Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

The targets of Russian information propaganda are legion: the Russian diaspora, the broader audience of the countries within Russia’s sphere of influence, Russian domestic audiences, and the international community. While Russian media sometimes target these different audiences at different stages and in different ways, at times they do so simultaneously. Most generally, the initial target audience tends to be the compatriots residing in any particular former Soviet republic, who are presented with a Moscow-biased version of current events and history. Then, the idea is introduced that the compatriots are at risk from hostile forces in Europe, America, the titular nationality—the dominant eponymous ethnic group in the country—and/or the country’s nationalist and “fascist” groups. The surprisingly high degree to which Russian information warfare and propaganda are accepted both domestically and in the former Soviet republics is closely related to the fact that Russian state-controlled media tend to dominate the information space of the entire post-Soviet region. Local media do not have sufficient resources or are simply not sufficiently established to compete with Russian state-funded media. Likewise, due to the prevalence of the Russian language, the vast majority of the audience consistently opts for Russian over English or other foreign-language media. In November 2014, the Russian state-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya announced the launch of a new international media project, Sputnik, that will broadcast in forty-five languages and have offices in all post-Soviet states with the exception of Turkmenistan.⁸³ The Russian government also intended to beef up the spending in 2015 for the Russia Today international TV network and for Rossiya Segodnya, which also incorporates the Voice of Russia radio station and the international news agency RIA Novosti, by 40 percent and 200 percent respectively.⁸⁴ However, given the enormous fluctuations of the ruble in the foreign exchange market, which in early 2015 lost nearly 50 percent of its value vis-à-vis the dollar, the combined funding for Russia Today and Rossiya Segodnya actually decreased from $695 million in 2014 to $335 million in 2015.⁸⁵

Information warfare campaigns in the near abroad tend to create divisions in target societies as well as shore up support for Russia’s military campaigns among the domestic audience. The campaigns are either simultaneously or subsequently extended to international audiences in order to present events with a Kremlin bias and justify Russia’s policy choices. As case study chapters will show, Moscow’s information warfare was exemplified in the Georgian and Ukrainian wars where it was used strategically to advance Russian military aims. In the case of Kyrgyzstan, Moscow’s targeted propaganda campaign arguably played a contributing role in toppling a regime.

The Russian propaganda machine is an elaborate industry that dates back to the Second World War with the purpose of deception and manipulation of information. Russian information warfare theory is derived directly from spetspropaganda (special propaganda) theory, which was first taught as a separate subject in 1942 at the Russian Military Institute of Foreign Languages. Although the subject was removed from the curriculum after the collapse of the USSR, it was reintroduced after Putin launched the Information Security Doctrine in September 2000. The doctrine was generally interpreted as the state’s attempt to take control over mass media and subordinate its functioning to the needs of government and national security.⁸⁶ Among its outlined measures for maintenance of information security in domestic politics was the “launching of counterpropaganda activities aimed at prevention of negative outcomes from the dissemination of disinformation about Russian internal politics.”⁸⁷ At that point the Russian Military Institute was rebranded as the Department of Foreign Military Information of the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.⁸⁸ According to deputy director of the Warsaw Centre for Eastern Studies, Jolanta Darczewska, in the Department of Foreign Military Information the Russian military trains specialists in “organizing foreign information and military communication,” “information analysis,” and “monitoring and development of military information.”⁸⁹ However, information warfare is not limited to this single institution: as of 2014 there were at least 74 research and scientific institutions, forming the Scientific and Methodological Association of Higher Education Facilities of the Russian Federation Covering Information Security, established upon the initiative of the FSB (the former KGB).⁹⁰