The recent escalation of events that led to the Ukraine-Russia crisis has had many countries officially blaming Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin. Among the many recriminations that came with attacking Ukraine virtually unprovoked, according to the Western narrative, the speeches that Putin has delivered in the last few days seem to be impregnated with loose pretexts and weak justifications. At the same time, Putin addressed the US as an “empire of lies”, while Russia seeks truth in its attempt to liberate the oppressed and persecuted people of the Donbass region. Both parties claim the other is twisting the truth with the intent of undermining the adversary. Overall, in his speech of the 24th of February, Putin delivered cleverly spun statements, but outlining a version of history that is remembered in a vastly different manner in Europe and the States.

This article offers a comparison between propaganda tactics employed in Russia and in the West, with particular attention given to covert propaganda – that is, propaganda that originated from a government agency but published by a non-government outlet with undisclosed source. This strategy is not novel, having been implemented during the Soviet era, but present circumstances have reignited our attention on this ambiguous tactic that has been reframed to modern times. Russian grievances against the West, including their perception of the threat of NATO expanding influence, are also reported to better frame propaganda on both sides. A crucial element emerges in the analysis of covert propaganda, which is the concept of plausible deniability. Finally, the Western response to Russian propaganda reveals a game where the objective is discrediting the other, attacking their sincerity and morality.

Media and grievances

In terms of news sources, Western decentralised media is not directly controlled by the state, and often reflects the agenda of various political parties and independent groups. On one hand, this means that all information from different points of view is readily available. On the other hand, it means that said information can be unverified and following an agenda that goes against state direction, especially but not limited on social media, often challenging internal security. In Russia, while being similarly decentralised (Ramesh, et al, 2020), media is more subject to censorship and regulation compared to its Western counterpart, thus working in harmony with state agenda, reducing discordant voices and promoting a unilateral point of view, discouraging potential dissidents and threats to the government. However, there is historical evidence that the Kremlin is not a stranger to divulging loose and unverified information to the public in order to promote its own objectives, and in fact it has been part of a well-established and well-documented political strategy since the Soviet era, which fuels distrust in the Western world regarding information coming from Russia. In turn, the distrust is reciprocated as NATO and Europe have been actively seeking to expand their influence – cultural and political– often to the detriment of Russia, who seems to have exhausted its ability to ignore Western provocations. This mutual animosity is at the same time reflected and fuelled by propaganda efforts on both sides, therefore engaging in a not-so-subtle information war.

In fact, condemned the West on multiple occasions – including in the days leading up to the present crisis –for seeking to extend its influence both in a physical manner with NATO’s eastern expansion, and in a more subtle manner through ideologies and popular culture. This in turn threatens Russian culture and national identity, which is also a narrative that Russian media has picked up, encouraged by the government. At the beginning of the conflict, President Putin stated in his speech: “[the US] sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within” (Putin, 2022). In the same speech, he also condemns the “hostile anti-Russia” narrative in the near territories that is “fully controlled from the outside”, attracting NATO armed forces (Putin, 2022). This is the culmination of a long-standing propaganda that warns Russian population against the indoctrination of the West, with articles discussing the bad influence of Western movies and videogames (TASS, 2021) or the morally questionable “gender obscurantism” preached in the West (TASS, 2021). In this sense, Western cultural, moral and ethical values differ consistently from those of the Russian Federation and attempts to influence the latter is a direct challenge to their identity, their authority and their sovereignty. Information warfare is therefore employed by both parties to defend their interests against interferences and against defamation.

Russian covert propaganda

The perceived low credibility of Russian state-controlled news outlets, due to history and the impossibly hard to ignore differences with their Western counterparts, does not represent an obstacle to their objectives, and it is instead part of a deep-rooted policy which dates back to Leninist thinking, so called “aktivnyye meropriyatiya”, or “active measures” (Abrams, 2016). These measures are also referred to as “dirty tricks” by the West (PublicResourceOrg, 2010), which implies that Russian strategies aim at achieving results in any possible manner – even by playing dirty, according to Western standards, if necessary. Covert propaganda – that is, propaganda that originated from a government agency but published by a non-government outlet with undisclosed source – allows the Russian government to disseminate information and influence popular opinion. This can be done in clandestine or semi-clandestine operations (“black” and “grey” operations, whose difference is often blurred) such as spreading unverified rumours or duping politicians and journalists (Kux, 1985). This system of top-down control, involving high leaders of the Kremlin, of disinformation and propaganda is supported by evidence provided by former Russian media insiders, such as journalist Peter Pomerantsev (Abrams, 2016).

Active measures have evolved considerably since the Soviet Era, becoming more efficient. While the USSR planted anonymous letters and newspaper articles in countries of the Third World, which would be published and then re-distributed by the Soviet media (Boghardt, 2009), today the Internet dramatically simplifies the process. Not only has the propaganda distribution changed, but also its volume. To make a breach in today’s overly informed world, Russian propaganda has had to increase the number of information that it disseminates. Evidence of the existence of so-called “troll factories” are numerous and describe agencies where Russian-approved propaganda is fabricated and then spread on the web in various forms – comments, blogs, articles, posts. The most striking report of these agency is by Lyudmila Savchuk, whose undercover account described employees using fake profiles on socials, fomenting hate speech, praising Russian leaders and overall manipulating media in favour of the government while undermining its enemies. (DIIS, 2017) Troll factories have become known in 2015 and later it was rumoured that they influenced 2016 US election campaign (Carroll, 2017). It is likely that they are still employed today to influence public perceptions of the Russian-Ukrainian war in order to counter-balance the weight of a few Western media companies which, according to Margarita Simonyan, head of pro-Kremlin news channel RT, dominate international media space in favour of Western agenda and against Russia (Russell, 2016).

There are plenty of examples in Russian media today that suggest a propaganda more concerned with the narrative than with fact-checking, such as the claim that Ukraine is the “cradle of fascism in Europe”, a statement that was attributed to member of Ukrainian Parliament Ilya Kiva from an ambiguous source (Izvestia, 2021). Similarly, Russian press has reported raging sentiments of fascism, neo-nazism and antisemitism in Ukraine, often – again – from dubious sources and exaggerated reports of real events (Russell, 2016; Mossetti, 2022; U.S. Department of State, 2022). Over the years, state-controlled media have been hinting at the fact that Ukraine is building an offensive arsenal (Jensen, Valeriano and Maness, 2019). On Sputnik International, a news source in English but owned by the Russian government, most articles depict an opposing viewpoint to that of Western media: while Westerners hear about IT companies such as Netflix seeking to obscure Russian news channels, Sputnik reports unacceptable censorship (Tsukanov, 2022). In addition, Sputnik International denies (Tsukanov, 2022) reports of a Ukrainian preschool hit with cluster munitions that documented by Western sources(Amnesty International, 2022). Reports such as this undermine and delegitimise Ukrainian and NATO authority, show that the West is attempting to frame Russia as an enemy to weaken, and over the years media has built and collected evidence supporting the perception that Ukraine is a national threat and thus justifying Russian intervention. Troll factories and more generally disinformation and covert propaganda plant ideas while hiding alleged Moscow’s involvement, sowing discontent, manipulating targets, and disrupting rivals.

The truth between the lines: plausible deniability

The scope of covert propaganda is of controlling the narrative surrounding the country and its leaders, manipulating information, disrupting, distracting and delegitimising adversaries and finally providing plausible deniability (Jensen, Valeriano and Maness, 2019). In the case of Ukraine, the justifications provided by Putin that Russia’s intervention is in favour of the liberation of the oppressed people of the Donbass region was one of the tactics that aimed at discouraging NATO to engage in direct confrontation against Russia. It is indeed on the basis of plausible deniability, supported by the propaganda that frames Ukraine and NATO’s expansion as a national security threat for Russia, that Putin declared that the economic sanctions are “illegitimate” (Putin, 2022). In this sense, Russia is treading on the ever-thinning line between just and unjust intervention, which is intrinsically linked to perspective. Plausible deniability, which means that an actor can plausibly deny knowledge, responsibility, or intention for illegal or unethical actions, works just as well if the agent behind those actions is not well hidden. In fact, the “covert” element in Russian covert propaganda does not necessarily hide its responsibility and identity, but rather provides enough justification to attempt to moderate the response from the West. The Kremlin’s skilful reasoning not only allows Putin to act in the open, but also invites other countries, in particular potential allies, to embrace the Russian point of view and maintain friendly relationships. By engaging in armed conflict with Ukraine, Russia sent a strong message to the West, especially to the US, that NATO’s continuing expansion is not accepted by Russia, and that Russia is not intimidated by the West and it can – as it has – react aggressively to assert its dominance. At the same time, covert propaganda works strongly towards undermining the credibility of Western countries and alliances, with the intent of disrupting them internally while strengthening distrust against the West from within Russia and its areas of influence.

Western narrative against Russian propaganda

The other side of the medal is, naturally, how the West has been portraying Russia over the years. Propaganda and state-controlled news media are not a prerogative of the Kremlin, and disinformation and fake news have been a plague of the modern world from the US to Europe. Contrarily to Russia, government-led covert propaganda in the West seems to be less practical and, besides some anecdotal evidence from the Truman and Eisenhower administration (Parry‐Giles, S. J., 1996), there is little record of it being used in modern times. Nevertheless, the media and reports of the Ukrainian-Russia situation reveal many biases and follow the Western narrative of mistrust towards more authoritarian regimes, which includes Russia.

Regarding the current conflict in Ukraine, media in Western countries has been corroborating the siding of NATO countries, providing in-depth reports of the conflict occurring in Ukraine. During the first days there has been an abundance of unverified evidence of Russian violence and attacks, some of which have been promptly debunked. Several news channels have streamed videos and shown images taken from Twitter or TikTok where the account was claiming to have recorded in Ukraine, (Subramaniam, 2022), all building a negative image of Russia. As the conflict continues, news channels and online sources have been conducting more severe fact-checks before disseminating news concerning violence in Ukraine (Spring, 2022). Fact-checking has become a key aspect for media, with multiple articles focused on debunking news, often targeting Russian information only (Subramaniam, T. 2022; FactCheck.org, 2022). Russian attempt to have a fact checking counterpart was a website called “War on fakes” revealed to be unconvincing, as it was providing more fake news than it was debunking, while having the support of the Russian government (France24, 2022; Wesolowski and Baig, 2022). Western media, in short, holds a clear negative predisposition and great distrust when it concerns framing Russian actions, and the titles of articles that report Putin speech are a strong indicator. “Putin’s absurd, angry spectacle will be a turning point in his long reign” (The Guardian, 2022); “Defiant Putin goes to war in Ukraine with a warning for U.S., NATO” (NBCNews, 2022); “Putin threatens West with ‘consequences greater than any you have faced in history’ if it intervenes in his invasion of Ukraine” (BusinessInsider, 2022) are all titles that hint at a narrative that Putin has made unmotivated threats to the West and has engaged in a senseless conflict. Russia is at a disadvantage when it comes to arguing their motives to intervene in Ukraine, considering its heavily negative portrayal in Western media. In the past days, while Russia has been closing off news outlets from outside of the country, some channels including BBC have reportedly divulged ways to bypass the block on Twitter, such as using VPNs or Tor, in defiance of Russian policies – indeed, using VPNs is legal in Russia, however accessing officially blocked content is not. The West stresses the great importance of free information and the attempted control over online sources is not seen positively, despite the Kremlin’s claim that the block is aimed at reining in disinformation, Russophobia, and false reports from the West that undermine the Russian government (Kudryavstev, 2022).

Covert and over successes and failures

In conclusion, Western propaganda has been historically more overt compared to the Russian counterpart, which has relied on covert media operations since the Soviet Union. While in the former case it can be a sign of a presumptuous attitude of moral and ethical superiority, the latter hints at a necessity to safeguard their national interests while allowing the government to safely act within a grey area. Both sides have consistently counter-attacked propaganda by attempting to ruin the image of the adversary, resorting to debunking official information, depicting the leaders as either weak or insane, and claiming impending threats. As previously mentioned, discerning between just and unjust intervention is intrinsically linked to perspective, and it is the main role of propaganda – overt and covert – to create said perspective. It can sway popular opinions, political approaches and military operations. While information warfare has always existed, the present conflict between Russia and Ukraine has revealed how much it has (or has not) developed over the years. Covert propaganda seems to be more efficient in influencing thoughts in a closed off environment, but it encounters many obstacles in a globalised world. At the same time, plausible deniability remains a valuable ally during tensions, therefore arguably covert propaganda fails at being convincing but succeeds in creating an environment where a state has more leeway.

 

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