Mikhail Belyayev, exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
Since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine, which is an apple of discord between the Kremlin and the West, a wide-scale information war for domination of views in the global information space has started in the geopolitical confrontation. It's no secret that due to some factors of a historical, ideological, financial and technological character, the Anglo-Saxon media are still leaders in the world media space. Of course, they are covering world events in a way which is beneficial to the Western elites.
On the occasion of the presentation of Russia Today, a TV-channel which works for the Western audience, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that it was important to overcome “the information monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon mass media” in the world. So it is not surprising that the initial positions of Moscow were not so good in the current information struggle with the West. Due to the coordinated position of the Western media, Russia was blamed for the crash of the Boeing in Ukraine in the eyes of the Western community; it justified launching new sanctions against Moscow. I should say that the point is not a juridical component of the incident, but the qperception of the incident by the global audience. Mistakes of Russian information policy also played their role. Various views, sometimes fantastic ones, were voiced by the Russian media.
At the same time, Western journalists knew well who should be the target and followed a united course. Thus, they achieved propaganda success – even though there is no evidence that Russia is involved in the disaster, the Western societies are sure that Russia is guilty. However, Moscow has some strategic advantages in the information war against the West. The main advantage of the Kremlin is that, unlike Russian society, the Western bloc is not homogeneous politically or ideologically in the sphere of the Ukrainian crisis.
Moreover, the level of approval of the state policies of their countries toward Russia by the European population is not so high. As a result, we witness a funny situation, when the Federal Chancellor of Germany stands for a strict policy of sanctions against Moscow, leading German concerns try to resist it, while the Czech President publicly approves the policy of Vladimir Putin. Therefore, there is no stable and long-term consensus on the Russian issue in Europe, either at the level of separate countries or at the all-European level. A strategic target of the Russian foreign information policy should be Germany in such a context, which plays the main role in the poorly-cooperating European political theatre. There are several objective reasons for this.
Many ordinary Germans like Russia. This is connected with the feeling of historic guilt for the war against the USSR, in which millions of Soviet citizens were killed. Moreover, Russia is perceived as a cultural nation on a global level, just like the Germans. On the other hand, many German citizens traditionally follow left-wing political views; and so their attitude to Russia is friendly, as it is the successor to the Soviet Union. Die Linke, which is present in the Bundestag, is thought to be one of the stable supporters of Russia. Pacific and anti-American attitudes are popular in German society, especially in the context of the U.S. aggressive policy in the international arena since the early 2000s.
Espionage scandals about mass wiretapping of German citizens’ talks by American special services, including the political leadership, didn’t gain Washington support in Germany. Finally, anti-Americanism often leads to supporting countries which disagree with Washington’s policy, such as Russia. The interests of major and medium-sized German businesses in Russia have significantly suffered from sanctions; they play a big role in the formation of public opinion. Providing proof, let’s present the results of the public opinion polls held by the public television of Germany ARD this September. According to the data, 60% of respondents stand against stationing extra NATO units in the countries of Eastern Europe, 61% rejected the idea of Ukraine’s membership in the alliance. 50% of Germans stand against further sanctions against Russia, while 41% noted that they understand Moscow’s perception of Western steps a threat to Russia.
Regarding the conditions which establish a positive atmosphere for organization of our own information campaign, it is logical that recently Russia Today opened a German office. Stimme Russlands Radio is also working in Germany. The German-Russian Forum headed by Matthias Platzeck, Minister-President of Brandenburg from 2002 to 2013 and the former party chairman of the SPD, unites respected German politicians and experts who support a continuation of dialogue with Russia and have access to the German media. In his recent interview to Passauer Neue Presse, Platzeck urged the West to meet Russian halfway in the conflict, stating that the geopolitical withdrawal of Putin from power would not open the road to the Kremlin to a liberal leader, but to a radical nationalist. Platzeck was criticized by the conservative German media for his suggestion to accept Russia’s position in the Ukrainian crisis. But the number one story of the German media space was an interview by Vladimir Putin to German ARD on last Sunday. Many radical opponents of the Kremlin negatively reacted to providing prime time for the interview with the Russian leader. Boris Reitschuste, a critical journalist from Focus in Moscow, reports that “ARD’s flirting with Putin led to a final loss of trust in the TV channel.” Süddeutsche Zeitung criticizes the moderator of the interview for giving the Russian President an opportunity to present his view on the situation.
Die Welt points out that, by broadcasting Putin’s interview, ARD “has turned into a Kremlin channel.” However, despite all criticisms, leading German periodicals admit that the interview is an obvious propaganda success of the Russian President. Austrian Der Standard reports: “Putin laughs more rarely than Obama, as he knows the price of laughter. But when he laughs, it means something. His laugh seems to be more sincere than the laugh of any politician in the world. Obviously, it is not a strategy, but a personal feature which makes people well disposed toward him.” Probably this is the reason why opponents of Russian-German cooperation reacted negatively to the broadcast of Putin’s interview: Moscow’s position presented by Putin is viewed positively by the majority of ordinary German citizens who critically perceive materials by mainstream periodicals. For example, a few days ago the German audience and bloggers almost executed ARD for a biased report about “a lonely isolated Putin” at a dinner of the G20 summit.
A popular blogger Stefan Niggemeier found out that the German channel intentionally cut video materials in such a way that there was an illusion of the complete isolation of Vladimir Putin. ARD presented a shot in which a waiter obscured the President of Brazil Dilma Roudolff who was sitting next to Putin, and commented that Putin was left all alone at the dinner. The incident caused such a negative reaction in German society that the channel had to make a separate statement on the issue. There is a deep contradiction inside German society, and not only between the left-wing and the right-wing supporters. In this situation one of the most effective instruments of influence on German policy would be regularly working with German public opinion. It was Germany that refused to participate in the Iraqi campaign in 2004 due to public opinion, causing indignation in Washington.
