OPINION: Disinformation and propaganda in Putin's Ukraine war

Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine has made it clear that the Kremlin's false claims are not confined to propaganda directly from Moscow. Russian disinformation and propaganda have a way of flowing downstream and reaching secondary institutions even in the western media. Russian propaganda and disinformation flow to media organizations in the free world, resulting in news organizations reporting inaccurate and false information. Some of these stories are designed to promote a narrative that serves the Kremlin's interest while others are designed to create confusion and undermine the the free world's confidence in its own institutions.  

Recent examples of stories that were potentially underreported were the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and the origin of the Wuhan virus. Both stories were quickly limited to specific angles that carried a particular narrative, and conservative or independent media organizations that challenged the original narrative quickly came under fire by the mainstream media. While some "fact-checking" agencies are honest others may have a political agenda. This is a fact that cannot and should not be overlooked. Finally, we must remember that during wartime the first casualty is usually the truth.

To better understand how Russian propaganda finds space in western media we must first need to define some key terms.

The Oxford Dictionary defines the word "misinformation" as the act of giving wrong information about something, and “disinformation” as false information that is given deliberately.

Ladislav Bittman, a former intelligence agent of the StB, explains the meaning of disinformation in his book "The KGB.”

“A false message is carefully constructed, filtered into an adversary's communication system to deceive the decision-making elite, or the public itself. Disinformation can be political, economic, military, or even scientific in nature. To be successful it must correspond at least partially to reality or to generally accepted opinions..."

According to Bittman, disinformation needs three primary actors: the operator who performs the task of disinformation; the adversary, which can be a foreign state or private citizens; and the unwitting agent who is unaware of his role and is exploited by the operator as a means of attacking the adversary.

Following Bittman, it must be understood that the role of official Russian channels such as Russia Today, Sputnik (directly controlled by the Kremlin), or Inna Afinogenova of RT's "Ahí les va" (There they go) are not necessarily disseminators of disinformation. They alternate Russian propaganda and even carry out conventional journalistic activities.

Disinformation occurs when some Western media transmits information that Russian intelligence wanted to spread.

The means of executing Russian disinformation have existed since the Soviet Union and are varied. Bittman cites several examples, such as forging false documents; spreading rumors; co-opting influential people; founding front organizations, etc.

One example cited by this author is the 1980 operation in which Soviet agents forged documents to link Zbigniew Brzezinski to racist policies and later circulated the forged documents anonymously throughout the Western press and also among African diplomats.

Another strategy used is the creation of front organizations, supposedly independent, which in reality are part of the Russian propaganda apparatus. Among those organizations created by the Soviets, the World Federation of Trade Unions, the International Union of Students and the World Peace Council stand out.

The concepts and former operations of the KGB are useful in understanding how Putin's Russia operates today. The power structures inside and outside Russia did not die out with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, Russia is a regime with a democratic facade, but with many of the same power structures of the Soviet Union's communist era. Vladimir Putin himself, who has ruled for more than 20 years, was a former high level KGB official whose geopolitical guru was Alexander Dugin, the son of a Soviet military intelligence colonel.

Russian geopolitics is extremely complex and is composed of different ideologies, but we could characterize it by its visceral anti-Americanism and its struggle against American hegemony in the world.

Russia is linked to sectors as antagonistic as the Latin American extreme left and sectors of the European extreme right. It has allies in the Islamic world and in the atheistic and materialistic Chinese Communist Party. As for its ideological essence, Putin's geopolitics mixes Russian nationalism, neo-Bolshevism, and Orthodox Christianity. Therefore, the decisions of the Russian government should not be understood from an ideological point of view, but through the vision of a more traditional "Realpolitik" i.e.: which decision will help to increase Russia's power?

This is the big question to be asked and not the understanding of ideologies. Adding to this, we should not forget that the main power group ruling the country comes from the FSB (now KGB) intelligence system itself along with Putin's allied oligarchs.

Disinformation and democracy

Russian disinformation has gained space in a context of a crisis of legitimacy of a large number of newspapers in free countries that have become overly aligned with the agenda of the Democratic Party and the globalists, leaving aside the opinion and values of a considerable part of Americans, as well as the rest of the Western world.

In this war, Russia has disseminated information that contains some element of truth, wrapped in lies or even pure propaganda and disinformation.

Some examples of Russian disinformation are:

NATO is expanding and threatens Russian sovereignty; therefore, Russia can annex Ukraine.

In fact, NATO has been expanding in Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the expansion was made by membership applications from these countries and not by military annexation. Ukraine, for its part, does not want to be part of the Russian sphere of influence and its people seek an ever-closer relationship with the European Union, through political and economic alliances.

Russia is denazifying Ukraine

The notion of Nazism is widely rejected in the West because of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by this nefarious ideology, and the idea of fighting Nazism is always popular and in theory, would generate support both in Russia and abroad. However, neo-Nazi ideas in Ukraine are far from popular. The Ukrainian government is much closer to the values of liberal and Western democracy than to a set of Nazi principles that represent only a tiny and almost irrelevant portion of the population.

This strategy of calling the opponent a "Nazi" also occurs within the West itself. In general, it is much more a way of disqualifying and dehumanizing a group than an accurate description of reality. Many sectors of the Western left often use this same strategy of labeling political groups they find undesirable with these defamatory labels such as "fascist" or "Nazi". And in this way, they legitimize violence and censorship against these groups, even if they are not that. Russian disinformation uses this same technique to give legitimacy to their war.

Ukraine must be demilitarized

In 1994, Ukraine had the third-largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. The Budapest Memorandum recognized Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for the country giving up its nuclear weapons, which has left Ukraine in a much more vulnerable position since there is no threat of mutually assured destruction. Therefore, the demilitarization of Ukraine should not even happen and it makes no sense for Russia to use this argument. On the contrary, the outbreak of war amidst Russia's illegal invasion, it is clear that the country must have its own military.

The United States has 'biolabs'

This issue of "Biolabs" is one of the most recent controversies. Fox News host Tucker Carlson explained in a lengthy Fox News report the existence of U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine, and some verification agencies denied it.

The debate about the existence or not of biological research laboratories is more of a semantic debate about what a "biolab" means. If we take the expression to mean a bioweapons laboratory, this statement is false. But if we consider "biolabs" as a laboratory in which medical research is carried out, then they do exist.

It cannot be imputed an alleged perfidious use by the United States when in fact there was also U.S. funding for research against diseases such as hepatitis, as Giorgi Khatelishvili (who worked in the Georgian Ministry of Health) said in an interview with the BBC.

Therefore, the existence of a medical research laboratory does not mean that it will be used for the manufacture of biological weapons.

During her testimony before Congress, Victoria Nuland, Secretary of State for International Affairs said, "Ukraine has facilities for biological research, in fact, we are concerned that Russian troops may be trying to control them, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of these materials from falling into the hands of the Russians...." Nuland's statement contradicts USA Today's Fact Check statement which states categorically, "No biological laboratories operate in Ukraine."

In today's information space is useful to understand that Russian propaganda is not necessarily aimed at promoting Russian world views or policies, but rather at creating chaos and confusion as a means to erode confidence in western institutions while distorting events to serve political purposes. Today we must be careful with the information we are bombarded with from all sides and understand that while it is difficult to sift through the oversaturated media environment we have a responsibility to question our ideological preconceptions in order to find the truth, which in many cases seem to have shifted from media outlets to individuals.