Russian state disinformation campaigns

Two interesting reports:

European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (2023). Digital Services Act: Application of the risk management framework to Russian disinformation campaigns. Publications Office of the European Union.

“During the first year of Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, social media companies enabled the Kremlin to run a large-scale disinformation campaign targeting the European Union and its allies, reaching an aggregate audience of at least 165 million and generating at least 16 billion views. Preliminary analysis suggests that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards.”

Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (2023). Russia’s African coup strategy.

“Today we are sharing a report from the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) on Russian influence operations in Africa, principally focused on the Niger coup. We believe it is vital there is wider understanding of the ways in which the internet is being used to stoke political instability around the world.”

Gorbachev

“Gorbachev’s desperate attempts to preserve socialism and the Soviet Union eventually failed utterly, turning him into an accidental hero in the West. I won’t even give him the minimal credit some offer for not sending in the proverbial tanks to crush the anti-Communist uprisings that were taking place all across the Soviet Bloc, especially since Gorbachev did send in military to Latvia and Lithuania, where he believed he could get away with it. He was hardly a risk taker where his own neck was concerned and didn’t want to end up like Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, whose rapid overthrow and execution in December 1989 was still fresh in everyone’s mind.”

– Garry Kasparov (2015), Winter Is Coming