While Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised two breakaway regions of Ukraine as independent this week, pro-Russia online disinformation campaigners unleashed numerous images and videos depicting Ukraine as the aggressor. Their often crude efforts were promptly dismantled by experts and fact-checkers. But for Moscow, quantity overrides quality concerns.
The disinformation examples abound the Internet: a photo of an alleged Ukrainian armored vehicle on Russian territory, a video of Ukrainian troops on an “invasion” mission infiltrating Russia, or another clip supposedly showing Ukrainian or Polish "saboteurs" trying to blow up Russian tanks.
Days after the Kremlin slammed Western “hysteria” over the Russian military buildup around Ukraine, the messaging from Moscow has changed following President Vladimir Putin’s decision on Monday to recognise the pro-Russian, self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
The new narrative, sustained by a disinformation campaign, is focused on presenting "proof" of Kyiv’s belligerence, which is contradictory to the situation on the ground as Ukraine confronts the military might of its huge eastern neighbour.
The disinformation circulates in pro-Russian groups on the messaging service Telegram and is then relayed by state and pro-Kremlin media organisations. Over the past few days, Russian state media has insisted that Putin has ordered troops on a “peacekeeping” mission into eastern Ukraine to prevent what the Russian leader has called a “genocide” of Russian-speakers by the government in Kyiv.
‘Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy’ editing
The fake videos and images though have not escaped the attention of fact-checkers on the lookout for Russian disinformation on the Internet.
>> More on FRANCE 24 Observers: Meet the anonymous Internet investigators tracking Russian movements on Ukraine’s borders
The video of soldiers "speaking Polish" and trying to sabotage Russian tanks was dissected to reveal a montage of video and audio pieces, according to Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, an Amsterdam -based investigative site that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. Some of the footage was shot in early February, while editors added footage and sound from a video shot during a Finnish military exercise in 2010.
The image of an alleged Ukrainian armored vehicle supposedly advancing into Russian territory was also promptly and effectively debunked. The Soviet-era vehicle in the photo does not belong to the Ukrainian arsenal, according to investigators at Oryx, an open-source platform specialised in military equipment and technology. “They couldn’t even get that right," said the group in a Twitter post.
Far more sensitive for investigators was a claim, supported by video by the FSB – one of Russia's main intelligence services – that a shell fired from Ukrainian territory destroyed a Russian outpost on the border on Monday.
The FSB video was examined by investigators at the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), a group of specialists in Russian military issues, and found to be suspect. "The closest Ukrainian positions” are located more than 37 kilometres from the impact zone, began a CIT Twitter thread. In a series of posts systematically debunking the claim, CIT noted that the only Ukrainian artillery systems that could fire at such a distance would have caused much heavier destruction than the lone damaged hut in the video.
“We find this 'incident' to be yet another in a string of poorly staged pretexts for a possible operation against Ukraine,” concluded CIT in a message posted on Tuesday.
It was not the first time that fact-checkers have called out the efforts of pro-Russian propagandists in recent days. "Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy,” taunted Aric Toler, a researcher at Bellingcat, who monitors "made in Kremlin" disinformation.
Aimed at ‘an already receptive audience’
The lack of sophistication may indeed be surprising. Russia is known to be a master of online propaganda since its agents interfered in the 2016 US presidential campaign. Moscow had, moreover, "already used the same techniques in 2014 to justify the annexation of Crimea", recalled Stefan Meister, a specialist in Russian security and disinformation at the German Council on Foreign Relations, in an interview with FRANCE 24.
Meister believes that "it’s impossible to imagine Russia today conducting a conflict without a cyber-propaganda dimension".
But how then can the well-oiled Russian machine produce such "low-cost" disinformation? "Simply because, for the moment, the Russian authorities do not need to do better," said Meister.
The Kremlin wants and needs to convince its own population. "A military operation in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, is much less popular with Russians than the annexation of Crimea had been in 2014," noted Valentina Shapovalova, a specialist in Russian media and propaganda at the University of Copenhagen, in an interview with FRANCE 24.
The authorities have therefore developed a narrative and resorted to images "which are similar to all the disinformation that has been sold for eight years to the Russian-speaking population about Ukraine", Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a specialist in Russian disinformation at the University of Copenhagen, told FRANCE 24.
It’s not the first time, for instance, that Putin has used the term "genocide" to refer to the situation in Ukraine. "This is what he had already done in 2014 before launching the invasion of Crimea," recalled Meister.
This means there’s little need to reinvent the wheel and fiddle with the details of disinformation. It can remain simple and work "because it is primarily aimed at an already receptive audience", explained Golovchenko.
‘Fog of disinformation’
What’s more, it’s not so much the quality as the quantity of disinformation that matters. "The goal is to create so many different – and sometimes even contradictory – versions of what is happening at the border that no one can really distinguish the true from the false anymore," said Shapovalova.
Using what Shapovalova calls a "fog of disinformation", Moscow hopes that the Russian-speaking population, from Moscow to Donbas, will be so saturated with messaging that, not knowing which way to turn, they will cling to the familiar: the voice of the Kremlin.
Disinformation, however crude, can also have its own raison d'être at the international level. "Moscow knows very well that the Western public will, in any case, consider anything coming from Russia as not very credible. The Kremlin is mainly interested in the fact that American and European analysts and decision-makers waste time tracking down this disinformation and talking about it," said Meister.
The purpose of this heavy-handed propaganda may be to divert attention, to create informational background noise intended to distract the opponent.
Finally, another possible explanation is that Moscow is purposely playing Washington's game. "The US has warned on more than one occasion that Russia would create incidents out of thin air before any invasion or military operation in Ukraine," noted Golovchenko. All the Russian propagandists have to do is create crude fabrications so that everyone cries wolf and spots a likely Russian "false flag" operation to justify a war. In short, this is enough to put pressure on Ukraine and NATO without having to move a single tank.
This article was translated from the original in French.
