AN INFORMATION WAR IS ON

The Germans have suddenly realized they were wrong. They were clearly in a hurry at the end of the 1990s to close the Institute for Eastern European Studies which, sure enough, focused its research mainly on an analysis of the situation in the USSR.

The confrontation between the two systems ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Germany decided that it would be foolish to waste money on research into what didn't exist. Russia in those days was, to all intents and purposes, not an independent state and presented no interest for study as a powerful enemy. And, when all is said and done, it was not regarded as a partner, either.

During the first two terms of Putin's rule, the West could not see any serious changes in Russia's domestic and foreign policy. However, it continued to believe that it had the economic and political levers, which it had acquired during the free-and-easy years of the chaotic 1990s, to keep Moscow under control. Russia's response to the events in Ukraine came as a complete surprise to the US and its European partners. There was a sharp burst of anti-western rhetoric and a marked increase in campaigning among the European population in that country.

Ideological activity with the Russian-speaking inhabitants of Europe, who number more than a million, has been carried out in the past - RT (Russia Today), Channel One, Russia-1, NTV Mir and Sputnik (formerly Voice of Russia) have successfully carried out this task and continue to do so. They relay comedy shows, soap operas, action films and programmes on current events which, the European media notes, attract audiences because of their high production qualities. But since last year the Kremlin has considerably strengthened its information component, attracting new media resources.

A short time ago, a number of Czech and Slovak papers published a list of several dozen professionally created pro-Russian websites, the content of whose material was noted for its impeccable Slovak and Czech language. Such Internet resources began to emerge in the Czech Republic after the publication of plans to step up NATO's presence in Eastern Europe. One of the targets of criticism of these sites was the recent transit of NATO equipment across Czech territory. The British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC) wrote that, in the opinion of the Russian authorities, political differences existed in that country which should be exploited.

The same picture was evident in the media of other European countries, which particularly alarmed the EU. It emerged that it was unprepared for an information war with Russia. Specifically, in Germany the foreign ministry decided to rectify its mistake and to create an institute for the study of Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe, for which it was prepared to allocate initially 2.5m euros annually. "This became more important following the earth-shattering turn in relations with Russia after the annexation of Crimea," DW (Deutsche Welle, the German state-owned radio and TV company, which is close to the German Foreign Ministry) said. The ministry supplied its diplomats with a check-list on how to counter Russian propaganda.

In Finland, a special working group was set up from members of ministries and the civil service. One of its tasks was to enlighten the people of the country - particularly using examples from Finnish history - in how to handle false information and faked photographs. According to the Director of Government Communications and an expert of the State Security Committee, Markku Mantila, "the Russian press quotes Finnish politicians so selectively that most consumers of the Russian media are of the impression that the Finnish government and its top politicians are calling for the sanctions against Russia to be lifted".

NATO experts believe that Russia's "information machine" is "sowing discord" among the western states. The alliance's Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs, James Appathurai, complains, the British Financial Times writes, that the Russians "have even reached deep into our own American electorate" in their attempts to influence US' domestic policy. There is, of course, another point of view formed by a media surveyor, member of the board of the world publishers' organization IFRA, Vasiliy Gatov: the US is not particularly worried about the influence of Russia's propaganda machine on its territory. RT, while proudly reporting back to its Kremlin clients about its successes in the world, cannot, in fact, quote a single meaningful figure showing the quantitative aspects of this success (it's not even a question of ratings, but more a matter of actual scope). It is a marginal channel with a marginal audience (both in the mathematical and social sense).

Nevertheless, the US Congress adopted a resolution calling for greater news coverage in the Russian language in countries with a significant Russian-speaking population. As well as increasing the work of the Voice of America and Liberty/Free Europe radio stations, private companies should be set up  and regional governments encouraged to help carry out this task.

The military-political bloc, which unites most of the countries of Europe, the USA and Canada, will regularly publish on its website 25 "myths" about NATO, and alongside it - "factual refutations". The information will be in Russian, Ukrainian, English and French. In addition, the North Atlantic alliance has created a Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga, whose tasks include "providing the public with an alternative to official Russian propaganda".

At the beginning of this year, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark and the United Kingdom asked the European Commission to draw up an action plan to counter "the rapid increase in Russia's campaign of disinformation and propaganda" in support of the Kremlin's political and military objectives. According to the main initiator of the move, the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius, it was not a question of a ban or censorship on Russian TV channels. In order to provide, as he put it, an alternative and impartial source of information, and for the purposes of increasing "the public's immunity to manipulation", their own Russian-language TV channels, Internet websites, radio and printed publications should be created. This was particularly relevant to Latvia and Estonia where Russian speakers constitute a sizeable section of the population.

Discussion of this question was one of the main themes of the EU's summit in March, and literally the day before the meeting fat was thrown on the fire by the head of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, who told the German newspaper Zeit that Russian propaganda had already achieved specific success in Europe. By way of an example he named the French extreme-right Front National Party, which receives loans from Russian banks, as well as "certain prime ministers who are more or less openly wooing Putin".

In fulfilling a decision of the EU leaders, which was formulated at the summit, at the end of March experts in the sphere of communications and public liaison began drawing up a specific plan of measures, the Reuters agency reported. Federica Mogherini, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, was instructed to present a comprehensive programme by the beginning of summer. The tasks of the Brussels group of experts will include "the correction and cross-checking of facts contained in the disinformation", as well as "drawing up methods of a European supply of information via key reports, articles, editorial commentaries and information sheets and graphics, including material in the Russian language".

The goal has been set, the timeframe decided, albeit a very tight one, but finding the people to carry out the task is not so easy. The point is that the commission announced by Mogherini has to include one representative from each country of the EU. The country delegated would be responsible for the amount spent on running it. So far, only Poland, Lithuania and Estonia have responded. As the journalist and political expert Aleksandr Morozov ironically remarked on his social network page: "…one can understand that. After all, there are a million such commissions in the EU…There are commissions for the organization of special bridges for wild animals over highways so they can cross safely from one wood to another. And now there is a commission on 'Russian propaganda'".

In Europe there are also several sceptics of this project, which is indeed all-European, because each individual country is already taking steps in this direction, depending on its national peculiarities and requirements. One all-European channel already exists - EuroNews - and it has not achieved any special popularity in the more than 20 years it has been operating. What is strange is that confidentially, in conversations with journalists, European officials themselves express their understanding of the priority nature of the information struggle, but at the same time they doubt that the new TV channel will be able to pass the stage of the original project.

In speaking about ways of confronting Russian propaganda, it would be wrong not to listen to the Russian side's point of view. R+ asked Aleksey Gromyko, Doctor of Political Sciences, Director of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences (grandson of the former USSR Foreign Minister from 1957 to 1985, Andrey Gromyko), to comment on what the West is doing: "When it comes to solving problems this is a dead end. None of the problems can be resolved with the aid of information and propaganda wars. And so long as such decisions are being taken, the prospects of the Minsk peace process will remain obscure. Russia today has a fairly far-reaching and effective structure on briefing the world's public about life inside the country and its foreign policy. However, I think we must play by the rules that bind us and build up efforts to explain Russia's point of view on the key problems of international relations. But this must be done honestly, judiciously and actively and we must on no account stoop to propaganda. The main thing is that we must offer some way out of this situation, and not drive it further into a blind alley. Only then will we achieve mutual understanding."

Appeals for mutual understanding are being made from both sides. At the same time, both are speaking about certain "rules of the game" which should be followed. Plain contradiction doesn't bother anyone. We've been down that road once before.