NATO/EU Study Examines Russian Key Narratives Amid Ukraine Crisis

The Euro­pean Cen­tre of Excel­lence for Coun­ter­ing Hybrid Threats, an EU-NATO joint orga­ni­za­tion that seeks to counter hybrid threats, has pub­lished a study exam­in­ing Russia’s key nar­ra­tives amid the Ukraine cri­sis. Accord­ing to the study,  the high­est Krem­lin rep­re­sen­ta­tives and  Russ­ian media mes­sag­ing seem to run in uni­son with some lev­el of orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to the study’s press release:

Jan­u­ary 2022 The Russ­ian mil­i­tary build-up along the Ukrain­ian bor­ders is being accom­pa­nied by an infor­ma­tion offen­sive. This Hybrid CoE Work­ing Paper ana­lyzes that offen­sive and its evo­lu­tion in the sec­ond half of 2021. The paper looks at pub­lic state­ments by high-lev­el rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, con­sid­ers whether there is an increase in Russ­ian infor­ma­tion activ­i­ties tar­get­ing Ukraine, and ana­lyzes the nar­ra­tives of these infor­ma­tion activ­i­ties. Accord­ing to the analy­sis, the mes­sag­ing of the high­est Krem­lin rep­re­sen­ta­tives and of the Russ­ian “media” seems to run in uni­son and there seems to be some lev­el of orga­ni­za­tion in the cur­rent com­mu­ni­ca­tion campaign.

Read the full study here.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report is close­ly fol­low­ing Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tives amid the Ukraine cri­sis. In Feb­ru­ary, we report­ed that Rus­sia has increased its dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, spread­ing false­hoods and lies about Ukraine and NATO.

Cor­rec­tion: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this arti­cle misiden­ti­fied the insti­tu­tion which pub­lished the study. It was pub­lished by the Euro­pean Cen­tre of Excel­lence for Coun­ter­ing Hybrid Threats, an EU-NATO joint orga­ni­za­tion, not the NATO Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Cen­tre of Excel­lence, a NATO cen­ter that seeks to counter disinformation.