Russia’s info-war : the home front.
Date: 2015-05-04
Institutions: European Union Institute for Security Studies
Subjects: European defence policy, Russia, armed forces, economic policy, establishment of peace, foreign policy, military cooperation, military intervention, political crisis

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Russia’s info-war: the home front
by Cameron Johnston

The  use  and  misuse  of  information  is  as  impor-
tant  to  today’s  Kremlin  as  it  was  to  the  Soviet 
Politburo. But if the ultimate goal is the same – to 
control  the  people  from  above  –  the  techniques 
used to achieve it are strikingly different. Whereas 
Soviet leaders imposed strict censorship in an at-
tempt to isolate the people from the ‘heresies’ of 
the  West,  Putin’s  government  bombards  them 
with fantastical stories designed to paralyse their 
critical  faculties.  And  if  Soviet  propaganda  was 
meant to contribute to the construction of a new 
society, modern Russian propaganda is wholly de-
structive. Rather than try, in vain, to persuade the 
people of the virtues of its rule, today’s Kremlin 
disseminates lies and half-truths designed less to 
convince  than  to  disorientate.  In  so  doing,  the 
regime  cuts  away  the  ground  from  beneath  the 
people’s feet, propelling them into a world where, 
in Peter Pomerantsev’s words, ‘nothing is true and 
everything is possible’. 

On  the  home  front  of  the  information  war, 
President Putin has scored a decisive victory. He 
has succeeded in persuading his people that the 
Kiev  authorities  are  fascists  and  the  Americans 
aggressors, while he himself is all that stands be-
tween Russia and total chaos.

The heroes and their feats

On 22 April 2014, Putin signed executive order 
No.  269,  honouring  three  hundred  journalists 

for  their  ‘great  professionalism  and  objectivity 
in  covering  events  in  the  Republic  of  Crimea’. 
These  journalists  had  helped  to  make  the  an-
nexation possible and would soon lay the ground 
for  the  armed  uprising  in  the  Donbas.  Vladimir 
Kulistikov – whose channel, NTV, had performed 
a hatchet job on the Russian opposition after the 
protests  of  2011-12  –  received  the  highest  hon-
our, ‘For Services to the Fatherland, second class’. 
The channel of another prize-winner, Konstantin 
Ernst, later ran an interview with a woman who 
claimed – falsely – that Ukrainian troops had cru-
cified her three-year-old son. Putin also honoured 
Arkady  Mamontov,  who  has  stated  that  the  EU 
was  building  concentration  camps  in  Ukraine, 
and  Ernest  Mackevicius,  who  used  footage  shot 
during  an  anti-terrorist  operation  in  the  North 
Caucasus in 2012 to illustrate the supposed sav-
agery of Ukrainian troops. 

The inclusion of the head of Roskomnadzor (Federal 
Service  for  the  Supervision  of  Communication, 
Information  Technology  and  Mass  Media), 
Alexander  Zharov,  on  the  honours  list  showed 
that  censorship  remained  an  important  weapon 
in the Kremlin’s arsenal. On 13 March 2014, he 
ordered internet providers to block Russians’ ac-
cess to several opposition websites, as well as to 
anti-corruption  campaigner  Alexander  Navalny’s 
blog. Likewise, it would have been more difficult 
for  the  Kremlin  to  sell  its  narrative  had  Russia’s 
independent media not first been hobbled. After 
the hollowing out of broadcaster RIA Novosti, the 

European Union Institute for Security Studies

March 2015

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removal  of  the  celebrated  editor  of  newspaper 
Lenta  and  the  intimidation  of  radio  station  Echo 
Moskvy,  Russia’s  liberal  minority  found  it  more 
difficult to make themselves heard.

The philosophy

Nevertheless,  the  Russian  leadership’s  approach 
to  propaganda  is  different  from  that  of  their 
Communist forebears. They take globalisation as 
a given and appropriate Western principles, such 
as freedom of speech, in the service of a relativistic 
view of the world. The Kremlin’s strategy rests on 
three key propositions: there is no such thing as 
objectivity; journalists are not critics but servants 
of the state and, in wartime, they are ‘soldiers of 
the ideological front’.

Any talk of objectivity is just hot air according to 
Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, a state-fund-
ed  TV  network.  Aram  Gabrelyanov,  founder  of 
the TV channel LifeNews agreed: “If [a journalist] 
is impartial, that means he is in his coffin.” They 
argue  that  mass  media  should  seek  to  entertain 
their  audience  by  embracing  subjectivity,  rath-
er  than  pretending  to  be  objective  like  the  BBC. 
This has led Simonyan to conflate journalism and 
propaganda: “If we were to say that any journal-
ism  that  does  not  simply  inform  [the  audience] 
about events in a dry manner but also carries with 
it an editorial opinion of some sort is propaganda, 
then propaganda is journalism…there is nothing 
shameful in propaganda.” 

If there is no truth, only a collection of competing 
narratives, it follows that journalists are not inde-
pendent actors but merely mouthpieces for a given 
interest group. The role of journalists is no longer 
to speak truth to power but to speak on behalf of 
power. For Gabrelyanov, then, the true goal of the 
media is “to be patriotic and defend the interests 
of the government”, while Kulistikov has declared 
that “We are part of the power machine”. 

Aleksei Volin, Deputy Minister for Communications 
and  Mass  Media,  chastised  teachers  at  the  jour-
nalism faculty of Moscow State University for fail-
ing  to  prepare  their  students  for  the  real  world. 
Rather  than  encourage  the  idea  that  they  can 
make  the  world  better,  teachers  should  remind 
their students that “[They] are going to work for 
the boss, and the boss is going to tell them what 
to write and how to write it…[he] has that right 
because  he  pays  them.”  While  echoes  of  Volin’s 
cynicism may be heard in almost any country, the 
stridency of his attack on journalistic freedom is 
characteristic of Russia today.

With  the  war  underway  in  Ukraine,  journalists 
should  advance  the  state’s  interests  in  the  field 
of  information  just  as  soldiers  do  on  battlefield. 
Andrei  Kondrashov,  one  of  Russian  television’s 
leading  news  anchors,  said  in  May  2014  that 
“Soldiers and officers receive awards for combat. 
It  is  an  absolutely  identical  situation  for  us,  be-
cause war is now moving to the area of journal-
ism.” 

Simonyan, meanwhile, explicitly defines informa-
tion as a weapon: ‘The weapon of information…is 
used in critical moments and war is always a criti-
cal moment…[Information] is a weapon like any 
other…And to ask why we need it is a little bit like 
saying ‘why do we need a Ministry of Defence if 
there is no war?’”. She added, ominously, that RT 
has  advanced  so  far  since  the  Russian-Georgian 
war that “if 2008 were to happen now, the picture 
around the world would be different.”

The effects

Even if these ‘soldiers of the ideological front’ do 
not kill in person, they wage war by proxy. The 
extent to which propagandists can distort reality 
and  inspire  paranoia  is  exemplified  by  the  case 
of  Dorji  Batomunkuev,  a  contract  soldier  who 
suffered severe facial burns during the battle for 
Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine. In a recent inter-
view  with  the  independent  newspaper  Novaya 
Gazeta,  Batomunkuev  said  that  President  Putin 
had  been  right  to  intervene  in  the  Donbas,  for 
if  Ukraine  had  been  allowed  to  join  the  United 
Nations, Russia would have been put in danger. 

By marginalising Russia’s true journalists and mo-
bilising  its  propagandists,  the  Kremlin  has  suc-
ceeded  in  persuading  the  Russian  people  that 
they are encircled by hostile forces bent on their 
destruction. Abroad, it has been less successful in 
selling its narrative but, there too, its conspiracy 
theories sap civic activism and undermine trust in 
government. 

With  Russia  suffering  financially  from  sanctions 
and  low  oil  prices,  Putin  might  well  attempt  to 
step  up  the  propaganda  yet  further.  But  if  food 
prices  continue  to  rise  and  real  incomes  to  fall, 
how long will the Russian people keep believing 
in the beguiling myth of the good Tsar?

Cameron Johnston is a Junior Analyst at the 
EUISS.

European Union Institute for Security Studies

March 2015

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© EU Institute for Security Studies, 2015. | QN-AL-18-015-2A-N | ISBN 978-92-9198-313-1 | ISSN 2315-1129 | DOI 10.2815/14284