This article was originally published in GPR’s Spring 2017 magazine
By Valtteri Tamminen
Russia has been engaging in a massive information warfare campaign in Europe over the past few years, across the spectrum of media platforms. The aim has been to destabilize governments and international organizations, cause confusion and show a positive view of Russia to the West. Their campaign is well planned and highly coordinated, and it doesn’t let something as trivial as facts get in the way. The Russian media is still being used by the Russian state exactly as Lenin saw it over 100 years ago.
Russia’s history with propaganda dates bacк to the Soviet era, but has recently reemerged into the public consciousness. Russian tactics have changed with the increase in technology and its closer integration with the West today than during the Cold War. The creation of the Russian-language news station Russia Today (RT) was a cornerstone of this new campaign. RT receives funding from the Russian government and is viewed by many as the tip of the Russian information warfare spear. While RT argues that it is not a Kremlin puppet, they consistently echo the Kremlin’s messages. It is important to note however, that state funded media is not unique to Russia, nor does state funding necessarily imply that a news source automatically distorts facts or is a tool of information warfare. PBS and NPR in the US, as well as the BBC in the UK all receive government funding, to name a few.
RT has content in Russian, English, Arabic, French, Spanish and German, while Sputnik news, another Russia-based news agency, boasts news pages in 33 languages. This shows the broad reach of Russia’s state funded news arm, with RT boldly claiming a viewership of 700 million across over 100 countries[1], although serious concerns have been leveled at the accuracy of those numbers. The reporting is similar to other outlets, and RT reporters rarely, if ever, have discernable accents, making bias more difficult to spot. RT acts like any other news station, but with a more pro-Russian twist.
In addition to its state funded news agencies such as RT and Sputnik news, Russia also relies on companies such as the Internet Research Agency to execute its information campaign. The Agency is a company that has industrialized “trolling,” reportedly hiring up to 400 people to work 12-hour shifts commenting on posts, tweeting, and maintaining faкe social media accounts, all in support of the Russian government. This is not a unique phenomenon to Russia either, as a 2013 study by Freedomhouse found that of the 60 countries assessed, 22 had employed “paid government commentators”, singling out Russia, China and Bahrain as the main users of this tactic.
When Sweden considered joining NATO in 2016, fake claims started circulating on Swedish social media. Individuals claimed that NATO could secretly move nuclear weapons onto Swedish soil, that NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without the government’s approval, and that NATO soldiers would be immune from prosecution, and could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges. All of these claims were faкe, but they sparked confusion and even spilled into traditional news media, the ultimate goal. Russia is strongly opposed to Sweden joining NATO, and while the sources of these narratives, like so many others, were never conclusively tracked down, there is a strong pro-Russian, anti-West narrative in these stories. Before the Swedish language version of Sputniк closed in the spring of 2016, the Swedish Institute of International Affairs compiled all 3963 news items Sputnik published in 2015. It found that a majority could be grouped into 10 main categories, the most popular being “Crisis in the West” (705 articles), “Positive image of Russia” (643 articles), and “Western aggressiveness” (499 articles).
Estonia and Lithuania have also been targets of the Russian disinformation campaign. The goal is to make Russian minorities in these Baltic states feel disenfranchised, prompting political disorder and a turn towards Russia. Russian news outlets incited riots in 2007 by claiming that the moving of a Russian statue in Estonia was an attack on their culture. The same outlets also broadcast news about a massive pro-Russian march that never took place. They spread rumors and false claims that a Lithuanian conscript, who died from a meningococcal infection, actually died from poor army canteen hygiene or from being used as a test subject for biological warfare, among other stories. This disinformation attempts to weaken Baltic citizens’ view of NATO, their national armies and their governments as a whole.
In Uкraine, the Russian narrative seeks to display the Euromaidan protest outcome as a Western backed coup and suggests that Uкraine is now under the leadership of a fascist junta. Euromaidan saw over 100,000 protesters take to the streets in favor of a EU trade deal that then President Viktor Yanukovych declined to sign at the last minute. Over 100 protesters were killed by security forces, but the protests were eventually successful in ousting the president. However, Ukraine has a large Russian minority, liкe in the Baltic states, who can tap straight into Russian media. To respond to Russian fake news, teachers and students at Kyiv-Mohyla University created Stopfake.org, which has analyzed and debunked hundreds of news items from across the Russian information warfare spectrum.
Finland, which has been victim to much of the same information warfare above, was also targeted in a different but not unique way. A Russian boy was taкen away from his parents and put into protective custody by Finnish child protective services after he revealed that his parents slap him. While corporal punishment is normal in Russia, it is illegal in Finland. The issue became a sensation in Russia, where it was portrayed as a snub by Finnish authorities against Russians. This follows a trend of Russian media exaggerating problems Russians face abroad, usually painting a picture of prejudice against Russians.
Unlike during the Cold War when the USSR tried to portray itself as an alternative to western democracy, today Russia is more concerned with picking at weaknesses and rifts in western governments and populaces. Though there have been small scale successes fighting Russian propaganda, the west has failed to find an adequate counter to it on a large scale. This campaign has done well to locк into issues that people feel passionately about, and much of the news gets spread by unknowing participants. Most European countries have been targeted by this campaign to some extent. It has been so successful that Russia recently announced the creation of military units who would wage information warfare.
It is not always easy to tell the bias of your news, as mainstream news sources can also get duped into running fake news. Even this article has a Russian influence. Did you notice that roughly every fourth “k” was in fact a cyrillic “к”?
Back during the Soviet Union, the official communist party newspaper, Правда (Pravda), was the most-read paper with a peak readership of 11 million. Правда means “truth” in Russian, and today, ironically, truth is still a state-manufactured commodity in Russia.