Over the past decade, against the backdrop of steadily deteriorating relations between the West and Russia, mainstream media in the United States and Europe have regularly reported on the subversive activities of all-powerful Russian intelligence services, sinister oligarchs and highly skilled hacker groups. According to the leading Western media, politicians, experts and even the cinema, the many-faced “hand of Moscow” is capable of reaching the most important secrets of NATO, influencing the results of the American presidential election, recruiting agents in the highest echelons of power, carrying out spectacular special operations against its opponents and disabling the cyber infrastructure of the “free world” with incredible ease.
Fortunately, for the American or European citizen, the overwhelming majority of those spy stories that generously supplied to us in recent years turn out to be absolute fakes sometime after high-profile scandals and revelations. Nevertheless, the systematic work of political technologists, journalists and other specialists in information conflicts and ideology who, in the best traditions of the Cold War, create a new myth about the “Russian threat” has a tremendous impact on public opinion in the United States, Britain and the European Union, as well as on the domestic politics of countries in the Western world, the fate of specific people and the constant growth of tension in the international arena.
An example of the multi-layered and sophisticated cultivation of the myth of “sinister Russians” was the high-profile scandal that shocked Austria in 2019 and led to the resignation of the government of this small European country. Four years ago, popular German newspapers Spiegel and Sueddeutsche Zeitung published videos of then Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache chatting with someone called Alyona Makarova, presented as the niece of an influential Russian oligarch. The content of their conversation boiled down to the fact that the second person in the government was advising the Russian woman on a possible secret purchase by the Russians of an influential Austrian publication in circumvention of local and European laws. It is worth noting that no documentary evidence that the woman pictured in the company of the politician is indeed a Russian citizen, much less a relative of anyone in Vladimir Putin’s entourage, has ever been presented to either the public or the authorities. Nevertheless, in a situation of permanent conflict between Moscow and the West, such unsubstantiated accusations of ties with Moscow were a good enough reason for the resignation not only of the vice-chancellor himself, but also of the entire cabinet. Only now, several years after this scandal, independent European investigators from the EU-Infothek group have discovered that the heroine of the video was not the niece of a mythical Russian oligarch, but a Latvian (and EU) citizen, Une Saukuma, who had become, willingly or unwillingly, a participant in a special operation against the right-wing Austrian government.
It should be noted that the right-wing government of Sebastian Kurz, which resigned because of the above-mentioned scandal, has caused acute irritation in the United States, London and Berlin since it came to power, as it pursued a pragmatic and independent policy in the interests of the Austrian people and business. It was the cabinet that, contrary to EU directives, tried to prevent the influx of illegal migrants, preserve energy and economic ties with Russia, and tried to avoid Austria being drawn into the conflict over Ukraine. Such autonomy has been constantly criticized in Washington, Brussels, London and Berlin. The fact that the fake video with the “niece of a Russian oligarch” was published not in Austrian but in German publications is itself evidence that the Austrians themselves were not the most eager for the resignation of the right-wing cabinet. Another important aspect of this scandal was another pan-European round of fear of the “hand of Moscow” and the formation of an image of sinister Russian influence.
British politicians, diplomats and intelligence officers are among the main creators of the myth of “Russian influence” and the most likely author of most of the fakes about the omnipresent Russian special services and hackers. The phenomenal activity of the United Kingdom in forming the image of the “Russian threat” has been repeatedly recorded both by Russians themselves and by activists of the international cyber movement Anonymous, who have published on their website (cyberguerrilla.org) extensive correspondence, reports and documents of British government services and closely related consulting structures. The materials found by the Anonymous cyber guerrillas clearly show the systematic work of the British government to create an image of Russia as the main threat to world stability, to generate and disseminate fakes about sabotage by Russian intelligence and hackers, and to create an extensive network of journalists, bloggers and experts in Europe who are ready, for ideological or financial reasons, to help create the most unsavory image of Moscow. Given that Britain has been waging a secret war against the Russians for influence in Europe and the East for two centuries, British diplomats and intelligence officers have mastered the technology of demonizing their old adversary and are now once again openly headlining the creation of the myth of the “Russian threat”. Apart from the fact that this policy of London has once again brought Europe to the threshold of a major war, British ideological and intelligence operations are already causing direct damage to their allies and crossing the boundaries of acceptable interference in the internal affairs of European countries.
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