By EUvsDisinfo
With COP 29 approaching, Pro-Kremlin outlets’ climate coverage reveals a calculated strategy: acknowledge climate change while using it as a tool to attack Western policies.
As Azerbaijan prepares to host the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 29), the Russian state-controlled and other pro-Kremlin outlets’ coverage of climate issues continues to follow a familiar pattern. While mainstream Russian outlets generally acknowledge climate change, they increasingly weaponise environmental discussions to undermine Western credibility and push anti-EU narratives.
The evolution of Russian climate narratives
Previously on EUvsDisinfo, we observed that while the larger Russian state outlets and commentators now mostly avoid dismissing the scientific consensus behind climate change, they have weaponised the topic to attack Western countries. For example, they have alleged that EU governments are hypocritical in addressing the issue while opportunistically pushing claims that only Russian gas imports, and not renewable energies, can help solve the problem.
Throughout last year, we have only seen that tendency strengthen, depending on the audience. Russian state-controlled outlets creating content in Spanish, for example, usually target left-leaning viewers in Latin America and Spain. However, these outlets also push contradictory right-wing commentary on climate issues likely focussed on reaching conservative Spanish-speakers in the United States.
Sure enough, these outlets tend to factually cover the topic and report measures to fight climate change, such as this story reporting on Denmark’s move to tax greenhouse gases emitted by cows. A couple of articles in more marginal outlets even depicted climate change as potentially beneficial to Russia. The idea is that as the world warms, the country’s now-frigid steppes would supposedly become a lush breadbasket for the world.
When climate denial meets a conspiracy theory
Nevertheless, narratives denying climate change still creep into pro-Kremlin discourse, even if Kremlin disinformation managers keep them confined to the more marginal outlets. Not surprisingly, those narratives usually have the same goal: to portray Western and, in particular, EU governments as using climate change as a pretext to pursue sinister or nonsensical agendas.
In this way, climate change scepticism among pro-Kremlin commentators isn’t really about climate change. It is about finding another way to portray the EU and its leaders as crazy or incompetent.
The attack playbook
A common tactic is to take issues reported on elsewhere with apparent neutrality and mock them openly on social media platforms or in some more marginal outlets. Remember the story about cows? One article mocked the measure, using it as an excuse to attack European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and to dismiss the ‘green agenda’ as a ‘quasi-religious cult’.
Other examples abound of commentators using climate change to attack alleged Western elites. An article in the English-language edition of Pravda network alleged that ‘Western politicians and activists keep scaring people with catastrophic evidence of climate change without any proof’. Yet another piece accused the BBC of promoting the ‘myth’ of the impact of using fossil fuels. The Spanish-language edition of Pravda – often the Kremlin’s go-to outlet for weird accusations, targeted disinformation campaigns, and tinfoil hat commentary – portrayed measures to fight climate change as ‘ideological madness’. And a piece in Italian accused EU authorities in Brussels of criminalising anyone who does not agree with the EU’s ‘green madness’.
In a few instances, things got even more outlandish. A marginal, conspiracist outlet casually alleged that the Rockefellers, the rich and historically prominent American family, somehow invented climate change and is directing and financing organisations purporting to fight it. Another dodgy-looking, fly-by-night platform claimed that ‘global elites’ are using environmental protection, including anti-climate-change measures, as a pretext for authoritarian governance.
From bank trackers to weather wonder weapons
Even the British bank NatWest did not escape the pro-Kremlin paranoid gaze. The bank has set up a harmless ‘carbon footprint tracker’ to help clients reduce their contribution to climate change. But for one conspiracy theorist, the existence of this well-intentioned and voluntary tool can only mean that NatWest is ‘exploiting climate change narratives’ to create a ‘new world order’ and to impose ‘centralised control over individual lifestyles’.
Finally, last in order and least in sense, a pro-Kremlin outlet in Ukraine blamed US climate weapons developed at a centre in Alaska for dangerous ‘climate changes’. This Alaskan research station has been busy. It was also purportedly responsible for Hurricane Milton.
Climate as a tool to attack the West
The common and continuing theme is to use climate change denial more as a tool than a narrative. The real narrative is to portray the EU, EU countries, Western countries more broadly, or shadowy ‘elites’ of different fantastical varieties as sinister forces trying to somehow undermine the targeted audience.
As we have often seen, pro-Kremlin disinformation is opportunistic and flexible. This tool is not used that often, at least compared to stories that accept, at least superficially, the reality of climate change. But if the tool becomes useful, Kremlin propaganda-pushers would not hesitate to push it more widely.
By EUvsDisinfo
