Many elections mean a lot of lies from the kremlin.
And the biggest liar in the kremlin is putin.
Spoiler: This is the first of two posts about disinformation. The first post will focus on the kremlin because that regime is systematically spewing lies to its own citizens and other citizens. The kremlin will increase its lies and spreading disinformation this year. The reason is that there are many elections this year. The largest two, in terms of electorates, are the elections to the EU parliament and to the US presidency. These are also the most important elections for support to Ukraine, and therefore also for the fascists in the kremlin.
As we all know, the kremlin lies. Of course it does. It is governed by a pathological liar, putin. He lies about everything.
putin is a liar.
Source: @Glasnostgone on X.
Elections → kremlin campaign of lies
There are two big elections left this year. The US presidential election and the elections to the European Parliament . The elections will trigger a lot of disinformation campaigns run by the kremlin, China and other regimes that frequently use disinformation and outright lies as weapons. The Mueller report documented the pervasive and systematic attempts by kremlin to influence the results of the US presidential election in 2016. The kremlin repeated its efforts during the 2020 US presidential election and will try again this year.
The kremlin have for years tried to infiltrate the EU institutions. Some MEPs are openly pro-kremlin as the Latvian MEP who was exposed last year. But the kremlin’s toolbox is larger than that. It included financing political parties, far-right organisations, and more. The European Parliament’s resolution 2024-02-08 condemned muscovy’s attempts to undermine European democracy:
Russia, often in breach of EU member state legislation, has found ways to provide significant funding to political parties, politicians, officials and movements in several democratic countries to interfere and gain leverage in their democratic processes. This includes giving bank loans, purchase and commercial agreements and facilitating financial activities.
Following the kremlin’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the kremlin unleashed a Tsunami of disinformaton on social media and other platforms. A lot of this was targeting the EU institutions. To tackle the kremlin’s future efforts, the EU adopted The Digital Services Act. It has however been unsuccessful in preventing the kremlin from spreding its lies as this study which evaluated Kremlin disinformation campaigns across all major platforms in more than 10 European languages over a period of almost a year. evalueated showed.
The conclusions are clear. We find that the Kremlin’s ongoing disinformation campaign not only forms an integral part of Russia’s military agenda, but also causes risks to public security, fundamental rights and electoral processes inside the European Union. Moreover, we observe that disinformation is only one weapon in the Kremlin’s information warfare arsenal. The Kremlin’s operations on online platforms often build on other inflammatory or deceptive content, and a range of malign behaviours designed to silence opponents and suppress the truth about the war in Ukraine.
The kremlin are the biggest liars in Europe.
This is not my first post about disinformation. And, as in this and this post about desinformation, I will use data from Varieties of Democracy. It covers all countries in teh world, but since we have elections to the European Parliament this year, I focus on Europe to begin with.
Doing that, I of course find that the kremlin are the most frequent liars on the continent. That concerns lying to its own citizens as well as lying to citizens in other countries about their government and policies. The indicators from V-Dem ranges from 0 to 4 where 0 indicates systematically lying and 4 indicates that the countries’ governments have other things to do than lie.
Another observation is that the government in one of the autocratic countries lies considerably less than other autocratic governments. That is Ukraine. Ukraine is reclassified as autocratic since it has introduced martial law following muscovy’s fullscale war. Countries above the diagonal disseminate more disinformation targeting foreign citizens than its own.
The kremlin lies most in Europe.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The indicators range from 0 to 4. For lying to foreigners or its own citizens, a 0 indicates that the regime lies extremely often about all key political issues, a value of 1 that it often lies, a value of 2 that it lies about half the time, a value of 3 that it lies rarely, and a value of 4 that it never or almost never lies. For lying to its own citizens, a value of 0 indicates that the regime lies extremely often about all key political issues.
Yet another observation from the graph above, is that Belarus, Serbia, and Hungary also are notorious liars, and governed by autocratic regimes. And they’re more sympathetic to putin than other governments.
The kremlin are the biggest liars in the world.
But even though the kremlin devotes a lot of effort and money to target EU and US citizens with lies, it lies even more to its own people. In fact, no other country in the world lies so much and so frequently to its own citizens as muscovy! That makes him the biggest liar in the world because most lies are targeting domestic audiences.
The kremlin lies most of all countries in the world to its own citizens
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The indicators range from 0 to 4. For lying to foreigners or its own citizens, a 0 indicates that the regime lies extremely often about all key political issues, a value of 1 that it often lies, a value of 2 that it lies about half the time, a value of 3 that it lies rarely, and a value of 4 that it never or almost never lies. For lying to its own citizens, a value of 0 indicates that the regime lies extremely often about all key political issues.
The kremlin has some favourite targets which they lie about more frequently than others. USA is of course a priority, but also countries that are closer to muscovy. Somewhat surprisingly, Ukraine is not the most lied about country among muscovy’s neighbours. It is Latvia. Latvia is constantly targeted by disinformation from foreign countries. muscovites accounted for almost a quarter of the Latvian population in 2023. The data does separate targets of kremlin disinformation from each other. But by combining the data for kremlin disinformation targeting foreign countries and countries subject to disinformation from foreign countries, provides interesting graphs. The increase in lies about and to Ukraine in the beginning of the war in 2014 is clearly visible in the graph.
The kremlin lies about Latvia and Ukraine.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: See above.
Including Estonia in the graph shows a very significant change in 2007 when the kremlin instigated public riots in Estonia, and launched a cyber attack against her following the removement of a statue portraying an occupying Soviet soldier in Tallinn. The kremlin regularly accuses Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian governments for abusing the civil rights of ethnic muscovites. This is of course nonsense. In fact, as I pointed out here,
muscovites outside of muscocy lead better lives than those trapped inside.
Disinformation and outright lies are key parts of the kremlin toolbox. They are systematically used to serve the kremlin’s purposes. Therefore, a lot of money is allocated for disinformation in the budget. putin himself is of course very much involved in the disinformation war.
putin is a liar.
That is a fact. He’s been lying to ordinary muscovites for years. But it is worse now. In order to justify his genocidal war against Ukraine, putin has to make them believe a lot of nonsense. There is no need to repeat those stupid lies, we know them too well by now. But lies are also needed to transform the country into a fascist state. His lies and propagande follow the classical fascist narrative. muscovy has now a hypernationalist, imperialist and supremacist ideology that glorifies muscovy as a superior civilisaton with traditional values and a higher culture. putin’s pathetic ramblings in his “historical essays” about Ukraine and muscovy are are part of the fascist narrative built on lies.
And recently, putin lied about the ISIS terrorist attack which he could have prevented if he had listened to the warnings from the US intelligence services. His pathetic and pathological lies aimed at discrediting Ukraine. And he’s been lying ever since Yeltsin made him president as Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba makes clear.
Source: @DmytroKuleba on X
Learn more about the kremlin’s war against the truth.
The elections to the European parliament take place in 6-9 June. Social media and other channels will be full of disinformation and lies from the kremlin. Therefore, it might be a good idea to find out more about it and what is done to fight it. Here are some links that may be useful.
EU. The fight against pro-Kremlin disinformation
Canada. Russia’s use of disinformation and information manipulation.