It has been a torrent of revelations originating almost always in the intelligence services, and which range from Russian troop movements to military deployments along the border with Ukraine, possible plans to replace the current Europeanist Ukrainian government with a pro-Russian one, and even possible false flag attacks carried out by Russian elements to justify a attack or invasion. Since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the Biden Administration It has been using, in an unusually aggressive manner and in close coordination with the United Kingdom, the information it handled, making it available to public opinion very quickly and informing in advance of possible Kremlin plans in the neighboring country. Although the effects of this information policy have yet to be studied, many experts believe that, at a minimum, it is preventing the Russian authorities from deploying their usual disinformation techniques, in addition to putting Moscow on the defensive and sowing confusion in its ranks.
“We have learned a lot, especially since 2014, regarding how Russia uses information space as part of its security and military apparatus,” he says. Emily J. Horne, spokesperson for the National Security Council. “And we’ve learned how to prevent some (of this information) from having an impact in this space,” she continues. This is a winning strategy, at least in the short term, as he says to The country Angela Stent, intelligence agent for Asia and Eurasia between 2004 and 2006. “If there is an incursion, the US can say that it has already warned regarding it; if there isn’t, you can say you prevented it by uncovering their plans,” she continues.
Revealing the plans that the Kremlin might be considering in the neighboring state also has the additional effect of demoralize and disconcert a rival, say the experts: they imply that they are ahead and that they have a high degree of penetration in a country like Russia, in which the secret services constitute one of the most important pillars of the State. They are a way for the Biden Administration to demonstrate to the Russians that Washington “knows what they are doing”, while “compromising their operations”, James C Johnson, a former US secretary of homeland security, has declared to The New York Times.
Something that, moreover, seems to be materializing in close coordination with the UK, with whose intelligence services the US maintains close cooperation. “We have information indicating that the Russian government plans to install a pro-Russian leader in Kiev,” he denounced at the end of January. British Foreign Secretary Lis Trusseven naming the character who would take charge of the country: Yevhén Murayevleader of a small pro-Russian political party that does not even have parliamentary representation.
lose the information war
Moscow’s response has been to accuse Washington and London of disinformation, although that is true, implying with their behavior that for the first time in this upsurge in geopolitical tensions with the West, they have lost the initiative in the information war and the only thing you can do is react. In a tone of somewhat forced triumphalism, the Foreign spokeswoman, Maria Zajárovadescribed the announcement, still to be confirmed, of the beginning of the withdrawal of the Russian troops deployed along the border with Ukraine, as “the day when Western propaganda failed, humiliated and destroyed without having fired a single shot.”
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The Biden’s information policy has generated acrimonious debate in the US. Many voices see reminiscences of what happened almost two decades ago in the iraq war preludes, in which similar revelations that were proven to be false led the country to start a war whose wounds have not even healed yet. However, many voices of experts reply that in this case the Russian military deployments are being corroborated by images transmitted by satellites, in addition to recalling that in this case it is regarding preventing a war and not arguing a the spy is clear.
The main criticism, however, comes not from the media, but from the State itself. These stark revelations may have the effect boomerang to expose US sources of information in the Russian state, allowing Moscow to eventually blind them and further complicate access to the Kremlin’s true intentions in the future. “The great danger is that we run the risk of revealing sources and methods,” Glenn S. Gerstell, former General Counsel at the National Security Agency, also told the New York newspaper.