Despite widespread concerns about the influence of English‐language Russian state media such as Russia Today and Sputnik, Russian claims about its invasion of Ukraine have not taken hold abroad. This failure seems puzzling. Journalists and politicians have alleged that potent Russian information operations tipped the 2016 American election to Trump, and the Brexit vote to “leave”. We need not assess those claims here. Instead, a closer look at the differences between 2016 and now point toward a better understanding of misinformation online, an understanding favoring “more speech” rather than speech suppression.
Unlike its current efforts to sell its war, Russian information operations in the 2016 American presidential election and the UK’s Brexit vote sought to amplify existing “wedge issues” in American and British politics. Immigration, police brutality, and elite corruption were not new issues. Russia did not create new narratives but seized upon stories and trends that had already proven divisive in the west.
The most obvious limit of this approach is that it only works with what is already there. It cannot create new grievances from whole cloth. As a result, foreign propagandists may aim to deepen existing divisions, but they cannot expect to build support for particular policy goals. Indeed, even when this approach may seem successful, it runs the risk of simply taking credit for work done by domestic discontent. The failure of Russian propaganda about Ukraine seems to show that as long as counter‐speech is available, misinformation may reinforce existing beliefs, but it cannot easily change minds.
Americans were asking questions about Hillary Clinton’s speeches to banks long before Wikileaks released details of the speeches stolen from Clinton’s campaign chairman by Russian hackers. Although Russian media amplified the story, it was one many Americans already wanted to hear. When it came to Ukraine, however, most Americans didn’t have strong feelings about the country, limiting the stories Russia could hope to sell. As of December 2021, while Putin called the situation in western Ukraine a “genocide” on Russia Today, most Americans had heard only “a little” or “nothing at all” about Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s borders. In the west, Russian propagandists simply didn’t have much to work with to slander Ukraine.
In the runup to Russia’s invasion, Russian state media echoed the government’s justifications for its “special military action” – that Ukraine was committing genocide in the Donbass and that Ukrainians needed to be liberated from a Nazi regime. During the war, it has amplified false claims that President Zelensky fled to Poland and credulously shared claims that a laptop allegedly taken from a Ukrainian militia contained NATO battle plans.
However, beyond the outer fringes of western politics, neither Russia’s contrived casus belli nor its wartime information operation have been taken seriously in Europe or America. Zelensky is Jewish; an unlikely Nazi, and the overuse of Third Reich analogies have been defanged by overuse in western politics. Because American, European, and Ukrainian audiences have been able to see Ukrainian President Zelensky “still here”, with his people, in Kyiv, Russian assertions otherwise floundered. Indeed, like Turkish President Erdogan in the face of a 2016 coup attempt, Zelensky was able to use social media to instantly and directly respond to claims that he had fled. Social media has afforded leaders an intimate, resilient medium for being seen in command.
Russian propaganda did nothing to prevent a massive shift in American and European public opinion – and foreign policy – against Russia. As long as people can see them, deeds matter more than words. In a contested media environment – one in which Russian propaganda had to compete with western journalism, unfiltered social media, and Ukrainian counternarratives, Russian propaganda lost decisively. Social media research firm Omelas found that “as Russian forces started moving into Ukraine, these media operations began to lose traction with their target audiences.” Crucially, Russian state media’s efforts to sell the war in the west were dead in the water as soon as the invasion began, before RT and Sputnik were blocked by social media platforms and banned by the European Union.
Despite their reach on cable television and social media, Russian state media simply wasn’t believed. Indeed, on social media, lack of interest in the narrative they were selling limited their reach as users refrained from resharing foreign “de‐Nazification” claims. To the extent that Russian information operations seemed to succeed in the past, they may have simply joined a popular chorus of domestic voices.
The exception that proves the rule, and further militates in favor of a free and open media ecosystem, is Russia. In Russia, instead of being one perspective among many, the Russian government’s view is the only one available to most Russians. Broadcasters who oppose the war are swiftly taken off the air, and a new media law threatens those who publish “false information” about Russia’s invasion with up to 15 years in prison. The net effect of boycotts by western companies and Russian state censorship is isolating Russia from the rest of the internet.
As a result, unlike in the rest of the world, Russia’s claims about its invasion are widely believed at home. Tragically, some Russians previously unaware of the invasion’s magnitude have refused to believe the accounts Ukrainian relatives who have called them while fleeing Russian artillery. What makes the Russian media ecosystem different from others is not the presence of Russian propaganda but the absence of anything else.
As the west embraces an unprecedented private boycott of Russia and considers new restrictions on foreign propaganda, it would do well to recognize that a free media and access to the truth on the ground routed the Russian narratives before the censors could get their boots on. Disinformation is more a problem of demand than supply, and western media consumers had no desire to buy Russia’s claims. Only in a strictly controlled, tightly regulated media ecosystem could Russian claims carry the day. Without censorship, the value and potential aims of propaganda are limited.
