Ukraine: disinformation on the battleground of a hybrid war

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, atten­tion to dis­in­for­ma­tion, one of the bat­tle­grounds of hybrid war­fare, has increased. Infor­ma­tion is key in wartime, espe­cial­ly when the con­flict is so close to home. Rus­sia has under­stood that a demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try can­not afford to help Ukraine in the long term if its pop­u­la­tion is opposed to it or suf­fers too many reper­cus­sions (such as high­er ener­gy prices). The war is there­fore also tak­ing place on the infor­ma­tion front. The chal­lenge for the Krem­lin is to suc­ceed in spread­ing its pro­pa­gan­da in the West­ern media and on social networks.

This war was first played out on the vir­tu­al bat­tle­ground of disinformation.

Car­ole Gri­maud, founder of the Cen­tre for Research on Rus­sia and East­ern Europe (CREER), is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the influ­ence that Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da can have on French cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly students.

From the first moment the Russ­ian army set foot in Ukraine, a mul­ti­tude of exam­ples of dis­in­for­ma­tion emerged, start­ing with Vladimir Putin’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this war¹. The Kiev regime is said to be neo-Nazi, and to have been per­pe­trat­ing geno­cide on the Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion of Don­bass since the begin­ning of the war in Feb­ru­ary 2014. How­ev­er, recent events, such as the dis­cov­ery of the mass grave in Izum – a town in the Kharkiv region lib­er­at­ed from Russ­ian occu­pa­tion by Ukrain­ian forces, in which a mass grave con­tain­ing at least 450 bod­ies was dis­cov­ered – have brought to light images that call into ques­tion the Krem­lin’s ver­sion, which is hard to dispute.

“The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment expects oth­er dis­cov­er­ies of the same type in oth­er cities under occu­pa­tion,” says Car­ole Gri­maud, “because the city of Izum is not the first. Mar­i­upol and Butcha are exam­ples, and satel­lite images are avail­able, but Moscow still denies respon­si­bil­i­ty.” All this leads one to imag­ine that these are not excep­tions, espe­cial­ly since they are real evi­dence of war crimes. “Many civil­ian bod­ies show signs of tor­ture, and oth­ers of star­va­tion,” she says. “This is con­sid­ered a war crime. The army that occu­pies a ter­ri­to­ry must guar­an­tee the right to life of the civil­ians liv­ing in that ter­ri­to­ry, some­thing that the Russ­ian army is clear­ly not con­cerned about.”

The Krem­lin’s dis­in­for­ma­tion about the Boutcha mas­sacre may “seem absurd”. Accord­ing to the Moscow regime, the images of the hun­dreds of civil­ian vic­tims are noth­ing more than a set up to put the blame on Rus­sia². For Car­ole Gri­maud, this state­ment is con­sis­tent with the Russ­ian strat­e­gy. “The dis­in­for­ma­tion used in the case of Boutcha may have been effec­tive with the Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion, but abroad, the objec­tive was rather to sow doubt. It worked with cer­tain French per­son­al­i­ties, who took up the Krem­lin’s lan­guage³.”

How­ev­er, Rus­sia is not the only one to prop­a­gate this doubt, some French peo­ple invol­un­tar­i­ly par­tic­i­pate in it, and the researcher notes: “In France, main­stream infor­ma­tion tends to sup­port one view­point, as if there was only one side of the sto­ry. Every­one must agree, there is no longer any real debate. This can push peo­ple to seek dif­fer­ent, less main­stream infor­ma­tion.” The risk is then that they will come across infor­ma­tion fab­ri­cat­ed by the Russ­ian counter-dis­course. “We know that false infor­ma­tion, or infor­ma­tion that pro­vides a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, even if it is lat­er dis­proved, leaves its mark on the mem­o­ry of those who have been exposed to it,” she concludes.

“The infor­ma­tion broad­cast by the gen­er­al media in France is the infor­ma­tion of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, it is a gov­ern­ment at war that has been apply­ing mar­tial law since Feb­ru­ary,” she says. West­ern­ers do not have sol­diers on the ground to ver­i­fy the infor­ma­tion giv­en, but civil­ians, NGOs and the var­i­ous human­i­tar­i­an aid work­ers on the ground bear wit­ness to what they observe. Their feed­back is more impar­tial and most of the time cor­rob­o­rates Kiev’s version.

It is there­fore impor­tant for Rus­sia, to cre­ate this kind of doubt, to spread its dis­course through our com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels. A recent report by the NGO EU Dis­in­fo Lab high­light­ed one of their ways of doing this⁴. The NGO iden­ti­fied fake sites bear­ing the names of real media. Thus, 20 min­utes wit­nessed the birth of its usurp­er – 20min​uts​.com instead of 20min​utes​.fr –, through which arti­cles con­sis­tent with the Krem­lin’s dis­course were disseminated. 

There is thus a direct desire to influ­ence main­stream news sources – the British news­pa­per The Guardian, the Ger­man Der Spiegel, and more than fif­teen oth­ers are also vic­tims of this decep­tion. These pro-Russ­ian arti­cles are then dis­sem­i­nat­ed en masseon social net­works, through fake accounts. 

The NGO EU Dis­in­fo Lab has iden­ti­fied fake sites bear­ing the names of real media outlets.

Arnaud Merci­er, pro­fes­sor of infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris Pan­théon-Assas, believes that the Krem­lin’s pro­pa­gan­da strat­e­gy is that of an “arson­ist”. He says that “dur­ing the Cold War, the strat­e­gy was to belit­tle the adver­sary and enhance its own image. Today, Rus­sia iden­ti­fies the points of ten­sion in our soci­eties and seeks to exac­er­bate them by throw­ing oil on the fire, hop­ing to divide our societies.”

This strat­e­gy has been seen in the past when Rus­sia has tried to influ­ence the elec­toral process in West­ern coun­tries. And in each of these events, the most effec­tive medi­um for spread­ing its dis­in­for­ma­tion has been social net­works. “The rise of influ­ence strate­gies on social net­works goes back to at least 2016, with the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump and Brex­it,” he says. “But it had already hap­pened in 2014 dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in Germany.”

“A large num­ber of fake accounts then appear on the net­works. These are antin­o­mi­an accounts that spread mes­sages to rad­i­calise both sides,” says the pro­fes­sor. “This is done to desta­bilise vot­ers. These mes­sages are then tak­en up and spread in turn by real users. There are peo­ple who, faced with infor­ma­tion that is not very cred­i­ble, are fooled and play the use­ful idiot by relay­ing it,” he adds, “and oth­ers who are already convinced.”

How­ev­er, it is dif­fi­cult to have an exact esti­mate of the num­ber of false accounts on the net­works. Accord­ing to Arnaud Merci­er, the exam­ple of Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twit­ter is proof of this⁵: “The bil­lion­aire’s con­di­tion for buy­ing the plat­form was to have an esti­mate of the num­ber of bots [fake accounts] present. Twit­ter was unable to meet this demand, so the takeover deal was ter­mi­nat­ed. How­ev­er, we do know with some cer­tain­ty that there are at least a hun­dred thou­sand accounts.” This cer­tain­ty comes from the esti­mate made by Twit­ter itself at the time of the poten­tial takeover: fake accounts would rep­re­sent at least 5% of active users, which Elon Musk dis­putes, esti­mat­ing that the fig­ure would be clos­er to 20%⁶. Of course, not all these fake accounts are Russian. 

The mass dis­sem­i­na­tion of con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion is also a source of doubt for the recip­i­ent of the infor­ma­tion. “They allow dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions to cir­cu­late in a halo of uncer­tain­ty. There is a desire to sur­round a fact with mul­ti­ple inter­pre­ta­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties,” says the researcher, “to cre­ate a cer­tain amount of doubt. Charles Pasqua had already described this tac­tic: when there is a sto­ry, you must cre­ate a sto­ry with­in a sto­ry, and then anoth­er con­tro­ver­sy until peo­ple don’t under­stand any­thing any­more. Fake accounts and fake news aim to make peo­ple lose track of events.”

Ulti­mate­ly, with its fake accounts – and the thou­sands of mes­sages they dis­sem­i­nate – Rus­sia man­ages to instil its dis­course in West­ern pub­lic opin­ion and has done so for many years. This strat­e­gy has become more pro­nounced since the start of the Ukrain­ian con­flict. “Vladimir Putin now talks about the dam­age that Euro­pean sanc­tions are doing to the economies of the old con­ti­nent,” says Car­ole Gri­maud. He main­tains that the pri­ma­ry vic­tims are the Euro­peans, and that win­ter will be hard on them. All this is done in the hope that pub­lic opin­ion will turn in his favour. Doubt is a sneaky weapon of war.

Although these prac­tices are present in West­ern coun­tries, the main tar­gets are oth­er coun­tries around the world.

Non-West­ern coun­tries are also tar­get­ed. “These false accounts do more dam­age in soci­eties where anti-West­ern sen­ti­ment is already present,” notes Arnaud Merci­er. In Asia, Latin Amer­i­ca, and more recent­ly in Africa, the Krem­lin’s dis­course is much more eas­i­ly accept­ed. The exam­ple of the Sahel is, in this respect, quite con­vinc­ing, espe­cial­ly as it direct­ly con­cerns France. First arriv­ing in the Cen­tral African Repub­lic, Rus­sia man­aged to estab­lish itself in the region. Under the guise of fight­ing ter­ror­ism, dis­in­for­ma­tion attempts to dis­cred­it the French armed forces – present there dur­ing Oper­a­tion Barkhane⁷.  

“The strat­e­gy is, once again, to inflame a sit­u­a­tion that is already tense due to a con­flict,” he adds, “in the case of Oper­a­tion Barkhane, mul­ti­ple accu­sa­tions have been made. From pae­dophile sol­diers to the dis­cov­ery of mass graves – for which France is the prime sus­pect – to ques­tion­ing the objec­tive of this operation.”

A recent case of this con­flict of influ­ence between France and Rus­sia is the dis­cov­ery of the Gos­si mass grave in Mali on 21^stApril 2022. A few days after the han­dover of the French mil­i­tary base in Gos­si to Malian forces, a Twit­ter account pos­ing as a Malian sol­dier announced the dis­cov­ery of a mass grave not far from the base. “This is what the French left behind,” he said, shar­ing a video of the mass grave. Only, France had filmed the whole scene with a drone that remained on site. The video showed cau­casian sol­diers –  not Malians – with Chi­nese equip­ment, thus asso­ci­at­ed with Russ­ian forces, bury­ing the bod­ies. Accu­sa­tions were made that France was respon­si­ble for this mas­sacre, even though it was the mer­ce­nar­ies of the Wag­n­er group, who had arrived to take over from Barkhane, who had com­mit­ted this act.

How­ev­er, for a local, access to infor­ma­tion is already lim­it­ed in favour of Russ­ian dis­course. Since the Malian mil­i­tary jun­ta has decid­ed to cen­sor the French media France 24 and RFI⁸, a Malian now gets his or her infor­ma­tion from Russ­ian state media, such as Rt News or Sput­nik⁹. 

Pablo Andres