Covert (Black) Propaganda: Past and Present
Soviet and Russian Practices
There were three basic forms of Soviet Bloc active measures: disinformation, black propaganda, and the use of agents of influence, according to Ladislav Bittman, as described in his 1972 book The Deception Game and in his 1971 testimony before the U.S. Congress under the name Lawrence Britt. Bittman was deputy head of the “special operations” or active measures [the KGB term for covert influence operations] department of the Czechoslovak security and intelligence service, the StB, from 1964 to 1966. He requested U.S. political asylum in 1968.
White, Black, and Gray Propaganda
During World War II, the British government classified propaganda into three types, according to how it was attributed:
During World War II, the British government classified propaganda into three types, according to how it was attributed:
White propaganda was accurately attributed, or overt.
Black propaganda was falsely attributed, or covert.
Gray propaganda either gave “no clear indication of its origin” (unattributed) or its origin was falsely disguised but not as convincingly as black propaganda (semi-covert).
This has been a standard way to describe propaganda ever since. See The Black Art: British Clandestine Psychological Warfare Against the Third Reich by Lee Richards for more details.
In this scheme, RT (known as Russia Today from 2005 to 2009) is white propaganda because it states on its website that it is “an autonomous, non-profit organization that is publicly financed from the budget of the Russian Federation.” However, by adopting the name RT, it made its connection with the Russian government less obvious to casual observers.
During the Cold War, the KGB and Soviet Bloc intelligence services produced covert (black) propaganda. So did the Soviet Novosti (“News” in Russian) press agency, which was ostensibly a Soviet non-governmental organization. Its founding statute stated that it was “an information agency of Soviet public organizations,” including, “the Union of Journalists of the U.S.S.R., the Union of Writers of the U.S.S.R., the Union of Soviet Societies of Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and the U.S.S.R. Znanie (Knowledge) Society.” This cover story was somewhat implausible given the nature of the Soviet system and the fact that Novosti was a direct descendant of the Soviet Information Bureau (Sovinformburo), a government agency formed in 1941, but it was a useful fiction.
It served Soviet purposes to claim that the Soviet government had no control over Novosti (also known as APN) especially when it ran disinformation, as it regularly did. Soviet diplomats could and did claim they had no control over this supposedly non-governmental organization. But when the U.S. government held a series of “Information Talks” with the Soviet government in the late 1980s, the Soviet delegation was headed by Valentin Falin, then-head of Novosti, despite the fact that it was allegedly a non-governmental organization.
Novosti and KGB Team Up to Produce Covert Media Placements
Novosti housed a little-known special section of some 50 KGB officers who worked producing covert propaganda under the aegis of Novosti, as revealed in Congressional testimony in 1982. (“Soviet Active Measures: Hearings before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of Representatives, 97th Congress, July 13, 14, 1982, p. 10.)
Sergei Kondrashev, who headed the KGB’s active measures and disinformation Service A in the 1960s, confirmed the KGB-Novosti relationship in conversations with retired CIA counterintelligence expert Tennent “Pete” Bagley after the Soviet Union collapsed, as Bagley recorded after Kondrashev died in his 2013 book Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief. According to Bagley, Kondrashev said Novosti:
was in effect an integral part of the KGB. It even had a department with a double designation, simultaneously part of Novosti and part of Service A, with its people paid on Novosti’s budget but given bonuses by Service A. Although about half of this department of some two dozen were (cleared) Novosti journalists, the KGB assigned officers to it just as it did to any other part of the FCD [First Chief Directorate, i.e., foreign intelligence]. [The first head of Service A Ivan] Agayants and Kondrashev sent to head it some of the KGB’s most effective officers …. Service A handed journalists in this department subjects and themes, the writers researched and drafted the articles and sent them to Kondrashev or his deputy, who would add editorial comments like “develop this point in more detail” or ‘add x or y item. Once approved, the article would either be issued by Novosti or sent to a [KGB] geographic department to be dispatched to [KGB] residencies abroad known to have the potential for planting it. (Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief, pp. 175-6)
Kondrashev recalled that about 25 KGB officers were assigned to Novosti, which most likely was the number when Kondrashev served in KGB Service A in the 1960s. By the time of the 1982 Congressional testimony, the numbers had roughly doubled.
Well-known Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner worked for this Novosti department early in his career, although he did not realize its KGB connection at the time. Pozner later told PBS:
When I started working at Novosty Press agency I worked in a department that was called the Department of Political Publications. It was my first job as quote, unquote a journalist. I was given articles to edit, articles written in Russian, addressed to readers as I recall, some in Latin America, some in India. Frankly I found it rather boring. … I really never knew where that was published and, I didn't really think about it. ... I worked there for about two and a half years. I was offered a job in a magazine which I was much more interested in doing. About three weeks after I'd left that place, I got a notice from the military recruitment center of the region where I lived…. The lady who was there asked me if I'd worked for the KGB. I said, “Of course not.” And she said, “What are you getting so flustered about?” I said, “Well because why would you ask me that?” She said, “Because your military dossier was sent to us by the KGB.” It was only then that I realized that this department was actually a KGB department. That was part of the Novosty Press I knew nothing about that. Maybe some of the people working in that department did know, but I was quite young and quite naïve, and that's when I began to understand that I'd been working in a department that produced disinformation. Later on I asked a few questions and it turned out to be true. … [The work consisted of] Inserting articles that were then signed by local journalists who were ready to put their name to these articles. Which obviously then played a role in the local political struggles going on, I guess.
In September 1991, after the abortive coup in August, the media in the Soviet Union was quite free. The activities of Novosti's department of political publications were described in the Moscow newspaper Kuranty on September 19, 1991. The article provides an inside look at how the active measures specialists working there on assignment from KGB's Service A devised arguments and assembled information for covert media placements, which were then published in an unattributed or falsely attributed fashion throughout the world:
The purposes of the part-time craftsmen, concentrated in the main editorial offices for political publications and some other structures, was to conduct “black propaganda:” to prepare articles, books, brochures, or simply argumentation in which, to the extent possible, the "Soviet ears" [identifying features] would be invisible. ... it is not always convenient, for instance, to defend the interests of Kremlin policy with the help of “opuses” by official authors.... It is another matter if an independent newspaper or a magazine, published in faraway foreign cities and towns, publishes an article written from an entirely neutral position, using generalized facts found in Western publications, and on top of it is signed by a local journalist or public figure.
...What is important is that these objectivist materials pushed the same ideas directed at Western politicians and ordinary folks: to boycott the Soviet market means to prolong unemployment; American grain sent to the starving people of Africa is poisoned by pesticides; the Soviets really do not have a superiority in tanks and missiles, and so on. The effect of the action depends, of course, not only on the quality and smartness of arguments prepared in the Western style, but also on where the unrenowned opus is published and under whose signature.
...the disinformation operation ... does not end with the publication of a skillfully planted scholastic thesis. The highest aerobatics is to quote an already planted "duck" in - this time - quite official propaganda: See, even the West European press is indignant over the machinations of the wily Uncle Sam. So, it is a sacred task for us to stop these wily efforts.
Soviet Covert Media Placements in Nigeria, 1985-1987
In the 30-month period from mid-1985 to the end of 1987, the U.S. Information Service (USIS) post in Lagos recorded more than 1,250 articles that it considered to contain misinformation or disinformation, which had been written by Soviet or Soviet-bloc press agencies and placed in the Nigerian press. Novosti was the source for most of these articles. The vast majority of the placements – more than 90 percent – were unattributed or falsely attributed. Novosti was spreading black propaganda on an industrial scale.
USIS Lagos’ report was printed in full the 1988 U.S. Information Agency report to Congress, Soviet Active Measures in the Era of Glasnost, which I prepared, on pages 61-70. USIS Lagos Public Affairs Officer Bruce Koch had briefed me on their very diligent activities to track covert Soviet propaganda in an earlier visit to Washington and I thought it was very important to include the insights their very thorough work uncovered in the report to Congress. Indeed, their work is still relevant today. Some excerpts from their report:
The Nigerian press is usually rather derelict in identifying the affiliations of the authors of articles it publishes. In addition, the Novosti press agency distributes its articles on plain, non-letterhead paper, making proper attribution more difficult. Even those articles in the Nigerian press credited to authors with Soviet-sounding names are usually not identified as coming from Novosti. Only official speeches, communiques of the Soviet government, messages from the Supreme Soviet and the like are released by Novosti on letterhead paper. The vast majority, certainly over 90 percent, of the 1,250 plus placements containing mis- or disinformation that are analyzed in this chapter appeared in unattributed [or falsely attributed] form.
This deliberate effort at hiding the source of the materials is abetted by a large, active stable of Nigerian “writers” who lend their names to Novosti-provided material, making these articles appear to be of local, rather than Soviet, origin. According to a recent article in a local newsmagazine, citing a source in the Soviet Embassy Information Office, these writers are paid a “bonus” each time one of their stories appears.
It is not difficult to spot such Novosti material. When it is published without a specific byline but rather attributed to a correspondent, a special correspondent, diplomatic correspondent or foreign correspondent, its style is a dead give-away. When the articles are published over Nigerian names, again the style makes the origin clear. In all cases where an experienced USIS officer pegged the Nigerian as a Novosti cat’s paw [dupe], this was eventually corroborated by public attribution in one or more Nigerian newspapers, but even inexperienced individuals can soon spot the characteristic Novosti style. In addition, the USIS campaign to have Nigerian editors correctly identify authors of feature stories and opinion pieces must be given at least partial credit for the public identification of 32 Novosti “writers” by Nigerian newspapers.
The themes in the falsely attributed or unattributed Novosti articles were very strongly anti-American, containing many false charges. USIS Lagos reported:
Twenty of the 28 Novosti articles on Afghanistan alleged involvement by CIA mercenaries, U.S. manufacture of pens and toys that explode and maim children and other innocents, Israeli collusion in aiding the mujahadin “bandits” and/or mujahadin use of chemical weapons supplied by the U.S. On the subject of arms control, Novosti accounted for 171 placements during the period from April 1, 1986 to March 31, 1987. These 171 articles implied [falsely] that Pershing missiles were stationed in Pakistan; alleged U.S. chemical weapons and Tomahawk missiles being used by South African forces; charged that an “ethnic weapon” was being co-produced by the Israelis, South Africans and the United States; claimed that Somalia was being used as a nuclear dumping site by the United States; claimed that Third World debt was equal to and caused by U.S. defense spending and that disarmament would naturally free more funds to aid developing countries; and, most recently, after the signing of the INF treaty, implied that U.S. missiles removed from Europe would be stationed in Africa and pointed at African countries.
Third world debt, the IMF, the World Bank, MNCs [multinational corporations], and U.S. development aid are all targets of Soviet active measures. … Over and over, the Soviet canard is that the United States controls and manipulates the IMF and the World Bank in order to control and manipulate the Third World, and keep it in perpetual debt, totally dependent on the West.
In Soviet-bloc press agency accounts, debts, including Nigeria’s, to Western nations or banks are depicted as “phony;” the West, in particular the United States, controls Third World oil wealth through MNCs [multinational corporations]; MNCs threaten the environments of Third World countries, unfairly exploit their natural resources, sell them inferior or even poisonous goods. These companies are also portrayed as the main prop of racist South Africa; U.S. development and humanitarian aid is designed to keep Third World countries dependent on the West; U.S. aid is used as blackmail; SDI is being financed solely at the expense of African development and the U.S. arms buildup is the main cause of Third World debt; even African corruption is caused by Western capitalist mores. All these themes repeatedly issue forth from the Novosti gristmill.
As a natural point of focus, the issues surrounding Southern Africa continue to receive a great deal of Novosti attention. Data compiled through April 1986 showed that Novosti accounted for about 52 percent of the anti-American articles appearing in Nigerian newspapers on this subject. The accusations were that the United States is the main supplier of arms to South Africa, that the AFL-CIO attempts to suborn South African black unions, that the United States and South Africa control 90 percent of Namibia’s minerals, that the U.S. uses MNCs to keep Namibia in bondage, that a secret CIA report confirmed joint Israeli, South African and U.S. nuclear testing, and that the U.S. uses South African radio stations to broadcast misinformation to Zimbabwe. As late as 1986, Novosti was still spreading disinformation about former U.S. ambassador to Ghana and Nigeria Smith’s alleged CIA plot to overthrow the Rawlings government in Ghana.
The report continued:
One other group of Nigerians who collaborate with the bloc news agencies are those who are self-professed “comrades” or home-grown radicals. Many in this “red/rad” group write regularly as free lancers, and many invariably follow the [Soviet] bloc line on international affairs. Frequently, but not always, it is clearly evident in their written articles that they have used Novosti releases or pamphlets for their research material. These “free lancers” significantly complement the Soviet active measures campaign, having accounted for 20 or more published articles per month since mid-1985.
Whenever a USIS officer visits any provincial media institution, he or she inevitably discovers a huge pile of Novosti releases stashed away in some corner or on some editorial desk. It is these reserves that are drawn upon whenever, and that can be often, the sub-editors have to fill an empty space for lack of material generated by their own employees. Even if the Soviets were to refrain from disseminating more of the same, the material on hand in offices of Nigerian newspapers is more than sufficient to maintain Soviet active measures for several months without additional input, since much of the propaganda does not require updating.
USIS Lagos judged that these covert media placements had a substantial impact on Nigerian opinion:
Because of this duplicitous attempt to pretend to Nigerian authorship, the bloc mis-/disinformation takes on an aura of greater credibility to the average Nigerian newspaper reader. In fact, it is not at all unusual to find even pro-American or well-educated professionals reciting, as gospel, some of the diatribe fed to them in this manner.
In this way, the material created in Moscow and edited by Pozner and many others made its way into the media in various Third World countries, spreading vile accusations and disinformation about the United States in a form disguised as local, genuine opinion.
Meeting Novosti’s KGB officers in Moscow
As noted earlier, in the late 1980s, the United States and Soviet governments held a series of “Information Talks” on issues of mutual concern. One of sessions was held in Moscow in September 1988. Charles Wick, Director of the U.S. Information Agency from 1981 to 1989, led the U.S. delegation. Valentin Falin, chairman of Novosti, led the Soviet delegation. My boss, Herb Romerstein, who was Director of the USIA Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures and Disinformation from 1983 to 1989, was a member of the delegation. Herb later recalled:
Wick emphasized that Soviet disinformation continued to be a major problem impeding better relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. I then raised the question about the AIDS disinformation story and pointed out that Novosti had distributed it around the world. One aspect of the story was a false quotation from the late Congressman Ted Weiss (D-NY) who was supposed to have said that AIDS was created in U.S. government laboratories. I said that the quotation came not from the U.S. “mass media” which Falin had claimed but from a monthly homosexual newspaper with a circulation so small that USIA had difficulty even locating a copy. What we did have however was a letter addressed to me by Congressman Weiss denying that he had made such a statement. I presented the letter to Falin.
Falin suggested that it would be useful to have regular meetings between Americans and Soviets on the issue of disinformation. I responded that this would be good to do on a working level. Falin agreed and he and I met separately to organize the meetings. As a result, Todd Leventhal and I met regularly with officials of the Soviet embassy where we had the opportunity to answer the disinformation stories. (“The Interagency Active Measures Working Group: Successful template for strategic influence” by Herbert Romerstein, in Strategic Influence Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, And Political Warfare, edited by J. Michael Waller, The Institute of World Politics Press, 2008, pp. 203-4.)
Also, in a side meeting, Herb met with several members of what was, in all likelihood, the KGB section of Novosti. The former director of USIA’s WORLDNET television service, Alvin Snyder, described the scene in his 1995 book Warriors of Disinformation:
Romerstein watched as several men in overcoats entered the meeting room. One didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out they probably didn’t work in the [Novosti] press building. Romerstein assumed they were KGB agents [should be “officers”]. “I wanted to go to the United States and it denied me entry,” one of the men complained. Romerstein replied that it was U.S. policy not to let foreign intelligence officers in. “What are you so afraid of the KGB for,” asked one of the men, with a grin. Others, without overcoats, joined the meeting. Herb got to the point, complaining that the Novosti Military Bulletin had carried stories that the AIDS virus was created as a biological weapon by the United States and that AIDS was also caused by U.S. nuclear testing. “We’ve seen this crazy story,” said Herb. “Stay away from it because it’s not true.”
“We didn’t create this AIDS disinformation story,” said one of the men. It was in your press.”
With that, Herb opened his briefcase, pulled out the New York Native [newspaper], and held it up so they could see the cover. (p. 114)
Snyder had previously described the cover of the newspaper, where a supposed statement by Congressman Weiss about the origin of AIDS had allegedly appeared:
On the cover of the New York Native was a picture of three men in drag; one in a long gown and cowboy hat, and the other two in cowboy boots and jockstraps. …
…“This is your source,” said Romerstein. “Now, we want to save you embarrassment. We don’t want you to be known for quoting this as your source. It’s not good for your image. Anytime you have a question about a source in America, you can call us up and we’ll give you help. (p. 114)
Herb told me that the Soviet participants at the meeting were quite embarrassed by the newspaper’s risqué cover. Wikipedia describes the New York Native as “a biweekly gay newspaper published by Charles Ortleb in New York City from December 1980 until January 13, 1997.”
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
The French expression, “the more things change, the more they stay the same” applies very well when comparing the practice of Soviet covert media placements in the 1980s to very similar and even more sophisticated current Russian efforts to place covert media articles in foreign countries. As mentioned in my post on “Countering Soviet and Russian Disinformation,” the authoritative November 7, 2023 U.S. State Department Media Note, “The Kremlin’s Efforts to Covertly Spread Disinformation in Latin America” 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, which is descended from Novosti, 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 Kremlin’s hidden hand: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.
On February 12, 2024, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center released a similar media note on “The Kremlin’s disinformation campaign in Africa,” which exposes how “Russia’s intelligence services [are] providing material support and guidance to ‘African Initiative,’ a new information agency focused on Africa-Russia relations that has spread disinformation regarding the United States and European countries.” It states:
The Kremlin’s disinformation campaign in Africa
· In addition to its own staff, African Initiative recruits African journalists, bloggers, and members of local publics to support and amplify the organization’s work of bolstering Russia’s image and denigrating that of other countries.
· One of African Initiative’s first major campaigns is to target U.S. and Western health initiatives in Africa with dangerous health-related disinformation. The campaign seeks to undermine U.S.-funded public health projects across Africa beginning with disinformation regarding an outbreak of a mosquito-borne viral disease.
· From there, conspiracies will be spread about Western pharmaceutical corporations, health-focused philanthropic efforts, and the spread of disease in West and East Africa.
The actors involved:
The Chief Editor of the African Initiative is Artem Sergeyevich Kureyev, who is also the General Director of Initsiativa-23, publicly registered to an office in Moscow.
Some members of the African Initiative were recruited from the disintegrating enterprises of the late Yevgeniy Prigozhin.
The organization already has local offices in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and Bamako, Mali and is hosting events on the ground.
Laundering the Kremlin’s disinformation to appear organic:
African Initiative primarily spreads its disinformation and propaganda via numerous branded and unbranded social media accounts. Two of its main accounts are “African Initiative” and “African Kalashnikov”.
The organization is highly active on its website, afrinz.ru, and VKontakte, and uses these platforms and others amplified by additional pro-Russian accounts.
The popular Telegram channel “Smile and Wave” is a frequent amplifier of African Initiative content.
Foreign information manipulation remains a critical threat around the world, as authoritarian actors like the Russian government use it to exacerbate social divisions, skew national discourse, and fundamentally disrupt people’s ability to make informed decisions for themselves and their communities. By supporting this disinformation network, the Russian government is actively harming the countries it targets and the African continent as a whole.
Recently, the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center exposed the Kremlin’s attempts to undermine global support for Ukraine by covertly spreading disinformation in Latin America. The core tactic in that campaign involved laundering Moscow-produced content through local individuals and groups to make pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda seem organic to the communities in which it was spread. Following the disruption of that operation, the Russian government is now trying the same tactic in Africa with a new set of actors and entities.
Foreign information manipulation is a dangerous and destabilizing tactic, but it is especially damaging when targeting health information. This Kremlin disinformation campaign must come to an immediate end before it poses an even greater risk to health security in Africa.
When dealing with disinformation, it is wise to debunk the false charges. As the above Media Note on Kremlin disinformation in Africa notes, exposing Russian efforts to covertly place stories in the media of foreign countries can be enough to disrupt these efforts.
Finally …
A Suspicious Substack
Andrew Korybko writes on Substack – a lot. On February 14, 2024, he published four articles:
There’s Compelling Evidence That Pakistan Is Indirectly Exporting Armed Drones to Ukraine
Moscow’s Response to Ecuador Sending Russian Arms to Ukraine Strengthens Ties with India
The Reportedly Planned G7 Envoy to Ukraine Would Be Tasked with Carrying Out the Davos Agenda
It’s Incredibly Insulting for Lvov’s Mayor to Smear Protesting Polish Farmers as Pro-Russian
Publishing four articles on widely different topics in one day is more than average for Korybko, but not by much. On many days, he publishes three articles. On February 13, he published three articles, one of which was “Trump’s NATO Comments Are Actually Quite Sensible,” seeing nothing unreasonable in Trump’s widely condemned comments in which he said, as president, he would invite Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” with NATO countries that spend less than 2% of their GNP on defense.
Korybko’s interests and seeming expertise are remarkably wide-ranging. On February 9, 2024, he wrote articles about Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Poland, and Tucker Carlson’s interview of Russian President Putin. Unsurprisingly, he had nothing bad to say about Putin, describing him in very benign terms:
President Putin is simply an apolitical pragmatist that solely wants to preserve his country’s conservative-nationalist society, robustly develop its economy, and ensure its objective national security interests, all while cooperating with others in pursuit of mutual benefit.
[Note: one would think that a native English speaker (Korybko grew up in the United States) would know that the correct wording in the sentence above should be, “President Putin is simply an apolitical pragmatist who …,” as “who” is the correct pronoun to use when referring to people, while “that” is used when referring to inanimate objects. This may be an indication that a non-English speaker wrote what are portrayed as Korybko’s words.]
In any event, Korybko (or his ghostwriter) reassuringly portrayed Putin as “an apolitical pragmatist with no bloodlust, psychological instability, or ideological motivations whatsoever.” He soothingly and disingenuously explained, “The only reason why he commenced the special operation [Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022] was to ensure the integrity of his country’s national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them and refused to retreat.”
Somehow, one suspects that Korybko is not doing all the research and writing on these widely varied topics himself.
The day after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death, Korybko was predictably on message, in his article, “Putin Had No Reason to Kill Navalny But The West Has Every Reason to Lie That He Did.” Korybko repeatedly complained about “anti-Russian information warfare operations,” by which he apparently meant Western reporting on Putin’s responsibility for Navalny’s death. He also sought to denigrate Navalany, describing him as an “alleged American agent,” safely citing Putin as his source for this false claim.
Korybko has been a prolific author for other publications. He wrote hundreds of articles for Oriental Review, a Russian online publication that was revealed in 2021 to be “directed and controlled by the SVR, or Russia’s foreign intelligence service” by an official at State Department’s Global Engagement Center.
Propastop, which describes itself as a volunteer-run “blog aimed at cleaning Estonia from propaganda, false information and media lies,” described Korybko as “notorious for his close relationship with the Russian government and for promoting Kremlin propaganda.” He was born in the United States and has often been described as an “American political analyst,” omitting the fact that he resides in Moscow. Sputnik identified him as “a member of the expert council for the Institute for Strategic Studies and Predictions at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia.”
In December 2019, a EUvsDisinfo article, “One World, One Author, One Chain of Command,” said Korybko was at that time providing most of the content for “OneWorld Global Think Tank,” which they described as “a new addition to the pantheon of Moscow-based disinformation outlets, publishing material in English.”
Later, OneWorld was revealed to be receiving its information from the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU. On July 28, 2020, The New York Times reported:
American intelligence officials said the G.R.U.’s psychological warfare unit, known as Unit 54777 or the 72nd Special Service Center, was behind the propaganda campaigns that were often devised to obscure Moscow’s role in creating them. …
United States intelligence reports have identified two Russians, Denis V. Tyurin and Aleksandr G. Starunskiy, with ties to the G.R.U. and who make sure the messaging and disinformation drafted by the intelligence officials are pushed by InfoRos and on InfoBrics.org and OneWorld.Press.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Russian intelligence services and press agencies have updated their covert propaganda practices to take advantage of the new opportunities presented in the digital era.