Is the Kremlin propaganda able to deform the image of the world, which was shaped in the West and, in the context of this report, in France? Certainly, and it began to do so already several decades ago. Or centuries. And today it uses some methods and arguments that were already used in Soviet times.
It also creates new techniques and arguments for new audiences, and, strangely enough, the West turns out to be not sufficiently prepared for this. However, in recent months, the European Union and the United States have started to realize the menace, and the information war conducted by the Kremlin is increasingly being condemned, including by top-level politicians. But, most important, the methods of fighting off this propaganda are being gradually created.
For about last decade, Russia managed to create a state-controlled media platform that consists of a number of federal broadcasters and powerful foreign broadcasting system. The main ones are: the All-Russian Governmental TV and Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), Gazprom-Media Holding public corporation, "National Media Group (NMG) joint-stock company. In addition, Russia has a centralized governmental system of international broadcasting, which as of 2016, included the Federal unitary enterprise of International Information Agency "Russia Today" (earlier - RIA Novosti), Sputnik multimedia service (earlier - Moscow Radio and Voice of Russia Radio ) and International information TV company RT (formerly - Russia Today). Broadcasting services have always received generous government funding, but in 2013-2015 it abruptly increased.
The current conflict in eastern Ukraine is not only warfare between ATO forces and military groupings of separatists controlled and supported by Russia. This is first and foremost a struggle between two value systems (civilizational ideas): Eurasian (imperial), promoted by the Kremlin and Western (liberal and democratic), favoured by the Ukrainian people during the Revolution of Dignity. We have to admit that Russia managed to inflict a number of sensitive strokes to Ukraine at the ideological front, using powerful instruments of non-military methods of preparing and conducting the war.
Новий випуск журналу «Національна безпека і оборона» Українського центру економічних і політичних досліджень ім. Олександра Разумкова, присвячений аналізу різних аспектів "гібридної" війни, яку веде Росія.
http://razumkov.org.ua/uploads/journal/ukr/NSD167-168_2016_ukr.pdf
Ukrainian experts have been in the heat of the dispute recently around the articles by Victor Pinchuk and Vasyl Filipchuk published, respectively, in the American Wall Street Journal and the Ukrainian electronic edition Apostrophe. The articles have been known to contain proposals on the possible ways to end the aggressive war that Russia is waging against Ukraine.
Since the beginning of its formation, Russian statehood has had features that have more or less affected its stability throughout its history both in short and long term.
The deep essence of the hybrid warfare is multidimensional purposeful political destruction, i.e. ruining of one state by another one with integrated combined use of military and non-military forces and means, but being concentrated on destroying enemy not only and not so much on the battlefield, but by undermining its vital potential from within, especially with certain external actions.
The economy of Russia is in crisis today, characterized, inter alia, by significant reduction in the share of the Russian economy in the world GDP, abrupt reduction in price indices for the exports of goods, significant decrease of the role of Russia in the global consumption of goods, record volume of capital outflows, etc.