Communication from American state Department
For many years, Russia has crafted a series of false narratives that its ecosystem of disinformation and propaganda continuously injects into the global information environment. These stories act as a template, which enables the Kremlin to regulate these narratives, with a consistency that is a complete disregard for the truth, as it shapes the information environment to support its political goals.
The Russian military and intelligence entities are engaging in this activity across the entire ecosystem of Russian disinformation and propaganda, to include malicious social media operations, the use of overt and covert online media, the injection of disinformation into television and radio programs, the organization of conferences designed to influence attendees to falsely believe that Ukraine, not Russia, is to blame for the increased tensions in the region, and the use of cyber operations to disrupt the media and conduct disinformation operations.
The US State Department, in a report, has listed five main themes of recurring Russian disinformation that the Kremlin is currently orchestrating in an effort to fill the information environment with false narratives about its actions in Ukraine.
Topic #1: “Russia is an innocent victim”
Russian government officials falsely portray Russia as a perpetual victim and its aggressive actions as a forced response to the alleged actions of the United States and our democratic allies and partners. To further these claims, Russia resorts to one of its favorite labels in an attempt to counter what it has called “Russophobia.” After the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government and state-controlled disinformation began accusing anyone who questioned Russia’s actions of being Russophobic or xenophobic.
For example, Russia claims that the negative reaction of the international community to the invasion of an independent country was simply because people feared and hated Russia. According to the chart below, Russophobia was not a concern for the Russian Foreign Ministry or state-sponsored disinformation until the Russian military invaded Ukraine. Claims of “Russophobia” persist across a variety of topics and are used whenever the Russian government wants to play the victim, when in fact it is the aggressor.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211227152745/https://medium.com/dfrlab/putinatwar-how-russia-weaponized-russophobia-40a3723d26d4
Topic #2: Historical Revisionism
When history does not align with the Kremlin’s political objectives, Russian government officials and their representative voices deny historical events or distort historical narratives in an attempt to cast Russia in a more favorable light and serve its domestic and geopolitical agenda. For example, the 1939 non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which helped precipitate World War II, is politically inconvenient for Putin’s regime. In 2020, in an attempt to minimize and rationalize Stalin’s decision to ally with Hitler, Putin published a distorted version of the start of World War II, downplaying the Soviet role and shifting blame for the war to other countries. Russia often takes this strategy further by labeling those who disagree with its distorted version of history as Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.
The Kremlin also applies this formula to the history of Ukrainian statehood, NATO's behavior during the collapse of the Soviet Union, its GULAG prison system, the famine in Ukraine known as the Holodomor, and many other events where the Kremlin's historical actions do not serve its current political agenda.
Topic #3: “The end of Western civilization is near”
Russia pushes the false claim that Western civilization is collapsing and has moved away from “traditional values” because they work to ensure the safety and equality of LGBTQI+ people and promote concepts such as female equality and multiculturalism. The destruction of Western civilization is one of Russia’s oldest methods of disinformation, with claims of a “decaying West” documented as far back as the 19th century.
This “values”-based disinformation narrative evokes ill-defined concepts, including “tradition,” “family values,” and “spirituality.” Russia argues that it is a bastion of so-called “traditional values” and gender roles and serves as a moral counterweight to the “decadence” of the United States and Western countries. For example, President Putin has claimed that the West has virtually abolished the concepts of “mother” and “father” and replaced them with “parent 1 and 2,” while Foreign Minister Lavrov wrote that Western students “learn in school that Jesus Christ was bisexual.”
Topic #4: “Popular movements are US-sponsored “color revolutions””
The Kremlin finds it difficult to accept that all individuals should have the human right to freedom of expression and that governments should be accountable to their people. Russia has accused the United States of fomenting uprisings or plotting “color revolutions” in Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Ukraine, and throughout the Middle East and Africa. If a popular movement is pro-democracy and reform and not considered to be in Russia’s geopolitical interests, the Kremlin will often attack its legitimacy and claim that the United States is secretly behind it. These baseless accusations often target domestic and international civil society organizations, as well as independent media outlets that expose human rights abuses and corruption. The Kremlin seeks to deny that people in neighboring countries can have freedom, dignity, and independent aspirations to defend themselves, just as it denies these qualities to the people of Russia.
Topic #5: Reality is whatever the Kremlin wants it to be
The Kremlin often attempts to create multiple false realities and inject confusion into the information environment when the truth is not in its interest. Russian officials do this by presenting arguments designed to try to deflect blame from the Russian government, even if some of the stories contradict each other. Over time, however, presenting multiple conflicting stories can itself become a technique designed to generate confusion and discourage response. Other elements in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem, such as the abuse of state-sponsored disinformation and weaponized social media, help fuel multiple false narratives.
It was clear to the world, for example, that Russia attempted to assassinate former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, England, on March 4, 2018. In the four weeks following that incident, the state-funded and state-run Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik spread 138 separate and contradictory stories across 735 articles, according to the Institute of Politics at King's College London.
Russia has used the same technique of flooding the information space with a multitude of false claims after other events, such as the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, and the 2008 invasion of Russia and the ongoing occupation of Georgia, to distract from the conversation about their role in the events. Again, the goal is to confuse and distract others and to manipulate the truth to suit the Kremlin’s interests.