Driving the news: U.S. intelligence officials briefed senators in recent weeks on the Russian campaign to frame Ukraine for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The briefing also covered the evolution of the Kremlin's tactics, including a much improved ability to cover its tracks.
- On Thursday, former top National Security Council official Fiona Hill testified that the Ukraine conspiracy theory is "a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves."
Context: Moscow has a history of using state media, online troll farms and a network of sympathetic agitators to promote content designed to deflect culpability for the Kremlin’s misdeeds.
What to watch: Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, much attention has been paid to the potential for social media operations of the sort Russia's infamous troll farm, the Internet Research Agency, carried out in 2016. But such operations take many forms — often relying, as in this case, on the use of proxies to spread a narrative across the information ecosystem.
The bottom line: Russia's Ukraine conspiracy theories offer a reminder that disinformation spreads through various channels, both online and offline. While elections are a prominent flashpoint, these interference campaigns are ongoing and put a range of political events in their crosshairs.
Jessica Brandt is a fellow at the German Marshall Fund and the head of policy and research for its Alliance for Securing Democracy.
