Chapter 3 - NATO's eastern flank: A new battleground

Among other crucial developments, the year 2013 witnessed Russia openly declaring an information war on the West. The first wave of onslaught was directed against states placed between the Baltic and the Black Sea (so-called ‘Intermarium’): Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine—countries that have remained the prime target of Russian intimidation and aggressive behaviour since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Aside from this, Kaliningrad Oblast, an exclave of Russia, emerged as a unique case study illustrating Russia’s resolve to build an anti-Western ‘ideological bastion’ in the heart of Europe. Given critical role of information in Russia’s vision of the future of warfare, the campaign against Ukraine and the Baltic states is nothing else but an integral part of the Kremlin’s general preparation for future conflicts.

Making a Molotov cocktail: Information warfare à la russe

Russia’s current disinformation campaign against the West is more dangerous and sophisticated than ever before for several reasons. First, the Soviet strategy wrapped in modern attire makes it universal, flexible, smart and borderless. Second, hacking campaigns, kompromat attempts, the deliberate destruction of information, blatant corruption, and cyberattacks render it virtually untraceable. Third, designed for domestic and foreign consumption, it reaches out to different audiences in Russia, the post-Soviet space and beyond. Fourth, it is permanent: known as ‘informational confrontation’, it is designed for both war and peace time. Finally, it often contains seeds of truth, which makes it even more difficult to defeat.

Russian disinformation is extremely flexible. While the West is struggling to fit it in any theoretical framework, the Russian side is merging theory and practise as part of a multi-disciplinary approach, weaponising information. Thus, a combination of Soviet-inspired post-modern information-psychological and information-technologywarfare constitutes two parts of the same phenomenon.

Following the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014, Russian disinformation efforts became more sophisticated and gained some new features, as described below.

Militarisation of information. Russian military strategists consider disinformation as an organic part of future conflict. Theoretical research and practical steps resulted in the creation of ‘research units’ and ‘cyber troops’. According to Russian Minister of Defence Sergey Shoigu, those “will be much more efficient than the ‘counter-propaganda’ department of the Soviet period”.

Codification and renovation of information legislature. The adoption of a new information doctrine (2016) and strategy for the development of an information society (2017) has tightened the state’s control over the domestic information space, identified external priorities, and confirmed Russia’s readiness for information warfare.

Creation of the ‘information vertical’. Every Russian citizen, from the President to a local operator, is now a part of centralised vertical responsible for the state’s information security. Introduction of ‘cyber squads’ and the extension of the Russian National Guard’s responsibilities in the domain of information and cyber security is part of this strategy.

Ukraine: Russia’s laboratory for future wars

The Russian disinformation assault against Ukraine corroborates Lenin´s tenet that ‘propaganda should be a matter of action rather than words’. The post-2013 developments should be viewed as a logical conclusion of the Kremlin’s previous sustained covert actions since the early 1990s. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine witnessed the combination of kinetic and non-kinetic methods simulating a new type of military conflict, with local military action (conducted by special-operations forces) supported by disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks. The first stage, the annexation of Crimea, served as a springboard for subsequent events in the Donbas region. The Russian side employed both information-technology(the occupation of the Simferopol Internet Exchange Point and disruption of cable connections to the mainland that secured Russian information dominance over the peninsula) and information-psychological warfare targeting Ukraine and the EU. At this juncture, emphasis was given to reflexive control techniques, when Moscow attempted to force the international community to recognise Russia as an actor with special vested interests in Ukraine, while at the same time supposedly not being a party to the conflict. The second stage of the conflict, from April 2014, saw a similar but expanded strategy based on intensified disinformation efforts, cyberattacks, troll farms and botnets, IT software and search engines (primarily Yandex) as a means to defeat, discredit and falsify information. Russia’s attempts to discredit Ukraine in the eyes of the West were based on presenting it as a ‘mistake of 1991’, a failed stated ruled by illegitimate, corrupt, inefficient, Russophobic, anti-Semite neo-Nazi ‘junta’—arguments that were to reach out to every segment within Western society.

The ruthlessness and actions of Moscow hinged on the following assumptions:

• Moscow would not be challenged over Ukraine;
• Weak, disunited and lacking strategic vision, Ukrainian political elites would fail to react properly; and
• Ukraine is not a (homogenous) state, meaning that Russian actions will be supported in certain regions.

Worst of all, for the majority of Ukrainians the idea of war with Russia was inconceivable, which was cynically abused by the Kremlin. In this regard, the Ukrainian example should be recognised as a stern warning to the entire European community, and to the Baltic states in particular.

The Baltic states: The next targets?

The three Baltic states comprising the northern part of NATO’s eastern flank are another prime target of Russian disinformation. Throughout the 1990s, Russian propaganda efforts revolved around the interpretation of Soviet historical legacy, with many poorly integrated and Soviet-nostalgic Russian-speaking minorities acting as the Kremlin’s ‘fan club’. After 2007, dramatic changes owing to the emergence of the ‘Russian world’ concept ensued: the once poorly organised and frequently incoherent actions of the Russians evolved into a systematised, well-coordinated and coherent strategy.

Russia’s disinformation operations against the Baltic states aim to present these countries as a failed experiment of both post-Soviet transformation and Euro-Atlantic integration. Russian propaganda extensively draws on ‘widespread poverty’, ‘depopulation’, raging far-right ideology and the ‘semi-colonial status’ of these countries. Meanwhile, the local elites are portrayed as Russophobic and paranoid. According to Russian propaganda, these features, coupled with ‘blind servility’ to the West, do not allow local political elites to make rational decisions, damaging their economies and turning these countries into a ‘sanitary cordon’ against Russia, and at the same time a target for Russian retaliation.

Another crucial theme of Russian disinformation is inseparable from the role of NATO. Kremlin-backed propagandist outlets are spreading fake materials and news (in Russian and local languages), attempting to create a repulsive image of NATO, whose soldiers (especially in Lithuania and Latvia) are portrayed as a wild mob of vandals, sexual perverts, and rapists immune to local laws and acting like invaders (an apparent parallel with the Nazi army on the Soviet territory). This distorted narrative serves the following objectives:

• Internal mobilisation of Russian population around the current political regime (‘Russia as a besieged fortress’);
• Russia as an alternative to the Western-liberal model (‘Russia as custodian of Christian-conservative values’);
• Revival of anti-American/NATO sentiments in Europe; and
• Artificial fragmentation of the EU.

Another way to create a negative image of NATO relates to the massive military build-up in the Western Military District (in particular, Kaliningrad Oblast), which aims to create an aura of impunity and at the same time ‘prove’ to the Baltic states that NATO is powerless to protect their sovereignty and territorial integrity in the event of conflict. At the same time, Russian military escalation attempts to stress the point that ‘excessive’ military expenditures are nothing but an unnecessary waste of money (and NATO-imposed condition) that could have been invested in the economy instead.

The Ukrainian crisis has had a dramatic impact on Russia’s behaviour in regard to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The most recent aggressive actions have portrayed the Baltic states as nothing but a ‘near abroad’, entities that have not escaped the Russian sphere of interest while at the same time failing to join the Euro-Atlantic community. Aggressive disinformation campaigning against the Baltic states is also meant to show that growing tensions in the region are caused by anti-Russian actions and Russophobia spreading in the Baltic states and Poland, which according to senior Russian officials could cause the Third World War.

Sabre rattling and direct intimidations are merely one side of Russia’s changing posture. After 2014, by spreading fake materials and aggressively interfering in the domestic affairs of its neighbours, Moscow has been increasingly leveraging Kaliningrad as a new outlet, while generating anti-Polish, anti-Lithuanian and anti-NATO sentiments.

Kaliningrad: Beacon of the ‘Russian world’ in Europe

Russia’s ability to act in the Baltic states and Ukraine is constrained by a number of factors and is likely to be limited to an even greater extent given realities of the post-Crimean world. Located in the heart of the EU, Kaliningrad appears to be an ideal location for the generation of disinformation and export of Russian values abroad. First attempts to that effect were unsuccessfully made from 2003 to 2006. However, it was the Ukrainian crisis that became a genuine game-changer, transforming the Kremlin’s perception of Kaliningrad, and its role in the ideological conflict with the West.

From 2014 on, the exclave has been in the vanguard of vigorous anti-Lithuanian, anti-Polish disinformation campaigns. The most notorious example was a disgraceful episode in Vilnius at the end of 2016, when the Russian embassy disseminated propaganda leaflets with fraudulent data on Lithuanian economic performance, urging the locals to abandon the country for Kaliningrad.

Apart from stoking internal disturbances Kaliningrad has become a shield of the so-called Russian world in an ideological war against the West, its values and traditions, a world in which the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has acquired prominence. Speaking in Kaliningrad (March 2015), Russian Patriarch Kirill named the oblast “Russia’s beacon” and a shield against the “adverse world”. Coupled with breath-taking militarisation (resulting in the oblast becoming one of the most formidable anti-access/area-denial regions), Russia’s measures in the domain of information security have transformed Kaliningrad into a laboratory for testing future warfare, with both sides of Moscow’s information confrontation being used in an integrated strategy.

What comes next?

From the Black to the Baltic Seas, NATO’s eastern flank presents a relatively weak, fragmented and unevenly developed area. Given the lessons Russia has drawn from its experience in Syria and Ukraine, Moscow will stress pursuing a strategy based on an integrated use of military and non-military components. As described by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov (2016) “the emphasis on the method of fighting [is moving] toward[s] the complex application of political, economic, information and other non-military means, conducted with the support of military force”. This means that the notion of information security should be seen as an organic part of hybrid warfare.

Furthermore, there is every reason to believe that another Russian strategic objective is concerned with undermining the level of cohesion among EU and NATO member states, as well as generating conflict and mutual animosity between Ukraine and its strategic partners in the Euro-Atlantic alliance. This will be done using various means from Moscow-backed think-tanks, NGO’s and marginal populist groups to social media and information outlets. The sophistication of Russian propaganda requires the West to abandon what has often been a simplistic understanding of information warfare.