Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 28 – Lies are one
thing; disinformation quite another, as the late Nathalie Grant warned decades
ago. The first can muddy the waters but are typically quickly exposed by anyone
who examines them. They have a far greater and long lasting influence because
the lies are wrapped in facts.
Indeed, one could say that the flood
of lies is nothing but a means to make disinformation more effective because
those who recognize these falsehoods may deceive themselves when it comes to
more carefully constructed narratives of disinformation which are accepted
because so many parts of them are true.
Consequently, identifying such
disinformation and carefully sifting the lies it contains that are surrounded
by facts is a far more important but also far more difficult task than simply
unmasking lies. The latter may make those who do it feel better; but only the
former can protest us against those who deploy disinformation skillfully.
That makes a new article by US-based
Russian journalist Kseniya Kirillova especially important. Indeed, in many
ways, it is a model of the challenge the world faces in dealing with Russian
disinformation and the care that needs to be exercised in exposing and thus
countering it (ru.krymr.com/a/28334404.html).
Last week, she
notes, the Ukrainian media was filled with stories that Ukrainian defense
plants were selling military equipment to Russia. The reports cited the conclusions of the
distinguished Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and even
appeared plausible given that Ukrainian plants had supplied Russian ones before
2014.
Such stories have two target audiences:
Ukrainians who might conclude that their elites were betraying them and their
country out of greed, and Europeans who might conclude that there was no reason
to defend Ukraine or maintain sanctions on Russia for its invasion if the
Ukrainians weren’t willing to prevent such sales.
But the stories, however plausible
and apparently fact-based they appeared to be, were entirely false. Indeed, as
experts at the Kyiv Center for Research on the Army, Conversion and Disarmament
point out, those behind this disinformation did not report accurately even
about what SIPRI did say.
Mikhail Samus, deputy head of the center,
notes that “it is important to understand that SIPRI did not publish precisely the
information” these stories contained. Instead, the stories were based on its
own collective summaries of materials rather than on the actual evidence the
Stockholm institute gathered.
For journalists who choose to rely
on the summaries rather than on the report itself, the stories placed in the
Ukrainian media appear accurate, whereas those who examine the SIPRI study will
see that such conclusions are not only inaccurate but designed to hide what
SIPRI did highlight in its latest report: Russian arms shipments to its forces
in the Donbass and Crimea.
And one Ukrainian journalist,
Aleksandr Demchenko, adds that the way in which SIPRI presented the data it has
on Ukrainian arms sales further confused the situation. The Swedish center
based its findings not on data from the last year but rather for a five-year-period,
from 2012 to 2016, which includes a time when Ukrainian firms did supply
Russian ones.
Moscow is only too pleased to use
such “inaccuracies” to discredit Ukraine in Europe and to hide its own illegal
supply of weapons to its own forces and clients in the Donbass and to
Russian-occupied Crimea. By pushing the inaccurate story of Ukrainian arms
sales at the same time and with the same sources, Moscow at least in part has
achieved its goals.
Exposing this kind of thing, as
Kirillova has done here, is far more difficult and time-consuming that simply
pointing to lies, but it is also far more important. And as she notes, “this
isn’t the first such case” since Russia invaded Ukraine; and it certainly won’t
be the last either there or elsewhere.
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