By EUvsDisinfo
Much of the pro-Kremlin information manipulation and disinformation is underpinned by the exploitation of people’s fears and anxieties. There is a topic that can induce paralysing anxiety and blood-curdling fears like nothing else. This is the threat of nuclear annihilation. We continue our series exposing pro-Kremlin information manipulation tactics over the last 1 000 and 4 000 days by recapping how Russia has used its nuclear sabre-rattling and feigned concern about nuclear safety to draw faux red lines and try to dissuade the world from supporting Ukraine.
Smearing Ukraine and thinly veiled threats to the West
The Kremlin’s increasing reliance on threatening nuclear rhetoric is not an accident. For Moscow, pushing constant disinformation about nuclear threats and nuclear safety has been a tool to justify Russia’s aggression or to discredit Ukraine, or ideally, both.
Most commonly, pro-Kremlin outlets sought to vilify Ukraine by spreading disinformation about Ukraine allegedly planning to develop nuclear weapons; accusing Ukraine of blackmailing its supporters with nuclear threats, engaging in nuclear terrorism, or preparing ‘nuclear provocations’; accusing the West of allegedly supplying nuclear weapons to Ukraine because it wants the ‘conflict to go nuclear’; and blaming the West for playing ‘nuclear chicken’.
Yet, hidden behind Russian nuclear discourse is always a thinly veiled threat. The Kremlin desperately wants to communicate ‘fear us, we have nukes’ by either openly stating such claims or alluding to it more discretely, for example when delivering disinformation-laden statements to the United Nations.
Ironically, pro-Kremlin outlets at the same time deny that Russia is threatening anyone with nuclear weapons.
Feigned concern about nuclear safety
Throughout the war, the pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem also spread constant accusations of Ukraine shelling the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant while feigning concern about a potential nuclear disaster or increasing nuclear risks due to Ukraine’s alleged ‘irresponsibility’. There were also even more bizarre claims that Russia is trying to prevent a nuclear war over Ukraine or false accusations that Ukraine stores weapons in nuclear power plants.
The Kremlin aired similar feigned concern about nuclear safety when Ukrainian troops crossed the border and entered Russia’s Kursk region. As on cue, the Kremlin unspooled the same lies as previously about Zaporizhzhia – Ukraine wants to attack the nuclear power plant in Kursk; will use it to create dirty bombs; and the West is behind planned nuclear provocations in Kursk.
This is a clear tactic to spread fear and unease about nuclear security. In other words, raising public anxiety about nuclear issues without explicitly threatening the use of nuclear weapons.
Drawing faux red lines
The nuclear rhetoric has been instrumental in reinforcing the pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative that Russia cannot be defeated because it is a nuclear-armed state. Moscow has followed nearly every announcement of Western support to Ukraine with nuclear sabre-rattling to try to reinforce the faux red lines the Kremlin has sought to conjure in order to dissuade countries form supporting Ukraine.
Using nuclear rhetoric in the context of ‘red lines’ also buttresses the main pro-Kremlin disinformation tropes – the West is the aggressor, Russia only wants peace, and the Russian army cannot be defeated.
In all of the Kremlin’s nuclear rhetoric, one topic usually remains absent – the recognition that Ukraine willingly gave up its nuclear arsenal after the collapse of the USSR, in exchange for security guarantees provided by Russia, the United Kingdom and the US. But perhaps the reason the Kremlin avoids talking about the Budapest Memorandum is because it would clearly show that Russia broke the promise to recognise Ukraine’s sovereignty and respect its territorial integrity.
Don’t be deceived.
By EUvsDisinfo
