Russia has long been waging operations against democracies using all of the asymmetric tools ASD tracks—information manipulation, cyberattacks, malign finance, civil society subversion, and state economic coercion. The Kremlin’s geographic scope in conducting operations to undermine democracy continues to expand and its tactics continue to evolve. Find ASD’s work on Russia’s attempts to interfere in democracies on this page.
Kristine Berzina Analyzes Russia’s Objectives in the War in Ukraine on France 24
As #Russia points the finger at #NATO, the #UN's Antonio Guterres is in Moscow, asking for cooperation over humanitarian access to places like Mariupol. Sergei Lavrov says they are "ready to cooperate", but only a day before he warned that World War [...]
Hamilton Toplines: April 18–24, 2022
Russia Russian diplomats and state media last week posted more than 800 tweets that referenced “Mariupol” or “Azovstal,” which is the name of a steel plant in the city that has become a holdout for Ukrainian soldiers. Kremlin-linked accounts celebra [...]
Kristine Berzina on the EU’s Strategic Compass on Bridging the Atlantic
Vladimir Putin has brought war back to Europe, presenting transatlantic security with the massive challenge of supporting Ukraine and shoring up their own defenses. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shifted the conversation from whether EU countries [...]
French Election Dashboard Toplines: April 11–17, 2022
Highlights The Russian Embassy in Paris was the author of nine of the top ten tweets by French-language Russian accounts last week. As in previous weeks, its messaging focused on the war in Ukraine and ignored domestic French politics. Russian st [...]
Zack Cooper Unpacks the Sino-Russian Relationship on War on the Rocks
This is the national security podcast crossover of the century! Or at least of the year…ok maybe of Spring 2022! For this special episode of the “War on the Rocks” podcast, Doyle Hodges of “Horns of a Dilemma” hosts Zack Cooper, Melanie Marlowe, and [...]
Laura Thornton in The Hill: ‘Big Lies’ Proliferate in Russia, As They Do in the U.S.
The Kremlin’s well-oiled disinformation machinery has been activated to create narratives both externally and internally about Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine: “It isn’t a war at all;” “Russia is liberating Ukraine from drug-addled Nazis;” “NATO is th [...]
Hamilton Toplines: April 11–17, 2022
Russia Russian diplomats and state media last week mentioned “Mariupol” in nearly 500 tweets as they blamed Ukrainian Nazis and their Western backers for war crimes committed in the battered Ukrainian port city. Diplomatic accounts claimed that Ukra [...]
Lindsay Gorman Breaks Down the Russian Cyber Threat on CBS News
As the war in Ukraine drags on, concerns are now growing about potential cyberattacks from Russia in the U.S. Lindsay Gorman, an emerging technologies fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, joins CBS News' Jamie Yuccas to discuss America's c [...]
Joshua Kirschenbaum for PIIE: The EU Should Sanction Sberbank and Other Russian Banks as it Ponders Banning Russian Oil and Gas
The European Union (EU) had a vigorous early response to Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine, aimed at disrupting Russia's financial system and economy. Ending EU imports of Russian hydrocarbons would be a powerful next step and is an absolute pr [...]
Bret Schafer Evaluates Russian Disinformation Campaigns on EU Now
Bret Schafer of the Alliance for Securing Democracy joins the diplomatic mission of the European Union to the United States to talk about Russian disinformation campaigns, their role in shaping narratives about the war in Ukraine, and the challenges [...]
French Election Dashboard Toplines: April 4–10, 2022
Highlights The Russian Embassy in France attempted to deny and deflect after evidence of mass killings in Bucha shocked the French public last week. Top tweets by the embassy implied that the killings only surfaced days after Ukrainian troops took o [...]
Hamilton Toplines: April 4–10, 2022
Russia The push by Russian propagandists last week to distort information on the atrocities in Bucha marked the Kremlin’s most aggressive disinformation campaign of the war. Russian diplomats and state media tweeted the term “Bucha” more than 1,000 [...]