Lavrov’s statement was not only a lie, as the world knows, it was especially offensive as it came a day after Russia’s horrific attack on a children’s and maternity hospital in Ukraine, which was widely condemned as a war crime. And that coincided with Moscow’s unsubstantiated claims, which have been picked up even by China in its efforts to bolster Russian propaganda, that the United States has a bioweapons program in Ukraine, which officials in Washington fear could be a pretext for Russia to use. own weapons. chemical or biological weapons against civilians.
“Unfortunately, I can confirm that the Russian leadership, including Minister Lavrov, lives in their own reality,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told CNBC Thursday. “Looking into my eyes, he told me that the photographs of pregnant women recovered from the rubble of the maternity hospital were fake.”
The disinformation war has long been a weapon of the Russian state. Moscow has put forward several conspiracy theories about the downing of a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014, such as a Russian missile system. And Russian state media aired an interview in which two alleged spies accused of using a nerve agent to poison a Russian defector in England in 2018 absurdly claimed they were in the country to visit the spire of Salisbury’s famous cathedral.
But the disinformation offensive reached a new climax in the war against Ukraine, which Putin falsely justified by saying that the country needed to be “denazified” and had no right to exist as a state. The phrase was especially egregious given that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II. Russian state media portrayed Russians as victims of the war and covered the invasion as an attempt to liberate the Ukrainian population despite bombs and rockets being rained down on civilians.
This is an approach that has many advantages for Moscow. It can be used as a front for atrocities and potential war crimes, such as an attack on a maternity hospital. Disinformation also plays a role in the Kremlin’s misrepresentation of the nature of war — that it’s about sacrifice — being carried to Russians in state media. Russia’s claims may be absurd, but they also find an audience among social media conspiracy theorists and can be used by propagandists even in Western countries to cast doubt on the credibility of leaders building a united front against Moscow. CNN’s Daniel Dale reported Thursday, for example, that videos falsely described as showing Ukrainian “crisis actors” have been viewed millions of times on pro-Russian social media accounts over the past two weeks.
Russia’s baseless claims about the state of war in Ukraine may also be aimed at diverting attention at home and in Europe from the strategic and economic disaster that the invasion has unleashed. US intelligence chiefs said in Washington on Thursday that despite their misguided assessment of the conflict, Putin was expected to escalate because, politically, he cannot afford to admit he has lost.
The disinformation campaign also makes it impossible for diplomatic efforts to make real progress, as there is no common definition of reality on which to base discussions. This will become a problem if, at some point, Western leaders try to build so-called diplomatic conventions that Putin could use to get out of the conflict without losing face. Although, given his ability to create false realities, the Russian leader could presumably simply claim that he faked a victory in Ukraine, even though it would be obvious to anyone outside of Russia that he would cover up defeat.
Putin’s apparent existence in a parallel version of reality could also have dangerous consequences, as it seems to influence his decisions. Some Western officials and observers are concerned that the Russian president could be trapped in a world of false information provided by his intelligence agencies, which could escalate the conflict – not only against Ukraine, but also against the West.
War on truth is a global threat
The war for truth is not limited to Russia. His strength is evident in politics around the world, not least in Putin’s meddling in the 2016 US elections. The effectiveness of this tactic has been magnified many times over by social media, which allow disinformation to spread quickly, often unchecked, and which tend to unite like-minded people in networks of lies.
That dynamic has played out in the United States over the past year, where former President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. His complaints dispelled the truth and convinced millions of supporters who prefer to believe that their candidate really won. Trump’s lies about the electoral system are fundamentally damaging to American democracy. CNN’s Fredreka Schouten reported Thursday that one in five local election officials say they are likely to leave their jobs before the 2024 presidential race.
The ex-president’s lies have created a deep rift in American society that will take years to heal and will deprive America of a nationwide version of the truth, much like Putin’s lie about the war in Ukraine hinders diplomatic efforts to end the war. Unlike Putin’s lies, Trump’s lies were not used as the basis for a major war. But they helped spark the U.S. Capitol Uprising, one of the worst attacks on democracy in U.S. history.
Russia’s lies and history of lies about the conflict also provide little incentive for Ukrainians to have a serious dialogue with Russia, even as their country is being destroyed city by city and the exodus of refugees exceeds 2 million.
Russia, for example, has lied about every aspect of the conflict, from justifying the war and insisting it won’t invade, to Lavrov’s comments on Thursday. Deep mistrust between the Russian occupiers and Ukrainians escalated after Russian troops fired on the evacuation routes agreed by both sides for the civilian population. This experience undermines Russia’s recent announcement that it will open new evacuation corridors into its territory for Ukrainians.
“I think that Ukrainians, to put it mildly, are very skeptical about this. I can’t imagine anyone really believing anything Russia is saying right now,” Steve Hall, the former CIA chief of operations in Russia, told CNN News on Thursday.
CIA chief says Putin is losing war on disinformation
If Russian commitments on the core issue of protecting civilians cannot be trusted, it is hard to see how any future cessation of hostilities can be negotiated that both sides can trust. A sense of parallel realities helps explain why international diplomatic efforts to end the crisis are not moving forward.
“I don’t see a diplomatic solution in the next hours or even the next few days,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters in Versailles ahead of Thursday’s EU leaders’ summit, blaming Putin for the terms of the Ukraine ceasefire, which he said was “unacceptable by any means.” for whom”.
Meanwhile, the White House is warning that Russia could conduct a “false flag” operation in Ukraine — another well-known disinformation tactic — to justify its possible future use of chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine, in line with conspiracy theories that the United States has used. The biological weapons program in Ukraine.
“Russia has a history of creating such outright lies,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday, explaining a tweet she wrote on the matter the day before. “The goal was to clarify the inaccuracies of the information, the misinformation they are trying to spread, and let the world know that they have not only the capabilities, but also the history of the use of chemical and biological weapons, and that at this moment we must have our eyes open to that possibility.”
Russia even requested a meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday over the alleged development of chemical weapons by the United States in Ukraine. “We will not allow Russia to gaslight the world with impunity or use the UN Security Council as a platform for spreading their disinformation,” Olivia Dalton, spokeswoman for the US mission to the UN, said Thursday evening.
While Russia has taken its disinformation war to a new peak in the war in Ukraine, the conflict will also be a historic turning point due to the U.S. information counteroffensive. The Biden administration, using selectively declassified intelligence, gave the world advance warning of Russia’s plans after Putin has amassed forces and equipment on Ukraine’s borders in recent months. His accurate predictions of his intentions—despite Russia’s denial that an invasion was imminent—helped restore public confidence in the agencies that failed to prevent the September 11, 2001, attacks, and also erred in intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. before the US invasion in 2003.
“In all my years as a professional diplomat, I have seen far too many cases where we have lost information wars with the Russians,” CIA director Bill Burns said at a Senate hearing on Thursday.
“In this case, I think we have had a great effect by destroying their tactics and their calculations and demonstrating to the whole world that this is a deliberate and unprovoked aggression built on a combination of lies and false narratives. one information war that I think Putin is losing.”