EUvsDisinfo: Empty Threats and Empty Coffers (original title: Empty Threats and Empty Coffers)
Russia is a military superpower with the best army in the world and an absolute economic miracle: at least that's what the Kremlin's disinformation and manipulation media say. A walk through the rooms of crooked mirrors reveals what Orwellian “truths” the Kremlin has been proclaiming to the world this week. Of all of them, two stand out. One is how Russia brandished the nuclear scarecrow - an already overused tactic - in response to the lifting of Western restrictions on Ukraine for long-range strikes against Russia. The other is how the Kremlin has employed a kind of creative accounting trick - counting every euro and dollar Ukraine receives to divert attention from Russia's rapidly emptying coffers.
Sometimes silence is more eloquent than all the Kremlin propaganda at once. And the topic that was absent from it this week was the startling truth that Russia has been waging a brutal, large-scale war of aggression against Ukraine for 1000 days. Perhaps Moscow wanted to spare its disinformation consumers the thought of the unplanned extra 997 days of the three-day Russian “special military operation” – and for those over 700,000 casualties that Russia has caused.
Red lines are being drawn again
A few days ago the United States announced that it would lift restrictions on Ukraine from using US-supplied weapons for long-range strikes against military targets in Russia. France and the United Kingdom immediately followed suit, as they have long been advocates of lifting restrictions.
In this sense, it is time for the Kremlin to dip its brush into the paint bucket to redraw some of its “red lines”. In fact, the Kremlin media probably expected such a decision, judging by their previous manipulative attempts to reinforce the false “red lines“, which we have already written about. Throughout the war, Moscow's constant tactic has been to respond to Western support for Ukraine with threatening rhetoric – an attempt to maintain control over – and governance of – escalation and to encourage Ukraine's supporters to abandon it.
Escalation only occurs when it comes from the West
As if on cue, accusations appeared that „The West is escalating“ situation and plans to destroy Russia, the specter of World War III was invoked, explicit threats of revenge were made, and accusations were made that „The West is directly involved“ in the war. The latter is particularly curious, as Kremlin publications both like to write that the West is about to launch a direct attack on Russia, and maintain the thesis that Russia is systematically and constantly fighting the “collective West“.
And of course, escalation is only when the West causes it. When Russia launches massiveattacks with drones and missiles across Ukraine, it is described as a reasonable and morally sound military strategy.
And here comes the nuclear card
One thing we can always expect is that the Kremlin will pull out the nuclear card at every opportunity. Putin first proposed a review of Russia's nuclear doctrine a few months ago in response to Western discussions about lifting restrictions on Ukraine's use of long-range missiles. So it should come as no surprise that Putin's approval of the review comes right on the heels of the US announcement of the lifting of restrictions. As soon as the boss delivers the message, Kremlin propagandists follow the script and use the "nuclear red line" to reinforce pro-Kremlin disinformation - The West is the aggressor, Russia only wants peace, and the Russian army is invincible.
The threat of nuclear annihilation would not be fully utilized without the well-known tactic of switching roles between aggressor/victim. In this case, Ukraine is accused again of harboring irrational nuclear ambitions, and Russia's escalation of the nuclear weapons situation is presented as a reasonable act of self-defense.
Who is better off economically
This week wasn't all nuclear doom and gloom. The disinformation illusionists also attempted to project the failures of the Russian military economy onto the European Union. They counted, almost with envy, the funds that the EU had mobilized to support Ukraine. The main message was quite bizarre, if not completely wrong – support for Ukraine has brought the EU to the brink of bankruptcy, while Russia is doing better than ever, despite Western sanctions. The truth, as always with the Kremlin, is exactly the opposite. The EU has pledged to continue supporting Ukraine until victory, while the Russian military economy is starting to show worrying signs of overheating. True to its gangster nature, the Kremlin feels compelled to boast about the depth of its coffers, even if they are not as full as Moscow would like.
Beyond the Numbers
This week we noted two more grim figures related to the Kremlin’s aggression and imperial ambitions. It has been almost 4,000 days since Russia illegally annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine under false pretenses. It has also been 1,000 days since Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. And for a decade now, the Kremlin’s information manipulation and disinformation operations have supported, excused, and enabled Russia’s senseless aggression. In a bid to hold disinformation merchants accountable and expose their lies, the “EUvsDisinfo“ database also this week exceeded the peculiar threshold of 18,000 registered cases of Kremlin disinformation.
Other topics in this week's EUvsDisinfo review:
- Lies come in small, bigger and… Kremlin. An example of the latter is the claim that the notorious disinformation media “Sputnik“ tells the truth, unlike Western media. This is a downright Orwellian statement, because we have been closely following the suffering of this EU-sanctioned pro-Kremlin disinformation laundromat for a long time. We also have a practical guideto the Kremlin's information weapons like “Russia Today“ and “Sputnik“. And if that's not enough to raise reasonable doubts about the integrity and real motives of such media outlets, then listen to their managers themselves: these Kremlin lackeys openly admit that the aforementioned channels are weapons in Russia's arsenal for waging information warfare, not legitimate media outlets.
- The Kremlin's lie makers often like to turn history upside down. They had occasion to do so recently, when the world marked the momentous event of the fall of the Berlin Wall 35 years ago, marking the beginning of an irreversible thaw and the end of the Cold War. The anniversary gave the Kremlin reason to seek historical credit where it was least likely to find it - propaganda claimed that Germany survived as a state after World War II thanks to Stalin's goodwill. It's simply not true. At the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945, the Allied powers, and not just Stalin, ultimately agreed to divide Germany into four occupation zones, administered by the US, UK, France and the Soviet Union, preserving Germany as a state.
- The Kremlin has something of a conditioned reflex to always blame Ukraine. When the news broke about the severed undersea cables connecting Finland and Germany, the Kremlin propagandists did not wait for any investigation. They had a ready answer - Ukrainian spies had sabotaged the undersea internet cable to Finland. Of course, at this stage this is pure speculation. But for the Kremlin it is simple - when something bad happens, we blame Ukraine. As in the case of the bombing of “Crocus City Hall“ and the explosion of the Novaya Kakhovka dam. There is no point in waiting for some evidence.
EUvsDisinfo/ translation: Representation of the European Commission in Bulgaria