State propaganda in the Russian Federation
At the end of 2008, Lev Gudkov, based on the Levada Center polling data, pointed out the near-disappearance of public opinion as a socio-political institution in contemporary Russia and its replacement with state propaganda.
[9] Russia's deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin said in August 2008, in the context of the Russia–Georgia conflict: "Western media is a well-organized machine, which is showing only those pictures that fit in well with their thoughts.
"[10] In June 2007, Vedomosti reported that the Kremlin had been intensifying its official lobbying activities in the United States since 2003, among other things hiring such companies as Hannaford Enterprises and Ketchum.
[11] In a 2005 interview with U.S government-owned external broadcaster Voice of America, the Russian-Israeli blogger Anton Nossik said the creation of RT "smacks of Soviet-style propaganda campaigns".
[12] Pascal Bonnamour, the head of the European department of Reporters Without Borders, called the newly announced network "another step of the state to control information".
[13] In 2009, Luke Harding (then the Moscow correspondent) of The Guardian described RT's advertising campaign in the United Kingdom as an "ambitious attempt to create a new post-Soviet global propaganda empire".
[15] In 2014, Ivan Zassoursky, a professor of Media and Theory of Communications in the Journalism Department of Moscow State University, said, "Today there are many complex schemes of influence in the world that can be labeled as soft power.
But traditional thuggish methods of propaganda and direct control used by the Russian government cannot be considered effective from the professional standpoint and acceptable from the viewpoint of journalist morality.
[18] In February 2017, a fabricated audio recording of NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg supposedly interacting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was published by Russian news website Life.ru.
[20][21][22][23] In the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the Bellingcat website of Eliot Higgins gave evidence about the manipulation of satellite images released by the Russian Ministry of Defense which was used by RT and Sputnik news agency based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
[43][44] Increases in Arabic-language pro-Russian propaganda was detected during the Russian invasion of Ukraine,[45] Russia has been accused of amplifying anti-Western post-colonial grievances in Africa through disinformation campaigns.
[60] On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to serve as special counsel to the US Justice Department in an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
[62] Among the organizations indicted was the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg based company that is said to use social media to spread fake news promoting Russian interests.
Russian social media operations were allegedly undertaken to use misinformation to appeal to pro-Russian forces in Crimea, while discrediting rebel and separatist groups.
Due to the propaganda in the Russian Federation, the European External Action Service founded the East StratCom Task Force in 2015 to count and display cases of untruths propagated in Russia about the EU and its member states.
Riabchuk writes: "Three major narratives emerged that can be summed up as 'Ukraine's borders are artificial', 'Ukraine's society is deeply divided', and 'Ukrainian institutions are irreparably dysfunctional'", thus needing "external, apparently Russian, guardianship".
"[84] Cliff Kincaid, the director of Accuracy in Media's Center for Investigative Journalism, called RT "the well-known disinformation outlet for Russian propaganda".
[86] In March 2015, The East Stratcom Task Force was created with the backing of the European Union in order to counter Russian efforts to spread misinformation and fake news.
