Putin’s hidden war. How the Kremlin is bombing us on the internet

Vladimir Putin with Margarita Simonyan, one of Russia's key propagandists. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Apart from the military component of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has noticeably intensified its psychological and information operations both inside and outside the country.

Moscow’s propaganda aims

The propagandistic aspect of Russia’s “special military operation” is one of the key points of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. On the one hand, Moscow actively disseminates fake news; and on the other, it is trying to keep up the image of an “unbeaten empire”. Its specific goals include: the dissolution of relations between Ukraine and its strategic partners; the paralysis of decision-making processes in European and NATO structures; the creation of various myths, such as that the United States is going to start World War Three and Central and Eastern European countries will be used as shields; the spread of different false doctrines, such as that the post-Soviet space is the “natural” and legitimate Russian area of influence; discrediting the Eastern Partnership states using the Orthodox Church, NGOs, and foundations; presenting Ukraine as an aggressor and a fascist regime; and promoting the image of an invincible Russia.

Making predictions during the ongoing war is risky and, in most cases, useless. However, it should be noted that by November 2022, the only war Putin is winning is inside Russia. Thanks to the active coordination of the security services and a fully controlled media, as well as the absence of political opposition and an effective civil society, more than 75 per cent of Russians support the “special military operation”.

Over the course of Putin’s more than 20 years in power, Russia has meticulously bolstered its defences against what it sees as its most potent foe – the West. This has been accomplished by restricting the country’s press freedom and indoctrinating its population with propaganda that is even more cynical than that of the Soviet era. Additionally, it has made an effort to control the flow of information in all the former Soviet Union countries that speak Russian. At the same time, Russia has developed strong offensive capabilities by infiltrating European policy-making and media institutions and building a potent cyberwarfare arsenal. “While Moscow remains a fortress to policy-makers in the West, the Iron Curtain has been replaced by a one-way mirror through which the Kremlin can carefully observe the West while remaining completely invisible and inscrutable,” wrote the Georgian politician Salome Samadashvili already back in 2015.

Social media war

Russia has developed a new method for disseminating false material covertly to potentially billions of individuals. As a report by US-based intelligence firm Nisos indicates, Russia is now utilising the social media platform Telegram to help it get around indicators that its material is Moscow-backed propaganda on digital platforms like Twitter. Researchers discovered a Telegram channel that was being used as a digital library for thousands of videos that were then translated into up to 18 different languages, including English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Persian and Chinese.

According to Nisos, once the videos are on Telegram, they may be downloaded and shared on Twitter and other social media platforms without any evidence that they were created by Russian state-affiliated media. This implies that Kremlin propaganda could circulate without being detected by major social media platforms that have made an effort to reduce disinformation on their networks. The Telegram group claims to be sponsored by RT and states in its description that it is working to “break the information blockage around the events in Ukraine”.

Reframing the war’s history is the overall objective that is consistent with Russian propaganda goals. The videos on the channel all present the same narrative from various perspectives, stating that the Russian military is kindly helping a Ukrainian population that is under siege from a dishonest, murderous government full of neo-Nazi terrorists.

Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of RT, claimed that the Telegram group was a component of the “people’s information militia” that has helped propagate pro-Russian viewpoints around the globe since it first debuted in April 2022. This is a result of the western blockade of state-owned Russian media outlets, including RT, on websites like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been characterised as the first full-scale “social media war”. Due to the digital revolution, the conflict also blazes new trails in other areas. The information infrastructure of Ukraine is attacked through cyberwar methods. At the same time, social media is used to spread the “fog of war”. Wars of choice are crimes in and of themselves, and when the crime scene cannot be hidden (as in the case of the atrocities in Bucha), an effort is made to cast doubt on what is observed.

Since users started disseminating information in real time, especially on the “WarTok” channel, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has also been referred to as “the world’s first TikTok war”. Even if there are some authentic accounts on the app, misinformation is a major source of concern. A recent analysis discovered that within 40 minutes of signing up for the service, new users are exposed to false information.

Southern Front

One organisation, whose name translates as “Southern Front”, produces and disseminates pro-Putin propaganda on YouTube, Telegram and through a website that targets regions that were recently under Russian control. The Southern Front news site issued its first message on the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now has numerous reporters who produce stories every day. It frequently publishes videos that make wrongful assumptions. Most reports assert that a “peaceful existence” has been created in regions that are occupied. The programme frequently promotes articles that defend Russia’s incursion. On the day of the invasion, the Southern Front’s Telegram message to its then 25 subscribers declared: “Vladimir Putin announced the launch of a special operation to demilitarise and de-Nazify the territory of Ukraine!” In another video, a reporter claims to have visited a library where she saw multiple instances of books with “Nazi emblems”. The screen does not show any proof. The books that are visible on camera are written by contemporary Ukrainian authors and cover actual historical occurrences like the Battle of Ilovaisk.

Another issue in this war is the blocking of the internet by Russia. The first thing that the Russians do when they occupy Ukrainian territories is cut off the networks. The struggle for control of the internet in Ukraine demonstrates how both sides see access to the internet as a vital tool in a 21st-century conflict. An essential part of the war effort has been the consistent flow of images and videos from Ukraine, which have given the entire world a front-row seat to the invasion. As a result of Russia’s moves to block access to mobile and internet networks, those living under occupation in Ukraine were left in an information vacuum, which Russia filled with its own propaganda. Much of the proof of the crimes committed by Russian troops in the seized territories throughout the war has just recently come to light.

Russia has made numerous efforts to regulate the flow of information. Since the start of the invasion, Russian troops have taken control of more than 5,000 base stations belonging to Ukrainian telecom companies and destroyed or damaged more than 65,000 kilometres of fibre-optic internet links, according to Ukraine’s special communications service. Additionally, 18 broadcast antennas that transmitted radio and television signals were destroyed by Russian soldiers. Russia appears to have redirected online traffic through its own providers in several southern Ukrainian regions, subjecting them to the huge Kremlin network of surveillance and control.

New narratives, old methods

The new propaganda that is being disseminated on social media and in the news has also made unfounded claims that the Ukrainian government intends to demolish a dam on its own land. This effort aims to both demonise Ukraine in the West and strengthen Russian support for the war. The Kremlin’s propaganda has gotten significantly more vicious since the invasion first began. Russian government representatives have avoided open criticism of the Ukrainian political system in the past. However, once the violence began, they began to describe it as “neo-Nazi” and “criminal”. In fact, Putin used the word “junta” for the first time since 2014 in his speech on February 24th. At the time, he had been using it to suggest the illegitimacy of the Ukrainian government and to contrast it with the “fraternal” people of Ukraine.

By asserting that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people” with a shared past and future, such a juxtaposition has historically been used as an excuse to meddle in Ukraine’s internal affairs. Disinformation is currently being spread in many different ways against the Ukrainian state. Russian propaganda disseminates false information about Ukraine’s intentions, including its “plans” to rebuild its nuclear arsenal, develop biological weapons that can target specific ethnic groups, “drown” Russia purposefully in synthetic drugs, and outlaw the use of the Russian language in daily life. The key difference from the pre-war era is that Vladimir Putin and other members of the Russian state’s highest echelons are considerably more engaged in spreading false information.

Additionally, blatantly neo-imperial narratives are also being used more frequently by the Russian authorities. At the 2022 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, for instance, Putin addressed the young attendees and noted that since Peter the Great’s time, Russia’s foreign policy mission remains unchanged: to retake and fortify the original Russian lands. Alexander Kuznetsov, the Russian Federation’s permanent ambassador to UNESCO, echoed him when he told his compatriots that several times throughout history, “the people of Russia … brought together the original Russian territory and took fraternal peoples under its protection.”

Such language is not only directed at the older generation of Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, many of whom still harbour nostalgic memories of the Soviet era of “stability and greatness”. Indeed, Putin and his allies have likely anticipated that Moscow’s military aggressiveness against Ukraine could inspire other nations to use force. By doing so, the Kremlin might purposefully keep the international scene tense and perhaps push Washington to its breaking point. China has undertaken air and sea manoeuvres close to Taiwan in recent months, threatening to ignite a war if the island proclaims its independence. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, has heightened tensions with neighbouring Greece, by accusing Athens of discriminating against Turkish communities in Rhodes and Kos and admonishing the country to demilitarise islands in the Aegean.

Despite the constant transformation of Russian propaganda and its disinformation machine, the Kremlin’s modus operandi remains the same. Overall, it does not matter how unbelievable the information is, as long as various conspiracies and emotionally-charged narratives are continuously disseminated without providing any evidence. If the fake information is debunked, Moscow denies any connection and blames others.

The thousands of pro-Russian trolls, bots, useful idiots and agents of influence do not stop repeating messages that are easily memorable for millions of uncritical and poorly-informed individuals. The vulnerability of these people is the main ally of Russia, which does not change its approach and follows the line that it had chosen many decades ago – lie as much as possible until people no longer believe anything.    

Grigol Julukhidze is the director of the Foreign Policy Council, a think tank in Tbilisi. He specialises in security studies and propaganda research. He is also a lecturer at Ilia State University.

Information war, Russian propaganda, Russian war against Ukraine, social media