Un bell’articolo dello Spiegel tedesco spiega obiettivi e risultati della propaganda russa e del conseguente conflitto informativo in atto nell’ambito del quale il Cremlino punta a spezzare il monopolio dei media anglosassoni influenzando l’audience occidentale e portandola su posizioni più filo-russe:

[…] Sources within the Kremlin express satisfaction these days when talking about Moscow’s information policies. “We may have won the war in Georgia in 2008, but we lost the propaganda battle against America and the West by a mile,” says one. “Thanks to RT and the Internet, though, we are now closing the gap.”

Whereas Ruptly is seeking to establish itself as an alternative to Reuters and the Associated Press in providing video footage, RT has already successfully established itself in the nine years since its creation, recently surpassing even CNN when it comes to clips viewed on YouTube. With close to 1.2 billion views, the BBC is the only media outlet ahead of RT. In Britain, RT has more viewers than the Europe-wide news station Euronews and in some major US cities, the channel is the most-viewed of all foreign broadcasters. RT’s 2,500 employees report and broadcast in Russian, English, Spanish and Arabic with German to be added soon.

The triumphant advance of Putin’s broadcaster began in a former factory in northeast Moscow. Founding RT editor Simonyan was just 25 at the time Putin appointed her in 2005. Her assignment from the Russian president: to “break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon mass media.”

It’s a mandate she has been pursuing successfully ever since. “There’s large demand for media that doesn’t just parrot the uniform pulp from the Western press,” says Simonyan. “Even in Western countries.” RT gives pro-Russian representatives from Eastern Ukraine far more air time than supporters of the government in Kiev, and not even Simonyan disputes this fact. “We’re something along the lines of Russia’s Information Defense Ministry,” her co-workers say, not without pride. […]

Oltre ad RT e Rutly, il Cremlino, secondo lo Spiegel, adopera altri strumenti. Punta, ad esempio, sul ruolo di esperti compiacenti per influenzare i dibattiti televisivi ed i reportage giornalistici. Ma opera anche sul piano dei social media e, quando possibile, diffonde intercettazioni di comunicazioni al fine di mettere in cattiva luce la controparte:

[…] Those who read comments posted under articles about Ukraine on news websites will have noticed in recent months that they have been filled with missives that always seem to follow the same line of argumentation. Moscow’s independent business daily Vedomosti reported recently that, since the start of the Ukraine crisis, the presidential administration in Moscow has been testing how public opinion in the United States and Europe can be manipulated using the Internet and social networks. The paper reported that most of the professional comment posters active in Germany are Russian immigrants who submit their pro-Russian comments on Facebook and on news websites.

In addition, journalists and editors at German websites and publications report receiving letters and emails offering “explosive information about the Ukraine crisis” on an almost daily basis. The “sources” often mention they have evidence about the right-wing nature of the Kiev government that they would like to supply to journalists. The letters are written in German, but appear to include direct translations of Russian phrases. They would seem to have been written by mother-tongue Russian speakers.
Other forms of propaganda have also been deployed in recent months. For example, there have been frequent incidences of intercepted conversations of Western diplomats or Kiev politicians getting published in ways that serve Russia’s interests. From the “Fuck the EU” statement by Victoria Nuland, the top US diplomat to Europe, right up to statements made by Estonia’s foreign minister that were apparently supposed to prove who was responsible for the deaths of protesters on Maidan Square. The Russian media also seemed to take pleasure in reporting in mid-April that CIA head John Brennan had traveled to Kiev.

There’s a high likelihood that this confidential information and the content of intercepted communications is being strewn by Russian intelligence. Officials at Western intelligence agencies assume that even communications encrypted by the Ukrainian army are being intercepted by the Russians.

Scrive lo Spiegel che tale campagna da parte di Putin non punterebbe solo ad influenzare i target stranieri bensì anche ad incidere sulle percezioni degli stessi russi. Obiettivo che, secondo un istituto di ricerca indipendente moscovita, sarebbe stato raggiunto:

[…] Few have studied the effects of that kind of propaganda as much as Lev Gudkov, the head of independent Moscow pollster Levada. The institution recently had to undergo yet another government review. “The public prosecutor openly admitted to us that the only reason we haven’t been closed yet is that the Kremlin hasn’t given the final order to shut us down,” says Gudkov. “But we are certainly being harassed.”

The 67-year-old research pulls out one poll after another from a stack of papers. They show that when the mass protests against President Viktor Yanukovych broke out, only 30 percent of Russians believed that Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the EU was a “betrayal of Slavic unity.” In February, at the peak of the Maidan protests, 73 percent still considered the issue to be an internal one for Ukrainians. In the time that has transpired since, some 58 percent of Russians now support the annexation of eastern Ukraine by Russia.

“The successful propaganda campaign we are witnessing here surrounding the Ukraine crisis is unique and highly sophisticated, even compared to Soviet standards,” says Gudkov. “The Kremlin has succeeded in stirring up sentiments deeply rooted in the Russian psyche: the yearning for an imperial grandness, a sense of anti-Americanism and pride over Russia’s victory over Hitler’s Germany.”

Ultimately, it was the annexation of Crimea that silenced Putin’s critics. Prior to the development, dissatisfaction with Putin had been growing continuously. Polls showed an increasing number of Russians wanted to vote the president out of office. In November 2013, 53 percent said they would vote for a different candidate during the next election. But Putin experienced a meteoric rise in popularity after the annexation, with 86 percent of Russians now saying they would re-elect him.