Unpacking the Kremlin's Mind War: Understanding Russian Cognitive Warfare

Understanding cognitive warfare is a national security requirement for nations like the United States. It's a form of warfare that focuses on influencing an opponent's reasoning, decisions, and ultimately, actions to secure strategic objectives, often with less military effort than would otherwise be required. As we explored in our podcast, "The Kremlin's Mind War: Unpacking Russian Cognitive Warfare," Russia is a key player in this space, using cognitive warfare to shape global decision-making, obfuscate its objectives, and preserve its regime. This isn't just about misinformation; it's about making adversaries and its own population see the world as Moscow wishes them to, delving into its historical roots, intent, and far-reaching scope.

What is Russian Cognitive Warfare?

Russian cognitive warfare is much more than misinformation or disinformation. It represents Russia’s way of war, governance, and occupation. Here's what sets it apart:

• Influencing Decisions and Actions: Cognitive warfare aims to influence an opponent's reasoning, decisions, and ultimately, actions, to achieve strategic objectives without direct fighting or with reduced military effort.
• Beyond Tactical Disinformation: While it uses an array of tools, including selective and partial truth in messaging, it's distinguished by its focus on achieving aims by influencing an opponent’s perceptions of the world and decision-making rather than by direct use of force. Its goals, means, and effects are far greater than mere tactical disinformation.
• Born Out of Need: Russia uses cognitive warfare to close gaps between its ambitious strategic goals and its actual means. Russia is not inherently weak, but it is weak relative to its expansive objectives. The main purpose is to generate a perception of reality that allows Russia to gain more in the real world than it could through its physical capabilities and at a lower cost.
• Targets Reasoning and Will: The primary objective of Russian cognitive warfare is to shape adversaries’ decision-making and erode their will to act. The Kremlin wants its opponents to do less so that Moscow can achieve more of its goals, ideally creating a world that simply accepts Russian premises and actions without resistance.
• Beyond Media: Russia utilizes all platforms that transmit narratives, including traditional media, conferences, international frameworks, diplomatic channels, and individuals, as tools for its cognitive warfare.
• Supported by Physical Activities: Russian cognitive warfare is not purely informational. It is supported by physical actions, which include: military exercises, sabotage, cyber-attacks, combat operations, and exaggerations of Russia’s military capabilities and battlefield progress. For instance, Russia flaunts its nuclear capabilities to deter Western aid to Ukraine, using this nuclear blackmail as a cognitive tool to shape decision-making rather than as an immediate threat of use.
• Cross-Theater and Multigenerational: Russian information operations span decades and geographies. Their effects may appear years after the initial launch, with narratives selectively activated and deactivated over time to adapt to the Kremlin’s evolving requirements.

Historical Context: Deep Roots in Soviet "Reflexive Control"

Russia's cognitive warfare capabilities long predate Putin’s rule, but he has extensively relied on this capability for both governance and waging wars.

• Soviet Origins: Its roots lie in the Soviet concept of "reflexive control," defined in 1967 as transferring the bases for decision-making from one opponent to another. Essentially, Russia tries to get opponents to accept Russian premises and then reason from those premises to decisions that favor Russia. A stark example is Putin's false assertion in 2021 that Ukraine's NATO accession posed an imminent danger, which was then used to justify the full-scale invasion.
• Continuity Post-Soviet Collapse: Unlike Russia's conventional military capabilities, its cognitive warfare capabilities did not degrade after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. Military discourse on reflexive control continued, and intelligence services sustained operations abroad. This continuity is evident in Russia's recycling of Soviet messaging strategies, such as flaunting conventional power (like nuclear weapons) and expanding the reach of state news agencies like TASS.
• Putin's Intensification: Putin has prioritized developing the Kremlin’s ability to shape perceptions globally and domestically since his presidency began. He adopted an Information Security Doctrine in 2000 emphasizing defense against psychological influence. Efforts intensified after "color revolutions" in former Soviet states, which Putin perceived as threats to his regime and Russia's goal to control those states. This led to long-term information operations, such as investing in separatist narratives in Ukraine as early as 2004 which later underpinned the 2014 hybrid operations and 2022 invasion.
• Integration into Military Doctrine: After its 2014 and 2015 military campaigns in Ukraine and Syria, Russia’s national security paradigm further prioritized cognitive warfare, integrating information warfare capabilities into its doctrine. Some Russian military writers even argued that all activities, including kinetic operations, must be aimed at achieving informational effects.
• Global Media Expansion: The Kremlin has actively expanded its media conglomerate globally since 2016, with RT, TASS, and Sputnik seeking partnerships with foreign media and investing in training Russia-favorable journalists.

The Kremlin's Intent: Generating an Alternative Reality

The Kremlin's focus on cognitive warfare stems from both necessity and perceived opportunity. Russia is not weak overall, but it is weak relative to its strategic goals.

• Strategic Aims: Russia's strategic aims have remained largely consistent under Putin: preserving his regime; reestablishing Russia as a great power (including subjugating Ukraine and Belarus); regaining control over former Soviet states; and establishing a world order that diminishes US influence, breaks NATO unity, and grants Russia decisive influence.
• Lack of Conventional Means: Russia has lacked the conventional means to achieve these goals. Its military failures in Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 exposed the limits of its hard power. Russia is often neither strong enough to impose its will nor appealing enough to be a partner of choice. For example, it would take Russia over 100 years to capture the remaining 80% of Ukraine at its current rate of advance.
• Purpose of Cognitive Warfare: The ultimate purpose of the Kremlin’s cognitive warfare is to generate an alternative reality that allows Russia to win in the real world. Most efforts aim to decrease the will and capability of those resisting Russia and lower the barrier for Russia to achieve its aims. This involves three key cognitive efforts:
  1. Making the world accept Russia’s premises: For example, asserting that Russia’s victory in Ukraine is inevitable, that Russia is entitled to areas it doesn't control, or that Russia deserves its desired sphere of influence.
  2. Portraying Russia as righteous: This involves dismissing and concealing Russian atrocities, such as claiming the Bucha massacre was "staged" or accusing Ukraine of destroying the Kakhovka Dam. The intent is to limit international resistance to Russian actions.
  3. Concealing Russia’s and Putin’s weaknesses while discrediting targets: The Kremlin strives to portray Putin as an effective war leader despite his failures and downplays Russian setbacks while persistently discrediting countries like Ukraine as "unworthy of international support". Concealing Putin's weakness is crucial for regime stability.
• Governance and Occupation: The ability to control the narrative is an increasingly existential requirement for Putin's regime's stability. Domestically, cognitive warfare helps generate resources for military efforts abroad, indoctrinating children and conditioning society for sacrifice. In occupied territories, immediate information control is established, such as airing Russian propaganda on local TV.
• Perceived Opportunity: Cognitive warfare is seen as an opportunity because it can be waged with inexpensive means (e.g., social media), failures are less costly and noticeable, and modern technology facilitates influencing diverse audiences at once, often with plausible deniability. It thrives in confusing information environments, aiming to paralyze decision-making by making it too hard to know the truth or too costly to resist.

The Far-Reaching Scope of Russian Cognitive Warfare

Russian information operations are integral elements of its cognitive warfare, operating at all levels of conflict: tactical, operational, and strategic.

• Tactical-Level Information Operations: These focus on individual events or narratives, like a pro-Russian TikTok video or claims of a Ukrainian official being a drug addict. They aim to confuse, inject new narratives, and test the information space.
• Operational-Level Information Campaigns: Tactical operations are orchestrated into campaigns at the operational level, targeting specific groups or regions over time. For example, a campaign targeting the Baltic states might include narratives about redrawing maritime borders, issuing Russian citizenships, and accusing governments of Nazism, with the objective of setting long-term conditions for future military action.
• Strategic-Level Information Operations: This is the most critical and hardest level to grasp. Strategic narratives target the opponent’s will and reasoning by establishing premises that lead targets to conclusions favoring Russia, often believing they are acting in their own interests. The Kremlin isn't arguing; it's trying to enforce its "manufactured portrayal of reality as the basis for our own discussions". A key strategic target is the opponent's will to act, aiming to condition the West to choose inaction regarding Russia. This includes trying to persuade the US that Russia's victory in Ukraine is inevitable or that its intervention would not be in US interests.
• Multi-Generational and Cross-Theater Operations: These efforts span decades and geographies, using repetition to desensitize opponents and hide Russian cognitive warfare in plain sight. Examples include:
  • Ukraine: Proliferating separatist narratives and structures in Eastern Ukraine as early as 2004, enabling the 2014 hybrid operation.
  • The Baltics: Setting information conditions for hybrid operations since the 1990s, using narratives of "historic unity" and "protecting Russian compatriots," and questioning the legality of their independence to justify potential future military action.
  • Finland: Evoking narratives about historic ties to Russia and accusing the West of undermining Finnish-Russian relations, particularly before its NATO accession.
  • "Bio-Labs" Narrative: A multi-generational and cross-theater campaign falsely accusing the US of producing biological weapons in former Soviet countries, recycled from a Soviet-era accusation about HIV/AIDS. This narrative supports Russia's strategic objective of regaining control over former Soviet states and discrediting the US globally.
• Beyond Traditional Information Means: Russia employs a wide array of non-traditional informational tools:
  • Global Media Infiltration: State media actively seeks cooperation and content-sharing agreements with foreign outlets to distribute narratives through seemingly independent third parties.
  • Cultivating Influencers: Russia cultivates a global cadre of Russia-friendly journalists and politicians, with operations uncovered paying European politicians to advance Russian narratives.
  • International Platforms: Russia uses international bodies like the UN and events like Russia-Africa summits to deflect criticism, introduce false narratives, and portray itself as a leader of an anti-Western bloc.
  • "Cognitive Warfighters": Individuals with messaging capabilities and constituencies are deployed. Examples include Konstantin Malofeev, an Orthodox nationalist who conditions Russian nationalists to support the war, and Kirill Dmitriev, who leverages his Western education to advocate for Russian interests.
  • Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP): A long-standing tool for hybrid operations, spreading pro-war narratives and framing countries like Ukraine as religiously intolerant.
  • Rossotrudnichestvo: A federal agency responsible for foreign aid and cultural efforts, used to expand global influence, orchestrate pro-Russian rallies, and establish the legal status of "compatriots abroad".
  • State-Owned Enterprises: Companies like Rosatom use information tactics to legitimize Russian occupation (e.g., Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant) and promote Russian narratives in regions like Africa.

Effects and Vulnerabilities

While effective in achieving gains beyond conventional forces, Russian cognitive warfare is not without its weaknesses.

• Effects: It has shaped Western decisions, resulting in lost opportunities for Ukraine and battlefield advantages for Russia. For instance, nuclear escalation narratives delayed Western provision of crucial military equipment to Ukraine.
• Vulnerabilities:
  • Prone to Failure: Information operations can fail due to human error, misunderstanding local culture, or timely countermeasures. For example, a Russian ambassador's threat to Sweden over NATO membership backfired, increasing Swedish support for integration.
  • Overreliance: The Kremlin's overreliance on cognitive warfare is a significant vulnerability. Its strategy in Ukraine hinges on convincing the West that the war is unwinnable; if this premise is rejected, Russia loses its advantage.
  • Vulnerable to Reality: Putin's regime is vulnerable to realities that undermine the narrative of a powerful Russia and a powerful Putin. Russians are more upset about battlefield setbacks than manpower losses, and the façade of power is crucial for regime stability.
  • Not Ironclad Domestic Control: Putin has ceded some information control to the expanding Russian nationalist community, whose milbloggers often criticize the military leadership.
  • Echo Chamber Effect: Cognitive warfare can create an echo chamber, leading the Kremlin to believe its own propaganda and make erroneous assessments, such as expecting a swift victory or a welcoming reception in Ukraine.

Countering Russian Cognitive Warfare

To effectively counter Russian cognitive warfare, the US and its allies should not attempt to defend symmetrically or chase every tactical disinformation effort. Instead, the key is to:

• Recognize and Reject Premises: Identify when the Kremlin is attempting to implant premises to shape reasoning and reject those premises directly. For example, dismantling the notion that Russia is entitled to a sphere of influence or that its victory in Ukraine is inevitable.
• Leverage Predictability: Russian cognitive efforts support long-standing strategic aims that do not change, making them forecastable and targetable.
• Prioritize Actions in Reality: Physical actions are often the most effective way to neutralize cognitive warfare. Ukraine’s successful drone and missile strikes against the Russian Black Sea Fleet, for example, defeated Russia’s informational efforts to impose a blockade. Similarly, Ukraine's incursion into Kursk Oblast dispelled the Kremlin's assertion that bringing Western equipment into Russian territory would trigger nuclear retaliation.
• Do Not Mimic Russia: The West should not attempt to mimic Russian cognitive warfare. Unlike Russia, the US and its allies possess significant real power commensurate with their objectives and do not need to rely on manipulative cognitive warfare to achieve defensive aims. The West is best served by highlighting Russian efforts, rejecting false premises, and focusing on the real-world situation rather than falling into the trap of the artificial world Russia seeks to create.