‘The West doesn’t buy Russian bullsh*t any more and the Ukrainians are highly motivated’

Scene one: The big bad wolf is sitting on a beanbag with a large pillow in his stomach, having just dispatched Grandma. Scene two: Red Riding Hood appears in a marketplace, buying cakes in Latvian.

It’s the end of a Latvian-language course, and a somewhat unlikely introduction to Media Hub Riga, where many Russian journalists have been working since last year.

The actor playing the wolf, Kirill Nabutov, once a sports commentator and more recently a documentary producer, left St Petersburg a week after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“I had put some anti-war messages on my YouTube channel at the start of the war, and I started to get threats like ‘we know where you live’,” he says. “My wife was very afraid, we made the decision in a split second, and 12 hours later we were gone.”

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Nabutov continues to broadcast his opinion pieces on the war from Riga, with his wife acting as cameraperson, and help from editing and social media staffers inside Russia. Some of these slots have attracted more than a million views on YouTube which, unlike Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, has not been banned by Moscow.

Several hundred Russian journalists are being supported in Riga by a coalition of NGOs. In the messages arranging my visit, it’s emphasised that I should not reveal the location of the co-working hub, or take photos that would identify the building.

Nadezhda Prusenkova of Novaya Gazeta came in the second wave, when the threat of her husband being mobilised overrode her desire to stay in Russia.

Novaya Gazeta (whose editor jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021) was the last independent media outlet in Russia.

“During our history we never collaborated with the state. We lost six colleagues, who were killed because of their journalism work. But I have a baby now, and I could have been detained because of my work. And I just can’t imagine my husband going to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians.”

Novaya Gazeta initially closed temporarily rather than submit to censorship. Later its print and online licences were revoked. However, it continues as a European edition, Novaya Gazeta Europe (www.novayagazeta.eu) and amplifies its work using platforms such as Telegram, which is extremely popular in Russia. Prusenkova was on duty around the clock as news of Wagner’s mutiny came through.

“In the last 20 years with Novaya Gazeta I can’t remember a day like it. I mean, it’s extraordinary that a group of 10,000 men were able to take over a large Russian city and nobody stopped them. It’s really bad for Putin.”

As the story unfolded it became harder to figure out what was going on. “For the first few hours we could reach Wagner sources; they were telling us they would follow orders from Prigozhin. Then they all went silent and we couldn’t get hold of them any more.”

For Prusenkova, one of the most noticeable features was the way Prigozhin was received in Rostov-on-Don even after the mutiny ended.

“It was like a soccer festival, people wanting to say hello to Wagner and get their photo taken with a tank. They seemed to be supporting him, but some of that is the charisma of power, of the gun. It’s a culture, a mentality.”

Across town there’s another new media production location, which also had to spring into action last weekend. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the US Congress, began life during the Cold War. In the 1990s its Russian service was invited to Moscow by Boris Yeltsin, but under Putin things got more and more difficult. In 2017 the channel was designated a “foreign agent”, and in subesquent years was hit by fines totalling over $17 million (€15.5 million). Its Moscow bureau moved to Latvia in 2022.

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Russian journalist Artyom Radygin was detained while filming the initial anti-war protests in Moscow, and left the country a few days later. “I already had a criminal case fabricated against me, and even now, police turn up at my parents’ home several times a week.”

Last weekend he and his colleagues had to grapple with a fast-moving Russian story from outside the country.

“People search for us when there are big upheavals in Russia, and this time our Russian-language videos had over 20 million views on YouTube.”

Despite the restrictions, Radygin and his colleagues managed to find freelancers to shoot video for them in Rostov-on-Don, and also carried out verification on user-generated content. Like everyone else, Radygin was surprised by how the story developed.

“Nobody expected it to finish like that. But it’s not over yet. There are a lot of blind spots in this story and my colleagues who carry out investigations are following up different angles, particularly regarding Wagner.”

One of their investigative reporters, Mark Krutov, has recently uncovered more details on Prigozhin’s fake passports, which were found last weekend during a search of Wagner’s offices.

RFE’s Russian and Ukrainian services have also co-operated on investigations into the abduction of Ukrainian children in Russian-occupied areas.

RFE/Radio Liberty has now committed to expanding its hub in Riga, which includes its 24/7 Russian-language TV and digital channel Current Time. The organisation is creating a new digital innovation laboratory to get around censorship.

“For example, we have an app that has an inbuilt VPN – virtual private network – so that an audience can access it in countries where the state is trying to limit internet access,” says Elmars Svekis, head of the Riga office. “This is how we aim to provide information behind what some refer to as the Iron Bubble, or the Digital Iron Curtain.”

On another street on the outskirts of Riga a different genre of communications professionals are at work, providing research and advice on strategic communications to Nato and partner countries, including Ukraine (Ireland, while a member of Partnership for Peace, is not involved). Part of their work involves researching Russian disinformation, as well as the impact of AI-generated content. They’ve also done experiments, by buying fake accounts through a contractor, that illustrate how social media companies are very ineffective at taking down fake content.

“We have not seen large-scale deep fake video content being put to use for propaganda purposes yet,” says deputy director of the Nato Stratcom Centre of Excellence, Eimar Linn. “There have been some examples but not too sophisticated. The technology is evolving very rapidly and I think tomorrow we will see it.”

The centre is looking at large language models from different perspectives; how malign actors can use it for their efforts, and how others can use them to defend themselves. However, Linn points out that when you are doing debunking, you are always lagging behind. Pre-bunking is much more effective, giving audiences the tools and expertise to recognise what might be coming their way, and to reduce the effect of propaganda or disinformation.

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Linn says Russian disinformation is not so far creating disunity in the West, but he points out that this cannot be taken for granted, and that Russian meddling in Africa, South East Asia, South America and elsewhere is a concern.

“The West doesn’t buy Russian bullsh*t any more, at least not to the degree Russia expected, and the Ukrainians are highly motivated. They know what they are doing and why. They are fortunate that Zelenskiy is who he is, that he understands the importance of communication. The worst nightmare for the Ukrainians right now would be to see Western unity dissolve or break down, and I’m quite sure that Russians are working to see that happen. That’s why it’s important that all Nato and EU countries have some sort of strategic communications capacity, based on democratic values. Because if countries don’t understand how information warfare works, and how to inoculate their own publics against malign influence operations, then at some point some may crack.”

For all those dealing with the different information challenges presented by the war, it’s an uphill struggle. Despite the best efforts of outlets like Radio Liberty, Novaya Gazeta and their colleagues at Meduza and other outlets, the vast bulk of the Russian population still gets its news from heavily censored state sources.

“It’s very hard to say this, but for now in Russia, propaganda still wins,” says Prusenkova of Novaya Gazeta. “I hope that situation changes. And I hope that Ukraine will win.”

The cracks inside Russia exposed during last weekend’s events may have done damage to Vladimir Putin, but it’s not clear yet how it will impact on the war in Ukraine. For Linn, there is no doubt that the information war is a war that democratic societies have to win.

“Russia has information warfare forces in all their special services, co-ordinated by the presidential administration. Which means that every day there are thousands of people in Russia going to work and getting paid to target mostly Western societies with different kinds of malign activities. Some people are only waking up to this, but it’s a fact and we have to deal with it in order not to lose.”