In tackling Vladimir Putin’s web of troll farms and hackers, we have one advantage: democracy | Peter Pomerantsev

RRussia is a “mafia state” trying to expand into a “mafia empire,” Foreign Minister David Lammy told the UN, highlighting the dual nature of Vladimir Putin’s political model. On the one hand, Russia represents something very old: a world of bullying empires that invade smaller countries, seize their resources and indoctrinate their people into thinking they are inferior. But it is also something very new: weaponizing corruption, criminal networks, assassinations and technology-driven psy-ops to undermine open societies. And if democracies do nothing to stop this, this evil model will be replicated around the world.

Ukraine is resisting older, zombie imperialism on the battlefield every day, and democracies will have to arm Ukraine and ourselves to properly contain Russia. But how should we combat the more contemporary tools of political warfare pioneered by Russia? These are becoming increasingly common. Globalization was intended to make us all so integrated that the risk of war would decrease. Instead, the free flow of information, money and people across borders made subversion easier than ever. At the Labor Party conference, Lammy indicated that democracies must work together to stop Russia: “Unmask their agents, build joint capacity and work with the Global South to tackle Putin’s lies.”

We’ve definitely gotten better in the lighting part. This month, Britain, the US and Canada revealed that RT is more than just state media spouting conspiracies; it collaborates with Russian intelligence and security services and is involved in money laundering, cyber incidents against Canadian infrastructure and fundraising for weapons. Because the indictment focused on clear criminality, rather than legally opaque ideas like “disinformation,” law enforcement agencies were able to take concrete action to disrupt the entire system of operations.

But such legal action is only one element of what a ‘joint asset’ must do. The audience targeted by Russia’s covert operations is still sensitive to the Kremlin’s messages. Tenet Media, the Maga media company where Russians secretly paid popular YouTubers $100,000 per video to smear Ukraine, reached 16 million views. Their hosts claim they had no idea who was paying them – and their audience doesn’t seem to care. Russian operations exploit audiences around the world, tapping into historically resonant anti-Western, anti-colonial sentiments in Africa and acting as what Lammy has called a “leader of a new fascism” promoting racism in Europe. In Moldova, the country is spending $100 million to undermine this year’s elections and referendum on joining the EU, planting fake candidates to confuse voters and sow fears that joining the EU will lead to war. All these stories – from right to left to playing on fear – work.

Democracies will also have to communicate better than the Russians. This means deciding together which topics we focus on, on whom and how.

Take Odessa, in Ukraine. Russia continually launches missiles at the city, as well as propaganda to undermine its sovereignty. As the Odesa Decolonization research project (to which I contributed) shows, Russia has spent years releasing films and TV shows, maps and speeches that reiterate Odesa’s belonging to the “Russian world.” The goal is to weaken the connection between Odesa and Ukraine, thus making a Russian takeover easier in the eyes of the world.

A concerted effort to push back would first decide which audiences are important to engage with – and how to talk to them.

For those who are less concerned about Ukraine’s sovereignty and more about food prices, you should explain that Odesa is the center of the grain corridor that keeps supplies flowing to the world, especially to the Middle East and Africa, while keeping food prices under control. control in the US. If Russia were to conquer Odessa, it could blackmail the world and control prices. Do we really want a gangster like Putin to manipulate the grain flow as he sees fit?

Then you need to decide who should communicate this message. What more can every ally at home do? Which country in the coalition can best reach a specific global audience? You will need to employ statesmen, current and former, and cultural figures who resonate with that audience; put on cultural events, speak in churches and go on TV shows – with each country bringing its strengths. The goal is to ensure what Prof. Nick Cull of the University of Southern California calls “reputational safety”: ensuring that a place’s image is well-known enough to help withstand aggression. We don’t have to use the same tactics as the Russians. Where they do troll farms, we can do online town meetings. But you do have to focus and scale up.

But joint capacity must also be more about coordinating strategic communications across nation states. We must disrupt the Russian war machine much more intensely. And states are not the only important actors.

One of the big revelations of this war is how independent investigators sifting through customs and other open source data can map networks and, unlike secret services, make the evidence public. Take the Economic Security Council of Ukraine (ESCU), a small team of researchers in Kiev, which managed to show the US Congress how Russia obtains CNC tools, the complex machines that make weapons. Mapping supply chains is the first step toward effective action to weaken Russia’s war machine – not just the dodgy companies that help move equipment into Russia, but also the origins of unique spare parts, raw materials, the mining equipment that extracts these materials, the lubricants used and the soon. It’s a huge job, but open source researchers can map it out remarkably quickly.

Vulnerabilities emerge from the mapping: Where are Russia’s critical supply chains particularly susceptible to disruption? And from vulnerabilities come opportunities for disruptive action. Anti-corruption activists can take out bad actors in the media. With the right data, companies can stop doing business with dubious intermediaries. The US and European states could impose more surgical sanctions. Ukraine can take more direct action.

The Russian war machine is supported by an extensive criminal network. We must build our own networks, bringing together the agility of open source researchers, anti-corruption activists, media, business, finance ministries and special forces from frontline states.

Democracies can draw on a much richer pool of partners than dictatorships, which by definition operate in a more closed and dirigistic manner. The trick will be to get the democratic swarm to join forces – something dictatorships are better at. There’s no time to lose. Dictatorships begin to coordinate more closely. Hacking networks linked to Russia and Iran are hitting US utilities and British hospitals. Russian and Chinese companies are circumventing sanctions on military goods. Their networks of troll farms, hackers, mercenaries and criminal gangs are working ever faster. Can we activate a democratic network to compete?

Peter Pomerantsev is the author from Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia

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