War - the ultimate crisis

Crises come in many forms. But without doubt war is the ultimate crisis. It brings with it all the other horsemen of the apocalypse – along with a few outriders. War leads directly to famine, pestilence, political upheaval, economic collapse and death. On that basis it really is the ultimate crisis.

Few recent events have had the potential to threaten us all than the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has caused inflation and soaring energy prices in the west, and famine in the global south. And if it is not contained, it could embroil the whole of Europe in its first full-scale conflict since 1945.

The principles that apply to war crisis management are the same as those for any other crisis. Expect the unexpected, prepare as far as possible, and ensure that your spokespeople are identified and prepped in advance. In the current Ukraine-Russia crisis President Zelensky has been a brilliant spokesperson for his country, Jens Stoltenberg has been highly effective for Nato, and Ursula von der Leyen has done an excellent job speaking on behalf of the EU.

In the 21st century wars are still fought with planes, tanks, artillery, and infantry. But they are also fought with drones and robots, and increasingly with cyber, AI and deepfakes. Just as the first casualty of war has famously always been reckoned to be truth, the first progeny of 21st-century warfare is undoubtedly fake news.

The shifting landscape

On the ground in the physical battlespace, Russia and Ukraine are evenly matched. The Ukrainians are fighting for their home territory, which gives them a high degree of motivation and provides them with an intimate knowledge of the terrain. They have also been supplied with sophisticated western weaponry, and many of them have benefited from training in Nato countries.

Where the Russians are concerned, they rely on having a much larger population, and from possessing much greater industrial capacity to supply their war machine. Their tactics are remarkably similar to those they employed in the second world war, sending waves of infantry and tanks forward regardless of the resulting casualties. As Stalin once said, quantity has a quality all of its own.

So now the two sides have largely fought themselves to a standstill. But the PR war continues, in all hours and all weathers. The advantage the Russians have is that they only have to fight the PR war on one front: they simply need to shore up support for the war amongst their domestic population, which is subject to remorseless pro-war propaganda from state-sponsored news outlets. President Putin’s overwhelming ‘victory’ in the recent rigged elections demonstrates that he and his supporters have succeeded in doing that.

The Ukrainians have to fight the PR war on two fronts. Like the Russians they have to keep the morale of their domestic population high, but at the same time they need to convince the west that they are still worth supporting, and that they can ultimately prevail against the invaders. They also now have to compete for western public attention with the increasingly fraught and dangerous conflict in the Middle East, and try to avoid becoming a central issue in the US presidential contest.

Although the Russian army relies on numbers rather than sophistication, it is commonly acknowledged that they have always been masterful practitioners of the so-called ‘dark arts’. On the battlefield they use ‘Maskirovka’, the art of military deception. They also invest heavily in troll farms to manipulate public opinion on social media, and are not averse to deploying ‘vranyo’,  loosely translated as the art of the bare-faced lie, which was recently used to explain the tragic death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. 

Since the start of the war, Russia has been pushing the line that the invasion of Ukraine was a pre-emptive strike to head off an imminent invasion by Nato, and also to prevent Ukraine from becoming a neo-Nazi state. And the Ukrainians have created the narrative that they are fighting Nato’s war for them, and suffering horrific losses in terms of people and infrastructure as a result. 

Both sides have deployed fake news. When the invasion started in February 2022, the Russians put out a deep fake video of Ukrainian President Zelensky saying he was going to surrender and urging his armed forces to lay down their arms. The Ukrainians have responded by spreading fake news about the state of President Putin’s health, and promoting rumours that he deploys body doubles to avoid the risk of appearing in public. They also spread rumours that former Wagner supremo Yevgeny Prighozin had survived his years in the Gulag by offering sexual favours to the dominant blatniye caste of inmates, which diminished his standing amongst the macho mercenaries he commanded. 

Russia has a long history of the deployment of ‘active measures’ to spread disinformation and drive societal division. In 2019 the US Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence found that “In 2016, Russian operatives associated with the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) used social media to conduct an information warfare campaign designed to spread disinformation and societal division in the United States. Masquerading as Americans, these operatives used targeted advertisements, intentionally falsified news articles, self-generated content, and social media platform tools to interact with and attempt to deceive tens of millions of social media users in the United States. This campaign sought to polarize Americans on the basis of societal, ideological, and racial differences, provoked real world events, and was part of a foreign government’s covert support of Russia’s favored candidate in the U.S. presidential election.” 

Even more recently in 2020 the US Department of State reported that “Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem is the collection of official, proxy and unattributed communication channels and platforms that Russia uses to create and amplify false narratives … as part of its approach to using information as a weapon.”

In perhaps the ultimate manifestation of ‘vranyo’, the Russians have accused the Americans of interfering in their recent presidential elections. 

Can disinformation and deepfake AI win elections?

The fact that this question even needs to be asked and answered is down to the fact that large swathes of the population now get their news online, rather than relying on the traditional mainstream media. This creates ‘echo chambers’, which are easy to penetrate and easy to manipulate.

Disinformation has a destabilising effect and it is widely acknowledged that Russia’s deployment of ‘active measures’ is intended to undermine faith in the democratic process. In January 2024, experts working for the German Foreign Ministry uncovered a huge trail of posts which amounted to a sophisticated and concerted onslaught on Berlin’s support for Ukraine. More than one million German-language posts were sent from an estimated 50,000 fake accounts, amounting to a rate of two every second. The overwhelming theme of the messages was the suggestion that Olaf Scholz’s government was neglecting the needs of Germans as a result of its support for Ukraine, both in terms of weapons and aid, as well as by taking in more than a million refugees. One of the most impactful fake messages was purportedly from Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, who appeared to be declaring from her own account on X that government support for Ukraine was crumbling. There is considerable concern in the German government as to how such fake news may be used to affect the outcome of the upcoming European elections, as well as three state elections in eastern Germany. There are also federal elections in Germany next year, and the Ukraine conflict, and relations with Russia, are likely to feature heavily in the campaign.

No country is immune from the impact of deepfakes and AI, which should be of significant concern in 2024, when more than four billion people in more than 80 countries around the world will be going to the polls. In the UK, the new Online Safety Act makes it an offence to spread fake material with the intent of causing physical or psychological harm, but it seems this may exclude political disinformation and deepfakes. And as the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), an arm of GCHQ, has recently warned: “AI-created hyper-realistic bots will make the spread of disinformation easier”.

Consequences for the global risk environment

There is no immediate end to the war in Ukraine in sight. Russia is now relying on war fatigue setting in, with European nations balking at the cost of continuing to support Ukraine, both financially and militarily. A $60bn aid package for Ukraine has yet to be approved by the House of Representatives, and President Putin is banking on a Donald Trump victory in this year’s presidential race, which would likely bring about an immediate halt to all American aid for Ukraine. 

The Ukrainians are hoping that the oligarchs who surround President Putin will grow tired of being denied access to their villas, yachts, and bank accounts in the west, and will move to bring him down. Alternatively, the Ukrainians hope that the Russian people themselves will become disillusioned by the volume of body bags coming home, as they did during the Afghan conflict in the 1980s. And, if the Ukrainians can capture – or even just blockade – Crimea, this would take away the jewel in Putin’s PR crown, and perhaps bring about a ‘Ceausescu moment’, when a tipping point is reached and public support simply evaporates.

Meanwhile the global environment looks ever more precarious, with a gradual reshuffling of the world order away from western dominance. Europe stands at the brink of having to defend itself for the first time since 1945 and the risk is that we will be fighting on the physical battlefield as well as the cybersphere. And, if the war in the Middle East expands, tensions in Korea escalate, and China moves against Taiwan, we may have to do this with minimal help from Nato’s most powerful member. 

So what are the implications of all of this for communications professionals? 

The answer, of course, is that they will vary from individual to individual. Given the ongoing sanctions imposed by the west on Russia, there is an obvious risk that organisations that still trade with, or invest in, Russia, may suffer from commercial loss and severe reputational damage as the war continues to drag on. Naturally, this is even more likely to be the case should the western allies win the war, when ‘victors’ justice’ may be applied. For professional communicators, perhaps the best strategy is to stay aware of the ever-changing geopolitical situation, and ensure you have robust plans in place to deal with any crisis situation that might present itself. Preparedness is key, so think ahead: identify and prioritise the main risks that your own organisation faces; identify and understand your stakeholders’ opinions and perceptions, make sure you know which relationships you will need to rely on in times of trouble; and actively plan for scenarios in which the worst could happen. 

And of course, like the general population, be on your guard against fake news, don’t believe everything you read, and check your sources. To professional communicators, I need hardly state the importance of ensuring that your own communications are honest, consistent and authentic, such that they enable you to build and maintain relationships of trust. Such relationships will hold you and your organisation’s reputation in good stead in the challenging times ahead.

Lionel Zetter is a former President of the CIPR and a former chair of the CIPR Government Affairs Group. This post was first published on the CIPR Crisis Communications website.