The Washington Post: Kremlin documents reveal extensive campaign to undermine US support for Ukraine.

Moscow intensifies propaganda campaign against Ukraine

According to internal documents obtained by a European intelligence service and published by The Washington Post, Russia has increased its propaganda activities to undermine US support for Ukraine.

Key points:

Kremlin spin doctors and trolls created thousands of fake news and social media comments.

This campaign is aimed at promoting US isolationism, heightening fears about border security, and fuelling economic and racial tensions.

The documents, dating from May 2022 to August 2023, were provided to The Washington Post to disclose the scale and methods of the propaganda.

According to the documents, when President Biden proposed $24 billion in additional funding for Ukraine in August, Moscow’s spin doctors were ready to undermine public support for the initiative.

One of the political technologists instructed employees to write a comment from the point of view of a fictional suburban resident who does not support US military aid to Ukraine and believes the money should be spent on protecting America’s borders rather than Ukraine’s.

The campaign also attempted to depict President Zelensky as corrupt and claimed that a large number of migrants were crossing the US-Mexico border. It called for allocating funds to border security instead of aid to Ukraine, and described “white Americans” as the primary victims of foreign aid.

The documents stated that they were written by a team working for the head of the Moscow PR firm Social Design Agency, Ilya Gambashidze. He was sanctioned by the US last month for involvement in a “malicious foreign influence campaign” at the direction of the Kremlin.

This campaign is part of a strategy based on the Kremlin’s long-term efforts to garner support from anti-establishment politicians who oppose the US global role. It has been ongoing for nearly 10 years.

Experts and former US officials point to the impact of Russian propaganda on congressional debates over aid to Ukraine in recent years. Most anti-Ukrainian politicians from the Republican Party have been blocking further aid to Ukraine since August.

Representative Michael Turner, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said some Republican members of Congress are echoing Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine.

According to the documents, the Kremlin began its campaign to undermine American support for Ukraine in January 2023. Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy head of the Kremlin administration, enlisted political technologists who had previously worked on campaigns to undermine support for Ukraine in Europe, and ordered them to expand their efforts.

The political technologists were instructed to create content for US websites condemning the corruption of Ukrainian officials, including “the sale and theft of weapons.”

They were to create an environment in which “Americans are not willing to sacrifice their well-being for the Ukraine conflict” and to present Russia’s close relationship with China as a new threat created by the US itself.

When Matt Gaetz, a leading opponent of aid to Ukraine, warned of a “dangerous bipartisan consensus that will lead us to war with Russia” and criticized a $40 billion aid package to Kyiv in 2022, the Russians used it as an example to spread their message.

The campaign also targeted spreading misleading content about immigration and the Mexican border. For example, websites connected with Microsoft and other social media researchers launched new attempts to disseminate such content when the Biden administration planned to push additional Ukraine funding through Congress.

Scholars and experts note that Russian propaganda has a significant impact on US congressional debates over aid to Ukraine. They point out that US politicians did not previously argue that Ukraine was unimportant or that the US would not support NATO.