“Weaken the influence of Russia”: how Britain prepared Ukraine for an information war

Dozens of documents related to the information work of London on the territory of the former USSR have become publicly available.

The archive, allegedly hacked by the hacker group Anonymous, contains papers with references to internal documents of the British Foreign Office.

Dozens of instructions, estimates, analytical notes and reports shed light on the activities of the British Foreign Office in Europe and Asia.

Some of them are directly related to Ukraine and Russia.

Thus, the documents note that the British Foreign Office issued a secret form, which refers to the launch of a program to counter Russia's informational influence in the Baltic countries, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and others.

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“The goal of the program is to weaken the influence of the Russian Federation on its closest neighbors,” the document says.

According to the plan, the program was implemented in several main areas.

The task of interaction, communication between ethnic Russians and local communities, as well as training, involving new participants in various projects was undertaken by the British Council, an international organization representing the UK in the field of culture and education.

In Russia, this organization closed in 2018 amid a new aggravation of relations between Moscow and London, its functions were partially taken over by the British Embassy.   

The British Foreign Office also focused on such tasks as supporting independent media in the post-Soviet space, especially Russian-language publications.

As the documents show, since 2018 London has been prepared to discredit any information disseminated by Russian state media if it does not correspond to British interests.

There was also a macro goal - to reduce the level of public confidence in the Russian government.

The program involved the involvement of the leading national broadcaster BBC, the Thomson Reuters Foundation and Aktis Strategy companies in the UK itself, and local NGOs outside of the UK, in addition to the British Council.

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RT sent inquiries to the British Foreign Office in Russia, as well as to the BBC head office with a request to comment on the contents of the archive.

At the time of publication of the article, no response had been received from any of the organizations.

"Non-trivial task"

The anti-Russian publications in the media that we see today are only part of the large-scale information operation that London is implementing throughout the post-Soviet space, political scientist Sergei Karnaukhov believes.

A leak from the British Ministry, if it is not a fake, indicates that this work was undertaken by the Foreign Office long before the entry of Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24.

Similar projects have been launched in a number of other countries, experts say.  

“Behind the information war there is a part of the defense departments of Great Britain, the USA, the Baltic countries, Germany and Ukraine itself, which performed a non-trivial task: they turned Ukrainians into information fighters,” Karnaukhov said.

“We used to underestimate the seriousness of this, but now we see that information warfare can solve the main tactical task - to inflict damage on the enemy’s country without shots and military actions.”

Pound dashing

Great Britain allocated a large amount for the implementation of the information expansion plan.

According to the planning statement, for three years, from March 2019 to March 2021, almost £9 million (about $12 million) was expected to be spent on the project and related grants.

Another document, published presumably by the Anonymous group, contains a FAQ for the lower performers of the project, that is, Ukrainian journalists.

In it, in particular, it is argued that most of the budget allocated by London is intended to finance the state television broadcasting of Ukraine. 

“We are focusing on state broadcasting.

We are on a tight schedule this fiscal year,” the 2018 document reads. 

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At the same time, the curators of the project were especially concerned about confidentiality issues - one of the documents of the leak is devoted to security and secrecy.

“Unauthorized disclosure of information about their activities should not be allowed ... It should be noted that, for security reasons, some grant recipients will seek to avoid direct communication with the UK Foreign Office.

The program group would not like the program documents to be in the hands of the Russian media.

We are aware that they are following us, ”the document says. 

Without compromise

Since the beginning of Russia's military operation in Ukraine, the topic of information confrontation with Moscow has received a new development.

The consecration of hostilities and the humanitarian situation in Ukraine has acquired an openly anti-Russian character.

As in many foreign media, and in social networks, Russia is presented as an uncompromising aggressor.

At the same time, Kyiv appears in the media space as a victim of the perfidious policy of the Kremlin.

At the same time, the problem of Donbass is relegated to the background by many pro-Western media or not mentioned at all.

The humanitarian situation in this region is put out of the picture, while the situation in the Kiev region — for example, the tragedy in Bucha — is presented as a non-alternative news agenda, unambiguously anti-Russian.

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At the same time, it is its “anti-Russian character” that becomes the key element of information, the question of authenticity or falsity turns out to be secondary, experts emphasize.

It is impossible to establish what contribution to the formation of such an information flow management system is made by programs like the secret plan of the Foreign Office, but the result is obvious, political scientist Alexei Mukhin believes.

According to him, the "array" of foreign news about the military special operation can be called "carpet information bombing."

At the same time, the media space is more than ever full of unreliable messages, the political scientist emphasizes.

“The volume of fakes has increased many times over, and it is quite obvious that the tactics are based on clogging the information space with fakes, which are partially refuted, but still have a strong psychological impact even on professionals,” Mukhin concluded.

Political scientists note that even the highest quality fakes can be exposed, but this requires professional expertise, which is not always easy to organize and carry out, especially in situations of active hostilities or the movement of troops, which were observed during a special operation in Mariupol or Bucha.