The Western Alliance in the Face of the Russian (Dis)information Machine

Subsequently, with the emergence of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (ID) and the introduction of propaganda as a subject (spetspropaganda) in the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages (1942), the Soviets managed to greatly boost their capabilities in the realm of information operations (IOs). [...] Incidentally, notable contemporary Russian theorists of information warfare agree that the Soviet defeat in the Cold War was pre-ordained after the forfeiture of strategic initiatives on the information battlefield in the second half of the 1980s. [...] In 2000, the changing attitude of the Russian ruling elites was reflected in the foreign policy concept of the Russian Federation (June 28) that prioritized the importance of “developing Russia’s own means to influence public opinion abroad,” and the Doctrine of Information Security (September 2000) that identified the range of issues, challenges and tasks to be dealt with in the short to medium t [...] The period between late 2010 (the Arab Spring) and 2013/14 (developments in Ukraine) witnessed a dramatic expansion of the role of the siloviki, primarily the Ministry of Defence, the FSB (federal security service) and the SVR (foreign intelligence service) in Russian information security-related policies. [...] For instance, the emergence of the cyber-troops and research units (controlled by the MoD) (Sukhankin 2017b) vested the process of headhunting and selection of the most talented young specialists in the hands of the armed forces.