Kremlin disinformation peddlers spare no effort to gush about the BRICS Summit in Kazan, singing praises to Putin as the chief architect of a new world order. Meanwhile, the contested election in Georgia remains in Moscow’s sights as it recycles old disinformation tropes.
Last week there was a big show in town: the Kremlin and its information manipulation and disinformation apparatus worked around the clock to proclaim the dawn of a multipolar world order from the proverbial rooftops. The town was Kazan, Russia, and the show was the 16th annual BRICS Summit. Since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin alleging his responsibility for war crimes in Ukraine, it has become more than a little difficult for the Kremlin’s master to travel abroad. Hence, the pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets now spared no effort to portray the Summit as an extraordinary diplomatic feat by Russia and in their nauseatingly flattering praises elevated Putin to the role of chief architect of a new world order to come.
For all the pomp and circumstance of the BRICS Summit conjured by the Kremlin’s disinformation-steeped showrunners, the contentious election in neighbouring Georgia also did not escape the pro-Kremlin disinformation treatment. The Kremlin’s disinformation apparatus has been targeting Georgia for a long time. Even after the ostensibly pro-Kremlin Georgian Dream party claimed victory, Moscow’s well-oiled disinformation machine continues to spin its lies. That comes no surprise since the political opposition is openly contesting results, while international organisations and other bodies report violations observed during the campaign and on election day. So, the pro-Kremlin outlets now try to depict popular protests and increasing calls for a transparent inquiry into the violations as ‘foreign interference’.
Bricklayer-in-chief hard at work
The core narrative about the BRICS Summit in Kazan coming from the pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets focused on depicting Russia, and by extension Putin, as the prime driving force behind creating a new, multipolar world order, and the Summit as a testament to global acquiescence to the Russian worldview. Some even called it a ‘historical milestone’ that will ‘steer humanity toward a new development path’ and claimed to represent the global majority, even if the math did not quite add up.
The Kremlin’s pundits focused their messaging on claims that BRICS is a symbol of unification of the ‘Global South’ and depicted the expansion of the BRICS format as the result of Putin’s tireless work and diplomatic prowess. Some were also keen to cast Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine as Russia’s noble quest to end Western hegemony and create a better world for everyone. Invariably, the drummed-up success of the Summit was juxtaposed with snide comments ridiculing the West as weak and ineffective in the face of the growing importance of BRICS.
But at the end of the day, the limelight was cast on Putin himself, as the bricklayer-in-chief creating a better world. The pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem portrayed him as nothing short of a knight in shining armour, even if the style of such reporting left a bad aftertaste of Stalin-era personality cult.
Time to whitewash
While most pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets went out of their way to reinforce Putin’s point that discussing Russia’s war against Ukraine was left off the BRICS agenda because Russia wants to focus on peace (!), the Summit was also an occasion to whitewash Russia’s crimes and deny any responsibility for destabilising the global security situation. In this context, Putin’s meeting with UN Secretary General António Guterres played an important role, as the pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem latched onto this high-visibility tête-à-tête to imply that the UN (and therefore the world) is fully on board with Russia’s proposals-cum-ultimatums for peace. To drive the point home, some pro-Kremlin outlets also focused on depicting Ukraine’s reactions to the Putin-Guterres meeting as rabid and paranoid, thus ‘proving’ that Ukraine is not really interested in peace.
Disinformation follow-through targeting Georgian elections
As the pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets’ self-inflicted euphoria about the BRICS Summit was slowly subsiding, they refocused their gaze on neighbouring Georgia, where the pro-Kremlin outlets have been pushing disinformation for years, laying the groundwork for the recent contentious and ultimately contested election. Some of the more creative disinformation peddlers even tried to bridge the two events by claiming that new BRICS members were flocking around Russia because they did not want to be treated the way the EU allegedly treats Georgia, that European integration is a thing of the past, and that countries now desire to be with the wealthy winner – meaning Russia.
The Kremlin’s disinformation outlets have had Georgia in their sights for quite some time, pushing narratives about ‘Western-instigated colour revolutions’ and ‘eroding traditional values’, all to undermine legitimate civic action and attempt to overrule the will of the Georgian people. The more vocally the people of Georgia expressed their European aspirations, the more the ruling party espoused anti-EU and anti-Western narratives, increasingly converging with the Kremlin.
According to the OCSE international election observers, the elections were ‘marked by high polarisation of the political and media landscape, hate speech against the opposition and the civil society’ and ‘marred by an uneven playing field’. Local civil society organisations in Georgia were far more scathing in their assessment of the elections, citing grave violations and calling for the annulment of the results.
Recycle, recycle, recycle
Seeing that the Georgian people were not yet fully duped by disinformation, the pro-Kremlin information manipulators have now opened their bag of old tricks and are actively recycling previously seeded disinformation tropes. From accusations about ‘colour revolutions’ to claiming that the West wants to start a war in Georgia, to denigrating Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili as a ‘foreign agent’ due to her vocal calls on the West to support a transparent review of the election results, to pushing the narrative that the pro-EU opposition are eroding traditional values because Georgian pro-EU political actors are Satanists.
But a particularly telling example of the Kremlin’s affinity for recycling disinformation is the claim that the opposition protests are a Western-curated Maidan and that Ukrainian snipers are arriving in Georgia to start provocations. This is truly telling, because in 2014 the same pro-Kremlin disinformation apparatus falsely claimed that Georgian snipers were starting provocations in Ukraine. It seems that the Kremlin’s machine of lies has now gone full circle. Don’t be deceived.
Article and pictures first time published on the EUvsDisinfo web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.
