Washington (AP) Russia is playing a different game, disseminating misinformation to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine prior to Donald Trump’s return to the White House next month, while President Joe Biden utilizes his last days in office to strengthen Ukraine’s defenses.
The Kremlin has been spreading polarizing narratives about the war and America’s Republican president-elect through state-run media, its networks of fake news websites, and social media accounts since the U.S. election on November 5. According to analysts, the English-language information is meant to incite anti-Ukrainian feeling at a critical juncture in the hopes of lowering U.S. military aid and guaranteeing a Russian triumph.
Fake movies purporting to show Ukrainian military burning Trump or his supporters’ effigies are recent instances. In one video, troops are heard stating that Trump should never be elected president again and should not be permitted to hold office. The video has been disproved by numerous scholars who have pointed out obvious indications of digital manipulation.
Another video purports to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting at a mannequin sporting a Trump campaign shirt and a red “Make America Great Again” cap. Private analysts and Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, a government organization that monitors Kremlin propaganda, examined that film and concluded it was fraudulent.
Other, equally phony versions show Ukrainian soldiers calling Trump a coward or burning his books. The videos circulated among Trump fans and adherents of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that contends Trump is engaged in a conflict with a Satanic cabal of influential global leaders, in the weeks following the election, reaching far beyond Ukraine and Russia.
According to observers who have followed Russian propaganda and disinformation since the start of the conflict, it is part of Russia’s ongoing effort to polarize Americans over the nearly three-year conflict in Ukraine and portray Ukrainians as untrustworthy, dishonest partners. The Kremlin wants to cut off the most important source of military aid that has sustained Ukrainian expectations since Russia invaded in February 2022 by reducing U.S. support for Ukraine.
Russian propagandists depicted Ukrainian officials as dishonest and self-serving early in the conflict. Despite President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage and his involvement in covert bioweapons research that Moscow attempted to link to the COVID-19 epidemic, Russian state media alleged that Ukraine’s leaders harbored Nazi sympathies. Russia’s invasion was justified by each untrue allegation.
Rupert Smith, a retired British general and former NATO deputy supreme commander who currently heads the Brussels-based consulting firm Solvo Partners, said that the Russians are behind the notion that Ukraine is so corrupt that it shouldn’t even be a state and that we are the best people to run this country. This is currently being used as a justification for not backing Ukraine.
According to an analysis by researchers at NewsGuard, a company that monitors disinformation, the phony video purporting to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting at the Trump mannequin circulated on websites like X, Telegram, and YouTube, receiving an initial boost from pro-Kremlin news sites before moving to ones that are popular with Americans.
Although some of the video’s versions were produced decades before the election, they were presented as more contemporary. The video received hundreds of thousands of views in a matter of days, and NewsGuard discovered that it had been translated into German, Chinese, and Polish in addition to Russian and English.
U.S. intelligence claims that Russia attempted to help Trump win the presidency because it thought he would weaken U.S. support for Ukraine and maybe the NATO alliance. In remarks that seem to imply he would pressure Ukraine to cede territory now held by Russia, the incoming president has lauded Russian President Vladimir Putin, denounced U.S. military assistance to Ukraine and NATO, and pledged to end the war within 24 hours.
A representative for the Russian Embassy in Washington cited earlier declarations denouncing any involvement in the dissemination of false information about Ukraine in response to inquiries about Russia’s activity in this regard.
The Biden administration has pushed up arms shipments and urged Ukraine to rapidly expand its military by enlisting more personnel in the time it has left, all the while forgiving billions in loans given to Kyiv. More than $56 billion in security aid has been sent to Ukraine by the White House thus far, and billions more are anticipated before Biden’s departure on January 20, 2025.
According to Joshua Tucker, a professor at New York University and an authority on Russia who specializes in online deception, it is simple to comprehend Russia’s intentions in attempting to stop that aid delivery. The effectiveness of Russian disinformation, he argued, is more difficult to measure, particularly on social media sites that are already overflowing with ludicrous, untrue, and disproven statements.
The relative ease and affordability of such operations in comparison to diplomatic or military alternatives is one reason why Russia may continue to attack Americans with disinformation.
According to Tucker, Russia most certainly views disinformation as a component of a larger campaign to weaken American leadership in the world by separating its citizens and eroding support for its institutions. According to him, the objective is the same regardless of the subject—immigration, the government, the American economy, or the conflict in Ukraine—and transcends one election cycle or one candidate.
According to Tucker, their true goal was a contentious outcome where many people were protesting the legitimacy of the election in the streets.
However, Tucker stated that if they are unable to achieve that, Russia’s misinformation organizations would continue to spread stories that they think will incite Americans and increase their prospects in Ukraine.
The Associated Press, 2024. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. It is prohibited to publish, broadcast, rewrite, or redistribute this content without authorization.
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