It can comfortably call for bombing European capitals in the morning and complain about the ‘aggressive West’ by the afternoon. This type of almost schizophrenic dichotomy is the key characteristic of the Kremlin’s disinformation apparatus.
Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin also applied this inside-out logic to the Paris Olympics. After months of complaining about how unfairly the Olympic community had treated Russia, and using any chance to spread disinformation to discredit the games and their organisers, the Kremlin comfortably pivoted to juxtapose Russia as all that is good and decent in this world with the Olympics as a morally corrupt, vile spectacle of godless heathenism. Let’s unravel these Kremlin falsehoods, logical fallacies and information manipulation.
An envoy of peace… on Russia’s terms
Once it became clear that the ‘denazification’ and ‘demilitarisation’ of Ukraine will not be a three-day affair, the Kremlin’s disinformation apparatus turned to the topic of peace to try to pre-emptively own the narrative. In fact, we have traced the evolution of the Kremlin’s ‘peace narrative’ since the early days of the war. From talking about peace while launching a deliberate attack on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and using appeals for peace to legitimise control over illegally annexed territories, to claiming Russia’s war serves a peaceful purpose, portraying Ukraine and the West as obstacles to peace, discrediting legitimate peace efforts and disguising dictatorial ultimatums as real peace proposals.
Last week, the Kremlin’s disinformation peddlers seemed to be unpleasantly surprised by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba’s visit to Beijing and scrambled to downplay the subdued nervousness this visit caused in Moscow. This week, the Kremlin’s mouthpieces seemed to have received new marching orders and were churning out lies and disinformation about any prospects for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine with much more gusto.
As the consummate liar atop the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sergey Lavrov, was touring South East Asia, he too took it upon himself to deliver the Kremlin’s manipulative spin on peace to audiences in the region. No surprises here either. Russia is a dove of peace, Ukraine and the West cannot be trusted and Putin is the best thing since sliced bread.
If the idea is unassailable, attack the motive
The first pro-Kremlin disinformation line, as always, was to discredit Ukraine’s efforts and portray it as insincere and disinterested in real peace. This narrative was also supplemented by an attempt to drive wedges by claiming that the ’Kyiv regime’ (an often used pro-Kremlin derogatory moniker for the Ukrainian government) disregards the will of the Ukrainian people to negotiate peace with Russia. Then came the attempts to reinforce the idea that Putin’s peace proposal-cum-ultimatum is the best Ukraine can hope for. An odd way to signal the Kremlin’s sincerity and openness to peace, particularly coming from the Russian top diplomat at the United Nations.
The ultimate fall-back line for the Russian disinformation outlets to ‘prove’ Ukraine’s insincerity is the Ukrainian presidential decree that prohibits any negotiations with Putin. In the Kremlin’s twisted view, this proves that any Ukrainian indications for openness to negotiate with Russia is merely a ploy to stall for time to replenish the armed forces. However, the decree only prohibits direct negotiations with the war criminal-in-chief Putin, not Russia as such. Such inconvenient specificity does not support the Kremlin’s narrative, so it is readily forgotten.
A logical fallacy
The icing on the Kremlin’s disinformation cake of absurdities came during Putin’s address on Russia’s Navy Day. Apart from the usual invocations of Russia’s greatness embodied by Peter the Great, it was another occasion for Putin to push the message of ‘aggressive West’ versus ‘peaceful Russia’ to a carefully vetted international audience.
Putin’s tirade allegedly came in response to an agreement between the US and Germany on the deployment of long-range weapons in Germany, which, in his words, will compel Russia to turn its missile arsenal towards the West.
At first glance, that might seem logical. Except, the timing does not quite line up. Germany and the US announced their plans only a few weeks ago, while Russia has been pre-positioning its missile arsenal for years now. From moving nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles to Kaliningrad in 2016, to effectively scrapping the Treaty on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF Treaty) in 2019 by developing and fielding INF non-compliant 9M729 missiles, to deploying Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus in 2023.
In this context, any proclamations of Russia ‘stopping the unilateral moratorium’ on the deployment of missile are not only irrelevant, but a flat-out absurd logical fallacy, because de facto Russia has not been observing any moratoria, unilateral or otherwise. Moreover, it’s not entirely clear how threatening Western Europe with Russian Iskander and Tsirkon missiles signals the Kremlin’s sincerity to negotiate peace with anyone.
Godless heathens upon the Seine
Of course, the Kremlin’s disinformation gremlins could not pass up the opportunity to ridicule and sneer at the Paris Olympics. The pro-Kremlin coverage put Russia’s homophobic obsession with instrumentalising attacks on the LGBTIQ+ community for disinformation purposes on full display. We’ve covered this deplorable tactic before, here and here.
Given the global resonance of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony and the controversy that ensued, the Kremlin’s mouthpieces unleashed a new barrage of hate-laden disinformation attacks, readily casting Russia as the defender of ‘traditional values’ against the ’triumph of liberalism’ in the rotten West. Much of this was also feigning concern about the fate of Christianity in Europe. Some more extreme cases stooped as low as to intertwine anti-Semitism with the Kremlin’s usual anti-LGBTIQ+ hate speech.
Finally, some pro-Kremlin outlets also seized upon the misinterpretation of the reference to the Feast of Dionysus as an homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper to engage in another favourite Kremlin pastime – accusing the West of godlessness and heathenism. As with anti-LGBTIQ+ narratives, we have also followed the Kremlin’s unhealthy obsession with Satan for quite some time. To us it came as no surprise that the Kremlin immediately saw signs of Satanism in the specular celebration of liberty, equality, fraternity and the true Olympic spirit on the banks of the Seine.
Also on the EUvsDisinfo radar this week:
- One of the most heinous pro-Kremlin information manipulation tactics is to discredit the victims of Russia’s crimes by claiming they are not real. So, after Russian missiles hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv, the Kremlin was quick to claim that the bloodied people in the Okhmatdyt hospital were actors. The same way the Kremlin tried to peddle that monstrous lie after executing innocent people in Bucha or bombing a maternity ward in Mariupol. The Kremlin’s cycle of lies and denial is always the same. In this case, pushing fabricated videos with ‘doctors’ and ‘policemen’ allegedly played by actors, the Kremlin tried to dismiss the victims and discredit Ukraine. But one minor detail slipped their scrutiny. Ukrainian doctors and policemen wear entirely different uniforms. Read the full debunk of this lie at Myth Detector.
- The Kremlin loves to project its own colonial and imperialist ambitions onto others, living the Cold War notion of ‘spheres of influence’. A prime example of such projection is the claim that the West is trying to isolate Central Asia from Moscow and Beijing. By making such claims, the Kremlin seeks to discredit the deepening cooperation between the Central Asian region and Western countries, and advance the imperialist notion that Central Asia is within Russia’s zone of geopolitical dominance. The EU and the US recognise the importance of the sovereignty and strategic autonomy of the Central Asian states, individually and as a region. Needless to say that involvement in EU or US initiatives does not exclude membership in the Eurasian Economic Union, the CIS, or the CSTO. The EU supports regional integration in all areas of the world.
- If we are to believe the Kremlin’s disinformation touters, the ‘long arm’ of Washington is behind everything that goes on in the world. Last month, the Kremlin claimed US involvement in an attempted coup in Bolivia, this month it claims that the protests in Venezuela are definitely financed by Washington. In fact, this unfounded allegation is part of a long-standing pro-Kremlin narrative accusing the West of sponsoring ‘colour revolutions’. The Kremlin frequently and falsely portrays popular protests around the world as instigated from abroad, often by the US and the West. This disinformation narrative has been applied, among others, to protests in Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Belarus, Slovakia, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. Don’t be deceived.
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