Agnieszka Bryc is a lecturer at Nicolaus Copernicus University (Poland).
Russia does not have to attack the West militarily by using its “hard power”; a far more effective means of defeating it might be to destroy it from within with its “soft power”. All Moscow needs to do is to methodically and consistently attack the democratic pillars of the West using cheap and highly effective cognitive warfare.
Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine is no accidental aggression but a symptom of a far-reaching strategy to overthrow the liberal democratic international order. Alongside this it strives to re-establish its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, where control over Ukraine is of fundamental importance for the continuation of neo-imperialist Russia’s policies in the continental and even global arena. Towards this end, it must neutralize the West, as it can defeat Russia in a military confrontation. The most effective way to avoid confrontation but to defeat the West is aggression under the threshold of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty that established NATO.
In that case the best means is cognitive warfare. The Russians believe that reflexive control (the Russian understanding of cognitive warfare) can help them defeat enemies without firing a single shot and essentially make them defeat themselves. Simply put, cognitive warfare is about breaking the enemy’s will to fight and changing the behavior of individuals and whole communities in line with Russia’s own interest. Thus, the battleground is the mind of a citizen of the West, and the weapon is managing understandings and cognition. This method is based on the cognitive errors typical for the human brain, such as overlaid information, emotional reactions and confusion. At the end of the day citizens are unable to properly assess reality and, therefore, they make no rational decisions in democratic political systems (e.g., voting during elections or referenda).
Why does Putin hate democracy?
After all, democracy is the greatest threat to Putin’s regime. First, democracy “undermines” his regime’s stability and the sustainability of power. Therefore, during the first term (2000-04) he cracked down on democratic elements in Russia’s political system and during the second term (2004-08) he promoted abroad Russian sovereign democracy, which fundamentally differs from Western standards and in fact should be defined as an electoral autocracy. The next step was made after mass protests in Russia following the rigged 2011 Duma elections. Just after setting up his third presidential term in 2012, Putin pronounced a conservative turn that officially and radically rejected Western liberal democratic values. Second, the Russian president is convinced that democratization is a tool of spreading American hegemony around the world, including Russia’s “exclusive sphere of influence”, namely the so-called post-Soviet space.
On the other hand, Putin is convinced that democracies have numerous flaws that can be exploited against the West by weakening it from within. This strategy resembles the Soviet subversive KGB-style operations carried out with a long-range horizon. The first and most extended phase involves demoralization; undermining internal cohesion; breaking social bonds; polarization; and undermining citizens’ trust in the state and other citizens. This phase usually takes place over a 15 to 20-year period. The next stage, which lasts from two to five years, focuses on destabilization, protests, unrest, and the emergence of an alternative center of power. This stage ends with internal state upheaval, a crisis of power, or the collapse of the government. In the last phase, Moscow calls for normalization and offers a “solution” that is implemented by externally supported “internal” groups or circles (like “separatists” in Donbas).
Without a single shot
A decade before the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russians launched full-scale cognitive warfare against Kyiv. In the mid-2000s, they invested in the rise of pro-Russian factions in Crimea, from where they selected a “leader of the self-proclaimed republic” a decade later. In 2011-12, they started training and equipping diversionary groups on Ukrainian territory, and in 2014 they were the ones who supported the infamous “green men”. Parallel to these activities, the infosphere in Russia, Ukraine and the West was saturated by a narrative presenting Russia as a “defender” of persecuted Russian-speaking people and denigrating the “Nazi” authorities in Kyiv. This was ultimately intended to facilitate the undermining of citizens’ trust in state institutions.
An analogous long-term cognitive war is being waged by Russia against Western democracy. This war has been in progress since at least 2007, when at the Munich Security Conference, Putin openly declared a break with the West. Its essence is not simply to interfere in elections but to undermine the very foundations of the democratic system. The aim is to destroy citizens’ trust in liberal democracy and democratic institutions while promoting the belief that democracy is weak, and that the West is declining or even collapsing. Through disinformation, psychological operations, distraction, sabotage and subversion, Russia deepens the polarization of Western societies, confuses citizens, and manipulates collective emotions.
As a rule, the Russians are not interested in supporting explicitly pro-Russian factions; they are keener on deepening disputes, especially during election campaigns. In November 2022, Yevgeny Prigozhin, then head of the Wagner Group and a troll factory near St Petersburg, confirmed that Russia had interfered in elections in the West. On his VKontakte account, he publicly admitted: “We interfered, we are interfering, and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, thoroughly, surgically, and in our way. We know how to do it.” Thus, both the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and far-left (also nationalistic and conservative) Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht were supported by Russian-linked social media accounts ahead of the German elections. The goal is not necessarily the victory of extremist parties, but their rise may effectively obstruct government and encourage the plunging of the country into a state of prolonged political crisis.
Indeed, chaos is a highly desirable state for the Kremlin. First, it makes confused citizens unable to make rational choices. This was seen during Slovakia’s September 2023 parliamentary elections. Two days before, a fake audio recording allegedly showed the leader of a pro-European formation discussing how to rig the vote. The video turned out to be bogus, but it is unclear what effect it had on the Slovak electoral decision. In the end, the nationalistic left Smer-SD party, led by Robert Fico, who advocates for an end to military support for Ukraine, won the most votes. Second, chaos is needed to discredit the government in the eyes of the public. That’s what the Russians tried to do when sabotaging the Olympic Games in Paris in the summer. Even before the opening ceremony, the Kremlin-linked “Storm-1679” group released deepfake videos on the Internet predicting violent attacks at the Games and even acts of terrorism. Often impersonating accounts that resemble news agencies such as France24, they “report” that “24% of tickets for the Games have been returned for fear of terrorism”.
Discrediting liberal-democratic values is the next priority for Moscow. Russians try to attack them through “whataboutism”, where the problem is not the Russian aggression against Ukraine but Western imperialism and double standards. The vehicles for this, in turn, are useful idiots, i.e. allegedly completely “impartial” journalists, but more often, social media influencers, celebrities and video bloggers. When the Russians are unable to instrumentalize the media message, they create their own news outlets that deceptively resemble the original media. Consider “Voice of Europe”, whose owner, the oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, an ally of Vladimir Putin, was accused by the Czech Foreign Ministry in March 2024 of running a Russian influence operation through it. Far-right members of the European Parliament have published there, spreading disinformation about the imminent collapse of the European Union or promoting slogans to reduce support for Ukraine.
Too late only to keep defending
While the West has made excellent progress in identifying Russian cognitive warfare operations, the problem is the failure to counter successfully and decisively Russian hybrid aggression. Whereas debunking and information campaigns help to build resilience among Western societies, we must understand that it is far too little to make Russia reject its goals to destroy the West from within. First and foremost, we have to understand that cognitive warfare is not another disinformation operation or a disruption of the infosphere, but subversive operations planned and carried out by the Russian military and intelligence services to destroy the West from within. Moreover, the Kremlin has time and is determined to achieve success. So, if the victory of the mainstream parties in the European Parliament elections was mostly satisfying, the fact is that what counts for the Kremlin is the trend, namely the rise of popularity of various radical forces and the deepening of polarization in many EU member states. And this, as Dmitry Peskov, President Putin’s spokesman, pointed out, shows that Eurosceptic forces are steadily growing in strength both on the domestic political scene and in the European Parliament.
Therefore, without changing the strategy into something more proactive, the West will let Russia undermine the democratic pillars of the Western world. Instead of merely defending, we must actively promote liberal democracy, the rule of law, human rights and civil society. But the very first task is to understand that new proactive measures require establishing “rule of law” on the Internet. Without more regulatory policies vis-a-vis social media and communicators (like Telegram, Messenger, Signal, X, etc.) autocratic regimes and eccentric “democratophobic” billionaires (Elon Musk) will use them to spread fake news, conspiracy theories, and anti-Western propaganda.
Edited by Adam Balcer
