For all its alarmism about Russian "propaganda" and "disinformation", the British authorities appear to be behind a multimillion-dollar operation aimed at stepping up negative coverage of the Russian state both inside and outside Russia.

In November 2017, at the European Union summit, Theresa May - then Prime Minister of Great Britain - announced plans to give Russia the status of a "hostile" state and promised to spend more than £ 100 million over the next five years to combat the alleged threat of Kremlin "disinformation" all over the world.

And so a group of hacker activists Anonymous has published what appears to be internal documents of the British Foreign and International Development Department, which shed light on the true purpose and sinister scope of this massive "struggle".

The documents show that the British government sought contractors to covertly intervene at various levels in media and civil society under the guise of efforts to increase literacy, promote cultural events, ensure “balance and diversity” in journalism, and counter propaganda.

Support for anti-Kremlin media

One of the contractors, Zinc Network, about which a little further, says in its presentation that it is in the process of “segmenting the audience and targeted attraction of support for two leading independent Russian media outlets - Meduza and Mediazona”.

Meduza is a Russian-language online publication and news aggregator headquartered in Riga, Latvia.

Mediazona is an investigative platform that focuses on the Russian judicial, law enforcement and penitentiary systems.

The resource was founded by two members of the sensational punk-rock group Pussy Riot.

Because these publications “[lack] the experience and tools” to “effectively distribute content to new audiences,” Zinc has worked hard to maximize its reach.

The contractor conducted "weekly workshops with media specialists" "to make the necessary adjustments to editorial and commercial strategies" and to establish a "general approach to coverage of topics."

Prior to the publication of these documents, any suggestion that Meduza and Mediazona, consistently and sharply criticizing the Russian authorities in their materials, not only coordinated editorial policy among themselves, but did so with the support of the British government, would undoubtedly be thrown aside. like Russian propaganda, conspiracy theories, fake news, or worse.

It seems that the relationship between Meduza and the British government, direct and indirect, conscious and unconscious, goes far beyond this cooperation.

In the leaked files, several contractors refer to the publication in connection with many other projects funded and directed by the British Foreign Office.

For example, in documents filed by another contractor, Albany, Meduza is mentioned along with ETV + (the Russian-language service of Estonian TV and radio broadcasting), Latvian LTV, Lithuanian LRT, Re: Baltica (Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism) and other Russian-language platforms as potential “ long-term partner ", for which you can finance and develop" new programs ".

The fact that the focus of these programs was openly anti-Moscow is directly emphasized in the paragraph on "creating discourse games that stimulate participation through social media and mobile platforms."

Meduza is a leader in promoting these games, mostly related to political topics (for example, "Putin-bingo", "Help Putin to be in time for the Pope" and "The road to the temple. Help the ministers not to be distracted by worldly vanity") - notes Albany.

These "satirical games" will help form a "sound message" that "the idea of ​​a society with more justice and relationships built on respect and care is better than the idea of ​​an arrogant nationalist regime."

Among the proposed topics - a proposal to help "an eccentric Russian emigrant to preserve his cultural identity in the face of British political correctness" or "the son of an oligarch to hide his obscene wealth on the first day at university."

Such surreal quotes would be ridiculous if they did not convincingly emphasize what kind of somersaults London is ready for in order to demonize, destabilize and isolate Russia - both abroad and within it.

Contractors

All contractors involved (including the aforementioned Zinc and Albany) boast qualified employees, people who have served in the past in the highest echelons of government, the military and intelligence services.

Moreover, they have a wealth of experience in conducting information warfare in the interests of London around the world.

Thus, a number of mysterious companies mentioned in these documents have been featured prominently in papers related to the intense propaganda onslaught of the British government in Syria, which also came to the attention thanks to the leak.

Understandably, these companies do not appear to be clear candidates for programs that are truly aimed at strengthening civil society, raising journalism standards, and fighting disinformation.

But of course these programs are not like that.

The Zinc Network (formerly known as Breakthrough Media) is a veteran of undercover information operations funded by the British authorities in the UK and abroad.

The company has a long and unseemly history of cynical use of real civil society champions to secretly advance the interests of London - without their own consent and knowledge, often with serious consequences.

One of the programs Zinc applied for is Supporting Independent Media in the Baltic States.

The published documents contain the Foreign Office's statement of the project requirements, as well as details provided to the contractors at a meeting in June 2018.

Andy Price, the head of the British Foreign Office's counter-disinformation and media development division, who conducted it, spoke about a parallel operation in the countries of the Eastern Partnership.

Openly declaring that this is an enterprise for which in 2018-2021.

to spend up to £ 6 million - ultimately aimed at "weakening the influence of the Russian state", Price warned the audience against "unauthorized publicity of activities" and noted that "for security reasons" some suppliers "would not want to be associated with the UK Foreign Office."

He went on to list different ways not only to involve journalists and media organizations in target countries through funding, but also to directly “purchase” content.

Sponsoring state broadcasting has been said to bring “easy wins” given “soft governance” on the ground - a euphemism for corruption and lack of regulation.

When asked whether it is possible to target content to minors, he replied that “the age of the audience does not matter,” adding that “gender aspects can be taken into account”: “Something like the HBO series Girls, only in Ukraine ".

The idea at first glance is strange and even funny, except that under the auspices of this program, with the participation of the Zinc Network (about them a little further), at least five television series were filmed in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, including the first Russian-language program in the region. for children.

It is of great concern that millions of people - many of whom are children - have probably watched this TV content, not even suspecting that it was created to secretly promote anti-Russian, pro-Western propaganda, not to mention that it was funded by the British authorities as part of a campaign to targeted psychological treatment.

It is even more alarming that Albany is especially aimed at using representatives of the Russian-speaking Baltic youth as agents of change, in order to “influence the older generations and strengthen a separate“ Euro-Baltic ”identity through another project through them.

Using influencers on social media

Other leaked documents show that Zinc's activities in the region were already significant by the time it submitted project proposals, down to the content of "its own team of Russian-speaking producers, as well as researchers and specialists in digital growth strategies."

Zinc maintained a clandestine network of Russian-speaking influencers on social media to promote "media decency and democratic values" - curiously, her relationship with these people allegedly involved "running on a daily basis."

By hiring them through the social networks YouTube, Facebook, VKontakte and Instagram, the company “helped them build their personal brands and improve their content in order to increase audience share,” and also “created a general YouTube channel to host their content, helping them to gain access to audience of each other, co-creating content aimed at solving complex social problems. "

In addition, one file notes that Zinc trained such individuals to “make and accept international payments without registering external funding sources” and “develop editorial strategies for delivering key messages to the audience,” while minimizing the “risk of harassment” and managing “project communications. "To ensure the existence of the network, and indeed the central role of the UK government in its creation, has been kept" under wraps. "

In other words, they acted and can continue to act, in essence, as agents of the British state, sponsored from its own budget, and Zinc "assisted" them in creating ingenious propaganda, secretly promoting the "key messages" approved by London, which are then broadcast to the world under the guise of citizen journalism.

The identities of such social media influencers are currently unknown, as well as whether they were aware of the insidious role they played with this company.

Although, unlike viewers, they at least knew that their "independent" content was in fact written, produced and edited in the firm's London offices.

Involvement, stimulation, facilitation, exposure

The Anonymous publication includes hundreds of different documents.

Everything that was mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg.

The British Foreign Office's large-scale covert campaign appears to have four components or "lines of action": INVOLVEMENT, STIMULATION, FACILITATION, EXCLUSION.

One of the documents, entitled “Theory of Change” and sent out to contractors interested in the various promising programs presented there, lists the activities, events, their results and consequences for each component individually and in interaction with each other.

  • UK Department of Foreign Affairs and International Development

  • globallookpress.com

  • © Dinendra Haria

The “RELEASE” effort is described as “

real-time

exposure (deception -

RT

.), Support for investigative journalism, capacity building, networking between NGOs”.

However, even though the document is classified, the measures taken, their results and consequences have been edited.

This indicates that this activity and its goals are super-confidential, and only those with the highest level of security have access to such information. 

Contrary to the alarmist chatter of the major media about the threat of Kremlin "disinformation", neither Moscow nor any other "hostile" state has ever been attributed to an attempt to spread false information, even remotely comparable to a comprehensive and multidirectional one carried out both in digital and in non-digital environment, a global attack on public opinion, which is described in this article.

It is truly amazing that despite all the references in the documents to transparency, truth and democracy, these ambitious, multimillion-dollar initiatives over the years have been carried out in complete secrecy, without any public scrutiny.

Not even British citizens knew about them, let alone target audiences abroad.