to decline.
The Kremlin has paid heavily for pro-Russian commentary on well-known Western media outlets. The Washington Post reports that Russians paid up to $39,000 to place pro-Russian commentary in leading Western media.
Russian propaganda skilfully creates the illusion of international legitimacy for its messages through the use of distorted quotes, false narratives and pseudo-analysis. But this approach also reveals its weakness – its reliance on manipulation and fabrication rather than real support or argument.
The main tools for countering this flow of disinformation remain exposing such campaigns and consolidating the efforts of free media. This is not only about protecting Ukraine, but also about preserving global democratic values, which are also being targeted by Russia’s information operations. While Russia’s armed aggression is directed against Ukraine, Russia’s hybrid war, using information and psychological operations, foreign interference and information manipulation, is directed against the entire civilised world, creating political and social tensions and threatening Western democracies.