Sneaky heat: the Kremlin uses climate change to push its favourite FIMI narratives

With COP30 underway, the consequences of ongoing climate change are all around us. This summer in Spain, in the midst of an unprecedented heatwave, some 380,000 hectares burned in wildfires. This area was the fifth largest on record, despite decades of work to improve prevention measures and give harsher sentences to those who start fires. Portugal also suffered, with fires destroying 260,000 hectares – proportionately, the largest burn area in Europe. Even in Paris, authorities are facing demands to allow modifications of the city’s zinc roofs, which become ‘ovens’ during worsening heat waves.

Pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives are spotty on climate change. On official state outlets like RT, commentators often appear more accepting of the science, and official websites quote Russian officials saying the right things. But venture into the conspiratorial caverns of Pravda and pro-Russian Telegrams channels, and climate denial quickly resurfaces. Reportedly, some in Russia’s elite see climate change less as a threat than as an economic opportunity.

Climate as a wedge

The truth, however, is more subtle. For the Kremlin’s disinformation spreaders, climate change is not a threat or an opportunity. It’s a wedge, a tool that pro-Russian outlets and commentators can use to bore holes into public discourse inside targeted countries. Into these holes, the Kremlin can either pour its preferred disinformation narratives about, say, sanctions, or it can try to heat up the discourse by offering polarising takes and destabilising the debate. Examples abound.

One tactic is not to deny climate change, but to condemn EU efforts to transition to renewable energies. Often, commentators posit a sometimes implied, sometimes explicit linkage between sanctions, green energy measures meant to reduce hydrocarbon use, the failure to import Russian oil and gas, and European industrial decline. The obvious goal is to use climate change as a means of injecting scepticism about sanctions on Russia into a country’s online debate.

‘Green dogma’ and ‘Industrial suicide’

For example, one narrative claims that under Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU is suffering ‘deindustrialisation and decline’ and ‘sky-high energy costs’. The leap is short to alleging that refusing to import Russian oil and gas is the source of the problem. Another, even shorter hop blames sanctions against Russia as a big part of ‘destructive’ EU policies. With such claims floating in the air, it is easy to assert that Europe is committing ‘industrial suicide’ by adopting ‘green dogma’ and rejecting Russian energy.

This series of narratives is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the ‘winter is coming’ deep freeze narrative that the Kremlin has a habit of repeating around the time that the leaves are changing colours. The idea is, without Russian oil and gas, European countries will solidify into ice. This deep prediction has routinely and predictably failed, and we haven’t seen a similar prediction yet this year. But who knows – perhaps Bad Santa will deliver, once again, this unwanted present.

Another tactic is using straight-up climate denialism to heat up already polarised discourse. By raising the temperature in this rhetorical atmosphere, pro-Russian commentators hope to destabilise political discourse, promote extremism, and ultimately make a country less resilient to pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives.

Divide and distract

They also smear the science as an alleged ‘religion’ and repost articles attacking political leaders such as Spanish President Pedro Sánchez for daring to point out the link between the fires that ravaged the country over the summer and climate change. The assault on Sánchez is a good example of one of Moscow’s tactics: using an important issue like climate change as a bond to join up with local outlets in order to attack a leader considered hostile to the Kremlin.

A final narrative seeks to portray Russia as a responsible partner who together with non-Western countries in addressing climate change. Its flip-side alleged that the EU’s climate adaption efforts, particularly those taken in tandem with African countries, are a form of neo-colonialism.

Elsewhere, pro-Russian FIMI seeks to sow division among countries and continents. Make no mistake: the Kremlin doesn’t really care much about climate change, or about countries it professes to respect. But Moscow does recognise a good tool for channelling its narratives.

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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.