The NATO summit in Vilnius illustrated both old clichés and new inventions of Russian agitational propaganda (agitprop). However, in the new circumstances, it is increasingly difficult for the propaganda to build a coherent image of the old enemy.
On December 17, 2021, two months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry published draft agreements on the so-called "security guarantees" that Moscow demanded from NATO. Russia has asked the alliance to abandon any further expansion. Also, the old members of NATO had to withdraw their troops from the territories of the 14 new eastern members who joined the alliance after the collapse of the USSR. In addition, the entire alliance had to stop any military activity in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. In addition, there were demands on the US to withdraw nuclear weapons from territories outside the US, namely Germany, Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy. In addition, the US had to completely abandon its military infrastructure in places where Moscow wanted it. Moscow demonstratively handed over the documents that should have been ratified by all alliance members — only to Washington. In this way, Russia emphasized its reluctance to consider other NATO members as parties to the negotiations.
For refusing to accept the ultimatum, Russia promised "actions of a military and technical nature." Since Moscow presented its efforts in the relevant documents to avoid a world nuclear war, military measures could only apply to legally neutral countries not protected by the alliance’s umbrella. There were only three such countries in Eastern Europe: Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. These states were on the path to joining NATO and the European Union and lost part of their territories through Russia. In 2012-2013, the government in Georgia changed, and since then, the country has been trying not to conflict with Moscow. It is possible to reach Moldova only through Ukraine. So the ultimatum put forward by the USA became one of the reasons for the attack on Ukraine. This ultimatum will go down in history as a classic casus belli — an unjustified pretext for war.
Саsus belli, before the biggest European war since the Second World War, vividly visualized the image of the enemy for Moscow built up over the years. According to it, NATO is an organization with the help of which the US supposedly "subjugates" more and more nations to use their territories for aggression against Russia. Agitprop exalts Russia as great, unconquered, and equal with the United States state. Russia must oppose the unfair dominance of the USA throughout the world following the concept of its foreign policy.
"Russia is a victim of deception."
Modern Russia did not always consider NATO as an enemy. Shortly before his first presidential election in 2000, then-acting President Putin answered affirmatively to whether Russia could join the alliance: "Why not? I do not rule out such a possibility - if the interests of Russia are taken into account if it is a full-fledged partner." At that time, he needed the support of Western elites because of Russia's difficult economic situation and political competition within the country. The creation of the Russia-NATO Council in 2002 was considered an essential international achievement. In terms of status, this body is identical to the one formed by NATO with Ukraine in Vilnius in July of this year, and which Russian propaganda now calls a "minor formality".
But NATO was primarily founded to protect states with shared values. It is a union of mostly liberal democracies with the rule of law. This fact determined the future fate of Russia's relations with NATO in a fatal way. In the 2000s, the Russian government had gradually consolidated with the destruction of independent mass media and the opposition, and the large energy business had been taken under the control of the state. After the rapid rise in oil prices, Russia no longer needed Western loan money to rebuild its economy after the recession of the 1990s and the 1998 default. At the same time, the pro-Western rhetoric of officials in Moscow also receded into the past.
But the main thing is that the extraordinary extension of Putin's power required an emergency that could explain Putin's irreplaceability and the undesirability of political pluralism in Russia. In a 2007 Munich speech at the end of his second presidential term, Putin sharpens his rhetoric and paints a familiar image of NATO: American hegemony seeks NATO expansion to contain and further subjugate Russia. It is a propaganda tactic of oversimplifying the cause when simple answers to complex questions are given by neglecting the details. In such a simplified picture, Putin's government received a vital mission to oppose the enemies of Russia and branded all opponents of Putin as enemies of the state. This narrative was well received by the residents of Russia, accustomed since Soviet times to a black-and-white version of reality where the USSR opposes NATO.
At the same time, Putin and his propagandists increasingly began to tell how Western leaders "abandoned and deceived" the last leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. They claimed the verbal promise to Gorbachev not to expand NATO to the east in response to his consent to the unification of Germany. During the turbulent times of "perestroika", there were consultations on various informal platforms regarding the possible future security architecture in Europe. The German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and the US Secretary of State James Baker made similar proposals, which could become legally binding after agreement with all the alliance countries. But events then developed rapidly, so agreements' legal approval quickly lost meaning. Russian propaganda latched onto these informal conversations of perestroika times to consolidate the images of "credulous good-natured Russia" and "cynical NATO", whose deception it became a victim of.
In 2014, at a press conference dedicated to the annexation of Crimea, one of Russia's key propagandists, Dmitriy Kiselyov, quite literally showed Putin [with his hands] how he physically feels strangled by NATO. Russia's shared border with NATO countries at that time was less than 6% of the total length of Russia's land border, so the metaphor of a sting or touch from NATO would be more appropriate. At the time, Putin explained the annexation as a desire to prevent NATO expansion. The image of an evil enemy allows you to justify any of your crimes since they serve an allegedly just and righteous purpose. By then, the audience of propaganda did not care about the authenticity of the facts; it was just ready to cheer for its side. It is how Moscow manages to appeal to an uncertain verbal promise of 30 years ago by certain representatives of the alliance member states to justify aggression against Ukraine, which violated the UN charter, the Helsinki Agreements, the Budapest Memorandum, and at least five more interstate Ukrainian-Russian agreements.
Helping Ukraine is madness, but not helping is a weakness
After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NATO and its members outlined two partially contradictory strategies. "NATO has two fundamental tasks in response to Russia's aggression: providing support to Ukraine and preventing the escalation of the war," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during a speech in Davos. For example, German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke about the need for masterful balancing: "We want the military conflict in Ukraine not to turn into a conflict between NATO and Russia. The balance between the support of Ukraine and the desire to avoid escalation will be maintained in the future.
Such views of Ukraine's allies can be explained. On the one hand, Western leaders must convince their voters that they have done everything in their power to prevent even the possibility of a major catastrophic war coming to their homes. This short-term task of avoiding escalation arose due to the unprecedented aggression by a nuclear state and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which Scholz also notes: "For the first time in history, a nuclear state is waging an unprecedented imperialist war."
On the other hand, Western elites are well aware of the cost of destroying the international order in the long run. It is a world of endless resource-intensive, and perhaps even nuclear wars, in which international consolidation of efforts for the "green transition, " fighting against poverty, or space expansion is even more impossible. Therefore, it is necessary to bring the aggressor to justice or demonstrate the disadvantage of aggression. Here NATO countries resort to sanctions pressure on Russia and military support of Ukraine.
Every Ukrainian well feels this caution of NATO members: delays in the supply of weapons, Macron's fear of "humiliating Russia", and lack of an invitation to NATO. Moscow also uses it for its propaganda purposes. If NATO is guided by the first task of avoiding escalation in some of its actions, this is interpreted as the alliance’s weakness. For example, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the meeting in Vilnius was a "failed summit with slight chances of membership". The remarks of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson about the need to invite Ukraine into the alliance without additional conditions were met with insanity accusations by the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev: "He, a retired fool, should be admitted unconditionally to a psychiatric hospital. That's where he will be able to portray a cool guy who demands to start the third world war."
In the same way, the network of pro-Russian Telegram channels also responds to the support of NATO countries with weapons for Ukraine. It is either embarrassment due to insufficient and late supply or accusations of an insane attempt to confront a nuclear state. Therefore, just as NATO balances supporting Ukraine and preventing escalation, Russian agitational propaganda (agitprop) balances between attributing to the alliance’s aggressive insanity and weak-kneed incompetence.
Summit in Vilnius: devaluation, shift of emphasis, and lies
The NATO summit in Vilnius was held on July 11-12, 2023. Ukraine achieved the cancellation of one of the stages on the way to joining the alliance — the Action Plan on NATO membership. It will make it possible to take advantage of the window of opportunity for admission in the future. However, the final communiqué refers to the vague conditions that Ukraine must still fulfill to become a member. Probably, these words hide the unstable political will of the alliance’s members, which can become more active only if the threat of escalation due to the acceptance of Ukraine is reduced. In his tweet before the summit, Zelensky called such wording absurd, which, according to reports in the Western press, angered allies. Therefore, Ukraine did not receive the desired political invitation at the summit. However, there were public verbal assurances from NATO representatives regarding the readiness to accept Ukraine into the alliance after the end of the war with Russia.
Also, at the summit, the Ukraine-NATO Council was created instead of the Ukraine-NATO Commission, which increases the level of cooperation and allows Ukraine to be represented on an equal basis in the alliance's committees. In addition, NATO approved a plan for long-term security support for Ukraine. In parallel with the summit, the G7 countries signed a declaration with Ukraine on security guarantees, which will later be approved on a bilateral basis; in addition to the G7 countries (USA, Germany, Japan, France, Canada, Italy, Great Britain), the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden expressed their willingness to join the guarantees.
Russian agitprop tried to devalue both the summit and its results. Through devaluation, propagandists deliberately downplay the importance, effectiveness, or success of certain events, decisions, processes, etc. The summit itself was called a "fail-summit", "Zelensky's failure", or "failed summit". The cancellation of the MAP (Membership Action Plan) was devalued by the conditions for inviting Ukraine prescribed in the summit's final communique. After all, it turns out that Ukraine needs to do its homework. And although it won't be called the MAP, the essence of it almost doesn't change," notes one of the anonymous pro-Russian Telegram channels. "The West can tell us about Ukraine's progress for decades, but it is still not ready to join NATO," another Telegram channel emphasized in the context of the proposed conditions. The similarly created Ukraine-NATO Council was called a formality to appease Zelensky.
Propagandists tried to shift the emphasis from the actual results of the summit to the dispute between Zelensky and Western leaders regarding the wording in the final communique as if this dispute is sufficient proof of the summit’s failure for Ukraine. "Zelensky is disappointed with Western leaders' attitude to the Ukraine issue at the NATO summit. No one initiated negotiations with us, and the final declaration was not even shown before its publication; in fact, no one considers our interests," says one of the anonymous pro-Russian channels. The opinion was advanced about the readiness of the West to freeze the war on unfavorable terms for Ukraine: "Zelensky's public diplomacy began to annoy the West, which is moving towards its goal and which does not care how the conflict will be frozen in the fall."
Another shift of attention took place in the direction of the allegedly unsuccessful counteroffensive of the Armed Forces. Pro-Russian Telegram channels combined messages about the NATO Summit and the counteroffensive: "Yesterday's summit was a complete failure for Ukraine, which was clear to everyone against the background of the inability of the Armed Forces to break the Russian defense line in the south."
The thesis about the failure of the summit appeared many times in pro-Russian sources in entirely different contexts: the position of the head of the President’s Office, Yermak, will weaken due to the failed summit, mobilization intensified in Odesa after the failed summit, the failed summit will lower Zelensky's rating, the West will reduce funding to Ukraine after the failed counteroffensive and the summit, the Crimean bridge blown up for informational compensation for the failed summit, etc. Multiple repetitions are one of the key tactics of Russian propaganda. An idea (thesis, slogan) is repeated many times until it is accepted as truth. Here this tactic was combined with the tactic of vague assumption. When a propaganda thesis is less credible if stated directly, the corresponding message can be implied in different contexts.
Also, agitprop spread fakes, as if Zelensky lobbied at the summit to introduce the troops of Poland and Lithuania to Ukraine, that the West will cut funding to Ukraine, that citizens of NATO countries are against Ukraine joining the alliance, etc.
New challenges for agitprop
One of the critical events of the summit in Vilnius was Turkey's unblocking of Sweden's accession to the alliance. The propagandists had to simultaneously explain Sweden's unwanted approach to the alliance and why Turkey, considered friendly in Russia, changed its position.
Russian agitprop responded to Sweden's entry with several contradictory arguments, resembling the hero of an old anecdote about the damaged kettle. He [the hero], justifying himself to his friend, simultaneously claimed that 1) he never took his kettle; 2) he returned it whole and undamaged; 3) the kettle was already leaky when he took it from his friend. In the same way, the theses of pro-Russian channels can be grouped into three contradictory messages: 1) Sweden may not join NATO due to the blocking of Turkey and Hungary in the future; 2) Sweden, like Finland, has actually been in NATO for a long time, so their formal entry will not change anything; 3) Russia's response to Sweden's entry will be so powerful that it will make it worse for both Sweden and NATO.
Russia uses such contradictory interpretations to devalue and undermine the facts. Such arguments emotionally reconcile the audience to the truth, even if the propagandists' interpretations appear inconsistent. In this case, it is necessary to explain how the war, designed to stop the expansion of NATO, led to the opposite effect.
Turkey presented another difficulty to the Russian agitprop. Due to the lack of allies, the Russian media interpreted this country from the beginning of the invasion as neutral and even sympathetic to Russia. For this, they used the tension between Erdogan and the Western elites, Turkey's refusal to join the sanctions against Russia, and Ankara's purchase of weapons from Moscow. In addition, Erdogan's long tenure in power since 2003 brings him closer to Putin in this regard. Turkey's blocking of Sweden's entry into the alliance played into the hands of this image. Erdogan's Turkey was presented as an almost subject country ready to escape under the USA's dictates. At the same time, the fact of Turkey's military support for Ukraine and Turkey's full support for Ukraine's internationally recognized borders were ignored.
But right before the summit, Turkey unexpectedly released the Mariupol defense commanders, who had been under previously defined exchange agreements since last year. In Vilnius, it [Turkey] paved the way for Sweden to join the alliance. To justify it, propaganda resorted to reminders: Turkey is a member of NATO. Thus, in the case of some pro-Moscow steps, Ankara is interpreted as a subject player that throws off its yoke of dependence on Washington. However, in the case of consolidated efforts with the West, agitprop reminds us: nothing surprising, Turkey depends on Washington, which confirms its participation in the alliance.
Another important outcome of the summit was the first, since the Cold War, approval by NATO states of detailed plans for the Alliance defense in the event of an attack by Russia. Among other things, these plans envisage keeping 300,000 troops on high alert. Russian agitprop almost ignored it. The withdrawal of NATO forces was one of Moscow's goals before invading Ukraine. Therefore, the strengthening and expansion of NATO, which should have weakened due to Moscow's military campaign, is challenging to weave into the general flow of propaganda. For these reasons, the Russian information machine reacted sluggishly to the summit's events. The message about the predictability of the summit results was promoted, which is noted by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in its analytical report.
Regardless of how the reality changes, the Russian regime will cling to the image of the enemy NATO, formed by years of propaganda, to justify its war crimes.
