Russian Active Measures. Группа авторов

Svobodnaia Pressa (Free Press) published an article by Yurii Piskulov, an expert on trade with Finland, with the intriguing title “The Information War: Why We Lose to the West?”33 In his article, Piskulov complained that, instead of winning the information war (as many in the West concede), Russia was losing this war. He quoted the head of RT, Margarita Simonian, who came to the same conclusion eight years ago, blaming insufficient budget allocations to RT. Although Piskulov admitted that since that date much more money had been invested in the Russian media, he insisted that Moscow nevertheless was losing.

      It may be that Piskulov’s text is part of Russian propaganda and a tactical approach to solving the “Western question” once and for all. His view might assure the West that it has nothing to fear and should stop fighting an information war with Russia. The West’s faith in the argument made by Piskulov and people like him, and a subsequent weakening of its effort in fighting an information war with Russia might have devastating and enduring consequences, ultimately creating a pre-condition for the realization of Igor Panarin’s prediction.

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1 Igor Panarin, Pervaia mirovaia informatsionnaia voina: Razval SSSR (Moscow: Piter, 2010).

2 Panarin, Pervaia mirovaia informatsionnaia voina, 12–13.

3 Panarin, Pervaia mirovaia informatsionnaia voina, 144.

4 Panarin, Pervaia mirovaia informatsionnaia voina, 9.

5 Igor Panarin, Informatsionnaia voina, PR, i mirovaya politika (Moscow: Goriachaia Liniia, 2014), 133.

6 Cf. Marcel H. Van Herpen, Putin’s Propaganda Machine: Soft Power and Russian Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD, and London, U.K.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 2–4.