This Dispatch draws heavily on the GEC’s recent Special Report Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem.

Two favorite tactics of Russian disinformation specialists are to:

• conceal Russian state involvement in disinformation outlets, and
• use obscure Western fringe voices and conspiracy theorists as surrogate messengers.

The Russians amplify the typically virulent anti-Western, anti-U.S. views of fringe voices and conspiracy theorists by giving them a broad international platform not only on state-owned RT and Sputnik, but also on pseudo-academic online journals the Russians control but which they seek to portray as independent. 

This has several advantages for Russian propagandists:

• it gives increased circulation to what would otherwise be marginal anti-Western views
• Russia avoids responsibility by concealing its involvement
• the individuals they publish speak in their local idioms and understand their home audiences well.

The goal appears to be to make these sites appear to be organic voices within the target audiences they aim to influence.

These cynical tactics create a vulnerability.  Exposing the unreliable views of the “experts” the Russians publish and the extraordinarily measures the Russians take to hide their involvement in their pseudo-academic online journals reveals them to be deceitful, damaging the Russian brand.

The Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) is a key node in the Russian disinformation system.  Its efforts perfectly illustrate several core principles of Russian disinformation and active measures: conceal, disguise, coopt (ideas and people), penetrate, and patiently manipulate.  (Image: article in Strategic Culture Foundation)

The Strategic Culture Foundation was founded 15 years ago, in 2005, publishing an online journal in Russian.  SCF Director-General Vladimir Maximenko described its mission as building Russian strength via “the mobilization of the nation,” which he said was “the main and unconditional imperative of the Russian agenda.”  It listed the foundation’s experts as scholars from Russia’s top academic institutions.

In September 2010, the SCF online journal also began to appear in English.  This marked its debut as an instrument for international influence.  Its goal was not to strengthen Russia, but apparently to increase Russia’s relative strength by weakening the West.

In a dramatic disclosure reported in the July 28 New York Times, two American officials revealed that the Strategic Culture Foundation is “directed” by the SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.   

(Image: SVR headquarters outside Moscow) 

Of course, the SCF does not advertise this and instead makes every effort to appear to be independent.  There is a well-hidden but open connection with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  But, there is no mention of this on its English-language website, nor of any link to Russia, including the fact that the SCF publishes an online journal in Russian.  It seems to be trying to appear non-Russian, describing itself only as a “platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs,” drawing on the works of “independent contributors.”

However, if one visits the website of International Affairs, the flagship journal of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1922, it states that the Strategic Culture Foundation is its partner.  Very few SCF readers are likely to do this.  And, until very recently, there was no way for its readers to know that it is directed by the SVR.

SCF’s president is Yuri Prokofiev, who was Moscow Communist Party Chief from 1989 to 1991 and a Soviet Politburo member.  Prokofiev is also one of the founders of the “Russian Organization for Assistance to Special Services and Law Enforcement Authorities” (ROSSPO).  “Special Services” is a Russian term for intelligence agencies. According to ROSSPO’s website, it works closely with Russian special services to support the policies of the Russian state, facilitate cooperation between state institutions and civil society, and ensure the social protection of the employees of intelligence services and law enforcement authorities.

When SCF launched its English-language website in 2010, it included Cyrillic lettering and hyperlinks to SCF’s Russian and Serbian versions.  By April 2011, the Cyrillic lettering had been eliminated.  In August 2015, links to the Russian and then-Serbian versions of SCF disappeared.  The SCF’s apparent strategy was to eliminate as many as possible links to Russia to try to create the misleading impression it is independent and unaffiliated with Russia.  From the beginning, it made attempts to attract Westerners and some South Asians as authors, although most of its writers were Russians. 

(Image: Soviet troops capture Berlin, Germany on May 2, 1945: photo on May 2, 2015 SCF hompage)

SCF’s dramatic evolution toward the goal of concealing links with Russia is clear.  For example, the May 2, 2015 SCF homepage featured articles by numerous Russian authors:

• Yuri Rubtsov (two articles)
• Pyotr Iskenderov
• Dmitry Minin
• Nil Nikandrov
• Nikolai Bobkin
• Alexander Donetsky (two articles)
• Natalia Meden
• Valentin Katasonov

Three Western authors also appeared on the SCF homepage that day, including Finian Cunningham and Pepe Escobar, “an analyst for RT, Sputnik News, and Press TV.”

Five years later, in 2020, the SCF online journal has undergone a stunning transformation.  On today’s SCF homepage, the Russian authors from 2015 have disappeared and been replaced by Westerners.  Finian Cunningham and Pepe Escobar remain.  There is good reason for this, from the SCF’s perspective.

Cunningham, the second most-published SCF author with more than 550 articles, can be counted on to blame the United States and its allies on almost every occasion.  In one SCF article, Cunningham refers to the United States as a “lawless rogue state.” His other SCF articles include:

• Give North Korea some respect
• Putin Stands Out as a Real World Leader
• Washington Choreographing All-Out War with Russia?
• The Year US-led Capitalism Became Exposed as Root of Global Conflict.

(Photo of Finian Cunningham on Sputnik website)

Cunningham also appears frequently on major Russian state media outlets RT (244 results) and Sputnik (351 results), the successor to Voice of Russia and RIA Novosti.   

Retired Russian Colonel Andrei Akulov is the third most-published author on SCF’s English-language site, although his last article was in 2018, as Russian authors were phased out.

Longtime SCF Russian authors like Dmitry Minin, Valentin Katasonov, Pyotr Iskenderov, and Alexander Mezyeav are still published on the Russian-language website.  All stopped appearing on the English-language website in 2017 and 2018.

(Photo of Valentin Katasonov on French conspiracy theory website Voltaire.net)

The early inclusion of Russian academics was likely aimed at giving SCF’s English-language online journal the appearance of scholarly respectability, although most of the Russian academics took strong anti-Western positions.  For example, a frequent author through 2018, Moscow State Institute of International Finance professor Valentin Katasonov, wrote the article, “Anglo-American Money Owners Organized World War II.”  He argued:

The war was not unleashed by frenzied Fuhrer who happened to be ruling Germany at the time. WWII is a project created by world oligarchy or Anglo-American “money owners”. Using such instruments as the US Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England they started to prepare for the next world conflict of global scale right after WWI. The USSR was the target.

Another prolific author through 2017 was Pyotr Iskenderov, senior researcher for the Institute for Slavic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences.  His articles included:

• Modern Nazism as the Driving Force of Euro-Atlantic Integration
• The Czech Republic: Doomed without Russia
• Estonia: Doomed Without Russia
• Russia has enough gas for everyone
• Brussels and Kiev: a duo of blackmailers

Western authors who have replaced the Russians on the SCF site include:

• Brian Cloughley, former Australian defense attaché in Pakistan, who has authored 256 articles.  Two recent articles are: “The Facts About Crimea Should Be Recognised. And So Should Crimea” and “Washington Wants an Arctic Circle of Confrontation."  (Image at right from Cloughley's website www.beecluff.com)

• Matthew Ehret, who has written 115 articles since April 2019.  He is founder of the Canadian Patriot Review, which says it is “inspired by the philosophy and strategic outlook of Lyndon LaRouche and the International Schiller Institute.”  Besides being an author for SCF, he also writes for other Russian disinformation websites, including Oriental Review and Geopolitica.ru.  Ehret and the Canadian Patriot Review are ardent advocates of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which they see as a “force for global progress, poverty eradication, and peace.”  He is also Director of the Rising Tide Foundation. 

• Cynthia Chung, President of the Rising Tide Foundation, who has written 19 articles since October 2019.  One of her recent articles is “A 70-Year War on ‘Propaganda’ Built by the CIA.”

The wholescale makeover of the Strategic Culture Foundation online journal in the last few years reveals its influence plan aimed at Western and other foreign audiences.

Western fringe voices and conspiracy theorists have been boosted, while Russian authors have been replaced with Westerners who express views the editors of Strategic Culture Foundation presumably find congenial.  This further disguises the fact that SCF is affiliated with the Russian state.

On September 24, Facebook announced that it had removed the Strategic Culture Foundation’s social media accounts for “violating our policy against foreign or government interference which is coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) on behalf of a foreign or government entity.”

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab calculated that 60% of the SCF’s traffic was directed to the site from its Facebook page, which had “up to 28,807” followers.  It said the Facebook page for the SCF’s Russian-language site, which was also removed, had “13,267 followers.”

New Eastern Outlook (NEO) is another Russian pseudo-academic online journal, focused mostly on Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.  It resembles the Strategic Culture Foundation although it has more discernable Russian links.

New Eastern Outlook is associated with the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Oriental Studies, although NEO does not mention this on its "About Us" page.  The logo of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Cyrillic letters (above right) is at the bottom of the NEO homepage.  It is hyperlinked to the Russian-language homepage of the Institute, but there is no explanation of the relationship between the two unless one happens to go to the Institute’s list of its periodical publications, where NEO is listed.

NEO is unlike any of the Institute’s 13 other periodicals, all of which are genuine scholarly publications.  For example, the journal East. Afro-Asian societies: history and modernity has been published since 1955.  It is published six times a year (NEO appears every day).  The journal’s mission is to disseminate “original scholarly research on Asian and African history, philology, philosophy, area studies, cultural studies, economy, politics, social studies, cultural anthropology, and political anthropology.” 

In contrast, NEO deals with contemporary political issues in a highly tendentious, argumentative way.  It is propaganda and disinformation attempting to masquerade as scholarship.

NEO is published in Russian and English.  It began to appear in 2013.  The BBC reported in July 2019 that “its Facebook and Twitter accounts have been suspended.”  It has social media presences on Pinterest, YouTube, Gab Social, and VKontakte.  Reuters describes Gab as “a popular gathering place for alt-right activists and white nationalists whose views are unwelcome or banned on other social media platforms.”

Like SCF in its early days, NEO combines the pro-Russia, anti-American views of Russian academics with the anti-U.S. views of Western fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists.  It apparently hopes that the prestige and knowledge of the Russian academics will give NEO the appearance of scholarly respectability, even though most of the Russian academics take strong anti-Western positions.

The Western authors published by NEO have highly anti-U.S., anti-Western views.  One author, Christopher Black of Canada has written 119 articles for NEO since November 2014.  In February 2020, he described a NATO military exercise as a prelude to an attack on Russia, writing:

I have written several times about the continuing NATO preparations for an attack on Russia, a second Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941. Circumstances prompt me to write about it again, for as of the last week in January the Americans and their gang of lieutenant nations in NATO have commenced the biggest military exercises in 25 years to take place in Europe. The code name for this operation is Defender-Europe 20 but we can interpret that as Attack-Russia 20; in effect a preparation for an attack on Russia comparable to the Nazi invasion in 1941.

Other NEO articles by Black include:

Cuban Resistance: An Example for the World
Paris and Volnovakha: The Brutal Face of Nato Terrorism
America Aggression: A Threat To The World
The Skripal Incident-Another Anti-Russian Provocation (screenshot above)
War Against Venezuela Is War Against Us All

Peter Koenig is a Swiss contributor who has written 56 articles for NEO in the last two years.  He says he “writes regularly for Global Research; … New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; … and other internet sites.”

In a February 28 NEO article, Koenig advanced groundless conspiracy theories about COVID-19:

With high probability the virus was man-made in one or several bio-warfare laboratories of which the Pentagon and CIA have about 400 around the world …. But such high-security bio-labs also exist in Canada, the UK, Israel and Japan. Western media also are silent about the fact that the virus is directed specifically at the Chinese race, meaning, it targets specifically Chinese DNA.

Almost all of the deaths or infected people in the 33 countries and territories to which the virus spread, are of Chinese origin. … this is in whatever way you want to turn it, a bio-war against China.

Of course, COVID-19 affects people of all races and nationalities.

A NEO contributor from Australia, James O’Neill, has written 135 articles since 2015.  Five of his first 15 articles were on the topic of the shootdown of Malaysian airliner MH17 in 2014, a topic of enormous concern to Russian authorities.  In these articles, O’Neill consistently gives credence to Russian denials of involvement while finding fault with the Dutch-led investigation. 

O’Neill also writes for American Herald Tribune, a website that Facebook and Google officials have said is linked to Iranian state media, according to a CNN article.  It disingenuously describes itself as “genuinely independent online media outlet,” and pretends to be “American.”  It also lists Peter Koenig and other contributors at NEO as authors and several contributors to Strategic Culture Foundation, including Finian Cunningham, Frederico Pieraccini, and Pepe Escobar.

NEO’s website links to many other websites that carry disinformation, including:

• Global Research
• Katehon
• The 21st Century
• The Fringe News

In addition to American Herald Tribune, NEO articles and authors appear in media in other countries, including:

• Qoche, an online publication that says it seeks to provide “diverse points of view and opinions” from dozens of worldwide publications.  Many are respectable publications but RT, Sputnik, TASS, Iran’s PressTV, and China Daily are also included, along with NEO authors including Viktor Mikhin and others.
• Vijayvaani.com, an Indian English-language website that describes itself as “the complete opinions forum.”  It includes articles by:

1. James O’Neill, an author at NEO since 2015, debuting on Vijayvaani.com on May 18, 2020 with the article, “Devastating Revelations About the Truth Behind the Destruction of MH17,” reprinted from NEO.
2. Viktor Mikhin, including his February 28 NEO article “US Wages Biological Warfare against China.”
3. Pepe Escobar, who writes for the Strategic Culture Foundation
4. Ramtanu Maitra, a “South Asian Analyst at Executive Intelligence Review,” founded by Lyndon LaRouche
5. Israel Shamir, “a Swedish writer and journalist, known for promoting antisemitism and Holocaust denial”

• New Age, which describes itself as “The Outspoken Daily” published in Bangladesh.  It has published NEO articles by Yuriy Zinin, Vladimir Terehov, Viktor Mikhin, and others.
• CounterCurrents.org, a website in India that believes “the destructive system of capitalism and consumerism must be replaced.”
• The Fringe News, which bills itself as “Alternative News Gone Mainstream,” republishes many NEO articles.  The site contains no information about who runs it.  Its “About Us” section is completely blank.  There is also no “Contact Us” information.
• OffGuardian reprints many articles from NEO authors, including 50 by Christopher Black or mentioning him, and James O’Neill.  The publication says it takes its name from the fact that “its founders had all been censored on and/or banned from the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ sections.”

The determined, multiyear effort that Russian propagandists have made to amplify the views of Western and other fringe voices and conspiracy theorists indicates this is a core part of their foreign information influence strategy.

The slogans of Russian state-run RT, Sputnik, SCF, and others provide insight into how they wish to influence foreign audiences.

RT’s slogan is “Question More,” encouraging the belief that mainstream opinion does not reflect the truth.

Sputnik says it is “Telling the Untold,” encouraging the conspiratorial point of view that the “real story” is hidden from view. 

The Strategic Culture Foundation explains its goals and methods in veiled language in its “About Us” page.  It says it offers:

the unique perspective of independent contributors,” “works to broaden and diversify expert discussion by focusing on hidden aspects of international politics and unconventional thinking,” and aims to “spread reliable information, critical thought and progressive ideas.  (emphasis added)

Let us translate this into plain language.

The SCF seeks to misrepresent Western fringe voices and conspiracy theorists as “independent” and “reliable” thinkers who “broaden and diversify” discussions with “unconventional,” “unique” views, which often focus on supposed “hidden” aspects of international politics.  The SCF aim is to influence “alternative” and “progressive” audiences in the West and elsewhere.

This is a well thought-out, determined effort.

The “no-standards” strategy pursued by RT, Sputnik, SCF, NEO, and other elements of Russia’s foreign-facing information apparatus creates a vulnerability.  Exposing the baseless claims of the conspiracy theorists and fringe voices they publish damages their brand, exposing them as unscrupulous manipulators.

For more information on Strategic Culture Foundation, New Eastern Outlook, and other proxy websites in the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem, see the recently released special report Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem by the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center.

For more, see:

• "Facebook takes down assets linked to Russian disinformation outlet," Digital Forensic Research Lab, September 24, 2020
• “Russia Today Has an Illuminati Correspondent. Really.” The Daily Beast, July 8, 2015
• "Life of Bryan: How an RT Columnist Tries to Influence the Debate on Russia and Ukraine," The Interpreter, October 29, 2014

Next issue: “Building an International Disinformation Network"

Past issues:

• #1: A Counter-Disinformation System That Works, January 8, 2020
• #2: Three Ways to Counter Disinformation, February 11, 2020
• #3: The Myth that Debunking Doesn’t Work, March 25, 2020
• #4: What Works in Debunking, April 14, 2020
• #5: The Coronavirus and Disinformation: Russia Remains True to Form, May 27, 2020

To contact us, email: GECDisinfoDispatches@state.gov