The 10 Types of Russia's Information Operations

THE KREMLIN’S INFORMATION
FRONT
Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies
2016
Valentyn Badrak, Dmitry Kozlov

irst of all, it must be noted
that the Kremlin’s informa-
tion weaponry is an ancient
one, which makes it both
highly refined and highly dangerous1
.
Russia’s tradition of creating effective
indoctrination methods, or, to use a
modern term, of carrying out successful
information operations, dates back to
its active «Gathering of Lands» periods.
Those methods were always aggressive,
«Jesuitical» in nature, aiming to sub-
due nations and to force their leaders
into pro-imperial decision-making.
The most ambiguous and psychologi-
cally destructive period for any person
living within the empire’s territory was
the time of creation and rise of the So-
1
Here and elsewhere we refer to the mental and
psychological aspects of information wars, ex-
cluding the technical aspects and actual cyber
warfare.
viet history, during which the Kremlin
school of information warfare tough-
ened up and gained practical experi-
ence of combining cynical indoctrina-
tion with the state’s powerful repressive
and penal system. For Ukraine, this pe-
riod was particularly symbolic, because
imperial Moscow, in its effort to mold
the typical Soviet person into an obedi-
ent and suggestible cog in the machine,
reached an apogee in the methods it
chose, and resorted to genocide of the
Ukrainian people.
Understanding the specifics of how
modern Russia’s information policy is
shaped and implemented, the experts
of the Center for Army, Conversion and
Disarmament Studies (CACDS) have
always kept Russia’s information opera-
tions against Ukraine on their radar. In
May 2002, Ukraine voiced its intention
for Euro-Atlantic integration, and the
very next year, Moscow started an open
The Highlights of Russia’s Information War
F
Valentyn Badrak,
Director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies

3INTRODUCTION
and systematic subversive war aimed at
destroying the Ukrainian state. Since
then, the tasks of CACDS expanded to
include regular research into the meth-
ods and principles of the Kremlin’s
information sabotage. Unfortunately,
during all periods of Ukraine’s mod-
ern history, its higher military-political
command would either be too lenient
towards the actions of Russia’s sabo-
tage system (presenting that leniency
as multi-vector, balanced politics); fail
to include information resistance in the
key defense priorities; or actually play
into the hands of the Kremlin’s masters.
A look into current state of resistance to
Russia’s information aggression shows
that Ukraine is not the only country in
a vulnerable position. In fact, almost all
Central and Eastern European coun-
tries, even NATO members, turned out
to be unprepared to counteract Russia’s
persistent and centripetal propaganda
machine. At the same time, we must
give credit where credit is due: many
expert and analytical organizations, as
well as individual authors, had looked
deeply into this problem, and their ef-
forts resulted in a considerable body of
material that can be used as a founda-
tion for the national information se-
curity system. Among such works we
would like to point out Ukrainian Men-
tality by Alexander Strazhny (2008), In
Search of the Universum (2011) and The
Refounding of Ukraine (2013) by Oleg
Romanchuk, Information Wars (2000)
and Propaganda and Counter-Propa-
ganda (2004) by Georgiy Pocheptsov,
The Kremlin’s CSTO Project: Imple-
mentation Results and Conclusions for
Ukraine by Dmitry Kozlov (2016), and
A Year of Russian Mythology by Ser-
gey Borschevsky (2016). A number of
Russia’s information operations against
Ukraine in 2006-2008 was analyzed (in
a fictionalized presentation) by this pa-
per’s author, in the book Eastern Strat-
egy (2011). Further seminal works
that analyze the results of Russia’s in-
formation attacks include: articles by
Oleg Pokalchuk, writer and social psy-
chologist; Putin’s Hybression: the Non-
Military Aspects of New Generation
Wars (2016), a report by the Centre for
Global Studies “Strategy XXI,” directed
by Mykhailo Gonchar; the multifaceted
research and publications of the Center
for Russian Studies; as well as the mul-
tipart thesis Donbass and Crimea: the
Price of Return published by the Na-
tional Institute for Strategic Studies and
edited by Vladimir Gorbulin.
One way or another, experience with
Russia’s war of extermination against
Ukraine, especially in 2014-2015, shows
that our national information security
system has just begun forming, and
the specially created Ministry of In-
formation Policy is still far from fully
understanding the mechanisms for in-
formation resistance. Because of this,
Ukraine’s retaliation is purely defensive,
a “response after the blow.” It goes with-
out saying that this position is not going
to result in victory or yield any advan-
tage on the information front. On the
information battlefield, the advantage
belongs to the side with more dynamics
and creativity, not the one that prepares
a response after spending some time to
decipher the enemy’s elaborate gambits.

4
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
Thus, any national information security
system we discuss must include struc-
tures or departments dedicated to intel-
ligence, counterintelligence, informa-
tion processing, and actual information
operations.
In modern hybrid warfare, the most
popular approach to date is to imitate
political unrest and rallies, in order to
cover them in the media in a specific
light and impose a biased view of events.
“Let’s look at spring of 2014, when
movement of the Ukrainian army was
being blocked: for example, at the Olk-
hovaya station. Our APCs would arrive
by rail, get taken off platform trains and
sent to Krasna Talakivka at the border.
Who went out to protest that: old men
and women? No, activists of Party of
Regions. Who got paid for it.2
” Events
like the one described by the former
member of Party of Regions are perfect
for creating TV shots, news reports, and
articles. Mass distribution of specially
prepared content affects almost all fo-
cus groups.
Switching TV pictures has long
become standard practice for Rus-
sian media. The proverbial front page
of the 2014-2016 hybrid warfare was
dominated by irregular paramilitary
units: armed civilians and Russian spe-
cial forces without insignia brought in
for combat operations. Those images
fueled the media imagination, while the
picture and narrative varied depending
on the edits provided by special services
and political technologists.
2
As reported by Vladimir Landik, former member
of Party of Regions, http://censor.net.ua/n391367
The past two years of Russia’s war
against Ukraine evidence the need to
create information security structures
that would ensure quick response with-
in certain departments (as appropriate
for each department’s nature of work),
and create a platform for public-private
partnership in ensuring information
security. The latter, importantly, must
include a correct mechanism for inter-
action between the state and the media,
with provisions for handling sensitive
information and for media participa-
tion in specialized information and psy-
chological campaigns or operations.
Naturally, to construct one’s own
national system, one must thoroughly
study the relevant system used by the
enemy. In the course of this research,
the CACDS suggested to divide in-
formation operations (IO) by type of
communication channel, with an un-
derstanding that these channels can be
used in the most elaborate of combina-
tions, up to and including massive in-
formation attacks on all fronts simul-
taneously.
With this in mind, we suggest sin-
gling out the following types of IO for
research and comprehensive analysis.
1. Information provocations and mis-
information on the part of Russia
with the use of non-government
structures or media3
.
2. Information operations carried out
by Russian scientific, research, and
academic institutions.
3
Considered official, as they are typically provided
with comprehensive support, monitoring and direc-
tion by Russia’s special forces, and therefore, the state.

5INTRODUCTION
3. Information and psychological
operations carried out by official
structures, including top state offi-
cials.
4. Information operations following
special events and provocations in-
volving Russian enforcement (army)
units.
5. Information and psychological op-
erations and provocations with the
involvement of specially prepared
civilian groups.
erations carried out by foreign poli-
ticians or public figures (“opinion
leaders” for specific focus groups).
erations carried out at the level of
international organizations and in-
ternational conferences.
erations via specific communica-
tion channels: books, films, specially
constructed TV shows, and exploi-
tation of memorials and favorable
images of the past.
erations based on the creation and
promotion of ratings.
10. Large-scale comprehensive infor-
mation and psychological opera-
tions carried out by artificially cre-
ated “opinion leaders.”
The war is not over, and many nega-
tive trends are still picking up speed.
The Kremlin’s information front is open
for business and active. Therefore, it
makes sense to study our enemy’s tac-
tics and strategy, and enable ourselves
to make preemptive strikes.

he title of the first propa-
ganda theoretician known
to humanity rightfully be-
longs to Plato. In his famous
dialogue in The Republic, this Greek phi-
losopher used a brilliant allegory, the so-
called “cave myth” to describe the basics
of modern propaganda technologists,
back in the 4th century BCE. It paints a
picture of people forever imprisoned in
a cave, their only ideas about the true
nature of things gleaned from the vague
shadows cast by torches held by puppet-
eers behind them. This is a very acute
description of a collective consciousness
subjected to calculated influence by mas-
ters of deception and manipulation.
Plato’s ideas received a new and sin-
ister interpretation in the 20th century,
when the rise of technology and media
enabled information dictatorship on a
previously unseen scale. In 1921, Ameri-
can journalist and political commentator
Walter Lippmann, winner of two Pulitzer
prizes, first described how public opinion
is formed with the help of the media, and
created the original stereotype theory that
is still considered classic in the West to-
day. The theory can be summarized as fol-
lows. A person’s capacity for knowledge is
limited: no individual can know every-
thing and be absolutely informed, because
their environment is far too complex and
changeable. To overcome the world’s di-
versity, one summarizes one’s knowledge
of it into categories. These categories are
fictions, stereotypes, and elements of a
pseudo-environment that a person uses
to adapt to their actual environment.
Consequently, a person’s behavior is their
response to the stimuli provided by the
pseudo-enviroment, not the real one.
Stereotypes are grouped into ste-
reotype systems, which are presented as
Vladimir Putin’s Shadow Theater
T
Dmitry Kozlov,
Head of the CACDS Personality Analysis Laboratory

7INTRODUCTION
daily customs, beliefs, teachings, social
institutions, etc., up to and including the
stereotype known as “social reality,” one
that encompasses all stereotype systems.
The world that we have to interact
with as individuals remains outside of
our grasp. A human is not an omnisci-
ent deity that can perceive everything
at a glance, but a product of evolution
that can only grasp a “sufficient por-
tion of reality to manage his survival,
and snatch what on the scale of time are
but a few moments of insight and hap-
piness.”
Each individual can only have good
knowledge of a small portion of reality,
becoming a specialist or an expert only
in some specific, narrow fields. An art-
ful and trained manipulator with the
necessary resources can take advantage
of this limitation of perception and of
the human inability to grasp reality in
its fullness.
Lippmann’s seminal works dedi-
cated to propaganda and manipulation
of the public consciousness were pub-
lished between the two world wars, and
used by the totalitarian regimes that
rose in Europe and Asia at the time.
Those regimes went on to control the
mass consciousness on previously un-
seen scale, using the new technological
potential of the cinema, radio, and press
to create strikingly convincing pictures
of reality. Those pictures were distorted
and illusory, but no less believable for it.
The rise of propaganda in totalitar-
ian states of the 1930-40’s was interrupt-
ed by their quick collapse. However, the
propaganda machine continued grow-
ing in the USSR, and Western political
leadership became concerned by the
degree of Soviet leaders’ influence on
the public opinion in the West. The start
of the Cold War resulted in a physical
arms race combined with a similar race
in the information field. The Western
world had to create counter-measures
to Soviet propaganda, yet because of
their values, they did not start out with
the means to properly “play dirty” in
response. The USSR’s collapse was met
with massive optimism on both sides of
the Iron Curtain, and with a hope that
the era of massive propaganda was truly
over, and large-scale brainwashing was
left to the handful of small and isolated
pariah states like North Korea. However,
the events of 2014 and Putin’s aggression
against Ukraine raised the following
question for the first time after the fall
of the Berlin wall: are the bad old times
coming back? Today, considering the
great advances in information technolo-
gies, propaganda operations are taking
on a new, previously unseen scale.
The history of Russian propaganda
spans centuries. Total information con-
trol and state influence over the masses
are an integral part of Russia’s history,
aspects that were true for every stage
of its statehood. However, never before
had information operations been this
artful, this innovative, and this broad in
scope. That is mainly because modern
propaganda technicians have at their
disposal the historic traditions of the
Tsarist and Soviet regimes, combined
with the brief and unprecedented exist-
ence of independent Russian media that
emerged during the late Perestroika and
Boris Yeltsin’s administration.

8
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
The direct origins of today Russia’s
grandiose mass consciousness manipu-
lation system are buried in the USSR’s
historic finale. For many decades, the
Soviet state’s ruling party invested co-
lossal resources into maintaining, de-
veloping, and aggressively imposing
a Leftist Communist narrative, both
within their country and outside it.
Doubtlessly, the ideas of a utopian, uni-
versally egalitarian society did not van-
ish after the Soviet Union’s collapse; this
ideology has always had and will always
have its advocates. However, the era of
unprecedented promotion of the Marx-
ist narrative in the masses was over, and
the former socialist states were swept up
in a perfect storm of the Western narra-
tive – a liberal, capitalist ideology that
had been carefully constructed during
the Cold War to counteract the threat
from the east. Unfortunately, the eu-
phoria brought by the collapse of totali-
tarianism soon gave way to the fear of
economic collapse, unwieldy reforms,
and the plummeting quality of life that
affected the overwhelming majority
of former Soviet citizens. Despite the
lack of ideological pressure, the Rus-
sian population clearly associated their
hardships with the government’s active
pro-Western information policy. Ac-
tive discussions sparked up in the soci-
ety, debating what the year 1991 really
meant. That marked the birth of a new
powerful narrative that would remain
dormant for a while: a revanchist, na-
tionalist, and totalitarian ideology that
refuted former Marxist ideas in favor of
the more amorphous “traditional val-
ues.” For a while, this paradigm was one
of many, and far from being a dominant
one, especially in the circles of key deci-
sion influencers.
However, everything changed when
Vladimir Putin came to power.
Anyone familiar with the current
Russian leader’s biography would be
highly naïve to believe that Vladimir
Putin is a true believer in the ideas
that de facto comprise Russia’s current
state ideology. During the first years af-
ter his “ascension to the throne,” Putin
had been using the pro-Western liberal
narrative inherited from Yeltsin’s elite,
which he was also a member of. The
“strong ruling hand” rhetoric was sprin-
kled over that narrative only sparingly.
Yet the new leader was constructing a
rigid, authoritarian-like power vertical
and centralizing political and economic
leverage – and a new ideological base
was needed to support those efforts.
The key element of Russia’s modern
ideological paradigm is the figure of its
leader. Today, thanks to the efforts of
political technologists, Vladimir Putin’s
personality is tied to so many load-bear-
ing structures in Russia’s state ideology
that his removal from the system of
coordinates would cause an immediate
collapse. Peter Pomerantsev, a British
journalist who had worked in Moscow
television for 9 years, once called Putin
“a media fiction” and “the first President
created entirely via the media.” That is
not a gross exaggeration. However, the
path towards the creation of this fiction
was complicated, rocky, and multi-level.
To understand the structure of the
grandiose illusion constructed around
Putin today, we must turn to its ori-

9INTRODUCTION
gins and to the period when there still
existed a real person, rather than the
media fiction. Upon his arrival at the
Kremlin, Putin found an existing team
of political technologists that had pre-
viously worked with Boris Yeltsin. A
testimony to the quality of that team’s
work is the fact that in the three years
preceding Putin’s appearance in the
political arena during the 1996 presi-
dential election, they had successfully
run Yeltsin’s campaign and ensured his
victory, despite the economic collapse
and the massive public disappointment
in the president and the government.
Media promotion of the new head of
state was hardly a challenge, since any
comparison to the retiring Boris Yelt-
sin would throw things into perspec-
tive. Focusing on the VVP [Vladimir
Putin’s] persona, PR technicians started
constructing “add-ons” for those traits
that the public found attractive. Their
success is impressive, not least because
in today’s world, it would be hard to find
a less charismatic leader than the Rus-
sian “father of the nation.”
The “strong ruling hand” my-
thologem became the first link in the
ideological chain. The political technol-
ogists inherited by Putin from his prede-
cessors could not have ignored the most
obvious differences between the Krem-
lin’s old and new masters. First of all, Pu-
tin’s lack of bad habits and active lifestyle
favorably contrasted him from the pre-
vious president. During the early years
of Yeltsin’s rule, his drunken stupor and
eccentric stunts were cleverly used to
present him as being “close to the peo-
ple” and “loyal to tradition.” A decade
later, this narrative had worn thin and
started properly irritating the public,
who associated their president’s inepti-
tude with the general chaos and ruin in
the country. Against that background, a
sober and fit figure capable of clear and
comprehensible speech looked extreme-
ly favorable, and was strongly promoted
through all of the still-limited resources
of the media, both state-owned outlets
and those close to the state. Later on, as
the propaganda machine grew stronger,
Putin’s power and health were further
mythologized. Even pop music was used
to that end, with the hit single One Like
Putin by the band Singing Together (a
clear allusion to Walking Together, one
of early quazi-Komsomol pro-Putin
projects). Subsequently, the mythical
image of the “Warrior Putin” who rode
horses topless, flew bomber jets and
hang gliders, dove to find amphorae at
the bottom of the sea, and performed
other legendary deeds, became an or-
ganic part of the general aggressive and
militarized ideology. It also took on a
life of its own as Internet memes, which
might have been ironic, but not always
anti-Putin in spirit.
Putin’s advertised physical strength
and fitness correlated well with another
image – a “strong hand” that would save
the country from collapse. The oligarch
circles of the Yeltsin era agreed that cen-
tral power had to be strengthened, un-
derstanding how fragile their position
was made by the rampant separatism
and another economic crisis of the late
1990’s. The oligarch-sanctioned change
of the president-shaped “store front” co-
incided with a new strategy that aimed

10
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
to connect the president’s figure with
centralization and improved govern-
ability of the regions. The country was
shaken by a number of terror attacks in
Moscow and the fighting in Dagestan,
while the new leader’s harsh response,
so different from Yeltsin’s peaceful and
vague position, struck a chord with the
public masses, exhausted by all the real
and imagined insults to their national
dignity, and eager for revenge. These
sentiments and their potential did not
escape the creators of the up-and-com-
ing propaganda machine.
The new full-scale campaign in
Chechnya, curtseys towards the army,
promises to “waste the terrorists in the
outhouse” and to “finish what has been
started” provided for Putin’s skyrock-
eting popularity and the growing con-
cern in the liberal community, which,
while not yet feeling much pressure on
the media and civil liberties, suspected
that a crackdown was on the way. The
oligarchs, who did not expect such met-
tle from the seemingly shiftless “foot
soldier,” were also concerned by Putin’s
staff games, which aimed to reinforce
his individual rule and redistribute fi-
nancial flows and benefits towards “his
own.” When Putin’s political technolo-
gists start taking his “strong arm” image
to such new levels as “conqueror of oli-
garchs” and “exterminator of gangs,” the
financial elite, who at the time owned a
giant segment of media space, tries to
mount a belated defense.
Private media outlets, mainly the
biggest private TV channel NTV, owned
by the oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky,
start putting a strongly negative spin
on their coverage of the government’s
policies. Putin prepares to strike back,
and in April 2001, essentially national-
izes NTV. The “NTV case” put a start to
the mass governmentalization of Rus-
sian media. Content broadcast by state-
owned media loses its critical bite, but is
still far from today’s never-ending wor-
ship of Putin Almighty. The president’s
figure is ready to become the consolidat-
ing core, but the elites have not reached
consensus yet. Opposition oligarchs of
the Yeltsin era are still putting up a des-
perate fight, and the fledgling regime’s
financial resources are insufficient to
provide for its serious ambitions.
This is where Putin receives un-
expected help from the economy. The
1998 financial crisis, the brunt of the
blame for which fell on Yeltsin’s admin-
istration, gives way to a rebound in real
economy on a scale unseen since the
Soviet times. Rising oil prices give a fur-
ther boost to the rebirth, already made
fast by the low starting point. In other
post-Soviet countries that also experi-
enced active growth during this period,
the importance of economic factors to
that turnaround was more or less ob-
vious. In Russia, the court’s political
technologists make full use of the co-
incidence between Putin’s accession to
the throne and the economic improve-
ment, firmly tying the president’s figure
to the improved quality of life in Rus-
sia. Putin’s popularity skyrockets again,
and the regime’s increased amounts of
resources allow him to become bolder
and more aggressive.
In the subsequent years, up to the ear-
ly 2000’s, Putin makes short work of the

11INTRODUCTION
most stubborn and influential oligarchs;
some go to jail, while others are forced to
leave the country or accept the new rules.
The process of concentrating the key in-
dustries around Putin comes with politi-
cal centralization, and the accompanying
suppression and subjugation of regional
elites. Ongoing economic growth, drop-
ping crime rates (mainly due to the end
of the capital redistribution era), harass-
ment of some of the oligarchs, who never
garnered sympathy from the public – all
these things outshine and cancel out the
depravity of the new state capitalism
system, the subjugation of the media to
the state, and the monstrous corruption
among the new elite.
During this time, the propaganda
remains concentrated exclusively on
Putin’s person; the time of Soviet-impe-
rial mish-mash with a side of “spiritual
tenets” has not come yet. Outside of
their media fiction of a president, politi-
cal technologists are satisfied with the
amorphous notion of “multi-national
Russia” – which, nevertheless, is already
starting to “rise from its knees,” mainly
thanks to the army revival.
The subsequent mythologization of
Putin’s image is supplemented with his
special service past. Through the efforts
of the Kremlin magicians, a perfectly
average KGB officer, who had served
in Dresden (not in Berlin, like some of
his more successful colleagues) and was
not credited with any particular heroics,
turns into a veritable super agent a-la
James Bond and Jason Bourne com-
bined. The liberal agenda that clearly
linked Soviet special services to terror,
repressions, and suppression of any
manifestation of non-conformity is left
in the past, and any remnants of it are
being thoroughly washed out of the
public mind. The dominant concept is
one that equates Putin and Russia. Later,
it was succinctly phrased by Vyacheslav
Volodin, one of the agitprop’s supreme
commanders, first deputy head of the
Presidential Administration and do-
mestic policy curator: “Attacks on Putin
are attacks on Russia” and “Today, there
is no Russia without Putin.”
By 2008, which marked the end of
Putin’s second term, the ruling para-
digm was running out of steam. Every-
one had gotten used to Putin; the once-
sensational fight against oligarchs was
only a brief mop-up of the undesirables
in favor of confidants; and the Chechn-
ya conflict, once the biggest driver of
the president’s popularity, turned out
to be drawn out and bloody. The latter,
though eventually settled by carefully
constructing feudal relations with one of
the local clans, ceased to yield any more
political dividends. The unprecedent-
edly high oil prices and the correspond-
ing highest revenues in Russia’s history
were no longer viewed by the public
as something extraordinary. Plus, the
growth of those revenues started being
hindered by the fundamental problems
of the “Putinomics,” which was incapa-
ble of innovative development.
At the same time, the Kremlin was
having more and more problems re-
specting the unspoken societal agree-
ment that had existed between the
public and the government all the way
through Putin’s rule: the sacrifice of civil
and political liberties for prosperity and

12
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
increasing income. This is when the rul-
ing caste finally looks towards the vast
potential of the conservative, primeval-
ly chauvinistic ideology, some elements
of which had already been used in the
years past, and which the society was
ready for, now that most of the media
space had been cleared of opposition.
Together with his team, Vladislav
Surkov, an exceedingly skilled and talent-
ed PR technician, creates the ideologeme
of “sovereign democracy,” a cleverly cu-
rated collection of Soviet, imperial and
foreign autocratic clichés (see more in
Russia After Putin: Plausible Models
by Valentyn Badrak, Dmitry Kozlov,
CACDS publication, 2015). This highly
versatile creative thinker and former
theater enthusiast was the first to solidify
the state ideology, take it to a grandiose
scale, and determine the methods of im-
posing it on the public. Compared to the
later “Volodin-style” agitprop, Survkov’s
methods were much more elusive, soft,
and insidious. They included engaging in
debate with the liberal-democratic camp,
incorporating a controllable portion of it
into the government, and taking certain
liberal concepts on board.
Essentially, the entire presidential
term of Dmitry Medvedev can be con-
sidered a propaganda campaign of sorts.
Medvedev’s figure and his pro-liberal
and pro-Western gestures meant to be a
contrast against Putin’s neo-conservative
course and serve as a lightning rod for
any failures. In this regard, Putin success-
fully stepped into the shadows right at
the time of the global recession. All fail-
ures in overcoming that recession were
attributed to Medvedev, while the “non-
stick” Putin rested on the laurels of his
military campaign in Georgia, the first
“small victorious war” since Chechnya
that became a powerful propaganda tool.
The war against Georgia and the con-
frontation with the West provided the
first opportunity to successfully use the
“besieged fortress” imagery, with the “fa-
ther of the nation” acting as its savior and
defender. However, in those years, Russia
was spared today’s levels of bigotry by an
unexpected explosion in oil prices that
re-enabled the simpler, familiar and ef-
fective methods of controlling the public.
By dumping some of the oil super-profits
into the real economy and social servic-
es, welfare was increased, and the public
kept happy.
The next challenge for the propa-
ganda machine came in the form of
2011 parliamentary elections and the
2012 presidential campaign, when Pu-
tin’s return to presidency enraged the
liberal community and resulted in mass
protests. The raging protest movement
highlighted the weak sides of the “Surk-
ov-style” propaganda that flirted with
the opposition and the liberals. Surkov’s
failure to find any acceptable form of
coexistence between the regime and
the real, active opposition resulted in
a change of tack to a hard, anti-liberal
rhetoric. Failing to make the regime
even mildly attractive for the relatively
educated and liberal-minded middle
class, Putin gave up on it. Disdainfully,
he considered that social group “tooth-
less” and incapable of active violence, so
he chose to throw in his lot with the tri-
umphant rabble, once and for all. Thus
came a large-scale reorganization of the

13INTRODUCTION
propaganda staff under Volodin, who
took over from Surkov; in reality, that
reorganization was in the works even
before the Bolotnaya Square protests
started (see later chapters for more de-
tails about the current structure of the
propaganda machine).
Putin’s second ascension to the
throne heralds further transformation
of the propaganda. After fully evicting
political opposition, the regime can af-
ford to be more open and aggressive.
Specters of the enemies, external ones
(the omnipresent United States, the de-
structive liberal values, etc.) as well as
domestic ones (traitorous opposition,
State Department agents, etc.) are paint-
ed more clearly; science and education
receive more pressure from the church;
military panache and saber-rattling
reach new heights. Overall, Volodin’s
agitprop becomes more primitive and
brutish than Surkov’s, reflecting Putin’s
success in clearing the political field of
all threats, and therefore, eliminating all
checks and balances.
Strangely enough, none of that helps.
Putin’s popularity is slowly sinking, and
no propaganda effort can overcome the
main problem: economic stagnation,
which came in place of the post-crisis
growth and which prevents the govern-
ment from simply buying the support
base again by increasing budget transfers.
However, the biggest threat to Putin’s
government was apathy. By 2014, the
share of Russian citizens who felt am-
bivalent about Putin exceeded the share
of his supporters and enemies. For soft
autocracies, that is business as usual;
the apathetic electorate continued dili-
gently voting for Putin, accepting him
as a constant that guarantees the status
quo. Yet Putin understood that in real-
ity, he could guarantee nothing, and any
shake-up of the oil prices would destroy
the apparent prosperity painted by the
mellifluous state-owned media. In that
case, despite all propaganda efforts, his
apathetic voters can easily end up in the
camp of the regime’s adversaries – which
can emerge from Putin’s own clan. The
only salvation in case of such economic
cataclysm would come from explicit and
unambiguous actions by some enemies
of Russia, which could be interpreted as
aggression. Since no-one in the world
was going to start any aggression against
Russia, such action had to be provoked.
As a result, propaganda became
reminiscent of a drug addict that keeps
upping the dose when the previous one
no longer has the desired effect. The
time has come to turn up the heat again.
These thoughts have been brewing
in the heads of Putin and his political
technologists for a while – but the vic-
tory of Ukraine’s Maidan gave them a
real boost. Putin saw that the “tooth-
less” urban middle class can have mus-
cle when united with nationalists, a pas-
sionate social group capable of violence.
At the time, Russian nationalists had as
little love for Putin as liberals, thanks to
his migrant-friendly policy and colos-
sal financial preferences granted to the
north Caucasus. That meant they had to
be thrown a bone, and fast.
Thus the Ukrainian gamble began.
The subsequent spectacle was staged
and performed brilliantly. The annexa-
tion of Crimea, which to the nationalists

14
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
was sacrosanct as a “lost land,” earned
exultant loyalty on the part of most
nationalist groups. The ecstatic state-
owned media spurred on the public,
who were already euphoric over Russia’s
first forceful expansion of its borders
since 1945: a clear evidence of its revived
military and political might. Against this
backdrop, the media space grows even
more saturated with images of Soviet
and imperial past, carefully selected dur-
ing Putin’s rule, until it reaches its apogee
in Victory Day celebrations that become
reminiscent of some primeval cult’s ec-
static pagan ritual. The contrast of to-
day’s greatness and the Yeltsin era shame
is exploited freely and unrestrictedly.
Meanwhile, the fact that Putin is Yeltsin’s
successor who had granted the latter full
immunity against any persecution, is ful-
ly erased from public consciousness. The
public does not spot this inconsistency.
It also fully accepts the fusion of Soviet
and Russian imperial imagery, despite
the two eras being polar opposites and
entirely irreconcilable,.
Ever since the mid-2000’s, Putin
has employed the revanchist narrative,
which interpreted the USSR’s collapse as
a conspiracy, a CIA operation, and a na-
tional indignity that must be avenged.
Now, it is taken to new heights. The col-
lapse of global oil prices, which is unre-
lated to anything done in Washington,
Putin’s media readily interprets as “ret-
ribution for Crimea,” and thusly pre-
sents to the general public, who have to
bear the brunt of the resulting econom-
ic crisis. Predictably, the public does not
rebel – but actually sheds its earlier apa-
thy and consolidates around the figure
of its national leader who inspires sup-
port, sympathy, pride, and admiration.
Putin is at the center of the ideology
again: as an invincible, brilliant strate-
gist, an anchor without which the coun-
try would immediately be lost in the
geopolitical storm. The media fiction of
Putin as an “icon of anti-Americanism”
and the conqueror of global injustice
has expanded beyond the post-Soviet
territory. Putin’s grandiose spectacle
proved extremely successful, and most
Russians, without their knowledge, be-
came the prisoners from Plato’s allegory,
watching shadows on the cave wall.
It seemed that the goal had been
achieved.
However, herein lies a trap for Pu-
tin. The patriotic ecstasy worked up by
the agitprop is a powerful, but short-
lived drug. New and higher doses will
be required more and more often. A
mere year after the Crimea euphoria,
the “national leader’s” sky-high popu-
larity ratings were starting to lag again,
and the Kremlin resorted to the opera-
tion in Syria to prevent that. What fur-
ther actions will be required to keep
up that high bar? On what scale will
Putin’s shadow theater stage its next
performance? And will the propaganda
machine handle these new challenges,
considering that behind the growing
panache is still an ineffective kleptoc-
racy, essentially a banana state? Is the
agitprop machine as good and smooth
as Putin imagines it? To answer those
questions, we will have to take a closer
look at the inside workings of the Rus-
sian propaganda structures. That will be
covered in the following chapters.

nformation provocations and
injection of false information
have always been an
important function of Soviet
special services. During the Cold War,
and during the growth of aggression
in modern Russia (2003–20161
),
information traps were most frequently
created as part of an informational-
psychological leverage strategy, where
provocations and misinformation
played a central part2
.
It is worth noting that in all types
of Russia’s information warfare,
information provocations and injections
of false information are aimed at
three audiences: Ukrainian, Russian,
1
Counting from the first act of aggression con-
cerning the Tuzla island conflict (2003), where an
armed confrontation was entirely possible
2
Considered official, as they are typically provided
with comprehensive support, monitoring and di-
rection by Russia’s special forces, and therefore,
the state
and Western. One must also remember
that Russian special services and
information front specialists prepare
different sets of content with distinct
features that cater to their intended
audience.
Since the start of military aggression,
this type of information-psychological
operations reached a previously unseen
scale and assumed elaborate forms that
have been adapted to our technological
age. Many specialists and journalists
have pointed this out.
At the root of special operations
that use misinformation or prepared
information provocations is always
the fear professionally instilled in a
certain audience by soldiers of the
information front. Take an operation
that has already been dubbed a “classic
act of sabotage” by European specialists:
the ruthlessly staged acts of violence in
Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve
2015, supposedly committed by asylum
seekers. The time and content were
Information Provocations
and Misinformation on the Part of Russia
with the Use of Non-Government
Structures or Media1
I
PART I
SubversiveWarfareTechniques
and Methods

16
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
chosen perfectly. (Hundreds of reports
of the event ran under headlines along
the lines of: “Mass rapes of women
in Cologne: the police report over 80
victims.”)
The spiraling European problem
was brilliantly exploited in a way that
would make the public think that
from now on, large cities aren’t safe
enough to relax and unwind, even on
major holidays. Apparently, even the
police can’t help! Dmitry Zolotukhin,
advisor to the Minister of Information
Policy, believes that Russian special
services conducted a successful
operation in European cities on New
Year’s Eve, laying a foundation for a
deep and prolonged crisis3
. Russian
media, naturally, spread the event far
and wide, spicing it up with dozens
of heart-wrenching stories they had
constructed.
Efforts aimed at the Ukrainian
audience were organized somewhat
differently. Russian information
coverage of the Ukrainian Revolution of
DignityfollowedbyRussia’sintervention
into Ukraine, the so-called “Russian
Spring,” came as a real shock to the
primarily peace-minded Ukrainians.
The amount of lies, aggression, and
hatred that poured from the Russian
media as if from a cornucopia was
unprecedented and even forced many
3
D. Zolotukhin, Information Wars in the Modern
Context. Abstracts of International Forum on Crisis:
Communication and Content Safety in the Context
Putin’s Russia’s of Hybrid-Messianic Aggression. –
Kyiv, Military Institute of the Kyiv National Taras
Shevchenko University, 2016. p. 125.
Ukrainian public figures to address
Russians4
.
Naturally, specialists raised every
alarmaboutthistypeofwarfare.Fromthe
very start, the aggressor in the Russian-
Ukrainian war resorted to total and
absolute misinformation. “Goebbels,
the master of misinformation, used
to say that the more atrocious the lie,
the more it is likely to be believed.
Technology is being used to create an
alternative information reality – a reality
that people who only watch Russian TV
live in.
All of this is being superimposed
on the well-known psychological
technology known as the spiral of
blackout. When people exposed to one-
sided event coverage start having doubts
(e.g. “This can’t be right”; “War is bad”),
they still cannot muster the courage and
strength to offer any resistance if they
are entirely surrounded by people who
think in similar one-sided terms. This
is true not just for Russians, but also
for a significant share of Crimeans. It
also meshes well with a whole number
of myths manufactured by the Russian
media. For example, remember the
alleged crowds of refugees at the eastern
border of Ukraine? That video was
shot during a market weekend when
Ukrainians were going to Poland, and
Poles were visiting Ukraine.” That
4
Yana Primachenko, Russia’s Information
War Against Ukraine: In Search of the Origi-
nal Source – Zerkalo Nedeli Ukraine, N39,
16.10.2015, http://gazeta.zn.ua/history/rossiys-
kaya-informacionnaya-voyna-protiv-ukrainy-v-
poiskah-pervoistochnika-.html

17
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
TECHNIQUES AND METHODS
was a summary voiced by Alexander
Chekmyshev, head of the Equal
Opportunities committee.
Injections of fake and provocative
ideas have been practiced long before
RussiabeganitsoccupationofUkrainian
territories. A typical example of that
was the infamous article “Operation
Clockwork Orange” by Igor Dzhadan, a
Kremlin-aligned political technologist5
.
Aiming to frighten the Ukrainian public
and discredit the Ukrainian army, the
article painted an almost science fiction
scenario of the occupation of Ukraine.
The article itself was a carefully planned
information-psychological operation,
implemented as far back as 2008.
During the war unleashed by
Russia in 2014, misinformation was
used extensively, spread primarily
through state-owned media. Victoria
Romanyuk, deputy chief editor of
StopFake.org believes that information
manipulations and fakes formed an
important part of Russia’s strategy
during its active occupation of Crimea
and war in Donbas, and were used
to achieve military and diplomatic
objectives6
. In 2014-2015 alone,
StopFake.org specialists collected
5
http://www.russ.ru/pole/Operaciya-Mehanicheskij-
apel-sin
6
V. Romanyuk. Defamation of the Ukrainian Army
as a Russian Propaganda Narrative. Abstracts of
the International Forum on Crisis Communica-
tion “Communication and Content Security in
the Context of Putin’s Russia Hybrid Messianic
Aggression”. – Kyiv, Military Institute of Taras
Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 2016.
P131.
over a thousand Russian propaganda
publications and materials. Romanyuk
says that misinformation can even
be categorized into several types, and
certain provocative stereotypes are
being repeated in different variations.
The particularly dangerous ones are:
“Ukraine is a failed state,” “Coup
d’etat in Ukraine,” “Ukraine is a fascist
state,” “Russia is not an occupant, but
protecting her own.”
Researchers also point out multiple
information provocations staged
through Russian media to undermine
the Ukrainian army and present it as
unprofessional. A prime example of
that took place on August 4, 2014,
when Russian media reported that
Ukrainian soldiers and border guards
who had moved to the Russian
Federation’s territory after battles near
Krasnopartyzanivka, Luhansk region,
supposedly dropped their weapons,
deserted from the Ukrainian army, and
asked for asylum in Russia. The deputy
chief editor of StopFake.org points
to dozens of such reports published
by Izevstiya, Rosiyskaya Gazeta, and
Lifenews. Referencing the 2016 study
by the Finnish Institute of International
Affairs (“Fog of Falsehood: Russian
Strategy of Deception and the Conflict
in Ukraine”), Romanyuk noted that
the Security Council of Russia had
even initiated research to prevent a
“romantic revolution stereotype” and
avoid emergence of a manageable crowd
in Russia.
This alone showcases the level on
which the Kremlin approaches its tasks
on the information front. In her article,

18
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
the deputy chief editor of StopFake.
org concludes that Russian propaganda
does not simply “distort content by
creating artificial myths and notions,
but actually inverts values and ethics.”
For another vivid example of blatant
falsehoods used to stupefy the Russian
society: on the same day, two channels,
Russia-1 and NTV, aired different pieces
of footage showing the same person,
which resulted in him being presented
as a Right Sector ally and a Russia
sympathizer at the same time. The star
of both “sensational” pieces was Andrey
Petkov, an ethnic Russian and German
citizen. The story aired by NTV showed
one Mr. Petkov, resident of Germany,
bringing EUR 500,000 to Ukraine to
support the Right Sector. “I brought
money for Maidan, 500 thousand
euro. I ordered 50 uniforms,” says Mr.
Petkov to NTV journalists. At the same
time, Russia-1 one showed an entirely
different side of Petkov, mentioning
neither his German roots, nor his
support of the Right Sector, nor his EUR
500,000 donation. In the Russia-1 piece,
Petrov speaks out against the Ukrainian
government. “On April 7, Andrey
came to the central square, as usual, to
openly announce his displeasure with
the new government’s actions,” says
the commentator. Moreover, Russia-1’s
footage shows a St. George’s ribbon tied
around Petkov’s bedpost.
The use of such methods indicates
that Russia already has a mass
consumer of information, whose level
of critical thinking is too low to properly
comprehend the real events. In addition
to that, the generation of journalists
formed during Putin’s rule of Russia
does not make a distinction between
information and propaganda. They
are ready to knowingly create similar
blatantly false reports to serve Russia’s
ruling ideology. The most striking
piece of fake information that was quite
successfully implanted in the mind of
an average Russian citizen was the idea
that “the war in Ukraine is waged by the
USA and NATO.”
A close look at Russia’s information
influence shows that a number of
methods are currently being used.
For instance, there is a whole industry
dedicated to the use of fake footage and
photographs lifted from other reports.
Among the most prominent cases were
photographs of “Slavyansk” allegedly on
fire after bombing by Ukrainian forces
(the real photo was from a fuel train
crash in Quebec in 2013); and a photo
of a young girl wounded by militants
in Syria, several years before Russia’s
war against Ukraine, which Russian
media presented as a victim of the
shelling on the Donetsk Airport7
. Fake
witnesses were also frequently used in
Russian media footage to speak about
7
These events are described in more detail in the
article “Pseudo-events in Information Wars” by I.
Parfenyuk, Associate Professor of the department
of public relations and advertising. I. Parfenyuk,
Pseudo-events in Information Wars. Abstracts of
the International Forum on Crisis Communica-
tion “Communication and Content Security in
the Context of Putin’s Russia Hybrid Messianic
Aggression”. – Kyiv, Military Institute of Taras
Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 2016.
P77-78.

19
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
events that never happened: such as
the story about a boy and his mother,
who was supposedly tied to a tank and
dragged across a square in Slovyansk.
Edited footage was also used to create
false reports, such as the one claiming
that the Right Sector’s leader, Dmitry
Yarosh, won the presidential election.
Starting from March 2014,
misinformation by the Russian media
became a constant accompaniment
to any war events. Every piece of
information, however absurd, would
be spread around Russian channels
like wildfire. One report that caused
a great stir featured footage of the
Shehyni checkpoint on the border
between Ukraine and Poland with
the voiceover claiming that, “Over
140 thousand people have crossed
the border [into Russia] during the
past two weeks alone. Those refugees
are coming from the southeast of
Ukraine, as well as its central and
western regions.” Interestingly enough,
this video was later deleted, replaced
by different footage replaced with
the same voiceover. This showcases a
certain internal competition among
Russian TV channels to see which
one is best at filling the orders coming
from the Kremlin or special services.
Videos like this were aired not only by
Channel One, but also by Russia 24 –
the latter decided to take a look at the
sea border as well. The following report
by Anna Sorokina is a real master
class on creating news where there
isn’t any: “Administrations of villages
located close to the port [author’s
note: port Caucaus on the Chushka
Spit, Krasnodar Krai, Russia] keep an
undisclosed list of addresses of local
residents who are ready to receive and
house refugees. The list was compiled
preemptively, even though no refugees
from Ukraine or Crimea have arrived
here yet.”8
During the occupation of Crimea, the
UkrainianMinistryofDefensefrequently
had to refute false Russian reports about
the situation on the peninsula: such as
the claim that the Ukrainian Navy frigate
Hetman Sahaydachniy supposedly
hoisted the Russian flag, or a report
claiming that Ukrainian military were
leaving their units in a mass desertion
from the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Unfortunately, such reports would often
reacheventherelativelyimpartialRussian
media – for instance, the story about
the liberation of military servicemen
in Crimea, originally reported by RIA
Novosti, was subsequently rebroadcast
by Dozhd and Lenta.ru.
This avalanche of misinformation
prompted Ukrainian journalists and
IT professionals to create websites for
monitoring and analyzing fake news,
the most renowned of them being
the previously mentioned StopFake.
org. Among their most prominent
materials is the investigation into the
armed conflict staged (!) in Simferopol
specifically for Russian TV. A large
body of evidence has been collected
and systematized to record the facts of
deceitful broadcasts on Russian TV.
8
Anna Sventakh. The NSDC Says that Information
Security is at the Top of Today’s Agenda, Den,
N39, (2014)

20
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
Due to the rampage of misinformation
through Russian national channels, the
heads of Ukrainian media groups even
addressedtheheadsofRussianmediainan
open letter. Telekritika notes that Anna
Bezlyudna(InterMediaGroup),Vladimir
Borodyansky (StarLightMedia), Fedor
Ogarkov (Media Group Ukraine), and
Alexander Tkachenko (1+1 Media)
demanded objective reporting from
Konstantin Ernst (Channel One), Oleg
Dobrodeyev (VDTRK) and Vladimir
Kulistikov (NTV). In the interests of full
disclosure, we must note that Ukrainian
channels, especially Inter and Ukraine
Channel, also received requests to stop
heating up conflicts and fueling tensions.
The latter two channels were frequently
used to play into the hands of the
enemy state: for example, Inter blatantly
advertised the 2016 Cross Procession,
an anti-Ukrainian event designed by
Russian special services.
On multiple occasions, the Security
Service of Ukraine also addressed fake
news and provocations. For instance,
on August 4, 2014, the SBU requested
Ukrainian internet associations to block
websites spreading information that
“promotes war, national hatred, and
dismantlement of Ukraine’s statehood
or territorial integrity.” The letter
containing the request listed at least two
dozen portals registered in Ukraine.
The department of counterintelligence
protection of national information
security interests requested to block
such websites, regardless of where they
were registered, in Ukraine or abroad.
Dissemination of rumors is another
aspect of provocation. Case in point:
rumors about poor outfitting of the
Ukrainian military and lack of provisions
at units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
proved particularly effective. Specialists
also note that panic-infused rumors
serve to create regional dissent: as such,
a wave of anti-mobilization protests has
swept western Ukraine. Protests reached
the highest point in Zakarpattia, where
the FSB’s old agent network has become
active again. Rumors of a mass draft
and immediate dispatch to the front line
caused a great stir throughout that region.
Experts in special service operations insist
that the “women’s riot” in Zakarpattia was
purposefully staged by Russian agents. A
measure of confirmation for that comes
from the protest’s coverage by Russia
Today (the channel’s journalist was
spotted in Zakarpattia at the time).
Since the start of Russia’s war against
Ukraine, its ITAR-TASS agency turned
into the headquarters of information
provocations. For a typical example,
we turn to the ITAR-TASS report of
September 27, 2014, according to
which, “throughout the largest cities in
the southeast [of Ukraine] … residents
of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa,
Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Mykolaiv
took to the central streets and squares
of their cities, demanding that the
government in Kyiv stops supporting
the war against the residents of Donetsk
and Luhansk regions. According to
the rally organizers, over 5,000 people
came out to voice their protest against
the Ukrainian government’s policies.”
Needless to say, such reports would be
immediately touted by other media,
including privately owned ones.

21
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
In response, the only thing the
Ukrainian media could do was refuting
the myth: “A Russian information agency
reported on mass rallies and “peace
marches” against combat in Donbas,
which never took place in reality.”
Unfortunately, messages like that can only
be directed at the Ukrainian audience,
because Russian readers would rarely
read any rebuttals. Moscow, on the other
hand, could broadcast their message to
both Russian and Ukrainian audiences.
Misinformation created by Russian
special services or structures controlled
by them was just as fit for the internal
consumer, that is, the Russian public.
Many experts keep reminding us
that Russia had declared an information
and psychological war on Ukraine. To
name one: when speaking on Channel
5, Grigory Perepelitsa, Director of the
Institute of Foreign Policy Research
with the Diplomatic Academy, noted
that “we’re seeing an open war rhetoric
on Russian TV. De facto, this is an
active information war, with the goal
of imposing a deeply negative view of
the European course on Russian and
Ukrainian public alike.” To this, we can
add that the Russian Federation became
increasingly more active in occupied
regions. In June 2016, Lilia Kislitsina,
people’s deputy of the Kramatorsk
City Council, pointed out the growth
of propaganda in Donetsk, combined
with the ban on Ukrainian media and
national symbols: “as many as five (!)
local channels were launched in that
region over two years.”
Itisalsoworthnotingthataftergetting
hit by sanctions, Russia also stepped up
its activity in the West, forcing a whole
number of states to organize a system
for repelling Russian attacks. That was
especially relevant for former socialist
countries. At times, provocations
even proved psychologically effective.
Back in November 2013, the Special
Investigation Service of the Republic of
Lithuania started an inquiry prompted
by the message published by the
BNS agency, which stated that Russia
may start organizing information
attacks and spreading misinformation
about the Lithuanian President Dalia
Grybauskaite9
.
Russia’s style and rhetoric were
also obvious from the Russian-Turkish
conflict after Turkey’s air defense
systems destroyed a Russian bomber
plane. As soon as the President
of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan
addressed a letter to Putin, voicing
his regrets about the shot-down plane
(needless to say, that address was the
result of lengthy diplomatic effort),
Russian media obediently spread a
distorted message that claimed that the
Turkish president actually apologized
to Putin for the incident. Despite this
report being refuted by Ibrahim Kalin,
Erdogan’s press secretary, the distorted
information had successfully reached
Russian viewers.
As tensions between Russia and
the West rose due to the former’s war
against Ukraine, lateral counteraction
to Russian provocations and
misinformation has become more
important. Volunteers and grassroots
9
Interfax-AVN, November 8, 2013

22
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
professional associations have become
increasingly effective in this regard.
For instance, journalists of the popular
French channel Canal+ dismantled
the report of the Russian propagandist
Dmitry Kiselyov, aired by Russia 24.
Kiselyov’s Vesti Nedeli (News of the
Week) show was dedicated to French
Eurosceptics’ protests “against the influx
of migrants.” RFI reported that the
voiceover was superimposed on footage
of French protests against new labor
laws, entirely unrelated to Eurosceptics.
In addition to the footage of protests,
the aired story included comments by
French citizens, starting from protesters
and ending with Bruno Le Maire,
former French Secretary of State. The
voice-over translation, which drowned
out the original speeches, was incorrect.
The journalists tracked down the people
featured in Kiselyov’s show and played
the videos for them. All of them said
that the Russian TV heavily distorted
everything they had said, sometimes
going as far as to translate their words
to exactly opposite meanings.
To name a few: the woman quoted
as saying she had lost her job because
three migrants were hired in her place,
was actually saying that she had retired,
and did not mention migrants at all.
The young woman who, according to
Russian propagandists, called to close
borders and forbid more migrants
from entering France, claims she had
said the exact opposite, and called the
above translation of her words a lie
and an insult. Finally, Bruno Le Maire,
who, according to the Russian TV’s
“translation,” was calling for France to
closely cooperate with Russia, told the
French journalists that his “response”
in the video is a compilation of separate
phrases, grossly distorted and out of
context.
Situations like these are countable in
hundreds, prompting experts to believe
that Russia’s modern-day propaganda
is more dangerous than its Soviet
counterpart during the Cold War (this
was pointed out by Washington Post,
among others). Die Welt reported that
Germany was stepping up its fight
against Russian propaganda. Russia
itself admitted that its propaganda
efforts were the most effective in the
Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary,
as previously reported by the German
newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, referencing Western special
services intelligence. In the rating of
propaganda recipients, Great Britain,
Estonia, and Denmark were named
as the least susceptible to Russian
misinformation10
.
Ukrainian experts speak about the
attempts of Russian propagandists and
information provocateurs to entrench a
number of dangerous ideological “fake
clichés,” which are used in different
circumstances and on different target
audiences11
. According to the former
10
http://zn.ua/WORLD/francuzskie-zhurnalisty-
razoblachili-lozh-propagandistskogo-telekanala-
rossiya-24-214127_.html
11
Volodymyr Ohryzko. Russian Information and
Propaganda War: Selected Methods and Counter-
measures. Den, 10.08.2015, http://day.kyiv.ua/uk/
article/svitovi-dyskusiyi/rosiyska-informaciyno-
propagandystska-viyna

23
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine
and the current Head of the Centre for
Russian Studies Volodymyr Ohryzko,
the following ideas are being promoted:
• the Russian national minority is
being oppressed and persecuted, in
Ukraine as well as in the West;
• the West considers Russia their
enemy and wishes to limit its
influence in the international arena;
• the USA and other Western
countries were behind the color
revolutions in several post-Soviet
countries, and those revolutions
were anti-Russian in nature;
• being a “superpower,” Russia is
“entitled” to its own sphere of
influence; the post-Soviet space
is the “objective” choice of such
sphere;
• Russia is the stronghold standing up
to modern-day fascism; “fascism” is
represented by everything labeled as
anti-Soviet and anti-Russian;
• Westernindividualismisdestructive,
while the collective form of public
consciousness corresponds to the
traditional Russian mindset;
• the Russian Orthodoxy is the only
true religion; the morals in the West
are in decline; Europe is turning into
“Gayrope”;
• the alternative to “Gayrope” is the
“Russian world.”

egardless of their ownership
status, every field of science
in Russia is under strict
governmental control.
OperationsbyRussianscientific,research,
and academic instructions include, first of
all, correction and rewriting of history, as
well as analytical support for information
and psychological influence projects.
In Putin’s Russia, pandering to
state interests with imperial ambitions
is being done on a massive scale. The
major guideline for Russian pseudo-
science is to oppress the neighbor-
ing states and to reinforce Moscow’s
imperialist view of history. Using the
formal authority of science, the Rus-
sian state thus exerts consistent in-
fluence on the consciousness of the
Russian people, on the neighboring
countries, and even on international
political leaders – by imposing ideas
that are beneficial for the Russian gov-
ernment and interpreting events to fit
the picture of an empire experiencing
a renaissance. Even long before Russia
started waging an active information
war against Ukraine, its pseudoscien-
tists were working hard to turn Russia
into some paragon that all modern so-
cieties and governments should aspire
to. The ashes of General Denikin were
returned to Moscow; Admiral Kol-
chak was the centerpiece of a patriotic
blockbuster; and Stalin was called an
“effective manager” in textbooks (to
vindicate the Stalinism slaughter, the
books cynically point out that Stalin
supposedly won the Second World
War). Russia, just like the Soviet
Union, believes that 1945 marked the
“liberation of Europe,” and such hor-
rendous events like the 1932-33 Ho-
lodomor Famine and genocide of the
Ukrainian people are being gingerly
referred to as “Stalinist terror against
grain-producing areas” (the term sug-
gested by local scientists). Essentially,
Moscow prepared a fairly solid foun-
dation to fight against the neighbor-
ing countries.
Instead of further detailing a truly
humongous block of distorted history,
let us turn our attention to some of the
summaries prepared by actual objec-
tive scientists: for example, Alexander
Strazhny in his book Ukrainian Men-
tality1
or Yury Fedorov in “Hybrid”
War a la Russe2
. For Ukraine, it was
1
A. Strazhny. Ukrainian Mentality. – Kyiv, Podo-
lina Publishing House, 2008
2
Yuri Fedorov. “Hybrid” War a la Russe. Kyiv, Bi-
znespoligraf Ltd., 2016
Information Operations Carried Out by
Russian Scientific, Research,
and Academic Institutions
R

25
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
an indisputable problem to be on the
receiving end of the consistent follow-
up by Russian institutions, including
active efforts made by influence agents
in quasi-scientific fields. For a clear
example, we can turn to an article by
Vladimir Kornilov printed in the pro-
Russian weekly publication 20003
. In
the article, titled “Poltava vs. Konotop:
Lies vs. the Thruth” (27.07.2009),4
Ko-
rnilov gives a detailed and “scientific”
explanation of why celebrating the
300th anniversary of the Poltava bat-
tle is relevant for Ukraine, while cel-
ebrating the 350th anniversary of the
Konotop battle is entirely absurd. The
very fact that Russian historians are in-
volved in the discourse on this subject
shows that this situation was an infor-
mation-psychological operation of the
Kremlin against Ukraine.
We should also emphasize that
an imperial presentation of history is
crucial for Kremlin to show its enti-
tlement to Ukraine in the future. This
also explains why, when Yanukovych
came to power, Moscow immediately
wished to create a joint history text-
book (and generally become closer
with Ukraine in all spheres). To this,
Ukrainian historian Igor Girich (M.
Grushevsky Institute of Archeog-
raphy and Source Studies with the
National Academy of Sciences of
Ukraine) said that on the mentality
level, “a joint Russian-Ukrainian text-
3
See also the article “The Battle of Konotop – a
New National Myth” (2000, 21.03.2008), and hun-
dreds more similar pseudohistoric publications.
4
http://inosmi.ru/world/20090727/251045.html
book sends the message that Ukraine
is Russia.”5
At the heights of confrontation,
Russian pseudoscientists, at the special
services’ command, went as far as to
announce that the Ukrainian language
does not exist at all, and neither do the
Ukrainian people, who are simply part
of the Russian people (Strazhny and Fe-
dorov describe this in detail).
This is exactly why most Russians
don’t view Ukrainians and Belarusians
as separate people, but consider them a
part of a single whole, which is suppos-
edly united by common spiritual values.
To support this idea, Putin’s earnest
servants are capitalizing on the “joint
foundation” of Russian Orthodoxy
and the common descent of the three
modern nations from the Old Russian
nation, which dates back to the Kyiv
Rus. Russian researcher Yury Fedorov
believes that “within the cognitive and
philosophic paradigm of the triune na-
tion concept, the idea of Ukrainians’
national self-identification and their re-
sulting wish for national independence
was – and still is – viewed as something
absurd, perverse and unnatural, some-
thing that has no right to exist.”
However, let us return to the mili-
tary phase of relations between Ukraine
and Russia.
On March 20, 2015, a symptomatic
event took place at the International
Centre for Policy Studies in Kyiv: a
roundtable titled “How to Win the In-
formation War.” The event’s title alone
reflects the degree of Russia’s informa-
5
http://www.zn.ua/3000/3150/70739/

26
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
tion pressure on Ukraine. During the
round table, the ICPS Chairman Vas-
ily Filipchuk made a shocking state-
ment: Russia is financing lobby groups
in key world countries, and actively
works with international PR companies,
spending between USD 1.4 and 4 billion
on international propaganda every year.
Professor Georgiy Kasyanov, Head
of the Contemporary History and
Politics department of the Institute of
History of Ukraine, explained the new
challenge posed before Ukraine: the
new influx of pseudoscientific ideas,
introduced by Russian quasi-scien-
tific structures, special services con-
trolled institutes, research facilities,
and even regular academic universi-
ties. “Russian historians, as well as
governmental and non-governmental
organizations, started systematically
constructing a certain narrative using
the names of Bandera, Shukhevych,
etc. and historic dates associated with
them. The terminology they use – fas-
cists, punishers, Banderites – is not
new. As a result, when we, Ukrain-
ian scientist, arrive in the West, we
often end up in a situation where
we’re forced to explain something we
shouldn’t have to: that we are not Na-
zis, not fascists, and so on.” Here lies
the true danger of Russian pseudosci-
ence: the police state has turned it into
bona fide scientific terrorism!
To add to the above, we should note
that during Ukraine’s “multi-vector
policy” stage, Russian structures at-
tempted to directly influence Ukrain-
ian scientists; then, once the war
against Ukraine was started, the focus
on influence moved to Europe. Moreo-
ver, Russia traditionally sends their
scientific personnel to international
forums, including official events. To
demonstrate how the Kremlin provides
scientific support to promote its offi-
cial ideology, let us think back to the
international (official) OSCE forum in
Berlin, in April 2015. Among the 23
member countries present, the Russian
delegation was the biggest, second only
to that of Germany, the host country;
of the six Russian delegates (includ-
ing the Russian ambassador to the
OSCE), two were members of the sci-
entific community, representatives of
educational and research institutions.
To put this into perspective, there was
only one more representative of an aca-
demic institution among the delegates:
a member of the Belarusian delegation.
This approach is typical for Russia, be-
cause “scientist” delegates allow them-
selves to refer to historic events during
their presentations, demonstrate the
involvement of science in the making
of government decisions, and “explain”
to foreign diplomats the potential con-
sequences of certain steps they may be
considering. On the other hand, if they
go overboard in any of their speeches,
official Russian representatives can al-
ways disclaim that any such statements
are only personal opinions of the scien-
tist in question.
Scientists in Russia have strictly
regulated functions: just like in Impe-
rial Russia, and then in the Stalinist and
Soviet times, the ideological machine
of today’s Russian science is geared to-
wards denying Ukrainians any mani-

27
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
festations of nationalism. The scien-
tific support for the imperial mission
relies on such methods as: criticizing
independent nation building; imperial
interpretations of history; and presen-
tation of alternative, always dubious,
data. The best-known example from
contemporary history would be the
blatant statement made by Putin at the
2008 Bucharest NATO summit: that,
supposedly, “17 million Russians live in
Ukraine.” Needless to say that this num-
ber, like many others, was fabricated by
“Russian scientists.”
Just like the USSR back in the day,
Russia is creating war myths. Starting
from 2014, they have become a par-
ticularly useful tool employed by Putin
to boost his public popularity. Working
out an effective mechanism for cultivat-
ing and mobilizing such popularity was
very high on the Kremlin’s agenda. At
the same time, Russia’s new approaches
to warfare, which were used first against
Georgia, then in Crimea, Donbas, and
Syria, became the centerpiece of Mos-
cow’s domestic and foreign policy. The
impact of war on the Russian public
consciousness can hardly be overesti-
mated. Even the “memories” of WW2
are still being used to maintain national
unity. Seeking legitimization through a
mythological interpretation of war was
typical for the Soviet government and
remains true for the current Russian
authorities. This is where an army of
decorated scientists becomes truly in-
valuable.
People with title like “researcher” or
“scientist” are often granted special au-
thority as spokespersons, like in the case
of Putin’s advisor Sergey Karaganov6
,
who authored quite a number of distinct
publications in 2006-2010, when Rus-
sia was aiming to suppress Kyiv’s desire
to join the NATO Membership Action
Plan. That is the same Karaganov who
in 2009, while working as deputy direc-
tor of the Institute of Europe of the Rus-
sian Academy of Sciences, said the fol-
lowing about the war in Georgia and the
prospect of a Russian-Ukrainian war: “I
hope that Tbilisi’s attack on South Os-
setia and Russia’s response to it will be-
come a useful episode, from a historic
perspective. The victims of this conflict
– Osettians, Russians, Georgians – may
not have died in vain. Russian troops
gave a decisive military response to
the idea of NATO’s endless expansion,
which, if unchecked, would have almost
inevitably resulted in a large-scale war –
not in Georgia, but in Ukraine, almost
in the middle of Europe.”7
During the presidential term of Vik-
tor Yushchenko, Karaganov attempted
to intimidate potential NATO members,
but during the latest war, he turned his
attention to Europe. After the Warsaw
NATO summit (July 2016), Karaganov
pulled off a powerful information-psy-
chological operation using his interview
with the German newspaper Spiegel
(July 12, 2016), in which this Russian
scholar directly threatened war against
the Baltic countries. Namely, when an-
6
Putin’s personal advisor, deputy director of the
Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sci-
ences since 1989, Chairman of the Presidium of
the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy
7
http://www.zn.ua/1000/1600/67678/

28
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
swering the newspaper’s question about
the reasons for concentration of NATO
troops in Baltic countries, Karaganov
said, “Can you even imagine what’s go-
ing to happen to these troops in case of
an actual open confrontation? They rep-
resent your symbolic assistance to the
Baltic countries, nothing more. Should
NATO initiate aggression against a
country with the nuclear arsenal of our
size, you will suffer the consequences.”
Notably, Spiegel does not mention
any “war” in Georgia or Ukraine, but re-
fers to a “crisis” in both these countries,
which indicates that Europe remains
incredibly restrained, even on the level
of opinion leaders and the media. It ap-
pears that they consider it dangerous to
even admit that the Russian-Ukrainian
war is real.
In Russia, the “scientist” title is often
replaced by one of a “researcher,” thus
raising a horde of henchmen who are
prepared to play along with any risqué
tune. To accomplish specific goals, the
Kremlin often nurtures entire organi-
zations, which provide follow-up for
certain sensitive projects that require
laying some groundwork or implant-
ing certain ideas in the public mind. In
cases like that, the key is to cleverly cre-
ate a number of “opinion leaders” with
artificial social authority (which is very
easy when the media is entirely under
government control: show someone’s
face on the screen, and they will move
on to make landmark statements). The
distinguishing feature of such organi-
zations is their niche specialization,
which, combined with the abundance
of information they receive from the
government, puts them in a whole dif-
ferent league compared to journalists.
For a typical example of a masterpiece
of fake, look no further than Igor Ko-
rotchenko, chief editor of the National
Defense magazine. During the artificial
peace and “brotherhood” between Rus-
sia and Ukraine, he spoke out strongly
in favor of developing cooperation be-
tween the two countries (particularly in
the military-industrial complex). Then,
in the trying time for Ukraine that came
right before the 25th anniversary of its
independence, he displayed levels of
Ukrainophobia that shocked even the
Russian audience. On August 11 alone,
Korotchenko tweeted that,8
“Ukrainian
camps that train terrorists to murder
Russian citizens are legitimate targets
for a missile strike! Do not negotiate
with Kyiv, just let the international com-
munity know that we will do what the
US does. Before striking on Ukrainian
terrorist camps in self-defense, Rus-
sia should just warn the UN Security
Council – and go for it!”
Statements like these need no com-
ment. Their purpose is to convince the
public mind that war is necessary, no
matter what degree of absurd Russia
sinks to in the process.
Various propaganda programs also
receive the scientific treatment, such
as promotion of the Russian language
and literature outside Russia. Ac-
cording to official data, financing of
the “Federal target program “Russian
Language” in 2016-2020 increased
threefold compared to the previous
8
11.08.2016,https://twitter.com/i_korotchenko?lang=ru

29
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
program of this type,” reaching RUR
6 billion [USD 96 million.] Russia
openly uses academic institutions to
spread anti-Ukrainian views, essen-
tially preparing the public for war. In
early August 2016, several students
and professors of the Moscow State
Institute of International Relations
reported that their English reading
materials frequently mention “the
Ukrainian junta,” instructors are fired
for “unpatriotic” articles, and students
frequently tattle on their instructors .
At many foreign language classes, the
students are given blatantly propagan-
dist texts that claim that flight MH-17
was shot down by Ukrainians, that the
government in Kyiv is fascist, and that
democracy is a Western invention that
is harmful for Russia. One of the in-
stitute’s instructors said: “The MSIIR
perfectly fulfills its mission to initiate
students into the discourses and nar-
ratives with which the Ministry of For-
eign Affairs operates. The students are
taught the realpolitik concept, which
is meant to justify geopolitics and geo-
political rhetoric. In other words, the
MSIIR teaches the students the aca-
demic language that could be used to
validate the state’s foreign policy. How-
ever, the MSIIR falls short on prepar-
ing students for critical understanding
of that foreign policy, and does not
teach them to challenge it, to think, to
ask questions.” In other words, Russia’s
higher educational institutions are be-
coming more and more reminiscent of
Soviet ones during the Cold War era.
In a fascinating development, Rus-
sian science is still trying to take very
devoted care of Ukrainian science,
even during the war. In the summer
of 2016, a conference took place in oc-
cupied Crimea, and it was attended by
Ukrainian scientists. The same year, in
early June, Yalta saw the 10th Interna-
tional Scientific-Practical Conference
“Russian Language in a Politically Cul-
tured World.” It was attended by experts
from the Russian Federation, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Serbia, Jordan,
Greece, USA, China, and… Ukraine.
The Ukrainian delegation consisted of
instructors from the Dnipropetrovsk
National University, Zaporizhia State
Medical University, Zaporizhia Nation-
al University, and the National Peda-
gogic Dragomanov University.
Without doubt, special purpose
scientific personnel will always be in
demand: for as long as the Russian
government needs to justify its exter-
nal aggression and explain wars waged
with the sole objective of creating
myths about Russia’s enemies. Analysts
note that the political class’ support of
Russia’s current government strongly
depends on the Kremlin’s ability to
maintain the current level of political
mobilization. This means that preven-
tive and victorious wars against imagi-
nary enemies besieging Russia will con-
tinue, and may heat up further.

nformation wars of the 21st
century created an unprec-
edented situation in which
virtually the entire popula-
tion of a combatant country is taking
part in the war, and each active citizen
becomes a soldier and an integral part
of the confrontation. In the past, gov-
ernment leaders and top state managers
made decisions and gave instructions,
but in this millennium, they have trans-
formed into real participants of the larg-
est (or the highest-profile) information
and psychological operations.
While Ukraine remained inexplica-
bly pacifist and ignored Russia’s infor-
mation attacks, a political information
campaign would be staged against it
roughly every year. These campaigns
would be dubbed by the media as “gas
war,” “sugar war,” “cheese war,” “meat
war,” “chocolate war,” etc. Moscow
would also provide constant reminders
about the presence of its Black Sea Fleet
in Crimea. In connection with that, Kyiv
would be presented with peculiar para-
digms, which it never provided any re-
sponse to. Among them is the Kremlin’s
well-known statement originally voiced
by Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russia’s am-
bassador in Ukraine: that supposedly,
the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s mission
in Crimea is to serve as a “guardian of
Ukraine’s southern borders.”
Hierarchy has always played a cru-
cial role in Russia’s information-psy-
chological operations against Ukraine.
As time passed, certain Russian officials
or public figures would systemically and
cyclically undermine Ukraine in one
way or another. Needless to say, there
is a big difference between the anti-
Ukrainian speeches made by the Mos-
cow mayor Yury Luzhkov in Sevastopol,
and Vladimir Putin’s program speech at
the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit. Yet
both special operations follow the same
pattern and fit into the same tapestry:
the Kremlin’s actions are linked, first of
all, to the recipient. The Moscow mayor
was appealing to the Crimean residents,
while Putin, Prime Minister at the time,
was basically threatening the Western
world and voicing his territorial claims
to Ukraine.
Putin actually carries out frequent
information and psychological influ-
ence stunts in person, and he has suc-
cessfully trained his staff to play along,
much like servants and jesters of old
would mimic their overlord. On April
4, 2008, at the Bucharest NATO sum-
mit, Putin claimed that Ukraine is
nothing more than a conglomerate of
Information and Psychological
Operations Carried Out by Official
Structures, IncludingTop State Officials
I

31
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
different territories previously owned
by its neighbors, that the bulk of these
territories’ population is Russian, and
that Ukraine’s wish to join NATO may
threaten its territorial integrity. Using
the Moscow rhetoric honed to perfec-
tion during the Soviet times, Putin not-
so-subtly hinted at Russia’s plans to di-
vide Ukraine along ethnic lines.
Here is the most prominent exam-
ple:
“…In Ukraine, one third are ethnic
Russians. Out of forty five million peo-
ple, in line with the official census, sev-
enteen millions are Russians. There are
regions, where only the Russian popu-
lation lives, for instance, in the Crimea.
90% are Russians. Ukraine, in the form
it currently exists, was created in the
Soviet times, it received its territories
from Poland – after the Second World
War, from Czechoslovakia, from Ro-
mania. Then, it received huge territo-
ries from Russia in the east and south
of the country… If we introduce into
it NATO problems, other problems, it
may put the state on the verge of its
existence. I want that all of us … real-
ize that we have there our interests as
well. Well, seventeen million Russians
currently live in Ukraine. Who may
state that we do not have any interests
there? South, the south of Ukraine,
completely, there are only Russians.”
(Putin, 2008)1
Russian experts offered the fol-
lowing comment on Putin’s speech:
1
Here and further on, quotes from “Hybdir” War
a la Russe by Yury Fedorov. – Kyiv, Biznespoligraf
Ltd., 2016
“This part of Putin’s speech at the
NATO summit clearly demonstrated
either his incompetence or his wishful
thinking, because his number of eth-
nic Russians in Ukraine was grossly
overstated. There aren’t seventeen
million Russians in Ukraine – rather,
seventeen percent of Ukraine’s popu-
lation are Russian. The share of Rus-
sians in Crimea cannot be 90 percent
– according to the 2001 census, it was
just over 58 percent. However, even
more scandalous was Putin’s remark
at the closed session of the Russia-
NATO Council also held in April
2008. Speaking to the US President
George Bush, Putin said, “You have
to understand that Ukraine isn’t even
a state! What is Ukraine? Part of it is
Eastern Europe, and most of its ter-
ritory was a gift from us!” (Allenova,
Kheda, Novikov, 2008).
Putin works hard to solidify the
myths developed by his pseudoscien-
tists. Yury Fedorov prevents several of
the president’s quotes as proof of that.
When speaking in Kyiv in July 2013, not
long before the invasion, Putin appealed
to the following myth:
“On this spot where we’re standing,
at the Dnieper font, a choice was made
for the entire Holy Rus, and for us all.
Our common ancestors who lived on
these lands, made this choice for our
entire nation. “For our entire nation” –
as I say that, I know that we certainly
understand today’s reality, and that
there is a Ukrainian nation, a Belaru-
sian nation, and other nations, and we
respect all this heritage, but we also
have a foundation of our shared spirit-

32
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
ual values, which make us one nation.”
(Putin, 2013)2
Then, on April 17, 2014, Putin an-
nounced his intention to annex not
only Crimea, but the entire southeast of
Ukraine: “The area called “Novorossi-
ya” (“New Russia”) even back in Tsa-
rist era – Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk,
Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odesa – was
not a part of Ukraine. These territories
were given to Ukraine in the 1920’s by
the Soviet government. … They were
conquered by Potemkin and Catherine
the Great during a well-known series
of wars. Novorossiysk was the center
of that territory, hence the name of the
region: Novorossiya. Russia lost these
territories for a number of reasons, but
the [Russian] people remained.” (Putin,
2014)
Essentially, Putin himself has never
stopped using any occasion to person-
ally attack and hurl insulting comments
at the Ukrainian nation. One statement
caused a particular stir: on December
16, 2010, when speaking to Russians
on air, Putin said that Russia would
have won the Great Patriotic War even
without Ukraine. Former president of
Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko said that
the Russian Prime Minister’s statement
about his country’s allies in the fight
against fascism was humiliating to a na-
tion that was Russia’s “trench brother.”3
During times of particular tension,
Putin often carries out personal infor-
mation-psychological operations aimed
at Western leaders. His preferred for-
2
As cited above
3
Interview with TVi channel, 21.12.2010
mats include speeches at international
organizations and interviews to popu-
lar printed media. However, recently
the Kremlin’s master started borrow-
ing more creative methods from other
people: for example, from the respected
US billionaire George Soros, whose fa-
vorite method to “talk to the world” is to
write open letters, articles, or books. On
May 27, 2016, Putin signed his name
under an article for the Greek news-
paper Kathimerini, before his official
trip to Greece (it is unknown whether
he writes his own content like Soros, or
uses an army of helpers, akin to Soviet
Secretary Generals). In the article, Pu-
tin “reminded” the Athens about the
crucial part that Russia had played in
Greece’s independence. Why under-
mine Greece’s position? Putin’s manipu-
lations aim to drive a wedge into NATO
and the EU, to ultimately get the West to
relax the sanctions, and to push through
the election in the occupied eastern re-
gions of Ukraine while the West unoffi-
cially acknowledges Russia’s ownership
over the annexed Crimea.
Stunts like this are often performed in
parallel with the official negotiation pro-
cess, sometimes helping to ease some ten-
sion or change the rhetoric. In the above
case, despite the statement by Donald
Tusk, President of the European Coun-
cil, that sanctions against Russia would
be continued, France took an overly soft
and careful stance, and its President Hol-
lande admitted that “Russia has made sig-
nificant steps” to fulfill the Minsk Agree-
ments. The response on the part of the
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was
predictablypro-Russian:onMay28,2016,

33
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
he criticized the West’s sanctions against
Russia as being unproductive.
Official functions are most frequent-
ly used to make speeches, statements,
or hold negotiations. Let us remem-
ber the holiday prayer to celebrate the
anniversary of the Kyiv Rus baptism,
which took place on July 27, 2013 on the
Saint Vladimir Hill in Kyiv. The prayer
was held by the Moscow Patriarch
Kirill jointly with Mitropolit Vladimir,
arch-priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox
Church (Moscow Patriarchate). Also
taking part in the prayer were 9 out of
the 15 arch-priests of Orthodox church-
es worldwide, who came to Kyiv for
that purpose. The next day, July 28, the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv
Patriarchate held a cross procession to
celebrate the same anniversary: after the
service in St. Vladimir Cathedral, sev-
eral thousand faithful, led by the Patri-
arch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
of the Kyiv Patriarchate, walked to Saint
Vladimir Hill to hold a prayer. After the
prayer, Putin, who was visiting Kyiv,
met with the Ukrainian president, and
suggested that they discuss cooperation
in the security sphere. Amusingly, the
official sources said that the two presi-
dents’ meeting lasted all of 15 minutes.
After his meeting with Yanukovych,
Putin met with the participants of the
“Ukrainian Choice” round table, which
was organized by his kum [godfather of
his child] and supporter Viktor Med-
vedchuk. This round table allowed Pu-
tin to take stock of the pro-Russian forc-
es in Ukraine and personally take part
in their preparation. For this follower of
the KGB tradition, the round table was
definitely a more important event than
his meeting with the Ukrainian head
of state. The media reported that dur-
ing the round table, the Russian presi-
dent spoke of the benefits that would
arise from integrating the Ukrainian
and Russian economies. Translated, this
means that he made some suggestions
on how to best present to Ukraine the
idea of unprecedented rapprochement
with Russia. During the same visit, the
Russian president had the time to visit
the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, where he and
Patriarch Kirill, jointly praising the
Ukrainian-Russian friendship, present-
ed awards to bishops of the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patri-
archate. If we view these events through
the prism of a personal information-
psychological operation, we can see that
during his short time in Kyiv Putin, act-
ing with silent approval of the Ukrain-
ian government, effectively influenced
the government itself, a well-formed
contingent of political influence agents,
and, by way of conferring with the sub-
ordinated church, the masses.
In September 2013, ZN.UA pub-
lished a document titled “On the Set
of Measures for Involving Ukraine in
the Eurasian Integration process.”4
The
author of the article reasoned that the
very existence of such a document sug-
gests that the Kremlin’s propaganda in
Crimea may intensify and become more
precise. “If one carefully listens to the
Russian president’s advisor Sergey Gla-
zyev talk about Ukraine’s European in-
4
Valentyna Samar. “Will Russia Open a Crimean
Front?” Zerkalo Nedeli, September 6, 2013

34
THE KREMLIN’S
INFORMATION FRONT
tegration and the ungrateful Ukrainian
oligarchs, one may think he is actually
reading out from the “Set of Measures,”
the author writes.
The article points out the support
that Moscow has been giving to a num-
ber Russian compatriot organizations,
conferences, round tables, and youth
engagement events. On August 9, 2013,
the Moscow House cultural center held
a round table titled “Crimean Youth
in Eurasian Integration Processes,” at
which Vyacheslav Svetlichniy, the newly
appointed Consul General of Russia to
Simferopol, essentially announced the
shift in Moscow’s priorities related to
supporting pro-Russian organizations
in Crimea. The Consul General stated,
“Our next task is to ensure that these or-
ganizations cooperate smoothly and are
better coordinated. For this, we place
high hopes in the youth, youth organi-
zations, and young leaders.”
Notably, the aforementioned Set of
Measures, in the section titled “Meas-
ures to Increase the Dependence of
Ukraine’s Economy on Russia,” contains
a separate item dedicated to the creation
of a Russian-Ukrainian Crimean Devel-
opment Corporation, with the intention
to subsequently create similar corpora-
tions with Russian capital in other re-
gions of Ukraine. The author of the arti-
cle emphasizes that Sergey Glazyev was
involved with putting Crimea in special
focus of the information-psychological
machine.
State officials are also often used
in operations aiming to probe or in-
timidate. Intimidation at the official
level is carried out through repetition
of certain ideas, sometimes by differ-
ent people. For example, the state-
ment about Moscow’s plan to locate
Iskander-M short-range ballistic mis-
sile systems in Kaliningrad region – it
was repeated by various officials ever
since 1998, when discussion of the
first wave of NATO expansion had
started in earnest. On June 25, 2016,
this idea was once again brought up by
Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, Head
of the State Duma Defense Commit-
tee and former commander of the
Russian Black Sea Fleet. The reason
behind that is simple: preparation for
the NATO summit on July 8-9, 2016.
Plus, in this particular case, several in-
terrelated events may be relevant.
In 2009, an important warning
came from Yury Scherbak, prominent
Ukrainian writer, civil activist and
diplomat (Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine). In
his article “Ukraine as a Failed State:
Myth and Reality” (Den, N83, May
21, 2009), he analyzed the interview
of Sergey Karaganov, one of Russia’s
“semi-official figures” and Head of
the Council on Foreign and Defense
Policy of Russia. In that interview,
wonderfully titled “Needless Monsters:
the Desovereignization of Ukraine,”
Karaganov, an “experienced agent of
Russia’s neoimperial policy” indicated
that occupation of Ukraine by Russia
is possible Russia. Below are excerpts
from the interview, accompanied by
Yury Scherbak’s analysis:
“— Does the current situation in
Ukraine put it at risk of becoming a
failed state?;

35
SUBVERSIVE WARFARE
— We are talking about a state bank-
ruptcy. Is desovereignization applicable
within any boundaries? Would it be
possible to introduce an external ad-
ministration?;
— Are the expert circles discuss-
ing, even covertly, what to do in a situ-
ation like the one our western neighbor
Ukraine is going through right now?
For instance, it is possible that events
escalate uncontrollably, as demonstrat-
ed by the gas pipeline issue(!).
In his answers, Karaganov makes a
conclusion about “passive desovereigni-
zation,” that is, the loss of sovereignty
as defined by the nation’s, society’s and
state’s ability to govern themselves. The
political scientist then slips out of the
academic tone and starts daydream-
ing: “If we’re talking about Ukraine
and Moldova – since those are the two
states that currently merit the most
concern(!) – then perhaps Russia and
the USA could talk about a kind of joint
responsibility(!)…”
Karaganov’s answer to the last ques-
tion – can Ukraine be allowed to fail –
is decisive: “No. We have no right to do
that(!)… We cannot leave matters unat-
tended. However, I don’t see any way for
Europe to write Russia a blank check for
occupying Ukraine, whether entirely or
partially. Then again, Russia would be
unwilling to have ungoverned territo-
ries right at its borders… Thus, Russia
will not let anyone become overly ac-
tive…”
Just as with many other provocations
and statements by Russian officials, the
Ukrainian government’s response to
this was unacceptably mild, short-sight-
ed and lacking substance. To a degree,
that was a harbinger of Russia’s military
intervention in Ukraine’s affairs.

ll of Russia’s military opera-
tions, whether in Chechnya,
Georgia, Syria, or Ukraine,
have been accompanied by
large-scale information campaigns. In
general, information-psychological op-
erations are a mandatory support for
military operations. Their purpose is
varied: from simple cover-ups, to spe-
cific explanation of certain viewpoints
to a wide audience. However, they are
always used to camouflage military ac-
tivity by diverting or dispersing the re-
cipient’s attention.
Since the very start of contemporary
relations between Ukraine and Russia,
the latter has widely used such informa-
tion-psychological operations to pursue
its interests in the global armaments
market (Ukraine, being a competitor
in the post-Soviet market sector, would
be consistently discredited, usually after
certain steps made by special services:
for example, to interfere with the con-
clusion or fulfillment of a contract).
However, in spring 2002, after the
National Security and Defense Coun-
cil of Ukraine officially announced a
course for European integration, Russia
stepped up its activity to a whole new
level. The 2003 conflict around Tuzla Is-
land is believed to have been provoked
by Alexander Tkachev, governor of the
Krasnodarsk Krai – but it would be hard
to believe that such an undertaking had
not been thoroughly prepared by Rus-
sian special services and approved by
the Kremlin. As tensions rose, Russia
resorted to a vast arsenal of influence,
using virtually all forms of information-
psychological operations. That included
misinformation, like the statement of
the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
that it was time to break out the 1971
map and check question of ownership
over Tuzla. Common intimidation
was used as well: Voloshin, head of the
Russian Presidential Administration,
made a presumptuous and irresponsi-
ble statement that, “Ukraine should be
satisfied that it still has Crimea. We’ll
drop a bomb if we have to.”1
Then, to
divert attention from the matter, Vik-
tor Chernomyrdin, Russia’s ambassador
to Ukraine, said, “Why stir things up?
Nothing’s happening in Russia.” To Rus-
sia, the Tuzla incident was more just
than a chance to question the legitimacy
of existing documents: it was a realistic
test to see how Ukraine would respond
to claims against its territory. Russia’s
efforts to escalate the situation included
1
https://iq.hse.ru/news/177753718.html
Information Operations Following Special
Events and Provocations Involving of
Russian Enforcement (Army) Units
A

The 10 Types of Russia's Information Operations

The 10 Types of Russia's Information Operations

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