Russian information war against Ukraine

The Russian information war against Ukraine refers to Russia weaponising information and communication in order to further its own ends in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The concept of informatsionnaya voyna () encompasses various strategies, including cyberwarfare, often described as technical defenses against technical attacks in warfare; however, cyberwarfare is just one aspect of Russia's information war, which may include shaping national narratives, manipulating the news cycle, and flooding the information space with Russian bots and trolls. The goal is to achieve strategic victory and exert reflexive control.

These efforts were used as part of its disinformation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Due to effective censorship, most media outlets in Russia are government-controlled, allowing Kremlin messaging to successfully sway the citizens of the Russian Federation to support its approach in Ukraine. The Kremlin has denied waging war in Ukraine, claiming it only wants to protect Russian speakers against Ukrainian Nazis. This narrative has been reinforced by Russian television since 2014, giving it an advantage through repetition and familiarity.Don’t Sleep on Russian Information-War Capabilities: Indeed, the Ukraine invasion should galvanize U.S. investment in its own messaging infrastructure, Alyssa Demus and Christopher Paul. Defense One, 5 April 2022 According to a poll, 58 percent of Russians approved of this perspective between 28 February and 3 March 2022.

Background

Doctrine Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, described a novel type of warfare that incorporates elements of propaganda, demoralization, distraction, and political posturing both in times of peace and war, and above all the importance of social media, beyond both cyberwarfare and information war as NATO understands them.The Gerasimov Doctrine: It’s Russia’s new chaos theory of political warfare. And it’s probably being used on you., Molly K. McKew. Politico, September/October 2017 He suggested a 4:1 ratio of nonmilitary to military measures. Nonmilitary tactics also come under the military in Russia, and although United States Marine Corps research suggests that the ratio is still largely aspirational, it indicates recognition of "the utility of nonmilitary measures in interstate confrontation, especially during what would be considered peacetime."[Russia's Information Warfare: Exploring the Cognitive Dimension], Blagovest Tashev, PhD; Lieutenant Colonel Michael Purcell (Ret); and Major Brian McLaughlin (Ret). Marine Corps University, MCU Journal vol. 10, no. 2, Fall 2019 https://doi.org/10.21140/mcuj.2019100208 p.133 The Russian Federation misinforms and misleads its citizens and the audience of its television channels in other countries – Channel One Russia and Russia-24, for example.Доктор Комаровський про російські канали: такої брехні не було ніколи в усьому Радянському Союзі (Dr. Komarovsky on Russian channels: there has never been such a lie in the entire Soviet Union) 3 March 2014

Reasons for the conflict

Revanchism Like Ukraine, Belarus and Russia consider the Kievan Rus as their cultural ancestor. Many Russians see Kyiv as the birthplace of their nation.A timeline of the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, Matthew Mpoke Bigg. 18 February 2022, New York Times Kievan Rus' reached its greatest extent under Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054); his sons issued its first written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda, shortly after his death.Bushkovitch, Paul. A Concise History of Russia. Cambridge University Press. 2011. In the 2000s, Russia waged a large-scale propaganda campaign in Ukraine, based on the doctrine of "Russian world", and Vladimir Putin said "we are one nation. Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities."Fog of Falsehood: Russian Strategy of Deception and the Conflict in Ukraine, Katri Pynnöniemi and András Rácz (eds.), Finnish Institute of International Affairs, (in English) p.93 Its ideological basis was post-Soviet revanchism in the Russian Federation for the cultural, economic, and territorial restoration of pre-1991 borders and the restoration of the former Soviet "zone of influence" in Europe and Asia.Цензура в Росії: закрили ЗМІ, що пишуть правду про Україну (CENSORSHIP IN RUSSIA: MEDIA OUTLETS COVERING THE TRUTH ABOUT UKRAINE HAVE BEEN SHUT DOWN), Volynnews, 13 March 2014 (in Ukrainian)МЗС України стурбоване ситуацією зі свободою слова в Росії. (The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is concerned about the situation with freedom of speech in Russia) Кореспондент (Korrespondent), 20 April 2014 (in Ukrainian)Цензура в дії: Мінкульт Росії заборонив виставу про Майдан на книжковому фестивалі. Еспресо TVУ російських соціальних мережах автоматично видаляють пости з критикою Путіна. Український тиждень

This revanchism sees three categories of the world's population as "Russian": ethnic Russians, regardless of where they live; a Russian-speaking population regardless of nationality; and compatriots who have never lived on the territory of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and other state entities, as well as their descendants.Russian Information Warfare: Lessons from Ukraine, Margarita Levin Jaitner, Swedish Defense University. Chapter 10 in Kenneth Geers (Ed.), Cyber War in Perspective: Russian Aggression against Ukraine, NATO CCD COE Publications, Tallinn 2015, p.93 At the 2008 Bucharest summit on 2–4 April, Putin told United States President George W. Bush: "You understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state! What is Ukraine?"Putin Has the U.S. Right Where He Wants It, Fiona Hill. New York Times, 24 February 2022

Many Russians idealize Soviet Russia under the rule of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as a time of prosperity, and the ruling United Russia party as heir to the country's "glorious past".The Soviet Union's Demise As Seen by Today's Russians, Larisa Deriglazova. Russia File, Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, 9 December 2021 Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian politicians have talked about restoring Russia's influence in post-Soviet countries. According to Vladimir Bukovsky, a dissident who spent a decade in Soviet prisons before his exile to the West in 1976, Putin was "totally sincere when he called the disintegration of the Soviet Union a 'geopolitical catastrophe'." During an interview with Stanford Times in January 2022, Steven Pifer (former US Ambassador to Ukraine) said that Putin "regularly refers to Russians and Ukrainians as one people, which is an utterly tone-deaf comment that many Ukrainians hear as a denial of their culture, history and language."Kremlin's unwillingness to recognize Ukraine as a sovereign state has resulted in major strategic failure for Russia Stanford scholar says, Melissa de Witte, Stanford News, January 6, 2022

Putin sees the growth of NATO in Eastern Europe as an "existential threat",What does Putin want in Ukraine?: The conflict explained, Eliza Mackintosh and Rob Picheta. CNN, 28 February 2022, accessed 3 March 2022 and has written that Russia and Ukraine are really one country.How the Soviet Union's collapse explains the current Russia-Ukraine tension, Greg Myre. NPR, 24 December 2021 This revanchism focuses on Ukraine, whose withdrawal from the USSR led to its collapse.Ukraine: Conflict at the Crossroads of Europe and Russia, Jonathan Masters. Council on Foreign Relations, 2 December 2021 "Russia is restoring its unity—the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, has been overcome", RIA Novosti, Russia's primary online state news agency, exulted on 26 February 2022.The Kremlin's propaganda machine is running at full throttle: But the truth is breaking through. The Economist, 28 February 2022 The Putin regime contrasts "ours" and "others" in Ukraine, and suggests that violence against "others" is desirable and even required.Russlands imitierter «Kampf gegen Faschismus».— DiePresse.com (Russia's mock "fight against fascism") (in German) The Russian government frames its hybrid war as a conflict between Russia and NATO, but while geopolitics and its desire for a post-Soviet sphere play into its focus on Ukraine, so do its domestic politics. An independent Ukrainian democracy might inspire Russians to demand their own democracy and "perhaps even challenge Mr. Putin's authoritarianism."

History of the war In June 2014, the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) obtained materials used to train Russian information war specialists. According to NSDC Secretary Andriy Parubiy, the documents instructed Russian soldiers to "actively influence the consciousness and system of knowledge and ideas of the target country".Агрессия России против Украины, Диверсанты на Востоке УкраиныПарубий рассказал, какой инструктаж получают российские силовики для ведения информационной войны в Украине: Россия инструктирует свои силовые подразделения о том, как вести информационную войну в Украине и влиять на сознание украинцев. (Russia's aggression against Ukraine, Saboteurs in Eastern Ukraine: Parubiy told what kind of instruction the Russian security forces receive to conduct an information war in Ukraine), CENSOR.NET 16 June 2014 (in Russian)

Propaganda targeting the Russian people, justifying a future war against Ukraine, appeared even before Russia's first incursion into Ukraine in 2014.American salo' tastes like Russian propaganda lard, Alina Pastukhova. Kyiv Post, 1 April 2009 In 2009, Maxim Kalashnikov's "Independent Ukraine: Failure of a Project" portrayed Ukraine as a Yugoslavia on the verge of an ethnic breakup. Novels such as Fyodor Berezin's War 2010: Ukrainian Front, Georgiy Savitsky's Battlefield Ukraine: The broken trident and Alexander Sever's Russian-Ukrainian Wars posited a war against Ukraine.Sci-fi writers imagined the Ukraine conflict that they're now fighting in: Life imitates art, Carl Franzen. The Verge, 14 July 2014, via Slate[httpAs early as 25 July, t//www.segodnya.ua/ukraine/v-roccii-nachali-shtampovat-knihi-o-vojne-c-ukrainoj.html В России начали штамповать книги о войне с Украиной] (Russia began to print books about the war with Ukraine) 2 March 2009 Activists said Russia had also waged an information war against Ukraine through cinema.Активісти започаткували ініціативу «Бойкот російського кіно». (Activists launch Boycott of Russian Cinema initiative) (in Ukrainian) Mediasapiens. 22 September 2014

Kremlin-run media in 2014 created the impression in Crimea that "fascists, anti-Semites and extremists" were in power in Kyiv and chaos ruled the rest of Ukraine, but this had "little or nothing to do with reality". Since Ukraine's independence, Russia has waged a constant information war against it, especially under the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. In February 2014, for example, Russians flatly denied that their military maneuvers in any way threatened Ukraine: "The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies the participation of the Black Sea Fleet in destabilizing the situation in Crimea."МИД РФ переплюнул Геббельса: «российские войска в Крыму ничего не нарушают» (Russian Foreign Ministry surpassed Goebbels: "Russian troops in Crimea do not violate anything"). Censor.net, 2014-03-03, accessed 2022-03-02 Of the men who tried to seize the Crimean parliament, Putin said: "These were local self-defense forces."У "Самооборони" Криму, про яку говорить Путін, російська зброя (In the "Self-Defense" of Crimea, which Putin talks about, Russian weapons), 4 March 2014, Pravda.ua, accessed 3 March 2022

Information operations

Censorship