ANTI-RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN: A LOSE LOSE SITUATION

Western countries are cultivating a narrative of Russia being guilty of every negative event. This growing information warfare campaign against Russia in the West creates the impression that any negative event in the world is the work of Russian special services or Russian hackers.

Recently UK Prime Minister has mounted a stern attack on Russia e.g.

1. Russia’s actions threaten the international order;
2. Russia attempts to weaponize information as part of a sustained campaign of cyberespionage and disruption;
3. Russia interferes in elections and plants fake news stories to sow discord and undermine Western institutions;
4. Russia has fomented conflicts in eastern Ukraine
5. Russia has violated the airspace of European countries
6. Russia has hacked the Danish Ministry of Defense
7. Russia has hacked the German Parliament
8. Groups linked to Russia or the Kremlin itself have meddled in elections and referendums, including Brexit, Catalonia’s independence vote and the 2016 US presidential elections.

The disinformation campaign aims to blacken Russia as much as possible and belittle Russia’s role in the fight against international terrorism and solving other international problems.

The conditions to reverse the influence of multiple destructive factors are currently missing. The confrontational rhetoric toward Russia is only increasing. Russia is frequently accused by the EU and NATO of increasing tensions.

Behind this campaign against Russia is the West’s natural need to find a real adversary who might pose an existential threat. Naturally, in such an environment  it is politically beneficial to lambast and point fingers at Russia. By the same token, the Kremlin is the best candidate to blame for all Western woes. The choice is rational for a good reason: It fell on Russia because the Kremlin annexed Crimea,  and now Russia is reported to be conducting subversive activity against the Western world.

Summing up, the West needs to criticize Russia to find explanations for its geopolitical challenges and woes. An attempt is made to point the finger at Moscow because those people who rule the Western world would have to say that their own policy was the reason for their mistakes. The crisis facing the European Union has nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with the supranational union’s internal problems. Russia has no interest in weakening the EU and could not weaken it even if it wanted to. Unfortunately, the myth of devious Russian attempts to influence political processes in Western countries distorts many ordinary citizen’s perception of Russia.

The attempt to make Russia a pariah is the essence of folly. Not only is Russian cooperation valuable in addressing a number of mutual problems, including Islamic terrorism and defusing the North Korea crisis, but Russia remains an important player overall in the international system. Being on bad terms with—much less trying to isolate—a power that possesses several thousand nuclear warheads is criminally reckless. The current anti-Russia hysteria is not only extremely damaging to the West’s internal political health; it also could produce catastrophic international consequences.

The unconvincing Western arguments

The dominant Western narrative on Russia and the Russian “threat” is false.

1. The Russian threat to the west? You only have to look at a map of Europe and see how NATO has expanded eastwards since the demise of the Soviet Union to realize who is threatening whom.
2. Russia is a dangerous aggressor which needs to be stopped. By any objective assessment it’s the US and its allies who are the dangerous aggressors. Was it Russia which invaded Iraq in 2003, falsely claiming it had WMDs? Or Russia which bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights in 1999? Or Russia which attacked Libya in 2011, helping to destroy a country which had the highest living standards in Africa? Or is it Russia which has killed up to 200 children in Pakistan in drone strikes since 2004?
3. Russia is to blame for the Ukraine crisis. This claim is a nonsense too - it was the EU and US who caused the crisis, by sponsoring and supporting a regime change against a legitimate, democratically-elected government.
4. The Russian invasion of Ukraine. If Russian had invaded Ukraine, we would certainly know about it by now.
5. Russia‘s annexation of Crimea. Crimea would still be part of Ukraine today had it not been for the Western-sponsored coup which toppled the legal government of the country. Crimea was only handed to the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 and the majority Russian population of Crimea unsurprisingly voted to return to their motherland after the coup in which far-right anti-Russian extremists played a leading role.
6. Russia, threatened by NATO’s eastward expansion, is portrayed as a “threat.”