For Ukraine, for their Freedom and Ours ! - CSO
Wars against the West
Our campaigns and actions
EXTRAITS - Soft propaganda: an invisible and invasive threat
While hard propaganda is visible to those who are aware of this type of threat, soft propaganda is most often left unchallenged. It is rarely decoded. It is also disseminated — intentionally or unintentionally — by members of Western governments, senior civil servants commenting on government positions, well-known journalists and sometimes think tank leaders and academics. Most of them are certainly not active agents of the FSB or sponsored by the Kremlin, nor are they sympathisers of authoritarian regimes, but they express more or less influential positions that ultimately help Vladimir Putin achieve his goals.
Underestimating the particularities of the ongoing war — this non-linear warfare, according to Russian terminology — is in itself one of the Kremlin's key objectives.
Beyond the term "hybrid warfare"
The term "hybrid warfare" has dominated European analyses since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict. Yet, according to Pierre Raiman, a historian specializing in totalitarianism, this reassuring vocabulary masks a far more worrying reality: Europe is facing a systemic cognitive war whose objective is to profoundly alter Western frameworks of thought.
"Our leaders remain prisoners of a vocabulary—'hybrid warfare,' 'escalation,' 'de-escalation'—that condemns them to fight the previous war while the adversary is already waging the next," the author argues. This conceptual inadequacy prevents them from grasping the strategic link between the war in Ukraine and the cognitive offensive being waged simultaneously in Europe.
Four dimensions of a global strategy
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an American think tank specializing in conflict analysis, confirms the scale of the threat: "The main objective of Russian cognitive warfare is to shape the decision-making of its adversaries and erode their will to act." This offensive unfolds along four complementary dimensions.
The cognitive dimension: "reflexive control"
Inheriting from the KGB's "active measures", Russian cognitive warfare relies on the concept of "reflexive control", theorized by the Soviet mathematician Vladimir Lefebvre: transmitting information to induce the adversary to voluntarily make the desired decision.
The originality of this approach lies not in direct persuasion, but in the manipulation of thought patterns. Analysts cite as an example the debate on "peace negotiations" in Ukraine: accepting the very principle of negotiating with Moscow would implicitly legitimize Russian grievances, automatically paving the way for territorial "compromises."
The Orwellian dimension: the dissolution of truth
Rather than imposing a falsehood, the Russian strategy aims to destroy the very concept of objective truth. The ISW summarizes this approach: "The Kremlin succeeds if it persuades its adversaries that it is too difficult to know the real truth, too difficult to be sure which side is right."
The desired result is not adherence to Russian lies, but a widespread disorientation that leads to inaction, deemed more prudent in the face of uncertainty.
The subversive dimension: organized chaos
Infrastructure sabotage, cyberattacks against sensitive establishments, assassination attempts like the one foiled against Armin Papperger, head of Rheinmetall, in July 2024: each operation aims to maximize the psychological impact on European societies.
So-called "community-based" operations—deliberately targeted graffiti designed to exacerbate tensions between groups—illustrate the effectiveness of this low-cost strategy of chaos. The stated objective: to undermine trust in democratic institutions.
The systemic dimension: three levels of coordination
At first glance, the incidents appear scattered and isolated. However, analysis reveals coordination on three levels:
Tactic: Apparently unrelated operations (influence on social networks, acts of vandalism, cyberattacks) facilitate denial.
Operational: These actions are part of long-term campaigns. The ISW has documented several Russian offensives targeting the Baltic states: revision of maritime borders, distribution of Russian pensions and passports, and accusations of Nazism against local governments.
Strategic: The whole thing converges towards a single objective: to condition European populations to the idea that their security ultimately depends on Russian goodwill.
Bob Seely's "new total war"
British analyst Bob Seely proposes the concept of "total war" to describe the integration of two seemingly distinct theaters: "Russia's new total war integrates the two Russian modes of the 20th century."
In Ukraine, Moscow combines conventional warfare, state terrorism (systematic bombing of civilians) and a war of identity erasure (deportation of tens of thousands of children, forced Russification, cultural plundering).
In Europe , cognitive warfare aims simultaneously to paralyze Western resistance by cultivating weariness and doubt. The objective: to gain acceptance of Russian conditions in Ukraine by persuading European public opinion that any other option would be too costly or doomed to failure.
This dialectic, according to analysts, reveals a structural complementarity: when Russia advances militarily, cognitive warfare consolidates these gains by presenting them as irreversible. When it retreats, cognitive intensity increases to divert attention and erode support for Ukraine.
A response conditional on the recognition of the link
Pierre Raiman's central thesis rests on the interdependence of the two theaters: "We can only effectively combat cognitive warfare in Europe by actively participating in the defense of Ukraine. The two fronts being linked, victory on one conditions success on the other."
This analysis implies a complete overhaul of the European approach to collective security. It suggests that cognitive neutrality is structurally impossible: "Cognitive warfare knows no half-measures; either it makes us think within the universe of its lies, or we think about reality."
The question remains for European decision-makers: will they be able, unlike the French general staff of 1940 mentioned by Marc Bloch, to "think about this war"?
EXTRAITS - Soft propaganda: an invisible and invasive threat
While hard propaganda is visible to those who are aware of this type of threat, soft propaganda is most often left unchallenged. It is rarely decoded. It is also disseminated — intentionally or unintentionally — by members of Western governments, senior civil servants commenting on government positions, well-known journalists and sometimes think tank leaders and academics. Most of them are certainly not active agents of the FSB or sponsored by the Kremlin, nor are they sympathisers of authoritarian regimes, but they express more or less influential positions that ultimately help Vladimir Putin achieve his goals.
Underestimating the particularities of the ongoing war — this non-linear warfare, according to Russian terminology — is in itself one of the Kremlin's key objectives.
The fourteen basic narratives of soft propaganda
1- Make people believe the narrative of humiliation. According to this discourse, we should understand the frustration of Russians due to the collapse of the Soviet empire. This is supposedly a trauma that we should understand, especially since the West betrayed Moscow by expanding NATO eastward.
2- Suggest that we should ‘understand’ Russia and soften our positions.
3- Focus attention on the turpitudes of others. Propagandists thus resort to whataboutism. They will mention the United States (the Vietnam War, the second Iraq War), France (its colonial period and intervention in Libya), Saudi Arabia (Yemen), the United Kingdom, etc.
4- Warn the West: ‘You are preparing for World War III. Your warmongering is dangerous.’
5- Assert that we have no choice but to accept the fait accompli.
6- Accept the ‘yes, but’ rhetoric: assert that no one can legitimise Putin and Assad, for example, by stating in advance that we do not like them and even acknowledging their crimes. However, we must also add that we know them, that others could be even worse, and that their removal from power could lead to chaos.
7- Assert that Russia is a major factor for stability in the world. This discourse proclaims, in a way: ‘You may not like Russia, but without it, the world would be less stable.’
8- Instil the idea that Putin's regime is a very minor threat compared to Islamism, when we should be joining forces against the real threat.
9- Legitimising regimes based on oppression. The message being spread is that the West should not impose its own values and defend dissidents fighting for freedom, as this would be imperialism or even colonialism.
10- Promote a false narrative about Russia: Russia is portrayed as a country of great culture (cite a few great Russian writers, musicians or painters), great history (refer to Peter the Great or Catherine the Great) and great religion (the splendour of the Orthodox religion, its magnificent icons). It does not matter that none of this has anything to do with the Russian regime and that the Moscow Patriarchate is subservient to the Russian regime and covers up its atrocities.
11- Assert that Russia is a continent and we cannot oppose a continent. Above all, do not talk about the regime, but resort to reductio ad geographiam.
12- Recall the economic interests of the West, regardless of the figures that say otherwise about our dependence on Russia.
13- Resort to vague theories about the soul of peoples and determinism and assert learnedly, citing the Tsarist regime and Soviet communism, that the Russian people are not ready for democracy, that it is not in their history, or even in their DNA (as if a people had such a thing).
14- Evoke the theory of development, or better still, developmentalism: helping Russia to modernise will ultimately bring it democracy.