While the debate on disinformation continues to intensify amid the rapid politicisation of social media and the ongoing crisis in journalism, the war in Ukraine highlights the phenomenon’s internationalisation. The term ‘misinformation’ is often used in Western media outlets when describing Russia’s state propaganda and its diffusion of misinformation through troll factories. On the other hand, Russia and its allies also appear to be using the term to frame Western narratives as untrustworthy. The war in Ukraine has become an information Cold War, with disinformation and misinformation labelling becoming an important and inflammatory weapon for both sides.
The origins of disinformation
Disinformation is often understood as the diffusion of false content, aimed at persuading the public of an opinion beneficial to the diffuser’s interests. Whilst the notion of disinformation might appear to be relatively black and white, the history of the term illustrates the actual complexity of the concept.
The word ‘disinformation’, or ‘dezinformatsiya’, can be traced back to 1923, when Soviet Russia created a specialised disinformation office for the ‘disseminat[ion of] false information with the intention to deceive public opinion‘. From its beginnings, disinformation was primarily a political tool, used to create false information to serve the diffuser’s interests. Former KGB General, Oleg Kalugin, considered dezinformatsiya as one of the principal tools used by Soviet intelligence to pursue its geopolitical strategy of ‘Active Measures’ during the Cold War, which aimed to assert its geopolitical agenda internationally by weakening the global perception of Western powers.
A good example of the Soviet Union’s dezinformatsiya strategy was when it attempted to jeopardise the U.S.’s peace-making efforts in the Middle East by weakening the U.S.’s ties with the Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat. The KGB forged a series of letters from the U.S. Government, insulting Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and calling for a U.S. backed ‘change in government‘. In 1979, a KGB-forged letter from the U.S. ambassador of Egypt was published in a Syrian newspaper, stating that the U.S. was planning of getting rid of Sadat ‘without hesitation’.
The reapplication of the Soviet dezinformatsiya strategy for Russia’s current international disinformation campaign is one of the more inflammatory elements of the information Cold War circulating around the topic of Ukraine. Russia has taken advantage of the digital age to further ignite tensions between the West and other countries with the aim of garnering more support. Russia’s disinformation campaign has been targeting countries in Africa, South America, and Asia, most likely in an attempt to increase pro-Russian sentiment amongst the international community.
One of the most direct links to state-sponsored Russian disinformation has been the involvement of Russia’s Wagner Group in Mali. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the ‘leader’ of this Russian-owned private military contractor, was found to be directly linked to the creation of a pro-Russian network of Facebook pages, which aimed to garner Malian support through anti-French and anti-UN propaganda. On 8 June 2022, 10 Wagner soldiers were spotted burying bodies to stage proof of French war crimes in Mali. ‘Dia Diarra’, an account allegedly created by Wagner, tweeted ‘This is what the French left behind when they left base at Gossi. These are excerpts from a video that was taken after they left!’. The Africa Centre for Strategic Studies has also documented the Wagner Group’s launching of coordinated disinformation campaigns across Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook. The Wagner Group’s activities are clearly having some success, as protesters at a recent anti-France rally in support of the Russian-backed military junta in Bamako were seen waving Russian flags and shouting ‘I love Wagner!’ – clearly, Russia’s disinformation strategy is a powerful weapon.
‘Strategic deployment’ in the West
Intelligence researchers, Dylan Huw and Thomas Maguire, established two ways in which governments might relay information to influence their targeted publics. On one hand, ‘deceptive deployment’ is the use of purposely falsified intelligence to intentionally deceive the public – this links to the discussion above on disinformation. On the other hand, ‘strategic deployment’ is defined as state-acquired intelligence that is purposefully spun to influence targeted publics. In this instance, while information is not fabricated per say, information is centralised, polished, and usually disseminated in a top-down dynamic which increases the probability of misleading narratives spreading. The most drastic and famous example of strategic deployment that led to false narratives in the West was the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This narrative was widely used to justify the war against Iraq. According to Paul R. Pillar, who was the US national intelligence officer responsible for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, while conclusions from the national intelligence community are meant to remain separate from those of politicians to ensure that intelligence analysis does not get spun to serve political interests, the lead up to the war saw incomplete and predominantly speculative intelligence on Iraq deliberately used by the Bush administration to paint a picture of an Iraq developing a nuclear weapons program. Although the CIA director had warned the White House that intelligence of Iraqi purchases of aluminium tubes in Africa was not conclusive evidence of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, President Bush’s speech on the 7th of October 2002 utilized the link to push Congress to authorise the use of force in Iraq. The Bush administration’s claim that had directed the US government to invade Iraq was later proved false by the UN weapons inspection mission and a 15-month search by CIA inspectors in Iraq, which both found no evidence that Iraq had resumed the development of its nuclear weapons program.
It is also no secret that, in the effort to control the war narrative at home and abroad, the Bush administration attempted to centralise and promote a top-down environment in news reporting on the war. Every morning, the White House spokesperson, Ari Fleischer would brief television networks and every evening, the White House would send out its ‘Global Messenger‘ newsletter, containing talking points and key quotes from the President and senior US officials to US institutions that might be in contact with journalists. Leading media outlets such as the New York Times have since publicly admitted that in some cases, they allowed certain controversial and questionable information to ‘remain unchallenged’, adding that the eagerness of certain US officials played a part in this lack of press scepticism.
Currently, there have not been any verified accounts of Western governments spreading disinformation since Russia’s invasion. However, efforts to centralise narratives and politicise intelligence have started to emerge. The UK government responded to Russia’s invasion by creating a new intelligence unit, the Government Information Cell, which disseminates declassified intelligence through social media and private-sector partners, and works with social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook to flag down what it labels as Russian disinformation. The UK Ministry of Defence issues a daily ‘Intelligence Update‘ on Twitter which publicly diffuses the latest UK intelligence on the Ukraine War. These ‘Intelligence Updates’ only disclose a very small portion of the UK’s total intelligence on the matter and remain carefully sanitized, likely in an effort to crowd out Russian disinformation on battlefield developments, and provide assistance to Ukrainian troops by disclosing strategic Russian positions. But Western politicians should remain cautious of using intelligence in support of speculative narratives as this would harm governmental credibility at a time when public distrust and anti-governmental conspiracies are widespread.
Misinformation labelling: Another inflammatory aspect of the Information Cold War over Ukraine
In recent years, the concept of mis/disinformation has become more muddled than before. While its original meaning still remains, the concept grew to also include instances where political actors strategically label verified information as ‘fake’ to dissuade the public from believing information that could contradict their political interests. Researchers J. Egelhofer and S. Lecheler speak of the ‘fake news label’, a recent development in political rhetoric used by political actors that harnesses the existing stigma surrounding terms like ‘fake news’ and ‘disinformation’, thereby placing the accusation on institutional news media and established democratic political systems. In 2016, US presidential candidate, Donald Trump, popularised the notion in his campaign, using the fake news label to break public trust in established institutions by portraying them as spreaders of disinformation.
This added phenomenon is making it increasingly difficult for news consumers to distinguish true from false information. In an environment in which news reporting and political discourse is increasingly about polemising issues rather than grounding arguments in proven facts, the ultimate soft-power weapon has become a state’s ability to exploit widespread confusion and resulting discomfort by sustaining a consistent narrative, whether this narrative be truthful, distorted or false.
Allegations of misinformation being thrown back and forth
A prominent feature of the information war on Ukraine has been misinformation labelling from all sides of the geopolitical spectrum. This is escalating diplomatic tensions between states involved. Russia labelled Western anti-Russian narratives as ‘information terrorism’, and subsequently banned Facebook and Twitter. Russia’s communication regulator also banned the use of the words ‘war’ and ‘invasion’ when referring to Ukraine in the early days of the conflict. In early March 2022, Russia’s parliament passed a bill, criminalising the spread of what the Russian state labels ‘fake news’ on military information in Ukraine. In turn, EU Commission President, Ursula Von Der Leyen, labelled all Russian news branches in Europe as spreading ‘lies to justify Putin’s war’ and announced an EU-wide ban of ‘the Kremlin’s media-machine’, including RT and Sputnik branches in Europe. This mutual ban suggests that both sides desire certain aspects of each other’s media narratives not to reach their own citizens.
Misinformation labelling also strains U.S.-Russia-China relations. In March, Russia made allegations that Ukraine was developing biological weapons in a laboratory with U.S. help, which triggered back and forth allegations of misinformation between Russia, the U.S. and China. China sided with Russia on this issue, extending this narrative of U.S-backed Ukrainian biological development to Chinese readers. Zhao Lijian from the Chinese Foreign Ministry publicly stated that ‘faced with the documents, pictures, physical items and other evidence found by Russia in Ukraine, the U.S. side only dismisses them as ‘disinformation,’ which is hardly convincing’.
The fact that the UN did not have the mandate or the operational capacity to investigate Russia’s alleged claims did not help the problematic back-and-forth of misinformation labelling. Neither did the U.S.’s denial of Russia’s narrative as ‘absurd’ and ‘ludicrous’, and diverging blame to Russia’s pattern of using chemical weapons in Syria, help. Nonetheless, American media has delegitimated the issue by calling it a ‘conspiracy theory’ fuelled by Russia’s FSB (Federal Security Service, Russia’s secret service) disinformation strategy. France quickly supported the U.S., with its permanent U.N. representative making a statement to the UNSC supporting the U.S.’s narrative.
In late May, CBS reporters visited the Ukrainian facility claimed by Russia to be developing biological weapons. CBS stated that the lab was used to test for disease in patients instead of the development of biological weapons, but that upon the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government ordered all such labs to destroy all dangerous strands so that Russian troops couldn’t attack these facilities and release these pathogens into the environment. While mainstream Western media has stopped reporting on the issue since May 2022, TASS, the Russian-State affiliated news agency, continued spreading Russia’s security claim on US-funded Ukrainian biolabs well into the summer. At an August 2022 meeting held by the Shanghai Corporation Organisation, a political and security organisation mostly comprised of former USSR-bloc states, China, India and Pakistan, the Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu stated that the US ‘developing components of biological weapons and testing ways to destabilize the epidemiological situation’ posed a great threat to SCO member states.
***The mixture of disinformation and misinformation labelling is evidently adding to geopolitical tensions and creating an information Cold War. Whilst Russia’s disinformation campaign in Mali reminds us of the USSR’s dezinformatsiya strategy used during the Cold War, misinformation labelling over the war in Ukraine is also deepening East-West divides. With misinformation labelling becoming an effective method of political persuasion, more and more geopolitical outcomes surrounding the war in Ukraine depend on the ability to maintain a robust and influential strategic narrative. The Ukraine biolabs debate provides a direct example of this, as both American and Russian efforts to build coalitions around a unifying narrative, in part through the use of misinformation labelling, is fuelling a soft power competition between both states.