Ukraine crisis: A low-cost disinformation campaign aids Putin’s playbook
Sébastian SEIBT
France 24
© AFP - ALEXANDER NEMENOV
While Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised two breakaway regions of Ukraine as independent this week, pro-Russia online disinformation campaigners unleashed numerous images and videos depicting Ukraine as the aggressor. Their often crude efforts were promptly dismantled by experts and fact-checkers. But for Moscow, quantity overrides quality concerns.
The disinformation examples abound the Internet: a photo of an alleged Ukrainian armored vehicle on Russian territory, a video of Ukrainian troops on an “invasion” mission infiltrating Russia, or another clip supposedly showing Ukrainian or Polish "saboteurs" trying to blow up Russian tanks.
Days after the Kremlin slammed Western “hysteria” over the Russian military buildup around Ukraine, the messaging from Moscow has changed following President Vladimir Putin’s decision on Monday to recognise the pro-Russian, self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
The new narrative, sustained by a disinformation campaign, is focused on presenting "proof" of Kyiv’s belligerence, which is contradictory to the situation on the ground as Ukraine confronts the military might of its huge eastern neighbour.
The disinformation circulates in pro-Russian groups on the messaging service Telegram and is then relayed by state and pro-Kremlin media organisations. Over the past few days, Russian state media has insisted that Putin has ordered troops on a “peacekeeping” mission into eastern Ukraine to prevent what the Russian leader has called a “genocide” of Russian-speakers by the government in Kyiv.
‘Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy’ editing
The fake videos and images though have not escaped the attention of fact-checkers on the lookout for Russian disinformation on the Internet.
>> More on FRANCE 24 Observers: Meet the anonymous Internet investigators tracking Russian movements on Ukraine’s borders
The video of soldiers "speaking Polish" and trying to sabotage Russian tanks was dissected to reveal a montage of video and audio pieces, according to Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, an Amsterdam -based investigative site that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. Some of the footage was shot in early February, while editors added footage and sound from a video shot during a Finnish military exercise in 2010.
The image of an alleged Ukrainian armored vehicle supposedly advancing into Russian territory was also promptly and effectively debunked. The Soviet-era vehicle in the photo does not belong to the Ukrainian arsenal, according to investigators at Oryx, an open-source platform specialised in military equipment and technology. “They couldn’t even get that right," said the group in a Twitter post.
Far more sensitive for investigators was a claim, supported by video by the FSB – one of Russia's main intelligence services – that a shell fired from Ukrainian territory destroyed a Russian outpost on the border on Monday.
The FSB video was examined by investigators at the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), a group of specialists in Russian military issues, and found to be suspect. "The closest Ukrainian positions” are located more than 37 kilometres from the impact zone, began a CIT Twitter thread. In a series of posts systematically debunking the claim, CIT noted that the only Ukrainian artillery systems that could fire at such a distance would have caused much heavier destruction than the lone damaged hut in the video.
“We find this 'incident' to be yet another in a string of poorly staged pretexts for a possible operation against Ukraine,” concluded CIT in a message posted on Tuesday.
It was not the first time that fact-checkers have called out the efforts of pro-Russian propagandists in recent days. "Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy,” taunted Aric Toler, a researcher at Bellingcat, who monitors "made in Kremlin" disinformation.
Aimed at ‘an already receptive audience’
The lack of sophistication may indeed be surprising. Russia is known to be a master of online propaganda since its agents interfered in the 2016 US presidential campaign. Moscow had, moreover, "already used the same techniques in 2014 to justify the annexation of Crimea", recalled Stefan Meister, a specialist in Russian security and disinformation at the German Council on Foreign Relations, in an interview with FRANCE 24.
Meister believes that "it’s impossible to imagine Russia today conducting a conflict without a cyber-propaganda dimension".
But how then can the well-oiled Russian machine produce such "low-cost" disinformation? "Simply because, for the moment, the Russian authorities do not need to do better," said Meister.
The Kremlin wants and needs to convince its own population. "A military operation in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, is much less popular with Russians than the annexation of Crimea had been in 2014," noted Valentina Shapovalova, a specialist in Russian media and propaganda at the University of Copenhagen, in an interview with FRANCE 24.
The authorities have therefore developed a narrative and resorted to images "which are similar to all the disinformation that has been sold for eight years to the Russian-speaking population about Ukraine", Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a specialist in Russian disinformation at the University of Copenhagen, told FRANCE 24.
It’s not the first time, for instance, that Putin has used the term "genocide" to refer to the situation in Ukraine. "This is what he had already done in 2014 before launching the invasion of Crimea," recalled Meister.
This means there’s little need to reinvent the wheel and fiddle with the details of disinformation. It can remain simple and work "because it is primarily aimed at an already receptive audience", explained Golovchenko.
‘Fog of disinformation’
What’s more, it’s not so much the quality as the quantity of disinformation that matters. "The goal is to create so many different – and sometimes even contradictory – versions of what is happening at the border that no one can really distinguish the true from the false anymore," said Shapovalova.
Using what Shapovalova calls a "fog of disinformation", Moscow hopes that the Russian-speaking population, from Moscow to Donbas, will be so saturated with messaging that, not knowing which way to turn, they will cling to the familiar: the voice of the Kremlin.
Disinformation, however crude, can also have its own raison d'être at the international level. "Moscow knows very well that the Western public will, in any case, consider anything coming from Russia as not very credible. The Kremlin is mainly interested in the fact that American and European analysts and decision-makers waste time tracking down this disinformation and talking about it," said Meister.
The purpose of this heavy-handed propaganda may be to divert attention, to create informational background noise intended to distract the opponent.
Finally, another possible explanation is that Moscow is purposely playing Washington's game. "The US has warned on more than one occasion that Russia would create incidents out of thin air before any invasion or military operation in Ukraine," noted Golovchenko. All the Russian propagandists have to do is create crude fabrications so that everyone cries wolf and spots a likely Russian "false flag" operation to justify a war. In short, this is enough to put pressure on Ukraine and NATO without having to move a single tank.
This article was translated from the original in French.
War of words: Are Putin's moves an act of war or a peacekeeping deployment?
Is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to direct troops to the separatist-held regions of Donetsk and Luhansk an invasion? And what are its so-called "peacekeeping" functions? Experts share their analysis
The third article of the treaty that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed with separatist leaders on Monday calls for the "implementation of peacekeeping functions by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation" in Ukraine's breakaway territories. The Kremlin's decision has effectively annulled the Minsk ceasefire agreement, which was signed after Putin illegally annexed Crimea in southern Ukraine in 2014.
Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, described Putin's assertion that the troops would assume a peacekeeping role as "nonsense."
Among the principles of peacekeeping as defined by the UN are the "non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate," and the "consent of the main parties to the conflict."
Samantha de Bendern, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House, a think tank in London, questions the role of the so-called peacekeeping forces.
"What are they going to do? Start policing the separatists? It is a smokescreen. It's part of Putin's disinformation [campaign] and part of his disingenuous waging of war. He has never been able to admit that he's at war with Ukraine, but he is," she told DW.
Domitilla Sagramoso, a senior lecturer in security and development and an expert on Russian foreign and security policy at King's College London, told DW that the deployment is "clearly an invasion" because "there is no agreement between the two sides about the deployment of peacekeeping forces. There is very little doubt that Russia took it upon itself to send additional troops into the separatist region and to call them peacekeeping troops to confuse everyone."
The Kremlin's motives may appear clearer following a unanimous vote late on Tuesday by Russia's Federation Council to allow the Russian leader to use military force outside the country, essentially formalizing Russia's military deployment to the regions held by separatists. It's feared the move could herald a broader attack on Ukraine.
Does the move constitute an act of war?
Technically, war has been going on in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas between Ukraine forces and Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Around 14,000 people have been killed so far in the conflict. An additional 1.4 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced.
The White House had earlier been reluctant to use the term "invasion" but has now shifted its position. "We think this is, yes, the beginning of an invasion, Russia's latest invasion into Ukraine," Jon Finer, principal deputy national security adviser, told CNN. "An invasion is an invasion and that is what is underway."
The EU and the UK, meanwhile, weighed in on what Putin's decision means.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday labeled the move a "renewed invasion." The EU's high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, noted that it was not yet a "fully-fledged invasion."
Under international law, the breakaway regions are still part of Ukrainian sovereign territory. Russia is currently the only country that recognizes these republics; no EU member state has done so. As such, said de Bendern, there is little doubt as to what is happening. "When you send troops into the territory of another place, it is called an invasion. These peacekeeping troops are not peacekeeping troops, they are an invasion," she told DW.
Putin did not indicate if he would send troops across the longstanding line of contact between Ukrainian government territory and the self-proclaimed "People's Republics" of Luhansk and Donetsk.
"Whether Russia moves into the rest of the Luhansk and Donetsk region is a matter for discussion because they would be facing Ukrainian forces. If they advance further then we enter into a hot war with Ukraine," said Sagramoso.
What are the historical precedents?
De Bendern said Putin's actions are analogous to Nazi Germany's military occupation of Czechoslovakia, which began with the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. "He has created his own artificial Sudetenland and is doing what Hitler did there."
Another historical precedent is the 2008 war in Georgia. The Kremlin dispatched troops from the breakaway separatist region of South Ossetia onto Georgian territory. "They were sent there to allegedly keep the peace and the Russian tanks ended up 20 kilometers (12 miles) from [the Georgian capital] Tbilisi," said de Bendern.
Another area of concern is that Putin may use the comments made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at last weekend's Munich Security Conference about security guarantees related to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
The memorandum is an agreement between Russia, Ukraine, the United States, France and the UK to grant security guarantees to Ukraine about its territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine agreeing to give up its nuclear weapons.
In Munich, Zelenskyy lamented that those security guarantees are not being respected. According to de Bendern, Zelenskyy was implying that Ukraine now saw no reason to respect the Budapest memorandum conditions.
"Very few people picked up on what that actually means. What he was really saying is that maybe we should start thinking about rearming ourselves with nuclear weapons," she said.
While that is highly unlikely, not least because of a lack of delivery capabilities and other infrastructure problems, de Bendern said Putin could use that perceived threat as a pretext for action further down the line.
"And they would say: You did that in Iraq. We're doing it in Ukraine. They're going to bring up Kosovo and they're going to say you bombed Belgrade because the Serbians were killing ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. We're going to bomb parts of Ukraine because Ukrainians are killing our fellow Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk."
There is no evidence supporting Putin's baseless claims that Ukrainian forces have harmed civilians.
Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect that the armed conflict between Ukrainian forces and separatists in eastern Ukraine began in 2014.
Edited by: Stephanie Burnett
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