Current Issues of Information Support of Russian Foreign Policy in the New Political Environment
Authors: Menshikov Petr , Neymatova Aida 
Published: August 2020

Introduction. In the context of growing anti-Russian information wars, intensive and sharp ideological confrontation active information support of Russia’s foreign policy becomes more and more crucial.

Methods. Authors use mainly the methods of expert evaluation and trends, opinion polls to prove that the US has long been waging information wars against Russia first using the term (“information war”) back in 1992. Moreover, with time the United States makes the methods of struggle more and more sophisticated and has already attracted the EU and NATO as associates. In addition, the methods of comparative analysis of research results of leading domestic and foreign experts in the field of information and ideological component of modern international relations and issues of information support of foreign policy of the Russian Federation, as well as general scientific and special methods of knowledge of legal phenomena and processes made as the object of the research: the method of systematic and structural analysis, comparative legal and formal-logical methods have been used.

Analysis. Along with the tools of public diplomacy our state takes all the needed measures to defend its information sovereignty at all levels. Despite the fact that the Russian state strategy has consistently created a system of detecting, preventing and eliminating threats to its information security, still it is necessary to deal with ever growing amount of antiRussian false information in the global media space. Results. Being one of the instruments of public diplomacy and foreign policy of any sovereign state, soft power takes into account the objective conditions of international relations and world politics and proceeds from the requirements of the national interests of the state as the main actor of the entire system of modern international relations. In the world practice of implementing the policy of soft power, starting with the creation of the Westphalian system of international relations, there was no precedent, when the state regardless of the socio-political nature of building a political system or the purposes of the foreign activity would be guided by different objectives and methods of analysis of world politics, the entire system of international relations and other goal-setting action in the international arena, including defined in the last decade by the concept of soft power. In the history of international relations, there has not been any world policy free from its ideological component. The thesis of de-ideologization of international relations, which received its definite distribution in the period immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the practice of foreign policy actions of all the main actors of modern world politics has clearly proved its complete failure. Today, in the context of “hybrid wars” within the entire system of international relations, the world politics is no less ideologized than during the “cold war”. The political leadership of Russia allows the hypothetical possibility of cyberwarfare, provoked by the actions of the Republican administration of the United States. In December 2019, the White House authorized the preparation of a plan for conducting an information war with the Russian Federation by special forces of the U.S. Army, assigning the solution of this task to the above-mentioned cyber command. The policy of soft power of Russia, as well as its public diplomacy, as the whole complex of foreign policy activities of the Russian Federation in the international arena, is derived from the fundamental function of defending the national interests of Russia in the new political reality. The Russian Federation has consistently opposed the transformation of international relations into an arena of ideological confrontation with the use of tools of the so-called “information wars”. State sovereignty is unified. Information security, as a factor of ensuring information sovereignty, is a basic component of the unified state sovereignty. This is an accepted truth underlying the understanding of the nature of modern international relations, the principle underlying the foreign policy activity of any modern sovereign state, due to the objective regularity of the growth of the ideological factor of modern international relations. Moreover, in the face of targeted misinformation Russia needs to ensure its information security at both levels: political (ideological) and technical (technological) ones combining cyber as well as soft power tools. Only such a combination of these two crucial elements and continuous improvement can lead to victory in hybrid wars.