The Kremlin’s Information War as Counterbalance to Western Commitment 

Author: Jerry E. Landrum, PhD

In the early days of the Russo-Ukraine War, the Ukrainian government initiated an information campaign to solicit military support from powerful Western states.  The video of Volodymyr Zelensky with his cabinet in military fatigues defiantly announcing, “We are all here defending our independence, our state, and it will remain so. Glory to Ukraine!” was central to this effort. Only 30 seconds long, the video was meant to project Ukrainian resolve in the face of Russian aggression. Every subsequent video of Ukrainian success shared on social media demonstrated that Ukrainians might, against all odds, be able to repel the initial assault, and Western leaders responded.

As the narrative of possible success proliferated, Western leaders signaled resolve and committed valuable war materials to Ukraine’s defense. The US and Baltic states provided Javelins to the Ukrainians. As Ukrainian successes were communicated over social media, the military aid increased with Next Generation Light Antitank Weapons from Luxembourg, Bayraktar TB-2 drones from Turkey, T-72 tanks from the Czech Republic, and, most significantly, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems from the United States. The latter vastly increased the Ukrainian army’s lethality and targeting range and enabled their ability to disrupt Russian lines of communication.  From April to December 2022, this critical support played a significant role in Ukraine’s ability to stop Russia’s advance on Kyiv and surprised many specialists. 

Ukraine’s success forced the Kremlin to change its initial theory of victory, to quickly seize Kyiv and conduct regime change.  Instead, the Russian military chose to adjust its operational approach by consolidating territorial gains in the Donbas region.  To be sure, the strategic goal of regime replacement remains Russia’s long-term objective.  A war of attrition is the defeat mechanism to destroy, dislocate, degrade, and disorient the Ukrainian army in the Donbas region.  In order to achieve this end state, Russia must disrupt Western support for Ukraine. 

Decreasing public support in Europe and America suggests that Russia’s information warfare has challenged popular resolve to support Ukraine and given the Kremlin a strategic advantage. I argue that Russia’s ability to generate counterbalancing audience costs disrupted Western support to Ukraine, and declining popular support in Western Europe indicates that Russia’s information warfare is achieving effects.  The case study in Grossenhain, Germany provides an illuminating example of these effects.  To reduce Russia’s ability to use disinformation to generate counterbalancing audience costs, the West should respond quickly, continue investment in information warfare infrastructure, and educate the public about how to identify disinformation. 

Information Warfare and Audience Cost

Political scientists have theorized about the effect of “audience cost” on the foreign policy decisions of leaders of liberal democracies.  The logic behind this perspective is that democratic leaders have structural accountability for their decisions. Elected legislatures, established bureaucracies, active interest groups, and the general electorate punish democratically elected leaders for perceived incompetence on foreign policy matters.  Western leaders, therefore, face significant challenges from opposition groups as they try to communicate how increased investments will assist Ukraine and why it is a vital national security issue for each respective nation. This is especially challenging in a war of attrition where gains are slow and the benefits of investment are not readily apparent. In many ways, audience costs are related to public opinion about the efficacy of a given policy. Public opinion in liberal democracies constrain the decisions of elected leaders who hesitate to back down on foreign policy decisions to avoid perceptions of incompetence. Therefore, information warfare in the Russo-Ukraine War might be understood as a contest for generating audience costs through perceptions that enable or disrupt efforts to provide material support to Ukraine. 

Material support serves as a “sunk cost” signal that creates audience costs for decision makers. These costs are self-generating in that leaders make deliberate decisions to incur costs, thereby signaling commitment credibility. While these decisions are costly in terms of fiscal resources, they also impose a significant toll on political capital. Thus, Western leaders committed national treasure in 2022 to the defense of Ukraine, and backing down risks signaling perceptions of incompetence. Current Western leaders, therefore, are deeply committed to Ukraine’s defense.  The risk of incurring audience costs from perceived incompetence for backing down makes a policy reversal unlikely.  Russia’s disinformation campaign seeks to create a counterbalancing narrative that makes the audience cost of continuing support to Ukraine more painful than the audience cost of backing down.

Achieving Counterbalancing Effects: A German Case Study

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz leads a left-leaning coalition government composed largely of Social Democrats and the German Green Party, and his government was an early proponent of supporting Ukraine’s defense. In 2022, the German government provided €2 billion ($2.1 billion) in military support. This support increased to €5.4 billion ($5.8 billion) in 2023, and reports suggest that German support is projected to reach €8 billion ($8.6 billion) in 2024. The German government is clearly committed through “sunk costs” commitments to supporting Ukraine, and the Scholz government is loath to back down for fear of suffering audience costs. 

The Kremlin seeks to counterbalance this commitment through information warfare.  According to the German Ministry of Interior, Russian propaganda “spreads false claims to try to justify military invasion, hide civilian casualties, and cement its narrative of the anti-Russian West.”  The primary target of the propaganda is the Putinverstehers, which translates to “one who understands Putin.”  These are Kremlin sympathizers who often repeat Putin’s propaganda line.  Putinverstehers is a sentiment found across the entire German political spectrum, but it is most prevalent in right-wing political parties.  The situation in Grossenhain, a small town in Saxony, provides an example of how Russia effectively targets its propaganda to influence Putinverstehers to generate counterbalancing audience costs.

To meet increased demand for Ukraine armaments, Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, decided in 2023 to open a factory in Grossenhain. This factory would improve the economic prospects of the entire community and enable Germany’s support to Ukraine. Still, after Rheinmetall announced the decision, the City Council sent a letter to Scholz asking him to block the move, and Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), an ultra-right-wing German political party, organized a rally protesting against Rheinmetall’s factory.  

Putinverstehers at the rally condemned further Ukrainian support with Russian talking points. AfD leaders generated a petition at the rally stating the town rejected “a further economic-military use” of the labor force. This is related to Russian disinformation on several social media platforms that Germany is mobilizing its military and preparing to enter the war in Ukraine.  A center-right member of the Christian Democratic Union in the Saxony legislature said, “It’s difficult to explain to people why we should support Ukraine.” This comment falls in line with Putin’s claim that the West is responsible for the war and that the Ukrainian people have “become hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters.”  A Grossenhain city councilor amplified the false narrative of Russian victimhood saying, “I can imagine that Putin is feeling squeezed because NATO is slipping closer and closer.” Another AfD member of Saxony’s state legislature said that Western support was “putting us all at risk” for Russian retaliation.  This comment demonstrates how Russia uses information about putting its nuclear arsenal on “high combat alert” and conducting “readiness drills” to scare the public, which mobilizes opposition against providing more support to the Ukrainians.

The Grossenhain case demonstrates how Russia’s talking points infiltrate policy debates, whether wittingly or unwittingly, through Putinverstehers in opposition parties to create counterbalancing audience costs for Western leaders.  For the time being, the Scholz government appears committed to supporting Ukraine.  However, the opposing AfD party, citing Russian talking points, resists continuing support. This is significant as the AfD continues to increase its political position in the German electorate. In 2017, the AfD polled at 10 percent of the German electorate. Over the last year, the AfD’s poll numbers skyrocketed to 22 percent making it the second most powerful political bloc in the country, and some predict the party will fare very well in the 2025 federal elections.  Thus, given their stated policy of opposing Ukrainian support, increased power for the AfD would be a beneficial political outcome for the Kremlin. 

What is to be done? 

Because of the West’s commitment to free speech, countering Russia’s propaganda is an immensely challenging task. Scholars in various security organizations and institutes have written much on how to thwart Russia’s propaganda effort, and they all more or less coalesce around the following policy recommendations:

• Establish Defensive Infrastructure

  The 2022 US National Security Strategy describes Russia’s attempt to “sow divisions among the American people” and “countries across Europe, Central Asia, and around the world” as a destabilizing threat.  In view of this fact, the West must continue to invest in its defensive infrastructure. The creation of organizations such as the Czech Center Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats, the U.S. Global Engagement Center, and NATO STRATCOM are examples of investments to confront the Russian disinformation threat.  Measuring the effectiveness of these organizations remains a challenge.  However, given the recognized pervasiveness of Russian information warfare, the need for their existence is clear for those who accept the significance and power of the information instrument of national power.

• Speed

  The West must seek to achieve a first mover advantage against the Russians. The US, for example, advertised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine several months prior to the commencement of operations and undercut a potential false flag operation. There are intelligence loss/gain tradeoffs in this approach, but it can be effective for preempting a disinformation attack. The EU’s establishment of the Rapid Alert System, a system meant to quickly identify and respond to disinformation, is a good example of investment in defense against information attacks.  As Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews have pointed out, early response to Russian information fabrications helps mitigate the effectiveness of the Kremlin’s disinformation activities.

• Censorship

  Because of concerns that published information might help the enemy, World War Two leaders endorsed the practice of censorship to prevent information from being used to achieve advantage.  In a similar fashion, the EU banned broadcasts of RT and Sputnik inside Europe. This approach is difficult because it violates notions of free speech, and there are plenty of conduits for dissemination that Russia can exploit. The effectiveness of censorship, therefore, is questionable. Still, for acute problems of disinformation in gray zone (competition below the level of armed conflict) activities, censorship should remain a viable option that is used with caution.  The intent of the media outlet is the key discriminator on whether to censor.  There must be a clear intent for propaganda for the media outlet.  RT and Sputnik are state organs of the Kremlin and are candidates for censorship.  This is different from a media outlet that freely reports on an issue and happens to comment favorably on a Russian talking point.  The lines are blurred, which is why caution is mandatory with this method.

• Education

  This approach emphasizes two techniques. First, governments must educate citizens on how to identify disinformation. Finland, for example, makes a deliberate effort to teach students critical thinking skills. Second, simply propagating the truth is important. The EU launched a website, EUvsDiSinfo, to counter Russian propaganda with the truth. These approaches have lag times in terms of effectiveness, but governments have rightly embraced them as a viable form of defense.

• Public-Private Cooperation

  Given the distrust of established institutions, one of the most promising forms of information defense is through public-private cooperation. The Estonian Defense League (EDL), a group of private citizens committed to defending their country from Russian attack, works tirelessly to counter Russian propaganda. Groups like the EDL are perceived as independent from government control and highlight how resilient a society can be to disinformation when coalesced around a common vision.  However, the independent nature of their operations makes them difficult to control, which is a risk that must be considered.

Conclusion

The current leaders of Western democracies are committed to supporting Ukraine partly because they do not want to suffer audience costs. Russia views Western support as a critical capability for Ukraine’s defense. To achieve victory, Russia must disrupt, decrease, and, if possible, eliminate Western support. One tactic they pursue in this regard is the use of information warfare to generate counterbalancing audience costs. The preferred technique is to saturate the information environment with semi-plausible talking points that opposition parties use to gain political power, which increases pressure on already committed Western leaders. As noted in Grossenhain, Germany, Russia has achieved some success in generating counterbalancing audience costs.

Author

Jerry E. Landrum is a U.S. Army officer and faculty instructor at the U.S. Army War College. He spent most of his career serving as an information operations officer. He holds a PhD in Security Studies from Kansas State University where he studied U.S. European security policy at the end of the Cold War. The views and opinions presented in this article represent those of the author and do not represent the Army War College, the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.