The Whole World Is the Target of Russia's Psychological Warfare - Estonian Intelligence

According to Russian doctrine, the targets of psychological warfare include the political leadership, military personnel and their families, the civilian population, and certain specific target groups, such as ethnic and religious minorities, opposition groups and businesspeople – in friendly, neutral and hostile foreign countries alike. This means that the entire world population outside Russia is a potential target.

Psy-ops units monitor foreign media on a daily basis to keep abreast of the coverage of issues relevant to the GRU, current events and Russia’s role in them. Regular media monitoring reports identify, among other things, influential Western publications’ articles that are in line with Russian interests; these are boosted through fake social media accounts and GRU-controlled online portals. In online propaganda, GRU focuses on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and VK (VKontakte).

The GRU uses those portals to plant disinformation in the public sphere of foreign countries, in the hope that it will spread and the original source will go unnoticed. The choice of topics depends on the GRU's priorities, which may change over time.

In 2020, GRU-controlled English-language online portals (such as inforos.ru, infobrics.org and oneworld.press) disseminated false information about the COVID-19 pandemic, undermining the Western countries’ efforts to curb the spread of the virus and praising Russia’s actions. For example, they spread the statement that the US is taking advantage of the pandemic to assert its worldview and the coronavirus is in fact an American bioweapon.