Russia in the trenches of cognitive warfare

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One of the themes that keeps coming up in Russia’s official and expert discourse is the cognitive warfare (the war for people’s minds) allegedly waged by NATO and the US against Russia. This is supposedly done in order to dismember the state, break the nation’s morale and destroy the Russian identity based on so-called traditional values. As in many other cases, Russia accuses the West of actions that it itself has been taking against western societies for decades. Russian decision-makers project their own goals and methods onto those they see as ideological and military enemies. They seem to place sacred trust in the propaganda narratives they themselves create. Thus, Russia’s aggressive actions against the West (see below) are presented as necessary self-defence in a permanent conflict of civilizations.

Russian strategic culture recognizes that any desired state of people’s minds is a matter of hard (internal and external) security. The term “cognitive warfare” encompasses a variety of techniques from the fields of psychological warfare, propaganda, indoctrination, disinformation, symbolic violence and others. It is assumed that they serve to combat the enemy to no less an extent than the use of armed force and, to a desirable degree, make it possible to prepare the ground for a possible military attack and thus significantly reduce costs for the attacker. This can also involve autonomous methods of sabotage against the enemy.

As Włodzimierz Bączkowski, one of the most astute Polish Sovietologists, noted in his 1938 article “Notes on the essence of Russian power”, the definition of war in Russia is much broader than in the West. Aware of the relative weakness of its army, Russia has always tried to bring it into play only in the final phase of a long process of preparing the ground for aggression through subversion and propaganda campaigns.

In addition to the army factor, the Kremlin’s ability to militarize the life of society and put the economy on a war footing is also essential. As in Soviet times, there is no clear line between war and peace for the Russians. Seemingly peaceful fields of activity such as sport, science or business have become channels for infiltrating western societies and the political establishment in order to shape western policy in line with Moscow’s interests.

Russian decision-makers will follow a similar logic in their calculations regarding a possible attack on NATO. They will take into account not only the military potential of the Alliance, but above all the willingness of western governments to use it against Russia. If they conclude that Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is losing credibility, then they will be strongly tempted to conduct a limited military operation on NATO’s Eastern Flank despite Russia’s relative conventional weakness. This could be combined with nuclear blackmail in order to extract significant concessions, leading to the destruction of the current European security order.

Russia is thus treating the war for people’s minds as a full-fledged battle that precedes or replaces a military attack. Its aim is not only to shape certain beliefs but also to format the cognitive apparatus. That is to change the way of thinking and acting in order to effectively manipulate the behaviour of individuals and groups and deprive them of the willingness to resist. Under these conditions, massive direct coercion may prove unnecessary, lowering the cost of aggression.

While Russia is going on the offensive on the international stage with a series of active measures against western democracies, domestically it is concentrating on prevention and defence, relying on censorship, indoctrination and repression.

Sources of cognitive warfare: fear, inferiority complexes and conspiracy thinking

At the beginning of the 2010s, the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev revived hopes of a lasting political liberalization among some groups of the ruling elite and the public. Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidential chair in May 2012 amounted to the establishment of a mature authoritarianism based on increasing repression and the ideologization of the public sphere. This “counter-revolutionary” turn stemmed from Putin’s fear of losing control over society and power as a result of a “colour revolution” orchestrated by the West. The denigration of democratic movements, allegedly inspired by the US intelligence services, became the leitmotif of the Russian leader’s rhetoric in the following years. This fear was fuelled by the anti-Putin protests of 2011-12 (the largest protests in Moscow were attended by possibly as many as 150,000 people) and apparently also by the lynching of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011. Putin’s team seems to have come to the conclusion that in order to stay in power, the Kremlin must shield Russian society from the western virus of democracy, human rights and tolerance towards minority groups. The interests of the kleptocratic, oppressive regime have been equated with the survival of Russian statehood and the nation.

As a result, an institutionalized cognitive war was launched against the country’s own society. It was presented as the defensive war of a Russia besieged by enemies and attacked by destructive ideas of a deviant liberal democracy that is incompatible with true human nature. In fact, liberal democracy is equated with Nazism and Satanism, which Russia has been supposedly fighting since February 24th 2022. It is significant that there is no clear dividing line between the external and internal fronts of the struggle: it is taking place in Russia, in the West and in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

The Russian government has recognized that the kleptocratic, dictatorial model of government, which is based on the dominant role of the state in the economy, is far less competitive than a market economy and liberal democracy. In the more than three decades of Russian post-Soviet statehood, the Kremlin has failed to develop an attractive project of national identity. The inherently aggressive imperial project, driven by an inferiority complex and resentment towards the West due to Russia’s defeat in the Cold War, remains the sole ideological basis of Putinism. Even though, according to independent surveys, most Russians value prosperity over geopolitical ambitions, they seek compensation for their disenfranchisement and poverty in belonging to a powerful state that spreads fear in the world.

However, the main source of cognitive warfare is the peculiar mentality of key decision-makers descended from the Soviet KGB, led by Putin himself. These people sincerely believe in a systemic, civilizational and existential conflict with the West as the driving force of history. They regard “hostile” ideas as a deadly weapon that led to the collapse of the state in 1991. The justification for such a concept is provided by the Chekist current in Russian academia, which is generously supported by the state. It claims that the USSR collapsed because the West was successful in cognitive warfare through the use of the “fifth column”: Soviet dissidents and reformers from the Gorbachev era.

Producing the new man: the goals of cognitive warfare in domestic politics

In domestic politics, the primary goal is to paralyse popular resistance to a kleptocratic model of power in which citizens are objectified; the state is seen as the property of the ruler; the nomenklatura exploits state resources; and the everyday lives of most Russians are characterized by poverty and lawlessness. It is in the interests of those in power for the population to seek sources of collective identity only in the narratives offered by the Kremlin.

In the Kremlin’s zero-sum game, the better off the nation is, the weaker the authorities feel. Conversely, the more the people are kept in misery and terror, the greater the regime’s impunity. As the first decades of the 21st century have shown, an increase in prosperity sooner or later leads to the popularity of democratic slogans, while the skilful management of deep poverty and social transfers makes Putin’s war “necropolitics” successful.

As Putin’s rule imposes ever higher economic and demographic costs on the state and society, the Kremlin has embarked on a neo-totalitarian course in domestic policy. This differs from classic Soviet totalitarianism: there is no mass party or officially proclaimed state ideology, and the borders of the state remain open to the majority of the population. At the same time, there are several features that distinguish the current phase of Putinism from its earlier, authoritarian phase. These include an unprecedented level of state interference in the private lives of citizens (widespread surveillance, ostracism of entire social groups, e.g. “foreign agents” or LGBT+ communities), alongside the cult of leadership imposed by state propaganda and attempts at social engineering.

The new, ambitious goal of those in power is to create a new man, a homo putinicus (analogous to homo sovieticus), who is forged in the fire of war. He is to be the ideal soldier in cognitive warfare or in any classic military conflict, from which a new world order liberated from western domination is to emerge. The biological survival instinct (e.g. the unwillingness to die on the battlefield) is to be overridden by neo-totalitarian norms of dictatorship.

The main idea behind this project is to instil in Russians new mechanisms of thought and action, a new way of perceiving the world that will make them immune to facts and rational arguments. This is more important than inculcating certain beliefs. Long-known Soviet propaganda and manipulation techniques have been enriched by an arsenal of post-truths and tools of digital authoritarianism. These efforts are typified by calls from pro-Kremlin academic circles to revise educational programmes in terms of their alignment with state interests. They also call for the elimination of “Russophobic” critical thinking and fact-checking curricula, as well as the banning of academic programmes that are incompatible with traditional values (e.g. those that promote pacifism).

There is no classical ideology that fulfils the criteria of 20th century totalitarian projects, offering a coherent truth about the world and promising the public a bright future. Instead, the Kremlin aims to overwhelm Russians with strong negative emotions, which, together with the disenfranchisement of citizens, is meant to paralyse the will to resist and make people doubt the existence of truth. Blatant lies have become an attribute of strong power in Russia. As Ian Garner explains in his insightful book Z Generation: Into the heart of Russia’s fascist youth, the content disseminated by the Kremlin needs no formal institutions as it spreads like a virus via pop culture and the internet and is available anytime, anywhere.

The poisoned pill: Russians, what are they feeding you?

The Kremlin’s arsenal of cognitive warfare refers to several leitmotifs that are part of the zero-sum game paradigm. They are fundamentally confrontational, exclude the peaceful coexistence of different worldviews, and promote the overarching idea of Russia’s uniqueness and moral and civilizational superiority. The final point allegedly gives Moscow the right to pursue its security at the expense of the sovereignty and even the existence of other nations.

One leitmotif is messianism: Russia is portrayed as a force for good, eternally fighting against the absolute evil of Nazism, whose new incarnation is in fact liberal democracy. It is based on the mythology of the victorious fight against Nazism in the years 1941-45. In line with the Kremlin’s outlook, which is based on a cyclical view of history, this battle has been fought again in Ukraine from February 2022. This narrative is reinforced by the false history of a benign empire that has only ever fought defensive wars and, thanks to the attractiveness of Russian civilization, has only ever made peaceful conquests. The cultures, identities, languages and historical memories of the non-Russian nations and ethnicities living in the Russian Federation are being eradicated and their cultivation is increasingly delegitimized as an expression of extremism or separatism.

Another buzzword is the nativist notion of Russians’ innate attachment to certain ideas and cognitive practices that are independent of historical experience. It suggests an almost genetic difference between Russians and western societies. This is supposed to justify the lack of alternatives to the imperial identity and the autocratic model of government, which is presented as an organic, natural part of the country.

Thirdly, Kremlin narratives propagate the cult of violence as a natural and noble instrument for defending the nation from “cultural genocide”. A strong army and repressive apparatus have become synonymous with a strong state. The “traditional values” promulgated by the propaganda amount to an affirmation of toxic masculinity, chauvinism, misogyny and homophobia. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has meant that previously marginal content with clearly fascist undertones, such as the cult of death on the battlefield, aggressive militarism or hostility towards the “Other”, has become the focus of the discourse created by the authorities.

The entire state fights against an insidious enemy

Almost the entire institutional apparatus of the state is involved, albeit to varying degrees, in an offensive against political and ideological “sabotage”. Russian society has become the battlefield of this struggle. Due to their ideological firepower, the propagandist media and the education system are at the forefront of this battle. In 2023, spending on patriotic education with a strong militaristic and chauvinistic bias increased sixfold. The role of the Orthodox Church or the hundreds of Kremlin-sponsored GONGOs in spreading militaristic and openly fascist content can also hardly be overestimated. The most important weapons of attack include draconian laws that serve to isolate critics of the regime from the “healthy” part of society; censorship and digital surveillance; as well as historical propaganda.

Last but not least, the language of communication adopted by the state is intended to create confusion and promote a new anti-morality. Words become carriers of strong emotions and convey a false sense of a truly patriotic community. The black and white language of an anti-western sacred war leaves no room for nuance or doubt. It digs a deep chasm between individuals and groups, whose mutual perceptions are to be altered (“I do not just disagree with you, I am different from you too”).

The propaganda uses a kind of neuro-linguistic programming aimed at triggering the desired, unreflective, “patriotic” reaction from the audience through the use of carefully selected words and phrases (“Ukro-Nazis”, “Gayropa”, “our boys”, “God is with us”, “in truth there is strength”). Russians who are against the war have literally been rendered speechless: the language with which they could describe their emotions and reflections has been banned, and there is no space in which it can be used safely.

The fight against the virus of foreign ideologies is being waged by the secret services, using methods known from the Soviet era that are enriched with modern tools of digital authoritarianism. “Smart” cities are equipped with systems for tracking citizens and collecting petabytes of data to effectively format individual and collective behaviour. The internet and social media serve as spaces for organized attacks on the regime’s opponents.

Historical manipulation and lies erase the history of other nations from public discourse (e.g. the frequent message that every Rus’ was Russia) to justify aggressive policies towards neighbours. Lies are also used to whitewash the crimes of past Russian regimes and to maintain a belief in moral superiority over other nations. Narratives that do not conform to the official line are treated as hostile cognitive weapons. This manipulated history is accompanied by a manipulated political geography: Russia’s state borders are drawn arbitrarily and violently, under the guise of self-defence against NATO “encircling” Russia. Currently, Russia shares less than 13 per cent of its entire border with the Alliance, but the myth of the besieged fortress is still present in Russian society.

The enemies can defeat themselves. They only need to be persuaded to do so.

Now, the Kremlin knows that its army is neither the “second strongest in the world” (after the US military) nor would it succeed in a military confrontation with the West, which is far more powerful. In multi-domain warfare, defeating a superior adversary is impossible without physical aggression. It is enough to smash its spirit of struggle. The human mind is therefore the battleground here, and reflex control is cheap, safe and highly efficient. It does not require a costly military confrontation and guarantees impunity as the attack occurs in a grey area.

Following the dissolution of the USSR, the Soviet armed forces initiated a process of reflexive control, which was subsequently resumed by the army in the mid-1990s. As Boris Yeltsin spearheaded the country’s transition towards democratization, General Mikhail Yonov redefined reflexive control as a military method of influencing an adversary’s decision-making processes, ultimately leading them to undertake actions that would result in their defeat. In 1997, his successor, Colonel Sergei Komov, articulated the 11 fundamental principles underpinning reflexive control in a comprehensive list, which Russia has consistently employed against its adversaries ever since:

– Distract the enemy (by creating a real or fictitious threat);

– Overload them with (self-contradictory) information;

– Paralyse (i.e. instil fear in the enemy, stoke their fear of losing strategic interests);

– Exhaust (i.e. force the opponent into useless operations so that they use up their potential and energy);

– Dampen their vigilance (e.g. by repeatedly staging a fictitious threat);

– Divide them internally (stir up conflict);

– Mislead them by suggesting that what they see is not a real threat;

– Intimidate (i.e. punch above your weight);

– Provoke (i.e. force the enemy to take action that benefits you);

– Insinuate (offer ready-made interpretations, use your propaganda and disinformation);

– Discredit hostile governments (elites) in the eyes of their electorate.

Russian aggression is predicated on a complex interplay between two key factors: reflexive control and political sabotage. The same instruments were essential to facilitating the invasion of Ukraine. As early as the 2010s, the Kremlin formed pro-Russian circles in Crimea, which later gave rise to the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donbas republics. Moscow provided training and equipment to illegal sabotage groups on the Crimean Peninsula, who subsequently occupied Crimea in 2014 alongside the “little green men” (Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms). Concurrently with these political distraction activities, Kremlin propaganda intensified the disinformation campaign to legitimize Russian goals.

Thus, acting without delay and establishing a fait accompli was essential before the Ukrainians and the West could come to their senses and rectify the injustice. Four concrete steps were thus required. The first objective was to assume full control of the territory. On March 27th 2014, the Russian army seized the local parliament, forcing it to remove the incumbent government and install a pro-Russian administration. The second step was to submit a formal request to President Putin. Two days later, the newly established authorities in Crimea sent an official request to the Russian government, requesting its assistance in maintaining peace and security for the local population. The third step was the establishment of false legitimacy. On March 16th, a referendum on the reunification of Crimea with Russia was held under the supervision of the occupying Russian forces. The official figure of 96 per cent of the population voting in favour is, in fact, an illusion. The actual turnout was approximately 30 per cent, with only half of those who did vote choosing in favour of joining the federation. The process was concluded two days later, and Putin signed a treaty that incorporated Crimea into the Russian Federation. Finally, it was necessary to persuade the international community that the annexation was a fait accompli and would not be open to negotiation. Following the implementation of the aforementioned “Crimea is ours” operation, establishing a land corridor connecting Russia to the recently acquired peninsula was a logical subsequent step.

Moscow adopted a similar approach, enlisting individuals with a proven track record in the region to incite unrest in the Donbas. One of those dispatched to the Donbas was Igor Strelkov (Girkin), who had participated in the annexation of Crimea. In April 2014, his armed forces captured Sloviansk in the Donetsk region. The aggression was already underway. However, according to the principles of cognitive warfare, it was necessary to create confusion among the enemy forces initially. In June 2014, Moscow signalled the return of its troops to their bases, while in reality, it was preparing for war – the subsequent phase of the strategy involved discrediting the opposition. The separatists of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) alleged that the Ukrainian army had used chemical weapons in the course of its efforts to liberate the occupied cities in the Donbas. In the subsequent period, when the separatists led by Igor Strelkov shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine with a Russian Buk ground-to-air missile system, they attributed the incident to the Ukrainian army.

Before the invasion of the Donbas on August 24th 2014, Russia initially sought to disarm its opponent before luring the Kyiv government into negotiations with the Kremlin. Despite the meeting between Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin on August 26th (held on the sidelines of the joint summit of Ukraine, the European Union, and the CIS Customs Union), the separatists continued their assault. The following day, the separatists assumed control of the Donetsk region, which borders Russia. At this moment, intelligence gathered by the United States indicated that in fact, over a thousand Russian military personnel were engaged in combat alongside the separatist forces. In early September, the members of the Tripartite Contact Group (Ukraine, Russia, and representatives of the separatists) signed a ceasefire protocol. Therefore, Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine persisted for the following eight years. Upon realizing that a breakthrough was unattainable, the Kremlin commenced a comprehensive incursion on February 24th 2022.

Deceive, baffle, confuse

It has been confirmed by numerous countries whose elections have suffered from interference from the Kremlin that the optimal time for a cognitive operation is during an election campaign. In 2018, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee adopted a report that collated evidence of Russian interference in elections in consolidated democracies, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Nordic states, and the Baltic states. It also collected data from partially consolidated democracies, such as Ukraine, Georgia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria and Hungary. Later, in October 2023, the US State Department published a report outlining Russian interference in various election campaigns across multiple democracies. The report noted that between 2020 and 2022, Russia had interfered in eleven election campaigns in nine democracies and had made less explicit efforts in seventeen others. Additionally, the Russians endeavoured to exert influence over the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom in 2016 and sought to replicate their success a year later in the independence referendum in Catalonia, Spain.

The involvement of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group and operator of various so-called troll farms, in influencing the 2016 US election was revealed when he publicly acknowledged his role in November 2022. He stated, “We interfered, we are interfering, and we will continue to interfere.” Consequently, the fact that Russia had intervened in the US election was no longer a matter of speculation. The approach was meticulous, methodical and precise, executed in a manner that could be described as surgical. One of his comments on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, has been documented as stating, “We are aware of the most effective methods for achieving this.” The troll farms initially targeted Ukrainian and Russian audiences domestically (2013) before subsequently targeting US citizens in the lead-up to the 2016 US elections. The impact of these campaigns was significant, with Russian activity reaching 126 million Americans on Facebook and 20 million on Instagram, primarily conservative users.

By targeting specific societal biases via carefully crafted content, Russian agencies were able to exacerbate sociopolitical polarization effectively. Furthermore, they incited discord between the police and the Black Lives Matter movement; anti-immigrant communities and proponents of immigration reform; and the LGBTQ community and the far right. In this manner, they provided fuel for the fires of secessionist aspirations; intensified debates surrounding crimes against First Nations; and exacerbated disputes over the right to access firearms. The objective of Russian cognitive operations in the United States or Europe is not to support a specific political party but to sow the seeds of mutual distrust. The impact of reflexive control on western societies would not be so successful without campaigns designed to reduce the level of critical thinking within societies and widespread conspiracy theories. The Russian disinformation campaign thrived during the global spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19), with pro-Kremlin social media bots amplifying anti-vaccine narratives, eroding confidence in state institutions, and disseminating a demonic image of a liberal democratic deep state. This apparently involved a conspiracy by global Jewish, Masonic and liberal elites.

During the presidency of Donald Trump, social media accounts began disseminating content supporting anti-vaccine activism and the belief in reptilians and the flat Earth, while simultaneously propagating the Great Replacement theory. This concept is not marginal within the American and European far right, as over half (55 per cent) of American evangelicals hold this perspective. A 2021 survey conducted by an American polling group, the Public Religion Research Institute, revealed that 65 per cent of QAnon supporters adhere to the belief that Trump was engaged in a clandestine conflict against pedophiles and Satanists in the US government. At the same time, 60 per cent of Republicans also expressed the conviction that immigrants were infiltrating the country and replacing Americans culturally and ethnically.

Additionally, Russian propaganda channels were found to be engaged in the promotion of alter-globalist narratives, particularly in Europe, where anti-colonial and anti-western sentiments are prevalent. In the wake of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, numerous duplicate social media accounts were observed disseminating content in support of an anti-Ukrainian campaign. The dissemination of misinformation, including allegations of American Biolabs in Ukraine; the poisoning of Ukrainian food exported to the West; and calls for the handover of Ukrainian territory to Russia in the name of peace (with the slogan “It’s not our war”), has also been observed. Pacifists have been among the most vocal in calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities. However, their appeals, like those of Pope Francis, are directed not at the aggressor but at the victim.

To win the hearts and minds of the “Global South”, the Kremlin has revived the conspiracy theory of the “golden billion”, known since Soviet times. According to this theory, the most privileged western elites want to take control of the world’s limited resources, a large part of which is located on Russian territory. Not surprisingly, after the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has taken up this narrative again. In July 2022, during the grain crisis, he stated that “the golden billion is racist and neo-colonial, it divides nations into first and second categories, and the underlying globalist ideology, which is supposedly liberal, takes on the characteristics of totalitarianism,” according to the TASS agency report. Moreover, vis-a-vis the “Global South”, the Kremlin is using well-known anti-American sentiment. Therefore, Moscow has been stressing that it has never been a colonial state. But Russia’s imperial history was indeed a history of colonization. This is classic whataboutism, which consists of constantly shifting the blame from one’s guilt to one’s opponent. Here, the goal is to portray Russia as in no way inferior to western democracies. No less dangerous than whataboutism is false symmetry: a network of useful idiots, from quasi-journalists like Tucker Carlson to rappers and pop and rock stars, spread consistently pro-Russian narratives under the guise of asking objective questions or presenting both sides of the story.

What a magnificent catastrophe

As long as the West does not take the initiative and merely reacts to the Kremlin’s cognitive warfare, Russia will achieve victory without a shot being fired. In fact, for a quarter of a century, Moscow has made no secret of the fact that it is doing everything to destroy the West’s will to fight and then to bring about its self-destruction.

Although the West is losing this confrontation, it is still trying to strengthen the resilience of its societies. But more is required than the measures taken so far, impressive as they are. Meanwhile, increasingly influential efforts on social media are exposing Russian lies and manipulation, as well as campaigns to educate internet users. NGOs such as the EU DisinfoLab are working to build resilience. The EU’s External Action Service has set up the East StratCom Task Force, which has developed the EUvsDisinfo platform. Its mission is to anticipate threats and respond to Russian disinformation campaigns. NATO structures (Hybrid Threat Centres) are also involved in this kind of activity (the centre in Helsinki has been operational since 2017 and in Riga since 2014). The Baltic states are at the forefront of cognitive warfare against Russia, where the first groups of internet “elves” started fighting Russian “trolls” on social media. The “elves” are groups of cyber-activists who started their anti-disinformation work in Lithuania in 2014, and later, similar initiatives were established in thirteen other western countries.

The problem, however, is that those strategies need to be more proactive. The West needs to take the initiative and abandon its self-defeating strategy. First, it is still afraid that more proactive steps might stifle freedom of expression. This is one of the reasons why, in August 2022, amid an unprecedented wave of pro-war and anti-Ukrainian propaganda on social media, the US Department of Homeland Security was surprised by the wave of criticism and disbanded the Disinformation Management Council.

Second, the threat needs to be understood for what it is in reality. Russian interference is often seen as a somewhat limited disruption policy and too rarely – with the exception of NATO specialists and experts from the Eastern Flank states – as part of a sophisticated and coordinated military effort. After all, ignoring or underestimating the threat only encourages Russia to intervene more aggressively. The result is a big, beautiful catastrophe.

Maria Domańska is a senior fellow at the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW). She specialises in Russian domestic politics.

Agnieszka Bryc is an assistant professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. She is a former member of the board of the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW). She specialises in Russian foreign policy and Israeli security. 

disinformation, Russia, Russia's war against Ukarine