Russia is a military superpower with the best army in the world and an absolute economic marvel for as long as the Kremlin’s information-manipulation and disinformation outlets say it is so. We took another stroll down the Kremlin’s halls of twisted mirrors to see what Orwellian ‘truths’ are proclaimed to the world this week. Two stood out above the rest. One was brandishing Russia’s arguably overused nuclear stick to respond to the lifting of Western restrictions on Ukraine regarding long-range strikes against Russia. The other was applying the Kremlin’s creative accounting practices to count euros and dollars received by Ukraine as a distraction from Russia’s own rapidly emptying coffers.
Sometimes, silence can speak louder than all pro-Kremlin propaganda combined. The topic that was eerily absent from the Kremlin’s disinformation sludge this week was the mortifying truth that Russia has waged a brutal, full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine for 1 000 days. Perhaps, Moscow wanted to spare the consumers of its disinformation from thinking about the unscheduled 997-day overtime for the three-day Russian ‘special military operation’ or the 700 000+ casualties that Russia has inflicted on itself.
Get the red paint, again
This week the US announced that it would lift restrictions on Ukraine using US-supplied weapons for long-range strikes against military targets inside Russia. France and the UK followed suit immediately, as they have been proponents of lifting the restrictions for some time.
Time for the Kremlin to reach for its depleting paint bucket to draw some ‘red lines’ again. In fact, the Kremlin’s disinformation outlets had likely anticipated such a decision, as we have covered their deceitful attempts to reinforce these faux ‘red lines’. It has been Moscow’s go-to tactic to respond to Western support to Ukraine with threatening rhetoric all throughout the war, as an attempt to retain control over escalation management and coerce Ukraine’s supporters to abandon the country.
It’s only escalation when the West does it
As if on cue, accusations about ‘Western escalation’ and designs to destroy Russia came forth, as did conjuring the spectre of World War III, overt threats of retaliation, and accusations of ‘direct Western involvement’ in the war. This last one is particularly curious, as the Kremlin’s outlets concurrently like to claim that the West is about to launch a direct attack on Russia, while also maintaining that Russia has already been fighting the ‘collective West’ all along.
And of course, it’s only escalation when the West does it. When Russia launches massive indiscriminate drone and missile attacks across Ukraine, it is depicted as a sensible and morally sound military strategy.
And here comes the nuclear card
One thing we can always count on is for the Kremlin to play the nuclear card at every opportunity. Putin first proposed the revision of Russian nuclear doctrine in response to Western deliberation about removing restrictions on Ukraine some months ago. So it should come as no surprise that Putin’s approval of the revision comes hot on the heels of the US announcement to lift restrictions on using long-range missiles. The master has spoken, and the Kremlin’s pundits follow the script, using the ‘nuclear red line’ to reinforce pro-Kremlin disinformation tropes – the West is the aggressor, Russia only wants peace, and the Russian army cannot be defeated.
Conjuring the spectre of nuclear annihilation would not be complete without some good ol’ aggressor/victim role reversal. In this case, accusing Ukraine once again of harbouring irrational nuclear ambitions and depicting Russian nuclear escalation as a sensible act of self-defence.
Who’s got the thickest wad?
It wasn’t all nuclear doom and gloom this week. The Kremlin’s disinformation illusionists also tried to project the shortfalls of the Russian war economy onto the European Union by enviously counting the euros that the EU has mobilised to support Ukraine. The core message was rather singular, if entirely faulty – supporting Ukraine has brought the EU to the brink of bankruptcy, while Russia is doing better than ever, even despite Western sanctions. The truth, as always with the Kremlin, is inverse. The EU has pledged continuous support to Ukraine for as long as victory takes, while the Russian war economy is starting to show troublesome signs of overheating.
Betraying its gangster nature, the Kremlin seems to feel compelled to brag about the thickness of its wad, even if its war chest is not nearly as full as Moscow would like it to be.
It’s not just numbers
This week marked two more grim milestones on the Kremlin’s path of aggression and imperialist ambitions. It’s been almost 4 000 days since Russia illegally annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine under false pretences. It’s been 1 000 days since Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine on 24 February 2022. And, for a decade now, the Kremlin’s information manipulation and disinformation operations have supported, excused, and enabled Russia’s wanton aggression. To hold the Kremlin’s disinformation peddlers accountable and expose their lies, our EUvsDisinfo database also reached a sobering milestone this week, now surpassing 18 000 cases of pro-Kremlin disinformation.
Read more about the Kremlin’s attempts to prepare the cognitive space for battle, censor and dominate the information domain, and use disinformation as a weapon of war in our upcoming series of articles. Don’t be deceived.
Also on the EUvsDisinfo radar this week:
- There are small lies and there are big lies. And then, there are the Kremlin’s lies. Like this one, claiming that the notorious disinformation outlet Sputnik tells the truth, unlike Western media. Now, that’s a truly Orwellian claim because we have closely followed the misadventures of this EU-sanctioned pro-Kremlin disinformation laundromat for quite some time and have a handy guide on the things you need to know about the Kremlin’s weapons of deception like RT and Sputnik. And if that does not raise reasonable doubt about the integrity and the true intentions of such outlets, the Kremlin’s lackeys running them have openly admitted that these channels are a weapon in Russia’s arsenal to wage information warfare, and not legitimate media outlets.
- The Kremlin’s weavers of lies are always titillated at the prospect of turning history upside down. Recently, the occasion came when the world commemorated the momentous occasion of the fall of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago, marking an irreversible thaw in the Cold War. For the Kremlin, however, this was an opportunity to seek historic credit where little is due by claiming that Germany remained a state after WWII due to the goodwill of Stalin. Simply not true. The Allied powers, and not only Stalin, ultimately agreed at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences in 1945 to divide Germany into four occupation zones administered by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, preserving Germany as a state.
- If there is one knee-jerk reaction the Kremlin cannot control, it’s to always blame Ukraine. When the news broke about the severed undersea cables connecting Finland and Germany, the Kremlin’s disinformation peddlers didn’t wait for any investigation. They had a ready answer – Ukrainian spies sabotaged the undersea internet cable to Finland. Of course, at this point, that is a pure speculation. But for the Kremlin, it’s simple – whenever something bad happens, blame Ukraine. Like in the case of the Crocus City Hall attacks or blowing up the Nova Kakhovka dam. No need to wait for any evidence.
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