Information Operations

A vital (and cheap) weapon in Russia's arsenal

Image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay

The big news this week was that Belgian and Czech intelligence agencies have uncovered a significant Russian propaganda network working to interfere in European politics and paying European politicians to spread Russian disinformation. The discovery resulted in Czechia imposing sanctions on the Voice of Europe “news” site and its leader Viktor Medvedchuk, who was sanctioned by OFAC in 2014 for working to undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, pursuant to Executive Order (EO) 13660. Medvedchuk at the time was close pals with Russian president Putin and then-Ukrainian president Yanukovych.

Viktor Medvedchuk is the leader of Ukrainian Choice, a group through which he has been stirring conflict in Kherson, a province just north of Crimea, through advertising campaigns designed to pit supporters and foes of Russia’s attempt to annex Crimea against one another. 

Medvedchuk also presents a secondary sanctions risk, so anyone working with him can also be sanctioned, even if no US nexus is involved. Treasury in 2022 noted that he continued involvement in destabilization activities in Ukraine and directed efforts to recruit current and former Ukrainian government officials to prepare for a Russian takeover of the Ukrainian government and its critical infrastructure. Medvedchuk had been under house arrest in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, but in September 2022, he was exchanged for 215 Ukrainian POWs from the Siege of Mariupol.

Neither Medvedchuk nor his wife, Oksana Marchenko, are sanctioned by the EU, so Czechia acted unilaterally, designating the oligarch for running an influence operation using Voice of Europe. Artem Marchevskyi, a Ukrainian-Israeli citizen who allegedly ran the website, was also designated by Prague.

But the drama doesn’t end there.

Apparently, several European politicians were paid off by Voice of Europe to promote Russian interests in the European Parliament. They include politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Hungary (no one should be surprised by the latter, given Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s cozy relationship with Putin). German lawmaker Petr Bystron from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was named as one of the recipients of Voice of Europe bucks.

These tactics are not new. Russia has been involved in disinformation, misinformation, and other information operations to influence policy in the West for decades, and Voice of Europe is just one of the disinformation outlets that aims to influence the political climate in the West and promote Moscow’s agenda.

In its account on X, Voice of Europe, which last posted on March 27, described itself as a source of “uncensored network news from Europe and the world.” However, a review of the X account turned up a potpourri of right-wing conspiracy theories, like purported statistics on sexual crimes committed by migrants, the harm done by Covid-19 lockdowns and “globalist censorship” imposed by the European Union.

These issues may seem like ordinary points of disagreement between political parties and sides. Censorship has long been a point of contention between the right and the left in the United States and in Europe. However, Russian information operations are much more sophisticated than just disagreements between the right and the left. They promote half-truths, misinformation, and outright lies to advance Moscow’s agenda. Russia is not the enemy. Russia needs to have its views respected in war negotiations. Your views are being manipulated.

The Voice of Europe’s YouTube page features interviews with prominent European politicians from far-right parties in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands. Sample headlines have included: “China — not Russia — is the primary threat to the West,” “Germany is constantly pressured into escalating the war in Ukraine,” “Peace negotiations should also respect Russian interests” and “Nations states should be monocultural.”

Russia’s information operations are relatively inexpensive, especially compared to the staggering losses of troops and equipment Russia has suffered since its full-scale invasion.

In addition to hundreds of thousands of troops Russia has lost in the war so far, Ukraine has turned a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet into submarines, or just disabled them into oblivion.

Molfar, an open-source intelligence agency, in analysis of Russia's fleet losses between February 24, 2022, to February 15, 2024, reported that a wide range of Putin's naval forces have been targeted in the war, with losses including both small and large ships performing various functions, from amphibious operations to patrolling.

The Moskva, the Saratov, the Vasily Bekh, the Ivan Golubets, the Novocherkassk… the list goes on. Ukraine’s drones have also been striking Russia’s energy infrastructure. And with more than 430,000 dead and frog knows how many injured, Putin also promised to pay the families of those killed in the war 5 million rubles ($68,800), and 3 million rubles ($41,300) to soldiers who were injured or went through a trauma during Russia’s invasion.

(This is where I mention that GDP growth doubters love to bring up when claiming that sanctions against Russia don’t work. Yes, families of the dead have more spending money now, but as Russia’s economy pivots toward wartime production, the supply of non-military goods dwindles, prices increase, and those same families of the dead and wounded cannot afford to buy eggs.)

In a recent article, the Institute for the Study of War notes that even with this pivot toward military spending, Russia will lose this war, especially if the West mobilizes its resources to stop the Kremlin.

The West’s existing and latent capability dwarfs that of Russia. The combined gross domestic product (GDP) of NATO countries, non-NATO European Union states, and our Asian allies is over $63 trillion. The Russian GDP is on the close order of $1.9 trillion. Iran and North Korea add little in terms of materiel support. China is enabling Russia, but it is not mobilized on behalf of Russia and is unlikely to do so.

So what’s poor Russia to do?

Promote the narrative that Russia is stronger and more capable than it is, sowing doubt and subsequent inaction on the part of Ukraine’s allies, and limiting military aid to Ukraine for fear of Russia’s mighty military and nuclear capabilities. “Perception manipulation is one of the Kremlin’s core capabilities,” says the ISW, and this strategy is the most effective and least expensive Russia has.

Remember Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson, during which Carlson looked much like a confused monkey, while Putin bloviated about random and irrelevant “facts” about Russia’s history to show that Russia is somehow entitled to destroy Ukraine?

The interview was not just a strategy to force the audience to accept Russia’s “reasoning” by pushing premises that advance Moscow’s interests and changing the fundamental basis of the debate, so that the audience arrives at a predetermined conclusion. The sit-down also exemplified Putin’s ability to spew a firehose of inanities, myths, and outright lies to justify his war. Putin claimed that Ukraine’s NATO accession posed an imminent danger to Russia. He claimed that Ukraine is not a real country and vomited a litany of lies, claiming history supports his contentions and justifies Russia’s attacks.

In addition, Putin has claimed that Russia has the “right to a self-defined sphere of influence,” according to the ISW, and is justified in killing, raping, and ethnic cleansing – with no repercussions. He has asserted that the West is Russia’s “enemy” and implied that Russia is fighting in Ukraine in order to defeat the West—a massive evolution from the claims of “special military operation” to “denazify” Ukraine in early 2022. He has claimed that Russia is fighting to protect the interests of the Russian-speaking diaspora living in Ukraine (if you call murdering them “protecting their interests”).

Courtesy of X (formerly Twitter)

Those who take the time to debate those and numerous other lies Putin vomits forth are arguing on his terms. To Russia, peace = Ukraine’s unconditional surrender. To Russia, “we will negotiate if Russia’s interests are respected” means Russia keeps the land it illegally annexed, and that Ukraine has no autonomy to decide its national security interests. And of course, all sanctions against Russia need to be lifted.

To Russia, resistance = escalation, according to the ISW.

The Kremlin has greatly invested in framing Ukraine – and anyone who dares to resist the Kremlin – as an aggressor (and Russia as a victim). The West’s legitimization of Russia, a belligerent in Ukraine since 2014, as a mediator in the Minsk agreements also gave the Kremlin eight years to falsely frame any Ukrainian self-defense action or unwillingness to bend to the Kremlin’s will as Ukrainian aggression.

The Kremlin knows that peace is our desired default setting in the West, and it works to use the concepts of “peace,” and “end to bloodshed” against us. If we refuse to bow to Moscow’s narrative that it—and not Ukraine with its thousands of people kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered—is the victim, and we increase pressure on Russia with sanctions and other restsrictions, we are the aggressor.

Putin understands that our values, our desire for peace, democracy, and freedom for all people drive our actions, and he has no problem using our values against us. By twisting the perceptions of the West to the Russian point of view and inundating western audiences with disinformation, the Kremlin can sow doubt and internal conflict. It can cause a delay in critical aid to Ukraine by advancing the narrative that the much-needed munitions and military equipment are somehow preventing the United States from securing our southern border. Russia can weaken our global leadership role (note that the EU has stepped up to help Ukraine stop the Russian onslaught, while Congress dawdles, paralyzed by members who have fallen for Russian disinformation at home).

And all these efforts come at a much smaller price tag than military modernization, with which Russia has struggled for decades due to corruption and inefficiencies. Analysis by the Insikt Group a few years ago assessed just how cheap disinformation efforts and the amplification of said disinformation are.

Advertising services on popular Russian-language underground forums, one of the disinformation merchants posted their pricing models showing the cost of content generation so you could budget out your disinformation campaign.

• $15 for an article up to 1,000 characters

• $8 for social media posts and commentary up to 1,000 characters

• $10 for Russian to English translation up to 1,800 characters

• $25 for other language translation up to 2,000 characters

• $1,500 for SEO services to further promote social media posts and traditional media articles, with a time frame of 10 to 15 days

Another illicit actor advertised services for social media activity:

• $150 for Facebook and other social media accounts and content

• $200 for LinkedIn accounts and content

• $350–$550 per month for social media marketing

• $45 for an article up to 1,000 characters

• $65 to contact a media source directly to spread material

• $100 per 10 comments for a given article or news story

These prices are certainly much less costly than the hundreds of millions it costs to build new battleships. And while the ships help Russia project military strength, disinformation efforts help change hearts and minds, or at least sow discord to delay aid to Russia’s victim, Ukraine.

Luckily, the West is waking up to these efforts. Czechia is not the only country identifying and blocking the assets of Russian disinformation merchants.

Just a few days ago, OFAC sanctioned individuals and entities supporting Russia’s malign disinformation efforts. The designations, according to Treasury, designations follow prior OFAC actions that have highlighted and disrupted Russia’s global malign influence campaigns, which have included US election interference, efforts to subvert democracy in Moldova, destabilization activities in Ukraine, and the operation of outlets controlled by Russian intelligence services, among others. The Social Design Agency, much like the Internet Research Agency, owned by the late Russian warlord Evgeny Prigozhin, before it and Struktura LLC were involved in a persistent foreign malign influence campaign that included the creation of websites designed to impersonate government organizations and legitimate media outlets in Europe. 

The designations against the Social Design Agency, Struktura, and its leaders, Ilya Gambashidze and Nikolai Tupikin not only cut the sanctions targets off from the US dollar, but OFAC also identitfied two USDT crypto wallets on the TRON network belonging to Gambashidze. These wallets received more than $200,000 worth of USDT on the TRON network, according to analytics firm Chainalysis, and a significant portion of those funds came directly from designated Russian exchange Garantex, highlighting the exchange’s continued involvement in the Russian government’s illicit activities. 

More needs to be done to counter Russia’s information operations. More designations. More education. More training to recognize the Russian threat. We cannot continue debating from Russia’s premises or waste time debating with Internet randos about irrelevant suppositions. We must continue to work in concert with our allies to identify and deter Russian disinformation efforts. We are stronger when we stand together.

And we need to ignore Russian disinformation claims that helping arm Ukraine weakens our own country. The Kremlin uses outright falsehoods and twisted logic to alter or delay our decisionmaking. While we dither, Russia regroups and promotes the narrative that it’s rebuilding its military might despite strategic trade restrictions and sanctions.

Let’s keep our eyes on the ball. Do not debate on their terms. Decide and define our terms instead.