- Georgia will hold elections in a year’s time;
- Experience of European countries and the USA has shown that Russia tries to influence election environment and election results of most advance democracies;
- Methods and platforms applied by Russia to influence elections become increasingly diverse and sophisticated.
What is the greatest strength of the Western world? – Democracy.
What is its greatest weakness? – Democracy.
Although not proved historically, as popular legend has it, Dr. Joseph Guillotin was put to death on the machine that bears his name. I hope, history will never have to evidence that the Western democracy, as we know it today, will be brought to its demise by democratic methods. It makes no difference whether we ignore it or not but the threat is real and it is obvious that the plan has been already devised.
In 2018, The Washington Post counted 27 proved instances of Russia’s meddling in foreign elections. According to the paper, over the period between 1991 and 2014, these interventions affected only post-Soviet countries. Since 2014, however, the Kremlin felt itself ready to go on a larger scale and accomplish more difficult tasks.
That’s how the attack on the West started.
In the spring of 2019, the election was held to the European Parliament and we can boldly declare that the list of previous 27 instances of meddling extended to include additional 28 instances, by the number of the member states. It does not matter whether Moscow managed to equally influence the will of German or Maltese voters. What’s important is that Putin applied various methods in an effort to impose on the current 28 EU member states those politicians and that agenda that were favorable to him. We just have to wait and see how these politicians and agenda manifest themselves during the five-year term of the parliament.
The previous five-year term appeared to be a “warm-up.” In 2015, an openly pro-Russian Marine Le Pen, who is financed by Russian business closely linked to the Kremlin, created a faction, “Europe of Nations and Freedom,” in the European Parliament, which soon gathered 38 MPs as its members. At first glance it seems strange that opinions of this far-right group often coincided with those of far-left group as well as pro-Russian “European United Left” and Nigel Farage’s Eurosceptics. However, this seems only at first glance – names do not matter for Putin. Nor is he concerned about their reputation (much like Le Pen, many other faction members’ attitudes to finances and principles are suspicious) when they agree, on ideological, mercenary or other grounds, to implement, in the name of Europe, the decisions taken in the Kremlin.
“They use actually all social platforms, they use photos and videos, often manipulatively. They exploit fears, for example, caused by climate change which represents a significant factor in European elections. The aim could be to influence those who cast their votes and also those who do not. In such a case, different technologies are applied,” says Karolin Schwarz from hoaxmap.org.
When selecting methods of influencing political choice of the West, Russia cares the least about morals. No one doubts that Moscow was behind the thwarted plot of assassination of Montenegro Prime Minister Milo Đukanović and regime change in the country in 2016. The plot aimed at rectifying the failure in getting favorable outcome through the elections and install a pro-Russian government who would halt Montenegro’s bid to join NATO.
The plot fell through. Montenegro, which Russians continue to call Chernogoria, became a NATO member in 2017.
Moscow never conceals its interest towards political events, namely, elections. This is especially true when it comes to former Soviet countries. And it poorly disguises its desire and attempts to meddle. However, one should know Russian version too. For Russia, any action – be it overt or covert, is the response to the “effrontery” of the West which, as the Kremlin believes, staged a series of color “flowery” revolutions in its former satellites and continues crowding out Moscow of its traditional spheres of influence. The 2003 Rose, 2004 Color and 2005 Tulip revolutions are viewed by Putin as the attack on spheres of Russia’s influence and responds with year-by-year increasingly energetic, sophisticated and impudent actions.
That he is allergic to “flowers” of revolution Putin has proved not once. The Ukrainian Maidan that started at the end of 2013 was met by Russia well prepared. Much earlier that year Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov published an article in which he set out his vision, then dubbed as the “Gerasimov Doctrine.” For the first time ever, it formulated all those methods that Russia had applied both in cold and hot wars. Gerasimov asserted that waves of color revolutions and Arab Spring were a new tactic of the United States and its allies and the influence of it exceeded the effect of traditional weapons.
It was precisely the Gerasimov’s manual that Moscow took as a guidance in “reading” the toppling of its protégé and loyal puppet Viktor Yanukovych: a) the West fights against us; b) we must respond to the West.
The response was totally unexpected and even hypothetically unimaginable – the occupation of Crimea by “unidentified” army, which was followed by “legitimization” of annexation by means of a democratic method – referendum.
Just recently, the Select Committee on Intelligence of United States Senate published an 85-page report about the meddling of Kremlin in the 2016 elections. The title of the report contains the Soviet term “active measures” without quotation marks. It has been years now that this collocation has made it from Putin’s KGB-ish textbooks into the parlance of world leaders and media, much like a Russian word “sputnik” in the 1950s or “troika” in the 1930s. Only a small share of the report is blacked out for strangers’ eyes.
The rest that is not blacked presents the identity of the culprit – Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential elections. Although the Committee on Intelligence is led by Republican Party members (Chairman is Senator Richard Burr), the conclusion rejects President Trump’s version that the US cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike, together with Ukrainians and the Democratic Party, tried to falsely accuse Moscow.
The report confirms that the Russian misinformation machine was indeed in full swing, targeting different groups:
“Evidence of the IRA’s [Internet Research Agency is a Russian “troll factory”– T.G.] overwhelming operational emphasis on race is evident in the IRA’s Facebook advertisement content (over 66 percent contained a term related to race) and targeting (locational targeting was principally aimed at African-Americans in key metropolitan areas).”
According to the report, racist posts on Facebook generated 11.2 million engagements with Facebook users. In total, the Russian misinformation on Facebook reached as many as 126 million Americans. Content of IRA’s five top Instagram accounts were focused on African-American issues and audiences. Separate pages focused on religious groups. Yet another area of intensive activity implied eroding the faith in traditional US media. According to the report of Committee on Intelligence, “Russian disinformation efforts may be focused on gathering information and data points in support of an active measures campaign targeted at the 2020 U.S. presidential election.” Russia has “engaged in a number of campaigns seemingly focused on gathering personal information (emails, phone numbers, and bank details) of US-based audiences sympathetic to Russian disinformation topics.”
Russian-style election propaganda that has extraordinarily enhanced in Georgia in the past few years dispels all doubts that Russia will not use any of its methods tested in other countries for the 2020 parliamentary elections in Georgia, that it will not finance far-right forces much like it did in Italy, Hungary, Greece, France and Austria, will not spread hacked emails and fake documents via Wikileaks like it did in Germany and the USA, will not carry out “phishing” attacks against political parties like it did in Germany and Norway.
“We studied the practice of fake news in the 2017 German elections. In almost every case, they were spread by far-right populists, the political party Alternative for Germany and media outlets associated with them,” recounts Luca Hammer, social media analyst.
The list of Russia’s successes, achieved by various levels of engagement, should include not only some of above listed cases, but Brexit too, as well as Presidential elections in Bulgaria (in 2016) and parliamentary elections in Czech Republic (in 2017). Russia superbly exploited the referendum in the Netherlands to sway it in the direction favorable for Moscow and vote against Ukraine’s further European integration. At the end of the day, the Dutch parliament ignored the referendum result and supported the signing of association agreement between the EU and Ukraine.
Thanks to Russian propaganda and meddling in elections, a substantial success was achieved by favorites of Moscow in French presidential and German parliamentary elections in 2017. According to a general expert opinion, influence of the Kremlin and its troll factory on the elections in Netherlands (in 2017) and to the European Parliament (in 2019) was of lesser degree owing to their active preparations against Kremlin’s various actions. Especially noteworthy was the May 2019 election which the EU member states had to prepare in a closer coordination than had before. Regular meetings were held between elections administrations and law enforcement authorities and as a result, external forces were not able to penetrate the databases and influence the vote. However, in the countries of traditional influence, traditional political parties, nongovernmental organizations and media outlets actively promoted their own ideological line, often with the support from Russian forces.
Voters learn on their own mistakes: in 2016, with an intensive support from Russian intelligence, Bulgaria elected a pro-Moscow candidate Rumen Radev as its president. Back then, the advocate of European integration, Prime Minister Boiko Borisov resigned. However, in 2017, after winning the parliamentary election, Boiko Borisov made a comeback as Prime Minister.
“Favorable outcomes in nine out of 16 elections may seem like a lot. But it’s not at all clear that Russia’s efforts made any difference. Other factors also affected the elections: increased immigration, for instance, and the perception that established party systems weren’t responding to ordinary voters’ concerns,” The Washington Post wrote.
Reinhard Hönighaus, Head of Press Team of European Commission’s Representation in Germany, speaks about the threats posed to the EU countries both from inside or outside:
“We have seen many instances of damaging intervention. Some groups spread disinformation in order to prevent voters from casting their votes, or to deepen the rift in society on, for instance, the issue of migration. Russian propaganda does have the influence, though since 2014 we also have achieved positive results. For example, we raised the awareness of threat; educated public on how to identify a particular narrative.”
“It’s true that Russia has been increasingly trying to meddle in Western elections. But it hasn’t gotten much for its efforts — and these efforts have often backfired. For instance, the U.S. uproar about Russian interference has almost certainly made it less likely that the United States will lift its sanctions. Thus, on balance, Putin’s expansion of Russian interference may not be in Russia’s interests,” The Washington Post wrote.
Those who follow the world media almost daily hear stories on how a group of Russian trolls was discovered in the Czech Republic, how the trace of Moscow was detected in the “Iranian hackers” case. All this is an account of ongoing information war which Russia declared against almost entire world; it opened one of its fronts against Georgia with its hackers, trolls, secretly funded media outlets, openly established “Sputniks” and other resources, nongovernmental organizations, foundations, marches, studies of students at Russian universities, concerts and many other, including democratic methods which it does not bother itself to conceal.
In the Georgian front, one can observe a constant activity of adversaries and especially conspicuous is its cyclic nature. Peak in Russian lies and propaganda always comes on elections because in the politics of Georgia, much like in politics of numerous other countries, Moscow has its favorites too. As the 2020 parliamentary election approaches, yet another peak of yet another cycle is nearing too.
Correspondent of Mtavari Arkhi
Especially for Myth Detector
The article is published within the framework of the project #FIGHTFAKE, which is implemented by MDF in cooperation with its partner organisation Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V.
