Camouflage
Quantifying and criminalizing Russia's vast global network of disinformation campaigns executed by their military industrial complex
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Russia is breaking our brains, and we might not recover.
In our latest interview with Ukrainian historian Tetiana Boriak on RadPod, she explained why Russia prioritizes information warfare — how its leaders first prioritize self-enrichment, then militarization, and how it’s all blanketed with a mental poison, a global carpet bombing by a vast network of industrialized disinformation campaigns.
I recall Timothy Snyder telling Frontline PBS in 2022 how Putin realized in 2014, he could manipulate our minds successfully.
Snyder explained: “What Russia was able to prove was that, no, as a matter of fact, we can invade a country, and we can make you think that it didn’t actually happen… Russia invaded Ukraine and basically persuaded us that it didn’t actually happen.”
So how, exactly, could Russia invade another country and dupe the rest of the world that it didn’t happen?
Camouflage.
What we are enduring in the remaining free world is the art of war-time camouflage writ large.
In a recent visit to a World War 1 museum outside of Paris, Musée de la Grand Guerre, I watched a three-minute documentary about the camouflage unit. I watched French artists and designers create trees with hidden doors, fake artillery, and masks that mimicked soldiers. In 1915, early in the war, the camouflage unit had a staff of 15. By 1918, the last year of the war, the unit had grown to 3,000 members.
A century later, Russia is engaging in the camouflage of war on a global scale, mostly undeclared. And in this modern information war, their units are comprised of tens of thousands of workers — from members of its military to gig workers engaging in cyber espionage. According to estimates, Moscow has about 60,000 intelligence officers working worldwide, excluding a covert network of informal disinformation superspreaders and a massive infrastructure of bots and foreign paid liars.
Unless democratic nations treat this as a poison of war, as lethal as a nerve gas, I don’t see how this ends with any democracies remaining.
No one questions the use of camouflage in a declared war, which can potentially save lives, but here, the moral violation is Russia is using this military-grade deception without a declaration of war.
Russian Imperialism
Tetiana Boriak explains this clearly from her perspective as a historian, when a war that began in 2014 is actually a war that has lasted centuries.
“The reason for this war is simple: Russian imperialism — the official state ideology, Russkiy mir,” she said.
She explained that a main target of Russia is the destruction of international law, which she believes may already be dead, or on the verge of collapsing entirely.
When the large-scale invasion of Russia’s war in Ukraine began, Tetiana said she worried that history would repeat: “On the second day of the war, I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, is it going to be like in 1933 when Ukrainians were starved to death intentionally by the Kremlin… and the world knew about the famine — they had the reports from their diplomats. But they have chosen their own national interest, and they have chosen business as usual…
“And the price for this business as usual was the rate of dead Ukrainians starved to death on their own land.”
She acknowledged that Europe was not ready for his war, but that it had more than 100 years to prepare.
“The Kremlin did not leave the stage of war. It is on this stage, starting from 1917, the Kremlin as this collective — Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Putin — this specific mentality has been formed. And this is the problem, because it is a huge civilizational mental gap between the Russian state and the free world.”
A Horrible Mistake
“Europe was thinking that in 1991, this famous article, The End of History, was written — ‘liberalism has won. Everybody will live in peace, cool. Let’s demolish our military infrastructure, military plants. Let’s turn them into some chips manufacturing.’ And now we see that was a horrible mistake.”
She said the “horrible mistake was that the European community has forgiven, together with the United States, Canada and other big countries in terms of economy, they’ve forgiven the Russian state, the Chechen wars, they’ve forgiven the occupation of Pridnestrovie in Moldova. They said, ‘Okay, in 2008,’ and in 2014, when Ukrainians were trying to do something to defend Crimea — to eliminate the Russian occupants, who appeared with no signs, like as they said, just ‘polite soldiers.’ The American president said, 'No, no, just give them the Crimean Peninsula.’ And when you are trying to bargain, to say okay to the state that is making wars and is occupying the territories of the other countries, the war will not end.”
Despite deafening pleas from Ukrainians, who Tetiana said saw the imperialism as they tried to save themselves, “making mistakes along the way, but the mistakes of the Ukrainian leadership do not excuse the aggressor, the country that crosses the border of another country…
“And for me, as a historian, not as a mother, as a citizen of Ukraine, as a historian, the worst part for me is what I see is this cognitive warfare, and I see it pretty clearly. I see its implementation into the consciousness of the Russians, Ukrainians, the societies of many other countries, of so-called historical consciousness that is basically replacing and pushing out the international law. And this is the most horrible thing one could think of — how one can weaponize history.”
Propagandizing the populace of a sovereign nation is an act of war. Let’s declare it.
Phantom Pains
She said every country has minority populations “living in some other countries that have phantom pains about lost territories due to previous wars from 500 years ago… if you normalize this rhetoric about historical consciousness, are you ready to defend your countries against the drones that now we see is absolutely the new military reality…”
She said “without international law, the whole world would be theirs.”
“They are obsessed with, not only with Ukraine, but with controlling the world, because the system that has been built in Russia, it cannot coexist with the democratic countries, because the ugliness of the Soviet statehood would be seen immediately.”
So the only way for Russia to survive is to spread their influence… and (political technologist) Surkov wrote about this perfectly, he said, ‘We want to undermine the world order.’
Quantifying Camouflage
Reflecting on her words spanning the events of a century, how an undiagnosed imperialism and an undeclared war on our minds and complicit world leaders who want “business as usual” is all building up to the termination of international law, I go back to the 15 staffers in the French military engaged to perform acts of war camouflage in 1915.
How has this camouflage grown in a century?
I decided to attempt to quantify the numbers of contemporary Russian camouflage, and the numbers are staggering for a country with a GDP below ranking below that of Italy.
In October 2025, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Andriy Sybiha reported that “Russia continues to intensify its information warfare. Despite reductions in military spending in the 2026 budget, propaganda funding will increase by an unprecedented 54 %… this clearly indicates the priorities of the aggressor states: they cannot win on the battlefield, so they are making the main bet on disinformation.”
Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense reported that the Kremlin is also increasing its domestic propaganda funding to $500 million per year. According to the communication arm Spravdi, this includes: blogs, films, news, TV series, video games… “patriotic content” aimed at “forming public opinion loyal to the Putin regime justifying the Russian aggression against Ukraine; influencing the minds of Russian servicemen by glorifying their participation in the war.”
Last year, the NGOs Global Rights Compliance and The Reckoning Project, published a report exposing Russia’s strategic weaponization of information during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, calling the technique, “information alibis” — a way to hide international crimes and offer cover for the perpetrators in advance of attacks.
The report names the top leaders who direct this theater of war: Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Presidential administration employees such as Sergei Kiriyenko, Alexei Gromov and Sofia Zakharova.
The 168-page report titled Manufacturing Impunity: Russian Information Operations in Ukraine — Russia’s Use of Information Alibis and How They Materially Contribute to the Planning, Execution and Cover-up of International Crimes emphasizes the “urgent need for the international community to recognise and address the threat posed by 'information alibis. This will require a concerted effort to uphold international law, promote accountability and protect civilians in conflict zones. The International Criminal Court, the United Nations, states and civil society organisations all have a crucial role to play in countering disinformation and ensuring that those who manipulate the information landscape for criminal purposes are held responsible for their actions. Only through such collective action can we hope to safeguard international peace and security and prevent the further loss of trust in information sources.”
Among its authors is Peter Pomerantsev, whose work I have mined on these pages in granular detail:
The report also advocates for advancing criminal accountability, as it underscores the vertical network of Kremlin leaders, state actors, media organizations and social media influencers all collaborating to distribute false information.
Even as I type the words ‘false information’ I feel a surge of anger. Such weak words to describe how my country was overthrown.
This cognitive war has a cruel side effect: it gives cover to any country whose leaders don’t care about genocide and sanctions and just want to do business as usual with the criminal state of Russia. Many of these countries have leaders who also now engage in cognitive warfare in lockstep with Russia. It’s not just Trump’s America. Check out the lineup of the comically named Board of Peace.
As Tetiana reminds us: “The Russian imperialism is everywhere, Russian song, Russian film, Russian exhibition participants, or participation of the Russian sportsmen in Olympic Games, and now they are allowed in Paralympic games to come with their own flag. So cool, International Olympic Committee says, ‘We do not know how many 1000s of victims from the Ukrainian side. We don’t care. Go guys with your own flags, Russia and Belarus.’ And Belarus gave the territory for attacking my country and approaching the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv. ‘No guys, that doesn’t matter. Four years have passed. Go with your flags.’ So the cynicism and unfairness of the contemporary world is incredible, and it’s very painful for Ukrainians to see these things.”
She said “it seems like we return to some kind of Middle Ages with the law of those who have strength. If you are big and powerful, you will survive. So you look for some unions, you don’t know how these unions might end, because the international law is almost dead, but for you, this is the only option, otherwise someone who is bigger and more powerful will will eat you and while eating you, it will say that, ‘You know, we’re actually one nation. You don’t see it? No? Strange. You know we have common history. You disagree? You know we have common language. Your language does not exist and your literature does not exist. So that’s why we’re eating you, and we will become this one nice, unified space.’”
So this war for our consciousness, this cognitive warfare, mental warfare, international or informational warfare is grooming all us to accept a world where ‘information alibis’ teach us not to see reality, it becomes a tool of subjugation.
As Tetiana said: “I have a feeling that if Ukraine will fall, or will be forced to capitulate, to write some kind of agreement, first it would be a temporary agreement, and then do you really think the Russian army will return home? I don’t think so. They will go further. And they have Finland. They have Baltic states, Lithuania, where I now live with my two kids as a refugee. They have Kazakhstan, and they see that nobody can stop them. That is the problem of this whole situation and international community, they are charmed with Russian literature, Russian language, Russian presentations, Russian ballet, sport, music… And if you do not stop an aggressor, why should he stop by himself? They have militarized the economy. They have fun bombing Ukrainian houses that are left with no water, electricity, heating. Why should they stop? They will not stop. They did not stop in 2014 — why would they stop now? They even did not declare openly the war to Ukraine. There was some speech of Putin, about a special military operation, a three-day special military operation.”
Bearing witness to her words, to these set of facts, to reality vs camouflage, to exposing leaders who lie, is the only way we begin to crawl away from the poison.
“Only together, we can survive and have future, only together,” she said. “Otherwise they will divide Europe and then they will eat country by country in this or that way. Now you don’t have to occupy. Look at Belarus. Officially, it’s not occupied, but there is no Belarus anymore. It’s just a Russian colony. They can do this also.”
Do Something
Lawmakers in Wales are reattempting to draft a law that would allow politicians who lie to be fired.
As Welsh Liberal Democrat Jane Dodds told the BBC: “Lying flourishes in politics because we can get away with it, because we face no real consequences.”
The legislation moving through the Welsh Parliament — known as the Senedd — could make Wales the first country in the world to make it a crime for politicians to lie during election campaigns. The bill is supported by polls, which found that 73% of voters support criminalizing politicians who lie to the public.
Denmark, among the countries to ban children from using social media before the age of 15, is also working to change copyright law, giving Danish citizens copyright over their own likeness, which offers them agency over social media platforms, forcing the take down of content shared without their permission.
Henry Ajder, founder of consulting firm Latent Space Advisory and a leading expert in generative AI, told AP: “We can’t just pretend that this is business as usual.”
And that’s exactly it, right?
The democratic world so wanted it to be business as usual as the digital revolution offered money to be made, while technofeudalism metastasized, spurred on a by a country that missed the Enlightenment.
I’ve been sitting here thinking about a photo at Musée de la Grand Guerre — a large image on the museum’s exterior of school age children in 1916 outfitted with gas masks. The masks are ill-fitting, because they were made for adults — they didn’t have them yet for children. This was, after all, the first industrialized war, and you can see that in the museum’s 70,000 artifacts, how things were still evolving.
As the exhibit placard explained:
Children were no exception to the need for protection from gas attacks, although it was more complicated to equip them: the masks manufactured in France were designed for adults, and little account was taken of the measurements of younger wearers. Children thus had to wear protective devices unsuited to their bodies, an issue compounded by the difficulties the authorities faced in trying to bring in a long-term standard model that would prove effective.
While soldiers received training and practical exercises on how to act in the event of a gas attack, civitians were less prepared.
A transmission of knowledge from the military to civilians was needed, and schools became a key venue for the latter to learn.
I’m not going to publish the photo I took of the chilling image — in memetic warfare, a country that missed the Enlightenment uses everything as a weapon.
But I remain haunted today by that image. In a World War, countries understand that all civilians must be protected, the littlest among us in particular.
Now, however, we hand them the devices which contain the poison, and they, like the rest of the remaining democratic world, go unprotected.
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Related:
Strongman: How a Crisis In Masculinity Paved the Way for Fascism
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In 1959 the Kremlin, having realized that the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact couldn't defeat the US and NATO militarily, decided to get us to defeat ourselves by waging disinformation, "active measures," and mole-based strategic deception counterintelligence operations against us.