Typically the word warfare evokes images of guns, tanks, and soldiers, which would be classified as "kinetic" warfare. In contrast, Information Warfare is any action taken by a state or non-state actor to attain the same objectives, whether they be to influence, manipulate or coerce another party to support its preferences and goals. During the Cold War, the U.S.S.R. became proficient in employing a variety of tactics to influence and deceive its Western rivals, utilizing what came to be known as “active measures” via its intelligence agencies. The Russian Federation has followed and built upon its predecessor’s legacy by utilizing new tactics via the internet and social media to influence its rivals’ democracies to influence more advantageous policy positions. The most significant of these strategies is poised to manipulate, obfuscate and exploit developments in foreign environmental politics.
The most famous and pervasive of these methods is the creation and dissemination of disinformation via officials in the Russian bureaucracy, state-sponsored outlets such as RT and Sputnik, social media campaigns using “troll-farms” via fake accounts, and even direct statements made by Putin himself. The arena of climate politics is particularly significant to Russia; as one of the worlds largest hydrocarbon exporters it sees decarbonization movements as a potentially existential economic threat, therefore it has a tremendous incentive to both vilify and discredit environmental political movements around the world. Disinformation is a potent political weapon as it may influence or manipulate a population to believe certain ideas and thus vote to adopt specific policies. Where misinformation is content which is false but unintentionally spread, disinformation is directly engineered by the deceiving party with the intention of influencing a target.
This article analyzes the different methods and objectives of documented Russian climate disinformation, which fall under four broad narratives (with significant overlap) that the Kremlin seeks to perpetrate: Climate Denialism, Petro-aggression and “Securitization,” Green movements as Western Neocolonialism efforts, and Green Party political interference. Russian climate disinformation is significant as it fulfills both the Kremlin’s objectives of protecting its economic interests and further polarization of adversarial democracies which is inherently connected to its imperialist foreign policy platform.
Denialism and Pseudoscience
The most classical iteration of climate disinformation exists under the vein of climate denialism. To support this effort, the Kremlin has sponsored pseudoscientific efforts to influence and cast doubt upon legitimate scientific climate data for decades. Russian scientists in the 2000s criticized the Kyoto Protocol and proved very useful in building an opposition to its ratification; Astrophysicist Khabibullo Abdussamatov claimed that solar radiation had a greater impact than human activity and a new ice was imminent, suggesting the Kyoto accord be postponed by 150 years. Yuri Izrael, a prominent Russian physicist, opposed the IPCC’s Kyoto data and by doing so effectively wrote the denialist playbook for further IPCC negotiations. In 2001 the Russian Academy of Sciences released a report contending that there was a “high level of uncertainty” that temperature rise was causal regarding human activity, which has proven rhetorically destructive in every subsequent IPCC negotiation. Furthermore, Russian scientists continue to purport the “climate winner” narrative that climate change will be good for Russia. Putin himself has also been duplicitous, both arguing for Russia’s status as a “climate winner,” yet also deceptively claiming that Russia intends to become carbon neutral by 2060. Another common greenwashing tactic that the Kremlin has purported is that natural gas is a “cleaner” and more efficient form of energy compared to oil and coal, yet this is once again mere rhetorical manipulation as it conveniently ignores the fact that natural gasses are still hydrocarbons and thus harmful to the environment.
The lies promoted by Russian scientists in the early 2000s have found new life in the age of the internet, often recycling to become the subject of new disinformation campaigns. A 2020 study found that in official Kremlin associated tweets vaccine and climate disinformation were selected the most due to “a broad societal impact from misinformation and disinformation, and both involve positions strongly aligned with political ideologies” and “arguably pose the biggest threat to the well being of a society.” The tweets themselves contain typically conspiratorial, pseudoscientific and sensational language, and typically target a prominent figure, media outlet or other Western institution. They are typically underscored by a link to either a junk site or a Russian sponsored “alternative” news site, whose Kremlin connections are thinly veiled. The links are typically a reiteration of previously espoused pseudoscience, however the content itself is usually far less important than the mere headline itself’s existence on social media, as they are prone to be circulated in political echo chambers. This is a direct continuation of the KGB’s original tactic to “drive a wedge” in democratic societies and further polarize democratic processes, creating policy deadlocks which are beneficial to the Kremlin.
Petro-Aggression and “Securitization”
The second objective the Kremlin seeks to use disinformation to influence is its imperialist ambitions, specifically in Ukraine and similar conflicts. Russia epitomizes what Jeff Colgan delineated a “Petro-Aggression” state, which is a nation that is a Petro-State (a state heavily dependent on hydrocarbon exports) which has utilized such resources to fund aggressive geopolitical action. Dr. Alexander Etkind, director of the OHPA, released his latest book “Russia Against Modernity” in 2023 which details Russia’s as a Petro-aggressive state. Thus the Kremlin’s economic protectionism is intertwined with its imperialist and expansionist objectives.
The Ukrainian-Russo war has spawned a new sub-genre of disinformation for the Kremlin to utilize. Dissemination efforts since the war have targeted the Russo-European energy interdependency relationship, wherein Russia previously supplied a hefty percentage of natural gas and oil to Europe. Attacks included the overblowing of Germany’s GDP shirking of .3% in 2022, which RT lambasted and heralded as Germany’s “imminent economic collapse.” Other narratives include claiming that Russia has completely weathered Western sanctions brought on by the war, while simultaneously lamenting that sanctions are the sole culprit of higher global energy prices and represent another attempt by the West to destroy Russia. Another false claim includes the West inventing the climate crisis to justify its expansion into the Arctic, as the Kremlin is desperate to contest the U.S. and Canada’s strategic and economic interests in the region. Due to the intertwined nature of Russia’s economic and imperialists objectives, disinformation concerning the war and the climate are inherently interlinked.
Climate Change as a Western “Neocolonial Invention”
A continuation of the war-oriented Kremlin propaganda is the claim that the Climate crisis is merely a Western invention intended to prevent underdeveloped states from industrializing. Russia has attempted to position itself as a friendly development parter to Africa, as an alternative to the West, preying upon the collective African psyche which indubitably is still painfully cognizant of the legacy of European colonialism on the continent. While African nations have drastically increased their oil consumption from Russia in 2023, with some nations like Ghana Libya and Tunisia increasing imports by 100%, the importance and potency of disinformation campaigns is further elucidated.
Green Party Politics and Global Elitism
The most underutilized yet still significant objective of Russian disinformation is the meddling in Green Party democratic politics in a litany of states. This is done by both the defamation of activists and green party leaders, but also by empowering climate skeptic parties like the A.f.D. in Germany and further population of “globalist” conspiracy theories. Most notably Russia launched a disinformation campaign against German Green Party Leader Annalena Baerbock in 2021 after she criticized the construction of the NordStream 2 pipeline. The campaign depicted Baerbock with photoshop atop a scantily-clad model’s body with billionaire George Soros (IE the typical “globalist” boogeyman in conservative political rhetoric), alleging that she was a puppet for the globalist environmental agenda. Additionally Baerbock was vocal about her distrust of the Kremlin, imploring the German public to pressure Russia to remove its military buildup prior to its invasion in 2022. Baerbock is also the subject of much right-wing populist vitriol in German domestic politics, making her a prime candidate for Russia’s propaganda apparatus to attack. A Russian meddling attempt has already surfaced in Germany’s parliament ahead of the 2024 elections, and there are numerous connections between the rhetoric extremist parties such as the AFD espouse and the Kremlin’s outlets.
An interesting counterfactual to typical disinformation was the Kremlin’s aiding of the Green Party candidate in the 2016 U.S. election. Jill Stein ran under the shadow of Clinton and Trump, however third party candidates in the U.S. merely serve to play spoiler for candidates of the two main parties. Thus the Kremlin launched specific tweeted bot campaigns which both disavowed Clinton and suggested voting for Stein instead, which would inevitably aid Trump’s campaign as Stein had no real chance at victory. Thus the Kremlin will exploit and manipulate both sides of the debate, dependent on what is the most advantageous for its immediate objective rather than its overall principles.
Russian climate disinformation is significant due to its didactic nature of advancing the Kremlin’s economic and imperialist strategies, and therefore should be continuously researched in order to best understand how to counter it. While the EU has historically faced the brunt of Russian campaigns, it is imperative that disinformation targeting developing nations is analyzed and furthers studied as the global south presents a fertile new battleground for influence between the West, Russia and China.
Article by Conall Hirsch
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