PMC Research Issues Paper on Russia’s Measured Misinformation vs Georgia
One of Georgia’s leading research and policy analysis centers, PMCG (Policy and Management Consulting Group) has issued a research inquiry into Russia’s everlasting disinformation campaign against Georgia, as well as, other countries in the region.
The name of the policy paper is “Russia’s Disinformation Campaigns in Georgia: A Study of State and Civil Society Response”, and it aims to study the nature and aims of Russian propaganda and disinformation campaign in Georgia and the steps taken by the state and civil society organizations in response.
The policy paper outlines in detail the measures and the tactics the Kremlin uses against its formerly controlled nation-states. “Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns have become a cornerstone of Russia’s revisionist project,” we read in the introductory text of the research paper. The paper unwaveringly underscores the aggressive methods the Russian ideologists use to discredit their pro-western neighbors. All of their secretive ‘methodologies’ are decrypted, and one does not need superior political or historical knowledge to understand the subtleties and intentions of these acts. Acts such as Hybrid Warfare, which includes Soft Power as a tool to achieve military success, are ever so present. Additionally, the notion of the Gerasimov Doctrine, which entails that the difference between war and peace is being blurred and that wars are being waged without any declaration and, once begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template, are evidently visible in the annexation of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, Donbas and Lugansk and even Transnistria.
The author of the article, Irakli Sirbiladze, defines the timeline of this Russian machinery, whose ultimate goal is to not lose grip on its sphere of influence and to remain the hegemon in the post-soviet world. The two clear examples of breaking away from Moscow’s political and moral ‘chains’ are Georgia and Ukraine, and in both cases, Russia has intervened militarily and ‘reasserted’ influence. “Georgia and Ukraine continued to be defiant in their pro-Western foreign policy aspirations, [as] Russia advanced its efforts to undermine their democracy, statehood and pro-Western integration processes,” the author writes.
One of the paragraphs in the Research Paper includes the former president's address to the legislature. In his annual statement to Parliament, President Giorgi Margvelashvili said, “Georgia is one of the objects of Russia's globally expanded ideological propaganda campaign. The aim of Russian ‘soft power’ is to discredit Western values as well as to achieve Georgia`s refusal of Euro-Atlantic integration. In this regard, it uses a conglomerate of local anti-Western forces. In order to discontinue this attack, it is necessary to consolidate the pro-Western agenda internally and to coordinate activities with our Western partners.”
The policy research paper not only consecutively and intricately examines Russia’s instruments of disinformation and hard-fought deception, but it also gives recommendations and proposals to the public sector, CSOs, the allies in the international community and most importantly to the administration and the Government of Georgia.
By Beka Alexishvili