Russian Info, Cyber and Disinformation (Catch all till 2017)

[kaur]

FAILING MISSION
PUTIN’S PROPAGANDA TV LIES ABOUT ITS POPULARITY
BY KATIE ZAVADSKI 09.17.15

A Kremlin-funded foreign propaganda venture is touted as a big success by backers, but documents provided to The Daily Beast suggest that it is woefully failing in its mission. RT, the 10-year-old network formerly known as Russia Today, appears to be misrepresenting its promulgated success at gaining a broad viewership and promoting the Kremlin’s agenda while spending as much as internationally renowned competitors. The network is also accused of exaggerating its audience and impact with its sole financier—the Russian government—and pretending that it has had a far bigger impact in the Western media sphere than it has, particularly online. Its highest-trafficked videos on YouTube, for instance, apparently pertain to “metrosexuals, bums, etc.” rather than anything political.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...t-ratings.html

[kaur]

Putin's Information War in Ukraine. Soviet Origins of Russia's Hybrid Warfare.

By Maria Snegovaya

http://www.understandingwar.org/site...0Warfare_1.pdf

[kaur]

Information at War: From China’s Three Warfares to NATO’s Narratives [PDF]

By Laura Jackson, Timothy Thomas, Mark Laity and Ben Nimmo

September 2015

http://www.li.com/activities/publica...o-s-narratives

[kaur]

November 3, 2015

Russian propaganda and the Putin regime.

In a testimony at 2:30pm before the Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Russia expert Leon Aron will discuss the importance of Russian propaganda to the Putin regime.

http://www.aei.org/press/russian-pro...-putin-regime/

[kaur]

Germans feel the heat.

The Hybrid War: Russia's Propaganda Campaign Against Germany


By Melanie Amann, Markus Becker, Benjamin Bidder, Hubert Gude, Konstantin von Hammerstein, Alexej Hock, Christiane Hoffmann, Martin Knobbe, Peter Maxwill, Peter Mller, Gordon Repinski, Sven Rbel, Anna Sadovnikova, Matthias Schepp, Jrg Schindler, Christoph Schult

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...a-1075483.html

[kaur]

Notorious Russian television host Dmitry Kiselyov, famous for his anti-Western rhetoric, has admitted to using a fake document during his weekly Vesti Nedeli news show.

During his show on the Rossia 1 television channel on April 24, Kiselyov displayed the ID of Ukrainian Roman Kolia, an officer in the Galician SS-Volunteer division. In a report on the modern-day relationship between Ukraine and the U.S., Kiselyov compared the U.S. to Nazi Germany, the Meduza news website reported.

In the following week's program, Kiselyov thanked the attentive audience for finding “inaccuracies” in the document and said it was fake.

“There are plenty of fakes now — from counterfeit paintings of brilliant artists to quotations falsely attributed to famous people. It is no wonder we fell for it,” he said.

Kiselyov did not apologize for misleading viewers, but used the situation to once again mention the fact that some Ukrainians fought alongside Nazi Germany and said he is thankful for “such artifacts, even if they are made in our time” for “reminding us about true history. “

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/n...ow/569657.html

This kind of behaviour is profitable.

Other leaks show that Kiselyov reportedly bought a $4.6-million home in central Moscow in 2014. Navalny has confirmed the purchase in a blog post, citing previously publicly available records, but added he did not know whether the other claims were real. Meanwhile, Shaltai-Boltai's website has been blocked in Russia.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n...rs/567948.html

[Bill Moore]

Beyond Propaganda: Soviet Active Measures in Putin’s Russia

https://connections-qj.org/article/b...-putins-russia

Note: you can open the entire article by selecting the pdf link below the title of the article.

Today, in Putin’s Russia, these active measures are once again in use, updated for digitally interconnected “global information space.” The paper begins with an introduction to active measures, then discusses their role in Soviet foreign policy and the attempts by the American “Active Measures Working Group” to counter them. The paper then describes how the Soviet active measures playbook has been updated for the modern era, using three case studies as examples. The paper concludes with a discussion on strategy, reproducing a number of recommendations from key publications.

It isn't too hard to discern how this information warfare tactic can be applied today to further fan the flames of hatred that are escalating on our streets.

Our KGB staff, using new typewriters and wearing gloves so as not to leave fingerprints, typed up hundreds of anonymous hate letters and sent them to dozens of African missions. The letters, purportedly from white supremacists as well as average Americans, were filled with virulent racist diatribes. The African diplomats publicized some of the letters as examples of the racism still rampant in America, and members of the American and foreign press corps quoted from them.

— Oleg Kalugin, 1994

Overall a very insightful article, and in my view it points to the need for a new interagency Active Measures Working Group (U.S.). The mission of the AMWG was to identify and expose Soviet disinformation.

We should also relook NSDD-75 (discussed in the article, and in the next post), as a means to more effectively compete with Russia and other states that threaten our interests.