On August 1, eight Russian citizens convicted in Western countries of crimes such as murder, money laundering, fraud and cybercrime were exchanged for sixteen people, randomly thrown into Russian prisons. Among them are people with Western passports detained on trumped-up charges, as well as Russian citizens persecuted for being in opposition to the Putin regime and protesting his invasion of Ukraine. At "Vnukovo" airport outside Moscow, an enthusiastic Putin welcomed returning criminals, spies and a convicted murderer who had been exchanged for hostages, journalists, opposition politicians and human rights activists.
For years, the Kremlin denied the involvement of the Russian state in the murder of Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, for which Vadim Krasikov was convicted in Germany. Now that Putin has publicly embraced the convicted murderer, pro-Kremlin media have been forced to change the message and reflect his homecoming.
Dehumanizing the victims and glorifying the guilty
The Kremlin's disinformation media immediately spread the false claim that the individuals freed by Russia were CIA spies. This is probably an attempt at some sort of parity, as Russia got actual spies in return. Then on his infamous TV show, the odious Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said: “We got our heroes back in exchange for a group of spies, foreign agents and traitors – servants of countries that set a common goal – the destruction of Russia”. An obvious attempt to get things done elegantly according to the formula “with one bullet– two rabbits“: Russia is getting back its “heroes” and expels “foreign threats”, equal to the political opposition.
Other Kremlin mouthpieces quickly picked up the same message – the editor-in-chief of “RT“ Margarita Simonyan also joined the chorus: “The people who returned to us are real people – for them, the loyalty to the oath that the president mentioned in his meeting with them is not an empty tale. These are real people. Those who left are small animals. It's a good thing we got rid of them.“
Heroes and good people on one side; traitors and animals – on the other. The propagandists tried to ridicule, belittle and dehumanize the victims of authoritarian persecution and the hostages of state arbitrariness. Once again, in the crooked mirror of the Kremlin, criminals become heroes to distract from the obvious – that the Kremlin traded real criminals for innocent people arbitrarily thrown behind bars.
Distortion of the concepts of patriotism and loyalty
In an attempt to make black white, the Russian leadership-controlled media misrepresents the values of patriotism and loyalty. Surely working for the benefit of the motherland is a good thing. But to engage in assassinations and espionage with state permission and on Putin's behalf is something entirely different. Putin's presence on the track was intended to send a message – if you're willing to break the law and commit murder to protect Putin's regime, the Kremlin team won't abandon you.
Exploitation of the “endangered values” narrative
The Kremlin media has a proven technique – to appropriate the whole spectrum of values in the service of disinformation. The trick is to create an artificial contrast between the supposed defenders of “threatened traditional values” and the targets of disinformation. In the case of the prisoner exchange, this narrative was deployed to contrast the “heroes” of “traitors“. Another favorite theme of the Kremlin publications is to ridicule the attitude of the West towards the rights of women and other groups, including the LGBTIQ+ communities, seeing in it signs of moral decay and perversion. Over the years, the team has identified dozens of examples of misinformation related to this narrative.
In this sense, it was no surprise that the Russian media network fueled heated discussions about the gender of Algerian Imane Helif, claiming that she is a biological male. Heliffe and fellow boxer Lin Yu-ting from Taiwan are neither male nor transgender. They were born women and have always competed as women, as confirmed by IOC President Thomas Bach.
Simonyan – hypocritical for women's rights
Margarita Simonyan is among the prominent mouthpieces of the Kremlin's disinformation. She used the occasion to become an advocate for women's rights and fair play in sports. Simonyan waved his finger against the alleged “double standards” of the West and rhetorically asked why Western “liberals and feminists“ do not come out in defense of the Italian boxer defeated by Heliffe. The Kremlin produced a ready answer to this disinformation-soaked rhetorical question. Because, as the propagandist claims, gender has become the “new anti-Semitism” in the West. Finally, she concluded with her characteristic disregard for human life: “It would be great if Iman Helif and Lin Yu-ting, or whatever they are called, made it to the finals and killed each other. To the delight of true fans of women's sports.“
Misogyny, racism and attacks on minorities are staples of Russian disinformation. Simonian uses the vocabulary of women's rights and fair play in sports advocates and engages in state-sponsored cyberbullying against women in sports. As well as fueling the familiar anti-Western narratives, it also helped create a scandal with the Paris Olympics.
Russian military athletes and those who publicly support Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine have been banned from the Olympics. Thus, only 15 athletes from Russia compete as “neutral”. This situation clearly did not please the Kremlin and – understandable – the number of disinformation attacks against the Olympics increased. Despite Russian attempts to interfere, the major sporting event went ahead successfully. A fact that made misinformers raise the bar. Some Russian media went so far as to write that the opening ceremony heralded the Apocalypse, that its director was struck by lightning as God's punishment, and that all medals should look like inverted satanic crosses.