Countering Soviet and Russian Disinformation

Second in a series. First post at https://counteringdisinformation.substack.com/

The Centrality of Morality to Countering Disinformation

Truth is a sacred value.  Spreading vicious disinformation violates this sacred value and is a moral outrage.  Exposing those who systematically spread lies as a matter of state policy provokes revulsion in many, which goes far beyond a simple acknowledgement that a factual error needs to be corrected.

Countering disinformation derives much of its power from disgust at these contemptible acts.

This is what I argued in GEC Counter-Disinformation Dispatch #2: Three Ways to Counter Disinformation, issued on February 11, 2020. 

A core failing of the Soviet Union and post-communist Chekist Russia is their rejection of and contempt for “bourgeois morality,” which makes their embrace of disinformation natural and inevitable.  American journalist and historian David argues:

The Soviet Union was based on Marxism, a secular religion, and Lenin was the architect of its system of antimorality. For Lenin, as he said in his speech to the Komsomol on Oct. 2, 1920, morality was entirely subordinated to the class struggle. An action was right not in light of “extrahuman concepts” but only if it destroyed the old society and helped to build a new communist society.

The effect of this theory is felt today in post-Soviet Russia, where the legacy of communism’s blanket rejection of universal morality destroyed the hope for democratic reform.

… Russia today is noncommunist but no less lawless than under the Soviets.

… When the Soviet Union fell, Russia dismantled the socialist economy but didn’t restore the moral framework Lenin destroyed. The result was the rise of a criminal state no less dangerous than its predecessor—one that has engaged in assassinations, shot down civilian airliners, and even bombed apartment buildings to bring Mr. Putin to power.

Satter was the first American to publicly point to evidence that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had likely carried out the 1999 bombings of four apartment buildings in Russia, which were blamed on Chechen terrorists and became the catalyst for the second Russian war on Chechnya.  Putin’s tough talk as wartime prime minister transformed his image from that of a faceless bureaucrat to a hard man in charge, likely enabling him to win Russia’s presidential election in 2000. 

Satter later wrote:

The evidence is overwhelming that the apartment-house bombings in 1999 in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk, which provided a pretext for the second Chechen war and catapulted Putin into the presidency, were carried out by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Yet, to this day, an indifferent world has made little attempt to grasp the significance of what was the greatest political provocation since the burning of the Reichstag.

I have been trying to call attention to the facts behind the bombings since 1999. I consider this a moral obligation, because ignoring the fact that a man in charge of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal came to power through an act of terror is highly dangerous in itself.

It is worth reading Satter’s article in its entirety.  The post-communist Chekist/mafia system of rule, not limited by any moral constraints, led to Russia’s invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, an aggressive, imperialist course of action that unfortunately seems unlikely to have exhausted its potential in the eyes of Kremlin leaders.

Frame: Facts vs. Truth/Morality

In countering misinformation (mistaken information), the core issue is “what is true.” Important questions to explore are “why are people inclined to believe falsehoods” and “how can one provide convincing information and arguments that will change people’s minds?”

In countering state-sponsored disinformation, exposing those who deliberately spread lies on an industrial basis as a matter of state policy raises additional, much more serious, difficult issues.  It necessarily involves confronting a very uncomfortable set of truths about those spreading the false stories, in addition to judicious, dispassionate fact-checking.  As Satter says about the 1999 apartment bombings:

The greatest barrier to accepting the evidence that points to the FSB as the perpetrator of the bombings is sheer reluctance to believe that such a thing could be possible. By any standard, murdering hundreds of innocent and randomly chosen fellow citizens in order to hold on to power is an example of cynicism that cannot be comprehended in a normal human context. But it is fully consistent with the Communist inheritance of Russia and with the kind of country that Russia has become.

The same problems with incredulity apply when exposing and countering Russian disinformation and state-sponsored disinformation by theocratic Iran, communist China, or other regimes who feel little or no compunction about lying.  I have long thought that contemplating the cruel, pitiless, manipulative methods of the Kremlin is like, figuratively speaking, gazing at the head of Medusa.  And, one must do this without turning to stone. 

The moral disgust that is a normal human reaction when one understands the machinations of the Kremlin and its ideological cousins is the emotional basis on which countering Russian and similar state-sponsored disinformation rests.  It is not just a question of carefully elucidating facts; but of coming to grips with the disturbing fact that several very powerful states operate with virtually no discernible moral constraints.

When exposed, the unremitting Kremlin use of disinformation and other unscrupulous influence techniques shocks ordinary Western citizens.  In 2018, I was interviewed by Adam Ellick of The New York Times for Operation InfeKtion, a three-part video series he produced on Soviet and Russian disinformation.

At its initial screening in New York City, I was on a panel with Adam and other guests.  After the screening, one bewildered person in the audience asked plaintively, “why do they do this?”  To people who are unfamiliar with Kremlin disinformation, their systematic sponsorship of vicious, harmful lies on an industrial basis can be very difficult to believe.  The constant horror that the Russian military is currently raining down on innocent civilians in Ukraine, as they have done for years in often forgotten Syria, and as they did earlier in Afghanistan and many other countries before, reveals the Kremlin’s appalling lack of moral constraints.

Because Russian disinformation is so unscrupulous and shocking, rebutting and exposing it has a salutary educational effect on Western audiences who were previously unaware of such unprincipled machinations.  Thus, in addition to refuting specific false claims, countering Russian disinformation also serves to educate and disillusion those with little or no prior knowledge of these vile state actions.

Russia, China, and Iran were listed as the three main countries that attempted to influence or interfere in U.S. elections in a December 2022 Intelligence Community Assessment on “Foreign Threats to the 2022 U.S. Elections,” portions of which were declassified in December 2023.  Cuba is also mentioned as having engaged in similar efforts that were “smaller in scale and more narrowly targeted.”

I am most familiar with Russian and Soviet attempts to use disinformation, propaganda, and other information operations to influence perceptions and decisions in other countries.

Soviet/Russian Goals in Information Influence Operations

I believe it is unlikely that the broad goals of current-day Russian disinformation have changed significantly from the Soviet era.  According to KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officer’s Handbook, an authoritative KGB dictionary of intelligence and counter-intelligence terms edited by former KGB foreign intelligence chief archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, the goals of Soviet active measures (the KGB term for covert influence operations, including disinformation) were to: 1) “exert influence on the adversary” and 2) “weaken his political, economic, scientific, and technical and military positions.”  (KGB Lexicon, p. 111)

There is little reason to believe today’s Kremlin leaders, with their KGB backgrounds, have not instructed Russia’s intelligence services to pursue the exact same goals, which are very broad and, from the Kremlin’s point of view, presumably uncontroversial.

Moreover, since 2000, Russia has been ruled by a former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, who was trained in secret police methods, which include the regular use of disinformation and covert influence operations.  One of the first things that Putin did after gaining power was to seize control of the independent media that had sprung up in Russia after the collapse of communism.

Although Soviet Russia used disinformation from its earliest years in power, the modern era in Soviet/Russian disinformation and covert influence operations began in 1959, when a new department for coordinating disinformation and covert influence operations was formed in the KGB’s foreign intelligence service.  This department grew rapidly and by the 1980s, Soviet political intelligence operatives serving in foreign countries were instructed to spend at least 25% of their time on covert influence operations (as opposed to espionage), according to high-level Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky in his 1991 book with British historian Christopher Andrew, Instructions from the Centre: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations, 1975-1985 (p. 3).   

Gordievsky spied for the United Kingdom for years before he defected in 1985 and passed them a number of top secret KGB documents, some of which are published in his book.  One of them was the KGB work plan for 1984 which called for conducting “active measures,” including disinformation, aimed at, inter alia:

• Deepening disagreements inside NATO.

• Exacerbating contradictions between the USA, Western Europe, and Japan.

• Stimulating further development of the anti-war and anti-missile movements in the West, involving in them influential political and public figures and broad strata of the population, and encouraging these movements to take more decisive and coordinated action.

• Assisting in consolidating and stepping up the activity of anti-imperialist forces in Asian, African, and Latin American countries, and deepening contradictions between these countries and the developed capitalist states.

• Exposing and neutralizing the subversive operations of Western special [intelligence] services and the adversary’s centers for ideological sabotage, nationalists, Zionists, and other anti-Soviet organizations abroad.

• Countering the USA’s attempts to curtail commercial, economic, and scientific contacts between developed capitalist states and the Soviet Union, and helping to create favorable conditions for concluding treaties and agreements in the USSR’s favor in the field of foreign trade, international economic cooperation, currency and credit relations and scientific and technological exchange, and also for acquiring the latest foreign equipment and technology.

• Countering the military and political rapprochement between the PRC and the USA and other imperialist powers on an anti-Soviet basis

• Prompting the Chinese leadership to improve Sino-Soviet relations.

• Further consolidation of the anti-imperialist stance of the Non-Aligned Movement; exerting influence in our favor on the stance of the Socialist International and clerical organizations on the questions of war and peace and other key contemporary problems.

Adjusting for changes in the international environment, current Russian goals for influencing others likely largely parallel these Soviet goals of 40 years ago.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the intelligence entity supervising covert influence operations was expanded further, becoming a directorate in what is now the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR.  Russian military intelligence, commonly known as the GRU, also conducts disinformation and hostile information operations.  State-run international media RT (formerly Russia Today), Sputnik, which was formed from Voice of Russia (formerly Radio Moscow) and Russian Information Agency (RIA) Novosti, and other entities circulate disinformation and propaganda at Kremlin direction.

The Soviet/Russian Approach to Covert Influence Operations

The basic approach Russia takes in these operations was described by Ladislav Bittman, the former deputy chief of the Czechoslovak foreign intelligence service’s special operations department, which was responsible for disinformation and covert information influence operations and which was supervised closely by the KGB.  Bittman defected to the United States in 1968.  Four years later, he wrote a book about disinformation operations called The Deception Game.  In it, he wrote:

Our main objective was to note and dissect all the enemy’s weaknesses and sensitive or vulnerable spots and to analyze his failures and mistakes in order to exploit them.  The formulation of special operations might remind one of a doctor who, in treating the patient entrusted to his care, prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.  (p. 124)

Just before the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva in 1985, a reporter for United Press International asked Bittman how he would construct a disinformation campaign if the summit failed to reach an agreement.  He told the reporter:

If I were still in the business, I would carefully analyze the American and European press, particularly any comments about President Reagan’s unwillingness to cooperate (at the summit), or about splits within the administration.

I would compose a series of phony messages, including some verifiable, true information, and add a few dramatic statements “proving” that the U.S. president came to the summit with a plan that it should not succeed.

I would start it in the European press, using two or three journalists with respected names, who would write stories that would fit their previous bias. The journalists would do some of their own research and background and so they would able to say, quite properly, that they did their own reporting. It would be written in their own style. 

Russia uses the same methods today, 56 years after Bittman defected.  Their current techniques, which have become more sophisticated, are described in the authoritative November 7, 2023 U.S. State Department Media Note titled, “The Kremlin’s Efforts to Covertly Spread Disinformation in Latin America.”  It states:

The Russian government is currently financing an on-going, well-funded disinformation campaign across Latin America. The Kremlin’s campaign plans to leverage developed media contacts in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, among other countries in Latin America, in order to carry out an information manipulation campaign ….  The Kremlin’s ultimate goal appears to be to “launder” [to disguise the origins of] its propaganda and disinformation through local media in a way that feels organic to Latin American audiences to undermine support for Ukraine and propagate anti-U.S. and anti-NATO sentiment.

[The Kremlin] information manipulation campaign targeting Latin America … aims to promote Russia’s strategic interests in the region … by overtly and covertly coopting local media and influencers to spread disinformation and propaganda. These are “influence-for-hire” firms with deep technical capability, experience in exploiting open information environments, and a history of proliferating disinformation and propaganda to further Russia’s foreign influence objectives.

… Moscow seeds original stories or amplifies preexisting popular or divisive discourse using a network of [Russian] state media [RT, Sputnik, and TASS], proxy, and social media influence actors and then intensifies that content to further penetrate the Western information environment. These activities can include disseminating false content and amplifying information perceived as beneficial to Russian influence efforts or conspiracy theories.

The Media Note describes how the media campaigns are run:

• A cultivated group of editorial staff would be organized in a Latin American country, most likely in Chile, with several local individuals and representatives – journalists and public opinion leaders – of various countries in the region.

• A team in Russia would then create content and send the material to the editorial staff in Latin America for review, editing, and ultimately publication in local mass media. In effect, this information laundering process would see pro-Kremlin content created in Russia get “localized” by the curated Latin American staff and published in Latin American media to appear organic.

• … The role of Moscow-based linguistics editors proficient in the Spanish language is integral to the campaign. The editors often use aliases to obfuscate their true identities to ensure the information is laundered in a way that feels organic to the target audience.

• [Pro-Kremlin journalist Oleg] Yasinskiy maintains and leverages a vast network of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking journalists and media outlets to propagate pro-Russian messages ….

• While the network’s operations are primarily done in concert with Spanish-language outlets Pressenza and El Ciudadano, a broader network of media resources is available to the group to further amplify information.

• … The themes and success metrics for the campaigns were developed in conjunction with and at the direction of the Russian government ….

• … The … themes primarily focus on attempting to persuade Latin American audiences that Russia’s war against Ukraine is just and that they can unite with Russia to defeat neocolonialism.

• These themes align with Russia’s broader false narrative that it is a champion against neocolonialization, when in reality it is engaged in neocolonialism and neo-imperialism in its war against Ukraine and its resource extraction in Africa.

• There are coordinated efforts between Russian embassies in Latin America and state-funded media outlets to increase pro-Kremlin messaging, spread anti-U.S. narratives, and develop partnerships among Russian state media, local media outlets and radio stations, perceived pro-Moscow third-country embassies in the region, and local journalists.

If the Kremlin is undertaking such a systematic effort in faraway Latin America, I think we can safely assume that it is undertaking similar efforts in countries closer to Russia, which have traditionally been of more or similar concern to the Kremlin, including South and Central Asia, the Middle East, and North and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Russians are, unfortunately, very good at deceiving and influencing others.  They are very professional and not limited by any moral considerations.  In addition, Russia has been an empire for centuries.  Kremlin rulers have many years of experience in ruling and manipulating other countries and peoples, including the 21 different republics, which were originally separate nation-states, that were conquered and absorbed into the Russian Empire and are now part of the Russian Federation, including Bashkortostan (the site of protests for minority rights in January 2024), Buryatia, Chechnya (the site of two brutal wars between 1994 and 2000), Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kalmykia, Karelia (conquered from Finland in 1940), Mari El, Mordovia, Yakutia or the Republic of Sakha (which is only slightly smaller than India and was also the site of unrest in January 2024), Tatarstan, Tuva, and others.  In addition, Crimea, whose inhabitants were expelled en masse to Siberia by Stalin in 1944, was unlawfully annexed by Russia in 2014, and Putin announced in 2023 that Russia had annexed areas in and around four Ukrainian oblasts—Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.  As Putin said in 2016, “the borders of Russia do not end,” quickly adding “that was a joke.”

A Detailed Look at Russian Propaganda Themes in Lithuania

The Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—were forcibly absorbed into the Soviet Union from 1940 until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 (with the exception of their occupation by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944), although the United States never recognized these forced annexations as legitimate.  In 2015, I traveled to Lithuania while working to counter disinformation at the U.S. Department of State.  The U.S. embassy in Vilnius kindly arranged for me to receive a briefing from the head of the Strategic Communication Department of the Lithuanian Armed Forces.  He explained the main propaganda themes that the Soviets were circulating to try to influence Lithuanian audiences and the themes they spread about Lithuania to influence other audiences.  These themes illustrate the basic Russian approach used in information influence operations, which they undoubtedly apply to other countries.

The Lithuanians listed 10 subject areas of Russia information operations regarding Lithuania:

• NATO

• Lithuania’s membership in NATO

• Lithuania’s membership in the European Union, the EU

• The history of Lithuania

• Lithuania’s energy sector

• The Lithuanian Armed Forces

• Lithuanian culture

• Lithuanian ethnic minorities

• The Lithuanian presidency, and

• Lithuanian internal and foreign affairs.

Russian influence operations professionals designed different themes for each target audience, according to the Lithuanian experts. For example, for the target audience in the West, some of the most prominent themes were:

• Culturally, Lithuania is not part of the West

• Lithuania does not share Western values

• Lithuania is an unreliable partner

• Lithuania is populated by nationalists and fascists

• Lithuania oppresses its ethnic minorities

• Lithuania cannot and should not be an independent state

• Lithuania is a “puppet” of Washington, without its own agenda

• Lithuania’s mission is to increase “Russophobia” [fear of Russia] internationally and provoke conflicts, which may spiral out of control.

The goals of Russian information operations aimed at the West, as the Lithuanian experts saw it, were that:

• NATO and the EU will distrust Lithuania and be less inclined to cooperate with it, and

• NATO and the EU will not come to the support of Lithuania in the event of an emergency.

For target audiences within Lithuania, these experts said that some of the main themes were:

• Lithuania cannot manage its affairs; all its projects fail

• The West is “evil”

• NATO cannot guarantee Lithuania’s security; it will not come to Lithuania’s help

• Being close to Russia in the past brought lots of advantages to Lithuania

• Russia is not conducting hostile information operations in Lithuania

• Lithuania and Russia share a common culture and history

• If Lithuania angers Russia, this could have dire consequences, including the use of military force, which could include nuclear weapons.

The goals of these Russian information operations aimed at target audiences in Lithuania, as the Lithuanian experts saw it, were that:

• Lithuanian citizens will not trust the Lithuanian government

• Lithuanians will distrust NATO and the EU

• Lithuanians will not see a threat from Russia

• The Lithuanian will to resist Russian aggression will decrease.

These experts said the Kremlin divided the Lithuanian target audience into smaller target audiences, each with their own tailored themes.  It saw those target audiences as:

• The older generation (who lived in the USSR)

• The younger generation (who do not remember the USSR)

• Ethnic Lithuanians

• The Russian-speaking community in Lithuania

• The Polish community in Lithuania

• The Jewish community in Lithuania

• Socially vulnerable groups

• Lithuanian entrepreneurs (especially if their business is oriented toward Russia)

• Lithuanians who are Orthodox Christians, the same religion that is dominant in Russia.

This is a very comprehensive set of themes and target audiences.  Russian influence professionals have very likely elaborated a similarly extensive and nuanced set of themes for each country they target. 

For up-to-date analysis on propaganda and disinformation in the Baltic countries, Poland, Georgia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, see the Lithuanian NGO Debunk.org, a disinformation analysis center that also runs educational media literacy campaigns. It has a website in English, Lithuanian, Polish Russian, and Serbian.

Exposing not only specific lies but also the goals, methods, and history of Soviet/Russian disinformation helps to convince people that Russia and its statements cannot be trusted, which is why they often try to hide disguise their messages as local opinions.

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Next time, I will examine disinformation aimed at policymakers.