What Comes Next?
Possible Developments in Russian Messaging (or Information Operations, if you will)
The war in Ukraine has brought Russian information operations (I’ll just use ‘info ops’ here, for ease and for want of a better term, even though it’s ridiculous that we don’t still have an agreed name for this problem) into the mainstream. Many journalists and periodicals write regularly about ‘Russian disinformation’, and prominent accounts on X often post disparagingly clips from Russian state television.
This is not necessarily a bad thing in principle: I have long argued that educating Russia’s target audiences about the threat from information manipulation is key to building resilience. However, it is crucial that we maintain and evolve our knowledge of the threat, and of Russian strategies and tactics. (A great example of how to write sensibly about Russian info ops, including how to explain likely Russian intent, is this recent piece by Lesia Bidochko.)
Transition from a positional informational war, to a manoeuvrable informational war
The increased exposure makes it increasingly tempting to dismiss Russian info ops as crude or simplistic. The recent mocking reaction to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MFA) posting of images of Rishi Sunak with a tattooed Ukrainian hand on his shoulder is telling. X users mocked the MFA for not understanding how hands work. The Daily Beast laughed off the operation as possibly ‘Russia’s dumbest propaganda fail’. And yet this dismissal of how Russia works is possibly dangerous, as it fails to take into account the complex impacts info ops can have, certainly in the longer term, or to ward off their effects. (I’ll go below into the two fundamental levels of how info ops work.)
It is clear that much of our government and academic understanding of Russian info ops was built up before the larger invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Much more work is required as to how Russian info ops work now, in a much more brutal war environment.
It is also clear that Russian (state and proxy) operatives are more agile than we might think, and are able to evolve their approaches and respond to events at pace. Governments in Europe and North America would do well to emulate Kyiv’s beehive approach to strategic communications, and develop capabilities that enable devolved teams to counter Russian messaging more speedily.
Even better, we should develop capabilities that enable us to anticipate what type of hostile messaging Russia is likely to disseminate in the future, thereby pre-bunking and mitigating in advance their impact.
Much of our work on countering Russian info ops to date has been reactive, with governments and others on the back foot, having to work out whether or how to respond to Russian informational attacks that might have already had an impact.
Transitioning from this reactive posture to one where we anticipate what Russia might do next, and use strategic communications and more informed journalism to undermine Russian messaging in advance (and also to criticise Moscow) could significantly help as we go forward.
This would help us transition from a positional informational war with Russia, to a manoeuvrable informational war. This shift in approach (echoing Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s discussion of a transition to a military war of manoeuvres) might help us seize the initiative in messaging. It will also help anticipate and mitigate future Russian informational attacks which are likely to intensify. It would require four factors: speed, flexibility, coordination, and pre-emptive capabilities.
The pre-emptive part of this is the toughest, and I shall tackle some issues regarding this first.
Pre-empting what will Moscow do next
Russian info ops have evolved since February 2022. Much knowledge of Russian information manipulation was built before February 2022, with many specialists studying the field as an abstract alternative to military warfare. As well as instilling a false sense of security, it has also meant in some cases that we do not fully understand the complex relationship between informational activity and military activities, even at an immediate operational level. In any case, it is possible that Moscow and its actors could rely increasingly on the following techniques this year:
1. More truth
More truth? It is an overused assessment that Russia disseminates varied and contradictory messaging in order to obscure the truth, and to overwhelm people by convincing them that the real truth is impossible to find.
However, that is only partially the case. Russian info ops work on several complex levels, but we can delineate two fundamental type of messaging: the messaging that targets deep-seated and long-standing views and beliefs about how the world supposedly works (ie ‘the Russians and Ukrainians are one people’, ‘the British are driven by their loss of empire’); or they target immediate, situational events. The former are very difficult to dispel, given their ingrained and cultural nature. What seems important is the complex relationship between systemic and situational info ops (I took those terms from Ilya Yablokov’s work on conspiracy theories), where these two types of discourse meet, and the moments where the situational reinforces systemic cultural opinions.
In that regard, as Moscow pushes on with its perverted case for invading Ukraine, we might see further instances where Russian actors use messaging to promote and amplify their acts of violence, rather than trying to evade responsibility. These truthful messages could be used to reinforce systemic messaging, helping to reinforce long-term cultural beliefs (ie the false claim that Ukraine is a ‘Nazi’ state).
The trend towards increasingly ephemeral messaging, especially Telegram, has further complicated this relationship between systemic and the situational messaging; I shall go into this at a later date.
2. More victory
The complex interaction of systemic and situational info ops leads us to Russian messaging about their supposed victory in Ukraine.
I have previously considered the importance of historical inevitability in Russian political and cultural thinking, and whether Russians are motivated to some degree by the belief that events in Ukraine are determined by fate. I have also considered whether a blind faith in ‘Providence’ and a predetermined victory encouraged complacency in Spring 2022 (and I am not the only one who has thought this – Russian Z-blogger Semyen Pegov complained that Russian military forces were over-reliant on ‘avos’ to carry them onto their allegedly certain victory).
Russians are already pushing the idea of historical inevitability in their media to convince their audiences not that they can win the war, but that they have already won in Ukraine. Articles carry this emotive messaging alongside supposed detailed military analysis that strongly appeals to some readers (this piece, ‘How Ukraine Lost the SMO’ is indictive of that tactic).
This type of messaging is almost certainly designed to improve morale among Russians, and to undermine support for Ukraine. There also something highly iconic in this messaging. The use of iconic Russian language as an attempt to transfigure reality is something that requires more thought in studies of Russian info ops. I’ll return to this point in the future; but the question of how discourse can act upon the world leads us into how Russian authorities exploit language.
3. More discursive repression
Moscow is clearly increasing its control over the information space inside Russia, and taking more measures to consolidate oversight of the information landscape inside temporarily-occupied Ukraine (the TOTs; I’ll come back to the problematics of understanding media there at another point).
There is a complex relationship between power and discourse which some scholars and writers have explored, but which warrants further investigation. Repression works in different ways, not just in terms of the physical violence that authorities can wield against their populations.
This short piece by Jennifer Earl is a fantastic introduction into ‘the many faces of repression’, and highlights that repressive activity does not just encompass ‘state violence’, but can include acts that ‘constrain or influence the ability to act’.
This starting point should be viewed alongside Masha Gessen’s suggestion that Putin uses language ‘to assert power over reality itself’.
It seems clear that Russian messaging does not rely on total control over information systems: that would be impossible. Rather, Russian messaging relies on complex relationships between different strands of information, competing sources, and their relative dominance. People do not only watch television, but are exposed to other media and sources (a range of internet sites, friends and families). The influence on their thinking and behaviours is likely determined by the relative exposure to various sources, and also the power structures behind them. Repression works well in a number of ways to increase the relative dominance of pro-state sources within the complex media environment, and Moscow is likely to increase its repressive activities to press that dominance where it can.
4. More agility
The other thing to note is the agility and speed with which pro-Russian sources operate, and their flexibility in adapting to new situations. This was especially notably in how Z-bloggers rapidly (within hours) turned their attention to the barbaric attack on Israel on 7 October, quickly using unfolding events to undermine American power and values. A similar flexibility was noticeable after the US and UK’s attacks on Houthi targets earlier this month.
To conclude
Russian political, military, and academic thought appears much more appreciative of the importance and impact of information systems and media on target audiences, and appears to have integrated this thinking more into its offensive capabilities. Much more thought is required here to understand the systemic and situational approaches in Russian info ops, and in particular how these work in wartime. (There is a whole line of necessary work around how Russian info ops work around each specific military attack by Russian forces, especially on civilian targets.)
There are no signs that Moscow will relent in its intent or offensive capabilities. There is the danger that Russia can leverage its understanding and experience in info ops to turn the possible informational stalemate, to coin a phrase, to its advantage. Countering this is going to take much more research, particularly into understanding the effects of evolving Russian messaging and its use of tools such as Telegram. It will also require much more courage in leveraging our own informational capabilities to go on the offensive to undermine Moscow, rather than simply reacting to their ops. And I’ll go into each of these points in detail over the coming weeks.