This week, many things have a slight United Nations flavour, as world leaders gather in New York for the 79th UN General Assembly (UNGA) High-level Week. In this context, the more fundamental topics of war, peace, global stability and security come into the limelight. For the Kremlin, the UNGA is a place to unleash a torrent of falsehoods on a broad range of topics, instead of engaging in serious multilateral diplomacy.
On the home front, however, the Kremlin’s disinformation peddlers are far more comfortable to launder more narrowly focused narratives. Re-drawing faux red lines, rattling Russia’s nuclear arsenal, issuing pompous threats and dismissing peace was all a day’s work for Putin’s little helpers.
This time we mean it
For some weeks now, the Kremlin’s disinformation outlets have been reinforcing Putin’s fumbling and thinly veiled threats of asymmetric Russian retaliation should the West lift the restrictions on Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to strike military targets deep inside Russia. When the master tries to draw another questionable red line, the pro-Kremlin sycophants are sure to amplify it.
On 19 September, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for lifting restrictions on Ukraine to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia. And the Kremlin’s mouthpieces went into overdrive. The notorious pro-Kremlin Pravda outlets, part of the Russian propaganda network Portal Kombat, immediately (and falsely) accused the European Union of declaring war on Russia, while Russian state-run TV Channel 1 added the ‘Russophobia’ treatment.
3 minutes and 20 seconds
Others were not quite so subtle. The notorious Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov was all too keen to echo the fear-mongering of another odious character – the Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, who boasted that Russian Sarmat missiles could reach the European Parliament in 3 minutes and 20 seconds. While this may sound merely boastful, these kinds of publicised discussions on the potential damage Russian missiles could inflict on Europe also serve the purpose of reinforcing the faux red lines drawn by Putin.
It also facilitates another of the Kremlin’s favourite disinformation tropes – juxtaposing the political leadership in the West with the ‘ordinary people’. The manipulative, wedge-driving implication is that the leadership, or ‘the elites’ in the Kremlin’s parlance, make reckless, selfish decisions, putting people in harm’s way. The Kremlin has been exploiting this ‘global elites’ avenue for years to peddle baseless conspiracy theories and erode public trust in legitimate governments.
Always play the nuclear card
Russia has many horrendous weapons in its arsenal, as Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has painfully illustrated. Yet, choosing the Sarmat missile to issue threats to the EU is not an accident. This is a long-range nuclear capable ballistic missile. Choosing this specific weapon, even if recent Sarmat launch tests have failed, is yet another way for the Kremlin to rattle its nuclear sabre.
We’ve logged hundreds of cases in our database of the Kremlin playing the nuclear card time and again. The same pattern tends to repeat: Putin issues a thinly veiled threat – we will take appropriate measures; political lackeys like Volodin add specificity – Sarmat missiles can reach Strasbourg in 3 minutes 20 seconds; and finally, propagandists like Solovyov shout about it from the rooftops. Et voila! A new ‘red line’ is drawn.
Peace on the menu again
Accusing Europe of declaring war on Russia should go hand-in-glove with depicting the Kremlin as a paragon of peace, right? At least that is the usual pro-Kremlin line. Good and kindly Russia wants peace, but the evil and greedy West wants to keep fighting. Well, this week it got a little more uncomfortable for Moscow.
The Kremlin’s sincerity for peace has always been highly questionable(opens in a new tab). The Kremlin could maintain the appearance of wanting peace and blame Ukraine for undermining peace efforts while it knew that Russia won’t have to actually engage in a meaningful process for a just and lasting peace.
Time to backpedal
But then, already soon after the Summit on Peace in Ukraine held in Switzerland in June, Ukraine shifted gears, opening up to the idea of inviting Russia to the next such Summit. At the time, the Kremlin merely brushed this aside to focus on its ongoing attempts to undermine Ukraine’s efforts for peace. Now, in the context of UNGA, just and lasting peace in Ukraine is once again on the agenda, and the idea of holding a second Summit is taking shape.
And so, the Kremlin’s disinformation launderers have found themselves in the awkward position to have to backpedal once again. After months of claiming that there are no peace negotiations without Russia at the table, now the Kremlin dismissed the possibility of taking part in a peace summit. Instead, it turned back to accusing Ukraine of rejecting peace, dismissing the potential Summit as an Anglo-Saxon ploy to deceive Russia and questioning the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government. Incidentally, the Kremlin was spreading the same disinformation narratives ahead of the Bürgenstock Summit in June. To obfuscate even more, pro-Kremlin outlets regurgitated the old and still false claim of the ‘West torpedoing the Istanbul March 2022 peace talks’.
When it comes to peace, the Kremlin, unlike Ukraine, may talk the talk, but evidently is not ready to walk the walk.
The bogeyman of ‘Ukrainian terrorism’
In the Kremlin’s twisted worldview, Ukraine is portrayed as a terrorist state and one does not negotiate with terrorists. In another attempt to dismiss the idea of negotiating peace, some pro-Kremlin pundits even tried to hijack the breaking news story of the exploding pager attack in Lebanon to link it to Ukraine claiming it will likely acquire similar capabilities to target Russia. The pro-Kremlin logic was that if Israel has such capability, it would share it with the US and the UK, who, in turn, would share it with Ukraine.
It would seem that for the Kremlin, there is no topic, no matter how remote, that cannot be linked to Ukraine, if it can be twisted and spun to blame Ukraine and its supporters for all the world’s ills. 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.
