Throughout history, Ukraine’s resistance to Russian imperialism has been shaped by its thinkers, artists, and political figures who continuously warned against Moscow’s expansionist ambitions. From the eighteenth-century descendant of Ukrainian Cossacks, Hryhorii Skovoroda, to Ivan Dziuba, Ukrainian philosophers have long echoed the resounding call for truth and freedom—twin pillars that are now under attack. Ukrainian historical figures such as Pylyp Orlyk—the author of the first Constitution in 1710 (Pritsak 1998)—and poets like Taras Shevchenko, Vasyl Symonenko, Ivan Bahryanyi, and Lina Kostenko have consistently warned of Russia’s malevolent intentions. Their foresight has proven tragically accurate as Ukraine confronts an existential crisis it battles not only on the ground but also through disinformation campaigns that aim to undermine its very identity (Democratic Initiatives Foundation 2025).
As any authoritarian regime, the Soviet Union relied heavily on coercion (Berls 2018). But the survival of the regime rested on excessive brutality (civil war, “pacification” of Ukraine, and the Great Terror), underpinned by a pervasive fear of “conspiracy” (Andrew and Mitrochin 2001; Shinar 2018). The combination of propaganda and covert action was used to protect the regime from dissidents at home and their imperialist supporters abroad (Andrew and Mitrochin 2001). The situation in Russia today remains eerily similar (Shinar 2018). In the shadowed corridors of the Kremlin, the strategy is simple yet profound: the truth is not a weapon but a liability. For decades, Russia has crafted reality to serve its interests, turning deception into doctrine and propaganda into policy, with roots established during the Soviet era and weaponized in the digital age (Snegovaya 2015).
Soviet “Active Measures”
Russia’s present-day information warfare is rooted in the Soviet “active measures” (Abrams 2016), introduced in the USSR to describe techniques designed to advance Soviet foreign policy objectives (United States. Congress. House. Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence 1982; United States Department of State and Bureau of Public Affairs 1981). Commonly used tactics included forging US documents to either alert Third World leaders about alleged CIA operations—like Operation KULBIT in Guinea (1975) under Brezhnev—or to promote media campaigns in India (1987), Panama (1988), and South Africa (1989) during Gorbachev’s era (Andrew and Mitrochin 2001). Active measures, however, were not limited to forgeries of documents; they included a combination of propaganda and covert action, which even garnered attention from Western media – the AIDS fabrication in the US and the “baby parts” story that accused wealthy Americans of harvesting organs from children in developing countries for transplantation (Ibid).
Moskow’s obsession with conspiracy, whether real or not, played into the Soviet hands, giving them operational advantages over Western intelligence agencies, where “security remained feeble” during the inter-war period (Andrew and Mitrochin 2001). Soviet leaders interpreted the liberal reforms and movements advocating for human rights as threats to national security and Communist ideology, viewing the one-party system as incompatible with plurality. To uphold this system in the Soviet sphere and prevent “ideological subversion,” the KGB played a central role in suppressing the Hungarian Uprising (1956), the Prague Spring (1968), the invasion of Afghanistan (1979), and pressured the Polish regime to dismantle Solidarity 1981(Andrew and Mitrochin 2001). The irony of Soviet active measures is that, while they presented Russia as a guardian of peace and stability, its policies ultimately created more problems than the ones they claimed to be protecting from. For example, to discredit the reformers of the Prague Spring in former Czechoslovakia, the senior Party official and head of the KGB, Andropov, justified the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact forces as “the only way to preserve Soviet security and the new European order” (Andrew and Mitrochin 2001).
New Places, Old Stories
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 did not mark the end of Russian information operations; rather, these practices evolved (Abrams 2016). Today’s environment differs from that of the 1980s and 1990s in two important ways: the size of the current media environment and the speed at which information is distributed (Dhunjishah 2017, 11). Putin’s regime has modernized many active measures, replacing traditional methods like typewriters and letter campaigns with digital tools like retweets and “troll factories” (Abrams 2016). Yet, some old techniques, including state-sponsored media outlets like RT and Sputnik, are part of an “information warfare blitzkrieg,” serving as the “white propaganda” component in a coordinated disinformation system, similar to the Soviet model (Abrams 2016).
Disinformation campaigns that sought to establish false narratives by planting fabricated stories (U.S. Department of State 1982) are still relevant today (Bowyer 2019). As Mueller’s report confirmed, the Russian attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election mirrors the Soviet efforts to influence U.S. elections (Jones 2019), which often included disinformation campaigns against candidates they opposed, such as labeling Barry Goldwater a racist in 1964 (Andrew and Mitrochin 2001). Russia’s disinformation campaigns have also been used to legitimize military operations, such as in Moldova, Georgia, and elsewhere. For instance, during the Syrian civil war, Moscow portrayed its military intervention as a mission to support Bashar al-Assad against terrorism, expressing concerns that it could spread to Russia (Charap, Treyger, and Geist 2019). These narratives illustrate the persistent irony of Russia’s delusional cause for violent actions.
The case of Ukraine
In addition to launching a brutal armed invasion, the Russian Federation is actively involved in an aggressive information war against Ukraine (The Digital Forensic Research Lab 2024). The persistent conflict in Ukraine has evolved into a battleground characterized not only by the presence of military equipment and personnel but also by competing narratives and spheres of influence (Aleksejeva 2023). Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech justifying the invasion, framed as a “special military operation,” echoed the same narratives that had been circulating in the Russian media ecosystem since 2014 (Tyszkiewicz 2022). These narratives painted Russia as a defender of peace, framed Ukraine as an aggressor, and accused the West of escalating tensions (Aleksejeva 2023; The Digital Forensic Research Lab 2023).
Recalling its comment to Bush in 2008 that “Ukraine is not a nation,” Putin once again declared “Russians and Ukrainians are one people” in 2021 in the Article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” overlooking centuries of Ukrainian history and over 30 years of its independence that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin’s justification for Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine under the pretext of protecting Russian-speaking populations from alleged followers of Bandera and neo-Nazis (Tyszkiewicz 2022) once again reveals the hypocrisy of Russia’s statements, particularly in light of a tragic Holocaust legacy. While purporting to fight Nazism, Putin’s forces have destroyed Jewish sites such as the Babyn Yar memorial, distorting history and contradicting the very anti-Semitism they claim to combat (Wertheimer 2022).
Conclusion
While the Russian government portrays itself as a defender of peace and stability, it simultaneously manufactures or exacerbates the crises it claims to prevent. As information warfare progresses, Russia encounters the challenge of sustaining the credibility of its narratives in a world that is now better at distinguishing truth from falsehood. Another irony of Russia’s information operations is that, despite its mastery of disinformation, it faces growing resistance, both from within and beyond its borders, as the truth becomes an increasingly powerful weapon in the digital age.
References
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Aleksejeva, Nika. 2023. “Narrative Warfare: How the Kremlin and Russian News Outlets Justified a War of Aggression against Ukraine.” Washington, D.C: Atlantic Council. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/narrative-warfare/.
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Khrystyna Pelchar, based in Morgantown, WV, US, is currently a Graduate Teaching Assistant at West Virginia University
