At a glance.
- Themes in Russian disinformation.
- Russia's response to US and UK warnings against a Russian cyber threat.
- Advancing censorship in Russia.
- Information operations and the persistence of independent channels of news.
- Information operations: repression and counter-repression.
- An example of diplomatic disinformation and debunking.
- British ministers pranked by someone pretending to be Ukraine's prime minister.
Themes in Russian disinformation.
Russia's countervailing disinformation campaigns have not gained much traction internationally. They've been marked by opportunistic implausibility, much of it focused on misrepresentation of post-Cold War biological weapons disarmament programs. The New York Times has an account of Moscow's recent efforts, and Forbes runs a profile of the oligarch, Yuri Kovalchuk, who appears to be the de facto leader of Russia's disinformation campaigns.
Domestically, Russian propaganda has been aggressive in seeking to rally people under the sign of the cyrillic letter Z, used as a distinguishing mark on Russian armor entering Ukraine during the special military operation. Much of that rallying has a strongly xenophobic tone. CNN quotes some representative rhetoric from President Putin: "The West will try to rely on the so-called fifth column, on national traitors, on those who earn money here with us but live there. And I mean 'live there' not even in the geographical sense of the word, but according to their thoughts, their slavish consciousness."
The campaigns have also traded heavily in outlandish stories of Ukrainian bioweapons, said to have been prepared with the assistance and connivance of the US. NATO is increasingly concerned that Russia might turn to special weapons (nuclear, biological, or chemical) as its invasion falters. Chemical weapons are likeliest to see use, and some see Russian disinformation about Ukrainian biowar programs (which only official Russia seems able to discern) as providing a pretext for such use. The Atlantic Council describes the latest iteration of that disinformation: members of the Duma say that Ukraine is developing weaponized pathogens that would affect only certain ethnic groups and regions:
"Sergey Leonov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Healthcare Committee, alleged that Ukraine is preparing biological weapons and claimed that Ukraine was researching 'regional infections aimed at Russian regions.' He mentioned 'Crimean fever' as an example, likely referencing Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, which was first documented in Crimea in 1944. The World Health Organization has reported that Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever 'is endemic in all of Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Asia,' contradicting Leonov’s statement. He also amplified the debunked claim that a recent spike in tuberculosis cases in separatist areas is connected to Ukrainian biolabs. Leonov stated that Ukraine is researching ethnicity-targeting biological weapons, another disinformation narrative that echoes the Soviet-era campaign Operation Infektion. Viruses cannot be controlled or restricted to targeting a specific region or ethnicity."
Ukraine has also objected to opinions expressed on Russian state-sponsored television that deploying tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield would be an appropriate and proportionate response to Western sanctions.
Russia's response to US and UK warnings against a Russian cyber threat.
Reuters quotes Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying, "The Russian Federation, unlike many Western countries, including the United States, does not engage in state-level banditry." His contention, of course, is both pro forma and absurd: Russian privateering and direct state cyberattacks have been notorious données in cyberspace for two decades.
Mr. Peskov's denials are old news. Russia's diplomats have been tweeting that line since their war against Ukraine was barely under way. The Russian embassy to the US tweeted a representative statement back on February 18th: "We categorically reject these baseless statements of the administration and note that Russia has nothing to do with the mentioned events and in principle has never conducted and does not conduct any 'malicious' operations in cyberspace."
Andrey Krutskikh, a diplomat with a background in arms control who presently serves as director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of International Information Security, struck a more statesmanlike tone than did Mr. Peskov. In an interview with Newsweek, Mr. Krutskikh pointed out the way in which cyberspace had become an international commons, and the importance of all sides working together to secure its beneficial use for all. "Modern life is impossible without information and communications technologies (ICTs)," he said. "They determine our well-being, security and survival. Relying on them, we can become richer or lose all our savings. They are transboundary and almost all-mighty. Amidst this reality the main task is not to frighten each other with digital means, but to try to reach agreements before it is too late."
He said that cyberattacks were particularly likely to drive escalation of any conflict. "A cyberattack, be it accidental or intended, including [one] perpetrated under false flag, can easily trigger escalation between states, leading to a full-scale confrontation. Ensuring international information security, therefore, becomes one of the key factors that directly influence strategic stability."
Mr. Krutskikh pointed, with open-eyed innocence, at the ways in which cybercrime had contributed to international mistrust: "Hacker groups tend to target their activities at big businesses, banks and financial institutions, Traditional principles of entrepreneurship collapse. The dependence of humanity on ever evolving ICTs makes all of us vulnerable to threats of their malicious use. Further progress is impossible without ensuring cybersecurity." The difficulty of attribution induced by the anonymity so often achieved in cyberspace makes cybercrime all the more problematic for international relations. (He might have added "deniability" to "anonymity:" Russian operators have long used deniable assets to inflict damage on adversaries in cyberspace.)
"An imaginary enemy will mislead efforts to fight the real one," Mr. Krutskikh said. "In these circumstances cybercrime is frequently used to disguise attacks against critical infrastructure, undermine political and economic situation of governments. An abrupt cut in electronic communications in areas like healthcare, water, sanitation or energy is equal to an emergency situation that can entail severe consequences and even loss of people's lives." This, of course, is exactly the sort of attack Washington's recent warnings anticipate.
And, of course, he regretted the West's failure to take up the four points President Putin proposed in Geneva in 2020. "The danger is that a global ecological, anthropogenic or socio-economic disaster can be provoked in cyberspace by a political miscalculation, negligence or, as Senator J. William Fulbright once wrote, by 'arrogance of power,'" he said, adding that in 2020, "We were clear and candid with the suggestion to undertake concrete steps that would contribute to better security and trust." Alas, "there was no concrete reaction to our proposal."
Thus, whether one takes the vinegar from Mr. Peskov or the honey from Mr. Krutshkikh, either way it's all Washington's fault. And London's, too. And probably the fault of Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Rome, etc. Not the fault of Moscow.
Elsewhere, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Tuesday that Russo-American relations were at a breaking point. “Yesterday, a note of protest was handed over to the American ambassador, noting that what was happening has put relations on the verge of breaking off.” He explained, "They," that is, the Americans, "must stop issuing threats against Russia."
Advancing censorship in Russia.
Reuters reports that a Russian court has officially found that Facebook's corporate parent, Meta, was guilty of "extremist activity," and thus its operations in Russia will be severely curtailed. Facebook and Instagram are out, but WhatsApp can stay, for now. In its defense Meta argued that not only was it not "extremist," but that it was in fact opposed to "Russophobia," but the court foreseeably found otherwise.
Google has announced, according to Reuters, that it will take steps to discourage Russian disinformation. "We can confirm that we're taking additional steps to clarify, and in some instances expand our monetization guidelines as they relate to the war in Ukraine," a company spokesman said. The measures are largely intended to prevent anyone from profiting by flacking disinformation, which is an interesting approach to disinformation that doesn't involve direct censorship. Mountain View will be particularly on the alert for "claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens."
Roskomnadzor, for its part, has not been shy about direct censorship. Russia's IT regulator has blocked Google News, at the request of the state procurator (prosecutor). "The American online news resource in question provided access to numerous publications and materials containing inauthentic and publicly important information about the course of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine," Reuters quotes Interfax as saying.
Information operations and the persistence of independent channels of news.
Russian President Putin has vowed to purge Russia of "scum and traitors" insufficiently committed to the special military operation in Ukraine. The Kremlin has sought to crack down on both public protest and online dissent, (both now "fully criminalized," the Atlantic Council reports) but public protests, by Russian standards, have been surprisingly prominent. This suggests that news other than the official Kremlin line that the war is an ultimately defensive one waged against genocidal Nazis is getting through. Some of the channels in which it's circulating are surprising. Groups within the widely used Russian social media platform VKontakte ("VK," "In Touch") are serving as conduits for dissent and unofficial news. The groups involved are, according to Newsweek, "longstanding groups focused on common interests such as art, sports, music and celebrities." VKontakte is by no means a nest of dissenters: the executives who run it are close to the government and have themselves come under US sanction. The sharing of unofficial news on the war in Ukraine seems to be a function of the sheer difficulty of effective content moderation on a platform with more than ninety-million users.
The social media platform Telegram has surged in Russia, where it's continued to operate without the interruption and blockage experienced by Instagram, Twitter, and the like. Telegram originated in Russia, which may be why it's been permitted to operate. The Wall Street Journal quotes Ivan Kolpakov, editor in chief and co-founder of the now-blocked Russian independent media outlet Meduza (which is itself surviving in its Telegram feed) “Telegram isn’t perceived as a total enemy resource. It’s not perceived as a tool of information war against Russia. In Russia, a huge culture of uncensored journalism and so-called journalism appears on Telegram. Telegram itself told the Journal it didn't know why it hadn't been blocked, and it didn't know if it would be blocked in the future, but “We believe in freedom of speech and are proud we can serve people in different countries in difficult times.”
Russia's countervailing disinformation campaigns have not gained much traction internationally. They've been marked by opportunistic implausibility, much of it focused on misrepresentation of post-Cold War biological weapons disarmament programs. The New York Times has an account of Moscow's recent efforts, and Forbes runs a profile of the oligarch, Yuri Kovalchuk, who appears to be the de facto leader of Russia's disinformation campaigns.
Domestically, Russian propaganda has been aggressive in seeking to rally people under the sign of the cyrillic letter Z, used as a distinguishing mark on Russian armor entering Ukraine during the special military operation. Much of that rallying has a strongly xenophobic tone. CNN quotes some representative rhetoric from President Putin: "The West will try to rely on the so-called fifth column, on national traitors, on those who earn money here with us but live there. And I mean 'live there' not even in the geographical sense of the word, but according to their thoughts, their slavish consciousness."
Information operations: repression and counter-repression.
All the Russian unity Mr. Putin praised during an appearance at his big Special Military Operation rally doesn't of course extend to the "traitors and scum" whom the Russian people will spit out like the "gnats" or "midges" they might inadvertently swallow. The AP reviews President Putin's recent speech on the topic, notes the "crudity" of his language, and predicts a sharp crackdown on dissent, in part born of frustration at the poor performance of his forces on the ground. "His rant appeared to reflect his frustration about the slow pace of the Russian offensive, which bogged down on the outskirts of Kyiv and around other cities in northeastern Ukraine. Russian forces made comparatively bigger gains in the south, but they haven’t been able to capture the strategic port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, and their advance along the Black Sea coast also has stalled."
An early subject of Russia's new laws against criticizing the Special Military Operation is a food entrepreneur, blogger, and influencer who's expressed opposition to the operation. The Guardian quotes Veronika Belotserkovskaya, who faces up to fifteen years in prison upon conviction, as saying, "To find out I was the first one to be charged was both amusing and shocking. I joked that I was officially declared a decent person."
Opponents of Russia's war have worked to find ways of penetrating Moscow's censorship. The Record describes the work of a group of Polish programmers who have been working to circumvent information blackouts by contacting individual Russians directly, and by doing so at scale.
Internally, Russian dissent is said to have found an outlet in Clubhouse, a social medium without a large Internet presence, and which the Russian organs appear to have overlooked, at least for now, Input reports.
An example of diplomatic disinformation and debunking.
Governments and platforms operated by the private sector have generally taken two approaches to countering disinformation: blocking (which includes jamming and deplatforming), and debunking (rumor control, fact-checking, pre-bunking, etc.). Debunking can sometimes take the form of satire and ridicule, and there's an example of this out of Canada at week's end.
To set the story up it's necessary to take a glance through the looking glass at the Twitter feed maintained by the Russian mission to the United Nations. They lead with a pinned tweet, offered apparently more in sorrow than in anger: "We regret to say that [Ukraine] both used to be and remains a pawn in our Western colleagues’ geopolitical struggle against [Russia]. All those years West didn't care for the people of Donbas including women & children who suffered and died under [Ukrainian] shelling." ("Colleagues" is a nice irenic touch; the word is even warmer and friendlier in Russian than it is in English.)
The Russian mission to the UN has requested that the Security Council take up the issue of US biolabs in Ukraine, about which it says Russia has discovered new evidence during its "SMO," that is, its "special military operation," that is, its invasion. "We've requested an emergency session of the Council tomorrow morning to discuss again the issue of US #biolabs in #Ukraine taking into account new documents that we have discovered during the SMO. We will send a letter to the #UAE Presidency on this matter immediately."
The Canadian mission to the United Nations had a polite response to an earlier Russian move at the UN, a letter dated Wednesday that amounted to Russia's pious and thoroughly mendacious call for an international effort to ameliorate suffering in Ukraine, as if that suffering were either a natural disaster or someone else's fault entirely, probably those Western colleagues mentioned supra. Anyway, Russian permanent representative Vassily Nebenzia was seeking the support of other nations for Russia's resolution that "all parties" respect international humanitarian law, and sought inter alia to hip everyone to the medical supplies and other humanitarian aid Russia was delivering to suffering Ukraine. The Russian mission is presenting the proposal to the Security Council tomorrow, presumably along with the biowar stuff, and anyway the Russians say their idea is a lot better than that biased and unreasonable stuff the French and Mexicans are offering the General Assembly, because, of course, Russia's highest priority is the amelioration of human suffering. Ambassador Nebenzia closes by saying he extends his offer to co-sponsor Russia's proposal with "assurances of my highest consideration." It's a strikingly mendacious letter, even by the low standards of wartime diplomacy.
The Canadian diplomats posted an image of the letter to which they'd taken a high-school English teacher's red pen. "Thank you @RussiaUN for your letter dated March 16. Please see our suggested edits below." The suggested changes all point out Russia's sole responsibility for the war and its many atrocities; accompanying editorial questions ask how Russia might justify its positions. See the original in the Canadian mission's Twitter feed and read the whole thing. Extra credit, Canada, for pointing out the text's uncertainty concerning the use of articles.
British ministers pranked by someone pretending to be Ukraine's prime minister.
The UK's Defence and Home Secretaries, Ben Wallace and Priti Patel, respectively, separately entered Microsoft Teams meetings (which Mr. Wallace said had been properly set up) during which they believed, initially, that they were talking to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. The Telegraph reports that, while his interlocutor looked like Mr. Shmyhal and was sitting in front of a Ukrainian flag, the Defence Secretary grew suspicious when the person-who-looked-like-Shmyal began asking about British naval deployments and Ukrainian intentions. (Presumably the real Prime Minister Shmyhal wouldn't need the UK to tell him what his government's intentions were.) Mr. Wallace ended the call after eight minutes and has ordered an investigation. Ms Patel's experience was similar. The Guardian's account of the incidents as "hoaxes," leaving open the question of whether Russian services were behind them, but it's equally severe about the security measures that made it possible for an impostor to get through to members of the Cabinet. If the calls were the work of Russian intelligence services, it represents something new. Who expected Moscow to call and in effect identify themselves as I.P. Freely? One would expect more. A call like that might convince Moe Szyslak for a minute, but a Cabinet minister? A question: are phone pranks more or less credible when they arrive through business collaboration tools?