As the war in Ukraine enters a critical phase, experts and security officials are warning that the Kremlin will be stepping up efforts to sow confusion and rattle Western nerves over the escalating conflict.
Russia has used disinformation to further its aims over Ukraine since before its full-scale land invasion in 2022. The examples have been wide-ranging, from lies about its troops on Ukraine’s border to claims that Ukrainian neo-Nazis make human sacrifices to pagan gods. But the objectives of Vladimir Putin are always the same: to vilify Ukraine and the West while painting Russian troops as liberating heroes.
“The Kremlin likes to repeat the same lies over and over, not necessarily to convince people that Ukraine is full of Nazis or that the US is evil, but just to create doubts in the minds of Ukraine’s Western allies,” an EU security official tells i. “Just that small amount of doubt among the public might force politicians to reconsider how much it wants to support Ukraine.”
Misinformation that parrots Kremlin talking points has already been published following the news breaking last week about Joe Biden’s decision to allow Kyiv to strike inside Russia with American long-range missiles.
US deep state claim
EUvsDisinfo, an EU project tracking and highlighting how disinformation is used in modern warfare, has tracked multiple examples since Biden’s announcement, including a claim that the decision wasn’t made by the US President, but the “US Deep State, which at all costs pushed for a continuation of the war and planned to present the new Trump administration with a fait accompli before it took office.”
Another example falsely claimed that US Patriot air defence systems killed eight people in Odesa, proof that America sees civilians as “collateral damage”.
Experts expect Kremlin disinformation efforts to increase before Donald Trump takes office, with the aim of using the fact that American weapons are being used to hit targets inside Russia as leverage for any future peace negotiations. Doing so could have two advantages: first, providing justification for Russia escalating its own attacks in Ukraine; second, to tap into fears that enhanced Western support for Ukraine risks plunging Nato into an all-out war with Russia, something Trump would like to avoid.
“Russia may use the addition of more long-range Western weaponry to exploit sensitivities in the West’s humanitarian approach to the use of weapons,” says Andrew Dwyer, a lecturer in information security at Royal Holloway, University of London. “The Trump presidency offers an opportunity to exploit his stated aims to end the war.”
It’s no secret that some people in Trump’s inner circle fear escalation. After Biden’s announcement, Donald Trump Jr tweeted: “The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.”
Western fears ripe for exploitation by Putin
Western officials say these fears are ripe for Putin to exploit, as was evident when he lowered Russia’s threshold for using nuclear weapons shortly after Ukraine used American long-range missiles to strike inside Russia, officials say.
“This was a message to the US and its Western allies,” says the EU security official. “Putin has consistently said that enhanced Western support for Ukraine was akin to Nato involvement in the war, stoking fears of a nuclear escalation.
“It is critical to his strategy that there is the appearance of red lines for the West, creating fears of retaliation among the publics of countries supporting Ukraine – even though he is yet to come good on any of his previous threats.”
Disinformation, from or inspired by the Kremlin, serves this wider aim of using Russia’s chosen talking points to discourage Western action over Ukraine. Some experts say it is also being helped in other ways by those who inadvertently repeat the Kremlin’s messaging.
On Wednesday night, Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party, posted on X shortly after reports of British Storm Shadows being used by Ukraine inside Russia.
“The Prime Minister should make a statement to Parliament, immediately, to confirm whether UK missiles have been fired into Russia,” he wrote. “He must tell the British public if this means we are now at war with a nuclear power, what risk this poses to people in Britain, and why this action was taken without any approval from Parliament.”
Corbyn – who i contacted for comment – will not have intentionally repeated Kremlin talking points but his tweet will have been well received in Moscow, says Keir Giles, a leading Russia analyst at Chatham House.
Ticking the Kremlin’s boxes
“Comments like this tick so many boxes on the Kremlin’s wishlist: The demand for the public release of confidential information; threats of escalation, reminders of Russia’s destructive power,” he told i.
Experts and officials say that the repetition of these points has normalised a public conversation about Russia that taps into overhyped fear about retaliation and a false attribution of equal blame to the West in the conflict.
“Russia has succeeded in changing the terms of Western debate on escalation from how to manage it to how to avoid it altogether,” argues Giles. “It has succeeded in creating the widespread impression that any attempt to stand up to Moscow is inherently fraught with nuclear escalation.”
This, sources say, also risks pulling focus away from the real threats Putin poses to the West. Russia has already carried out poisonings on British soil, sabotaged our public services, as i reported last month, and been suspected of attempts to cut British undersea cables.
“The war appears to be entering a new tempo in advance of the Trump presidency, with Russia likely ready to expand its sabotage more in the open,” says Dwyer. “This quickly changing pace opens up the information space to disinformation as the situation in Ukraine, and beyond, changes.”
The changing pace Dwyer describes is likely to result in more Russian disinformation because the stakes are getting higher. The more the West supplies arms and support to Ukraine, the harder Moscow’s job of winning the war becomes and the more it will have to try and undermine the countries it views as adversaries in other ways. The more Ukraine is able to push back, the stronger hand it might have in any peace talks.
It is why the experts in disinformation that i has spoken to say it is more important than ever that the West keeps its focus both on bombastic claims that are obviously lies and the subtle subversion of narratives that the Kremlin encourages. Misjudging the real threats of Russia right now could have significant consequences both for the outcome of the war in Ukraine and for the UK’s national security.
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