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Guardian received a massive number of pro-Russian comments, often written in poor English. Due to the activities of these trolls, the Moscow Times had to close its comments page. In July 2014, a Dutch web magazine, De Correspondent, had a similar experience, having published an interview with the author of this chapter. The magazine received an avalanche of pro-Kremlin comments that doubted the integrity of the reporter and the interviewee. Moreover, the magazine was accused of receiving financial support from dubious sources. The slur campaign encouraged the chief-editors to publish a declaration in which they distanced themselves from these comments.20 This happened a few weeks after the downing of the MH-17 airliner by a Russian BUK missile above the occupied Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. Of the 298 victims, 196 were of Dutch nationality. In the Netherlands, the deaths of 298 people became a national trauma, which made broad popular support for the Kremlin’s policies an unlikely development.
In June 2015, more information about secret activities of “troll farms” became available, when Liudmila Savchuk, a former employee of the “Internet Research Agency” based in Saint Petersburg, sued her purported former employer who failed to provide her with a contract. This firm employed an estimated workforce of four hundred employees who worked in two twelve-hour shifts. They were paid relatively high salaries of approximately $780 a month for posting comments on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Each employee was in charge of a dozen or more fake Facebook and Twitter accounts.21
Hiring Western Communication Firms
Beyond establishing “troll farms,” which was a genuine communication innovation, Russia began to hire Western communication firms. During the Cold War, this was inconceivable, but the situation changed after 1991 and Russia’s integration in the capitalist world economy. In 1997, the Russian government was accepted into an intergovernmental political forum, the G7, which became the G8. In this new international environment, it became possible for the Kremlin to get access to prestigious Western lobbying and communication firms. These firms were eager to work with the Kremlin that was willing to generously pay for their services.
The first initiative was undertaken in 2006, when Russia was tasked to organize the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg. To improve its image, the Kremlin hired the prestigious New York-based firm Ketchum with its Brussels-based daughter GPlus Europe. The $2 million contract included sending twenty-five people to Saint Petersburg, who arranged interviews, established podcasts featuring Russian officials, and made a webcast of the summit with the BBC. After the event Ketchum touted that it “succeeded in helping … shift global views of Russia to recognize its more democratic nature.” Its privileged contacts with the Kremlin apparently boosted Ketchum’s reputation: the firm received the “2009 Silver Anvil Award of Excellence Winner—Marketing Consumer Products,” a prize from the Public Relations Society of America.22
The Kremlin was also satisfied, because its reputation was enhanced. In January 2007, Russia signed a two-month contract for $845,000 with Ketchum and its subsidiary, the Washington Group. The contract was worth its money. Ketchum lobbied successfully on behalf of Putin who was chosen Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2007. The political implications of the Kremlin’s cooperation with Ketchum became even more transparent during the war in Georgia in 2008, when Ketchum helped set up a web platform, called ModernRussia, later changed into ThinkRussia, which disseminated the Kremlin’s views. Even Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and the subsequent invasion of eastern Ukraine did not end the honeymoon between the Kremlin and the American PR firm. Although the scale of their cooperation was reduced, it was even then not suspended.
The “Russian World”
The Russian propaganda offensive also included a process of mimesis which consisted of copying Western soft power initiatives. In 2007, Putin established the Russian World Foundation (Russkii Mir), an agency led by Viacheslav Nikonov, a grandson of Viacheslav Molotov. The official goal of this agency was to defend the interests of Russian speakers outside Russia and to promote Russian culture and language abroad. At the beginning, the agency targeted the former Soviet republics, but today its strategic scope is truly global. Pretending to be a cultural organization, similar to the British Council, the Alliance Française, or the German Goethe Institut, it has a clear political task: to mobilize Russian speakers all over the world to support the Kremlin’s policies. Together with the Russian aid fund Rossotrudnichestvo, founded in 2008, the agency opened Russian Centers at foreign universities. In 2015, there were approximately 70 such centers in the United States, 14 in France, 11 in Germany, and 13 in Britain. Branches of the Chinese Confucius Institute established at university campuses served as a model for the Russians. Arthur Waldron, a Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, who refused to open such a branch, has stated: “Once you have a Confucius Institute on campus, you have a second source of opinions and authority that is ultimately answerable to the Chinese Communist Party and which is not subject to scholarly review.”23 Subjects, such as the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen, Tibet, Taiwan, the repression of the Uighurs, and the democracy movement in Hong Kong, would be declared off limits. It is clear that similar objections can be made against the opening of Russian Centers at European and American universities. These are not independent cultural or scientific institutes, but tools in the hands of a revisionist power.
Financing Political Parties
The Russian information war intends not only to influence Western public opinion, Western elites’ opinions, and students at Western universities, but also—more directly—governments and political parties. The Kremlin could here fall back on an old tradition, developed during the Soviet era. A famous example is the case of Günter Guillaume, the Stasi’s agent who became a close aide to German chancellor Willy Brandt.24 In his memoirs, Brandt would later write: “In hindsight, I accepted advice that I certainly should not have accepted.”25 KGB practices of planting agents of influence abroad have survived the demise of the Soviet Union, being extremely useful under Putin.
The arrest of a Russian spy ring by the FBI in the United States in June 2010 seemed to be an echo of the Cold War, reminding the world of Soviet practices. A team of eleven illegals with fake names and false passports resided in the United States for many years, living normal lives. Their mission was to gather information and to infiltrate circles close to the government. The calculations were simple: although not every “sleeper” would become a Guillaume, there was a chance that at least a few of them would succeed.
To influence foreign governments of Western countries, the Russians also used more conventional ways, such as bribing politicians and political parties. For instance, in 2004, the Lithuanian president Roland Paksas was removed from office after having accepted $400,000 from Mr. Yurii Borisov, a Russian businessman who, according to the Economist, was linked to the Russian security services. Another case is that of the Centre Party in Estonia, an opposition party whose members are mainly Russian speakers. Its leader, Edgar Savisaar, at that time mayor of Tallinn, was accused by the Kapo, the Estonian intelligence service, of having asked for 1.5 million euros from Russia for his party.
In addition, there is ample evidence to suggest that in the Czech Republic, President Miloš Zeman received money for his presidential campaign from the Russian firm Lukoil. In 2014, in France the extreme right party Front National received a loan of 8 million euros from the First Czech Russian Bank. In 2016, it asked for an additional loan of 27 million euros. In November 2014 the German Bild reported about a dubious gold business transaction: the Eurosceptic German party Allianz für Deutschland (AfD) apparently bought cheap gold from Russia, which the party later resold for the world market price. Obviously, an exchange of favors and services