Though it is only comparatively recently that Russian disinformation has re- emerged in the contemporary public consciousness, the phenomenon itself is far from new.[1] Rather, it is a practice with a long history, dating back to tsarist times, as well as a distinct strategic purpose. Over the decades of the Cold War, it served as one of the most enduring and effective tools of Soviet asymmetric warfare against the West. And in the post-Cold War era, it has become a core element of foreign policy for the government of Vladimir Putin, helping to buttress and empower the Kremlin's neo-imperial impulses.
Today, moreover, both the volume and the effectiveness of Russian disinformation is growing. Russian fake news and propaganda are being amplified by a new, more crowded global informational environment in which traditional sources of news and opinion are being increasingly challenged by new (and often unreliable) information outlets and social media platforms. This altered media terrain has provided the Kremlin's propagandists with fresh opportunities to disseminate divisive tropes, undermine the authority of the Western-led liberal order, and posit an alternative vision of the world more consonant with Moscow's increasingly assertive, revisionist worldview.
A Persistent Strategy
At its core, Russian information manipulation is rooted in the country's unique conception of war and peace—one that is fundamentally different from that which is collectively held by the nations of the West.[2] In Europe and the United States, officials and policymakers overwhelmingly view war and peace as fundamentally different and opposing concepts. Either one prevails, or the other does. In Russia, by contrast, war and peace have long been viewed as part of the same continuum, with emphasis placed on techniques, tactics, and strategies that could confer advantage on the Kremlin in a competitive process that could, conceivably, culminate in warfare.
As a result, beginning in the 1950s, the Soviet Union placed significant emphasis on the development of techniques for influencing foreign behavior short of war. This field, broadly known as "active measures" (aktivniye meropriyatiya in Russian), quickly became the Kremlin's main strategy to shape events and policy in other countries.[3] In fact, defectors have divulged, "active measures"— rather than traditional intelligence gathering activities—occupied the lion's share of attention and resources on the part of the KGB, the Soviet Union's main foreign intelligence agency, during the decades of the Cold War.[4]
Of the different tactics employed as part of Soviet "active measures," disinformation (dezinformatsiya in Russian) was among the most effective, designed to weaken adversaries through information manipulation. Soviet disinformation, the scholars Richard Schultz and Roy Godson have noted, was used "to strengthen allies and weaken opponents and to create a favorable environment for the achievement of Soviet foreign policy objectives." As a result, they were "systematically and routinely conducted on a worldwide scale."[5]
With the Soviet collapse, Russia's use of disinformation temporarily diminished as the country underwent massive internal changes. For a time, at least, it appeared that the once all-powerful Soviet KGB would be dismantled and undergo a reduction of its strength and influence. Comparatively quickly, however, real efforts to reform the Soviet Union's premier intelligence agency faltered, and by the mid-1990s a process of reconsolidation was underway— one in which the KGB, now rebranded the FSB, regained both power and authority. Russian disinformation charted a similar trajectory. The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, followed by the chaos of Russia's short-lived experiment with democratization during the 1990s, offered at least a brief reprieve from the Kremlin's use of deception and subversion against its international adversaries. But, parallel with the resurgence of the Soviet-era intelligence state, disinformation experienced a revival, as Russia's new rulers once again made it a core part of their foreign policy and intelligence operations.
Given Russian President Vladimir Putin's early career as a KGB agent, it was perhaps inevitable that his regime would come to rely heavily on one of the agency's most potent Soviet-era tactics. Less than a year after Putin assumed the Russian presidency in late 1999, the Kremlin issued a foreign policy and information doctrine laying out that the country faces an array of threats in the information domain, requiring "stepping up counter-propaganda activities."[6] A decade later, Russia's 2010 defense doctrine formally authorized the use of information warfare to proactively shape the global order, and to condition the international environment to the subsequent use of military force.[7] And the 2021 National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation identifies "information security" as a core area of concern, and emphasizes the importance of the "development of forces and means of information confrontation."[8]
In the service of this priority, the Russian state has erected an elaborate informational architecture, encompassing state-run television and multimedia channels, news agencies, web- and social media-based messaging outlets, stakes in foreign newspapers and television channels, as well as proxy actors (like the infamous Internet Research Agency).[9] Through this ecosystem, Russia has managed to create what scholars have termed a "firehose of falsehood" that it uses to obscure objective truth, outshout and outmaneuver legitimate news sources, and advance its own version of world events through "high-volume, multichannel, and continuous messaging."[10]
This enterprise enjoys enormous resources. As of early 2023, and despite the heavy economic toll of the Ukraine war and the impact of widening Western sanctions, European officials still estimated the Kremlin to be spending some USD 2.4 billion annually on disinformation and propaganda activities.[11]
Modern Appeal
What makes Russian disinformation so effective, both at home and abroad? The question is apt, given the course of Russia's current war of aggression against Ukraine, and the heavy losses (both economic and human) that the country has incurred as a result. The answer can be traced back to several factors.
Internally, demographics play a significant—if underappreciated—role. Russia, after all, has been on a trajectory of protracted population decline for more than half a century, and that downward trend was significantly exacerbated by the Soviet collapse.[12] While it has fared a bit better in more recent years, the pace of the Russian population—estimated at approximately 1.4 as of mid-2024[13]—remains well below the total fertility rate of 2.1 required for a sustainable replenishment of the state. It is also stubborn, having remained largely static despite numerous policies adopted by the Kremlin with the aim of ameliorating the national population decline.
While the drivers of Russia's demographic downturn are manifold, emigration has played a decisive role. When measured in 2021, approximately five million people were estimated to have fled Russia in the two decades since Vladimir Putin took power.[14] Moreover, this dynamic has been greatly exacerbated by the current war in Ukraine, which has precipitated the largest exodus of Russians from the country since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.[15]
Notably, this trend is not value-neutral. Rather, it has been heavily weighted toward what demographer Judy Twigg has termed the "creative class"—that is, "scientists, educators, artists and knowledge-based workers" who have left Russia in order to escape deepening authoritarianism and a stifling intellectual climate.[16] They have left behind a Russian population that is generally less mobile, less educated and more susceptible to the extensive state-promoted propaganda that pervades virtually every aspect of contemporary Russian life, from education[17] to entertainment.[18] This helps to explain why, despite the heavy economic and human toll of his war of choice, Vladimir Putin appears to continue to enjoy comparatively high levels of support—although the increasingly repressive nature of the Russian state makes polling there notoriously unreliable. At a minimum, however, the Ukraine war has not yet engendered the type of grassroots discontent that could imperil Putin's hold on power. For that, the Kremlin's pervasive domestic propaganda is significantly responsible.
Externally, meanwhile, Russian propaganda is tailored to diminish the authority and appeal of the West. Unlike the informational efforts of China, which focus overwhelmingly on "telling good stories" about the PRC to global audiences,[19] Russia is relaying a qualitatively different narrative. Unlike Beijing, Moscow is not attempting to sell its own model of governance to the world. Rather, its informational efforts are intended to advance its geopolitical objectives by diminishing global support for its adversaries, and lessening resistance to its own preferences.
In this, Russian disinformation has been greatly aided by recent changes in global media, from the proliferation of social media platforms to the rise of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, that have made information manipulation and the dissemination of Russian narratives much easier. Kremlin- aligned disinformation actors have been deftly exploiting these changes to gain greater resonance for their messaging and to reach new audiences. To this end, recent years have seen the Kremlin make major investments in the expansion of its media outreach beyond its traditional ambit of the Russkiy Mir (Russian world) and Europe, into the developing world.
In Latin America, for instance, Russia is now operating a formidable media enterprise (consisting of multiple broadcast networks, social media messaging, and propaganda) that outstrips U.S. media engagement in the scope and breadth of its outreach toward regional states, experts say.[20] In Africa, meanwhile, the Russian government and its proxies have been carrying out a "massive disinformation campaign" shifting the blame for rising global food and energy prices to the West in an effort that is "intended to both hide Russia's culpability and persuade leaders of at-risk countries to support an end to sanctions designed to stop Russia's unjust and brutal war in Ukraine."21 And in the Middle East, Russia is waging a "disinformation war" to shape regional opinion, amplifying false narratives and conspiracy theories via Arabic-language social media outlets and pushing its own propaganda via state-owned media channels, all of which boast Arab-language programming.[22]
This approach has proven markedly effective. While in the United States and Europe, opposition to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is widespread, Moscow is making major gains in advancing its position—and eroding that of the West—throughout the developing world, thanks to its propaganda and messaging capabilities. Thus, the 2023 edition of the Democracy Perception Index, the world's largest annual study on democracy, found a wide gap between Western attitudes toward Russia and those of countries in the "Global South," including Mexico, Malaysia, Algeria, and Nigeria, where a much more favorable view of Moscow continues to predominate.[23]
An Ominous Convergence
Russian disinformation is not a singular enterprise. While Russia has unquestionably been a pioneer in the weaponization of information, recent years have seen other countries surge forward in their strategic use of information operations. Authoritarian states such as China, Iran, Turkey, and Qatar have charted significant advances in the manipulation of media and informational narratives. So, too, have extremist groups such as the Islamic State, capitalizing upon a media environment in which the barriers for entry have been dramatically lowered.[24]
These actors, moreover, are increasingly benefiting from Russia's acumen in the manipulation of information. Thus, amid growing strategic cooperation between Russia, China, and Iran in recent years, the Kremlin's propaganda and information manipulation playbook has increasingly been embraced in both Beijing and Tehran in a process which experts have termed "authoritarian learning."
The past several years have provided ample evidence of such collaboration. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, for instance, the European Union's European External Action Service (EEAS) assessed that Russian disinformation about COVID-19 was being taken up and amplified by both China and Iran in what amounted to a "trilateral convergence of disinformation narratives" aimed at sowing confusion and diminishing trust in the West among global audiences.[25] So extensive was this collaboration that some authors termed it an "axis of disinformation."[26] More recently, false Russian narratives about Ukraine, formulated in support of the Kremlin's "special military operation" against Kyiv, have been echoed by China as part of the so-called "no limits" partnership between Russia and the PRC.[27]
As these examples, and countless others, demonstrate, Russia's expertise in manipulating the information space has begun to enhance the respective disinformation enterprises of like-minded authoritarians. As a result, the United States and its partners in the West will face a more sophisticated, multifaceted, and hostile informational environment in the years ahead.
This adversarial manipulation of the information space, moreover, is set to become a key battleground in the unfolding "great power competition" that has become the central organizing principle undergirding the national security agendas of successive administrations in Washington. That makes Russia's manipulation of the information sphere an enduring challenge for the United States and its international partners—and raises the importance of erecting effective, collaborative informational strategies to counter it. For both Washington and the broader West, it is long past time to begin.
Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC, and director of the Council's Future of Public Diplomacy Project.
NOTES:
[1] This chapter is drawn in part from Ilan Berman, Challenging Moscow's Message: Russian Disinformation and the Western Response (AFPC Press, 2023).
[2] Stephen J. Blank, ed., The Russian Military in Comparative Perspective (U.S. Army War College, 2016), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1910&context=monographs.
[3] C.W. Bill Young, "Soviet Active Measures in the United States – An Updated Report by the FBI," Congressional Record E 4716, December 9, 1987, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP11M01338R000400470089-2.pdf.
[4] G. Edward Griffin, "Soviet Subversion of the Free-World Press: A Conversation with Yuri Bezmenov," 1985, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmXiapfCs8.
[5] Richard H. Shultz and Roy Godson, Dezinformatsiya: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy (Pergamon-Brassey's, 1984), 2.
[6] Russian Federation, Information Security Doctrine of the Russian Federation, 2000, https://base.garant.ru/182535.
[7] The Kremlin, "Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation," February 5, 2010. An English language translation is available at https://carnegieendowment.org/files/2010russia_military_doctrine.pdf.
[8] President of the Russian Federation, Strategia Natsionalnoye Bezopastnostii Rosiyskoy Federatstii [National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation], July 2, 2021, http://actual.pravo.gov.ru/text.html#pnum=0001202107030001.
[9] For a detailed examination, see Berman, Challenging Moscow's Message, 21-24.
[10] Christopher Paul and Miriam Mathews, "The Russian 'Firehose of Falsehood' Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It," Rand Corporation Perspective no. 198, 2016, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html.
[11] Author's interview with NATO strategic communications specialist, Riga, Latvia, February 2023.
[12] World Bank, "World DataBank: World Development Indicators," n.d., available at http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&country=&series=SP.DYN.TFRT.IN&period=#.
[13] See, for instance, "'Disastrous' Russian birth rate putting country's future at risk, Kremlin says," Agence France-Presse, July 27, 2024, https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russia-central-asia/article/3272093/disastrous-russian-birth-rate-putting-countrys-future-risk-kremlin-says.
[14] As cited in Uliana Pavlova, "5 Million Russian Citizens Left Russia under Putin," The Moscow Times, October 13, 2021, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/10/13/5-million-russian-citizens-left-russia-under-putin-a75246.
[15] Francesca Ebel and Mary Ilyushina, "Russians abandon wartime Russia in historic exodus," Washington Post, February 13, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/13/russia-diaspora-war-ukraine/.
[16] Judy Twigg, "Russia is Losing its Best and Brightest," The National Interest, June 13, 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/russia-losing-its-best-brightest-16572.
[17] Howard Amos, "Russian Schools Are Teaching 3-Year-Olds Propaganda about the War in Ukraine," Vice, March 25, 2022, https://www.vice.com/en/article/russia-ukraine-war-propaganda/.
[18] See, for instance, "Pro-Kremlin Pop Star's Concert a Microcosm of Russia's Wartime 'Patriotism,'" The Moscow Times, September 10, 2023, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/09/10/pro-kremlin-pop-stars-concert-a-microcosm-of-russias-wartime-patriotism-a82414.
[19] Joshua Eisenman, "China's Media Propaganda in Africa: A Strategic Assessment," United States Institute of Peace Special Report, March 16, 2023, https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/03/chinas-media-propaganda-africa-strategic-assessment.
[20] Interview with Joseph Michael Humire, AFPC Disinformation Wars podcast, episode 27, December 22, 2022. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/afpcdisinfowarfare/episodes/EPISODE-27-Russiandisinformation-is-helping-reshape-Latin-America-e1sjilf/aa937q9g.
[21] U.S. Department of State, Global Engagement Center, "Russia's Disinformation Campaign Cannot Hide its Responsibility for the Global Food Crisis," June 22, 2022, https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/russiasdisinformation-cannot-hide-its-responsibility-for-theglobal-food-crisis/.
[22] See, for instance, H.A. Hellyer, "Russia is waging a disinformation war in the Middle East," Politico Europe, April 7, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimirputin-sputnik-rt-russia-is-waging-a-disinformation-war-inthe-middle-east/.
[23] Latana/Alliance of Democracies, Democracy Perceptions Index 2023, May 2023, https://6389062.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6389062/Canva%20images/Democracy%20Perception%20Index%202023.pdf.
[24] For a detailed examination of this phenomenon, see Ilan Berman, ed., Digital Dictators: Media, Authoritarianism, and America's New Challenge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).
[25] Rikard Jozwiak, "EU Monitors See Coordinated COVID-19 Disinformation Effort by Iran, Russia, China," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 22, 2020, https://www.rferl.org/a/eu-monitors-sees-coordinated-covid-19-disinformation-effort-by-iran-russia-china/30570938.html.
[26] Andrew Whiskeyman and Michael Berger, "Axis of Disinformation: Propaganda from Iran, Russia, and China on COVID-19," Washington Institute Fikra Forum Policy Analysis, February 2021, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/axis-disinformation-propaganda-iran-russia-and-china-covid-19.
[27] See, for instance, David Bandurski, "China and Russia are joining forces to spread disinformation," Brookings Institution, March 11, 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/china-and-russia-are-joining-forces-to-spreaddisinformation/.