http://online.wsj.com/articles/russia-ramps-up-information-war-in-europe-1408675046 said:
Russia Ramps Up Information War in Europe
BERLIN—Dmitry Tulchinskiy, bureau chief here of Russian state news agency Rossiya Segodnya, shares a quiet hallway with a travel company and a chess club.
By next year, that office could get cramped. The agency's Berlin staff is supposed to grow from two to at least 30. Its job, according to a directive signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, will be to "illuminate abroad the state policies" of the Russian Federation.
"What is propaganda? Propaganda is the tendentious presentation of facts," Mr. Tulchinskiy said in an interview. "It does not mean lying."
With its image battered by the conflict in Ukraine, Russia is accelerating its push to rebuild, modernize and expand its Soviet-era foreign media apparatus. One country of focus is Germany, the European economic powerhouse that has both close ties to Russia and rising public resentment of the U.S. On Thursday, the scope of the ambitions emerged further, when the government publicly moved toward adopting a $39 million budget increase for pro-Kremlin news channel RT to fund its expansion into French.
The effort will give the Kremlin new opportunities to feed discontent over the U.S. role in the world and to undermine Western leaders who have closed ranks to oppose Mr. Putin's policies.
In Berlin, RT, formerly known as Russia Today, plans to launch a German-language offering by next year, its editor says. Rossiya Segodnya is building up a bureau to run a German-language website, social-media accounts and a 24-hour radio station. The media offensive represents another arm of Mr. Putin's increasingly direct confrontation with the West.
"We simply want to end the dominance of the so-called Anglo-Saxon media," said Dmitry Kiselyov, the television anchor whom Mr. Putin appointed in December to help direct the international effort. "We believe they do pure and simple propaganda, distorting the image of the world, counter to the interests of humanity." In response, U.S. government officials say they focus on building international ties with exchange programs and other initiatives, and reaching out on hot-button issues via social and traditional media.
While Mr. Kiselyov rejected the comparison, the effort carries echoes of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union established a web of foreign-language news outlets hoping to drum up sympathy for its cause.
As in the Cold War, the U.S. is portrayed as the chief antagonist to world peace. In Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has struggled to quell rising resentment toward the U.S. amid anger over National Security Agency surveillance, Russian officials see a receptive and influential audience for that message. In France, populist leader Marine Le Pen, who has voiced support for Mr. Putin, led her National Front party to victory in European Parliament elections in May.
Still, the road has gotten tougher for Kremlin image-makers. German polls show that the Ukraine crisis and downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 have damaged Russia's image. French President François Hollande supported new sanctions against Russia after the Malaysian airliner crashed.
It isn't clear how quickly Moscow will follow through on the plan. In Berlin, employees of Russian state media said they were aware of their bosses back at headquarters looking to expand, but knew of few details on how the expansion was going to be carried out.
Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of RT, said a website and social-media presence featuring German-language content was scheduled to launch in the first half of next year as a possible precursor to a full-fledged television channel. She noted a petition in Germany calling for a local-language RT had gathered more than 28,000 signatures. "We receive a lot of comments asking to translate RT into German," said Ms. Simonyan in a written statement.
Ms. Simonyan said RT German would work closely with Ruptly GmbH, an RT subsidiary launched last year that sells footage to broadcasters and is based in an office tower with an expansive view of central Berlin. Ruptly's offerings this month included extensive video of the racially charged protests in Ferguson, Mo., as well as graphic footage of civilians killed by shelling in eastern Ukraine where government forces have been trying to rout pro-Russian separatists.
In France as in Germany, Ms. Simonyan said in a statement, RT would also start with online and social-media platforms before launching a television channel.
The focus on Germany and France reflects the Kremlin's attempts to open a gap between Europe and the U.S., and between the European public and its governments, over how to respond to the Ukraine crisis. Despite taking a tougher stance recently, backing EU sanctions against Russia in wake of the downing of the Malaysia jet, Ms. Merkel has been Mr. Putin's most important interlocutor in the West. She has spoken with him more than 30 times this year.
A Russian official in Berlin briefed on the media plans for Germany said a significant portion of the German public was receptive to Russia's message. They included people with antiwar, antiglobalization and general leftist views. Conservatives, including opponents of "homosexual propaganda," were also targets, the official said. "One can do some pretty powerful work with this segment," the Russian official said.
RT, launched by the Kremlin as Russia Today in 2005, is a news channel now available in English, Spanish and Arabic that positions itself as an alternative to Western international media such as CNN, the BBC and Germany's Deutsche Welle. While viewership is relatively small, observers say that by airing increasingly shrill criticism of the West and comments from anti-American conspiracy theorists as well as far-right and far-left Western politicians, RT has sought to undermine the authority of Western media.
In the Ukraine crisis, for example, RT has accused Western media and politicians of hiding evidence opposing the view that pro-Russian separatists shot down the Malaysia jet. "The biggest success of the Russian propaganda is to create confusion about what is true or not," said Marieluise Beck, a member of the opposition party Greens who is one of Mr. Putin's most prominent critics in the German parliament.
But Ms. Beck said Germany should be cautious in how it reacts to the Russian state media's German-language expansion plans, for fear of giving Moscow a reason to block Deutsche Welle's Russian-language programming.
Pollsters say that pro-Kremlin media may indeed find fertile ground in Germany, especially with the mainstream media increasingly critical of Russia. In the former Communist East, generations of Germans grew up in Moscow's orbit, surrounded by reminders of Russia's role defeating the Nazis in World War II. In the former West, awareness of close economic ties with Russia dovetails with memories of the Ostpolitik—policies West Germany implemented in the 1970s to ease tensions with the Eastern Bloc.
Manfred Güllner, one of Germany's top pollsters, sees skepticism among many Germans about their media's portrayal of Russia. When he last examined the question last year, 42% said they found the German media's reporting on Russia to be "exaggerated and distorted." That could provide an opportunity for a pro-Kremlin outlet like RT, though Mr. Güllner cautioned that the German media environment was already so saturated that a new voice could have trouble getting heard.
"The potential is surely there," Mr. Güllner said. "The question is how many people will actually use the thing."
Mr. Kiselyov, whom the European Union sanctioned for being a "central figure of the government propaganda" after Russia annexed Crimea in March, says that Germany is suffering because the U.S. is drawing it into its conflict with Russia. He said sanctions against the interests of Germany and European countries were enacted, for example, on grounds of an "absolutely propagandistic declaration" by Western media that Mr. Putin shot down the Malaysian jet. "Of course something must be positioned in response to this," he said in an interview.
On his show in April, Mr. Kiselyov cited poll numbers suggesting that Ms. Merkel was taking a tougher line against Russia than most Germans wanted. In late June, Mr. Kiselyov cast the Ukraine conflict as an echo of the run-up to World War I, which he described as engineered by Washington and London to decimate their adversaries on the Continent. "Now, just as back then, the English and the Americans have the common goal of making enemies of Germany and Russia and thus to exhaust them," Mr. Kiselyov told viewers.
Mr. Kiselyov, 60 years old, has honed a sharp, tough-talking style on television that sounds very different from the often soothing tones of Soviet news anchors. Last year, he said that the hearts of gay organ donors harvested from fatal car crashes should be "buried or incinerated as unsuitable to prolong someone's life." In March he reminded viewers that Russia was capable of "turning the U.S. into radioactive ash."
He got his job running much of the Kremlin's international media in December thanks to Mr. Putin, who named him by executive decree. The Russian president ordered state news agency RIA Novosti to be dissolved and merged into a new entity called Rossiya Segodnya, which became responsible for a range of Russian state media targeting a foreign audience.
Rossiya Segodnya now says it will employ hundreds of journalists around the world to produce local-language news reports, radio shows and social-media content. According to a Rossiya Segodnya brochure that provides an overview of the organization for the German public, the organization planned to build up hubs in about a dozen cities, with a goal of participating "in shaping public opinion and the news agenda." Mr. Kiselyov said financing for the expansion was still being worked out.
At the Rossiya Segodnya headquarters in Moscow recently, in a huge building initially built as the press center for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the modern open-plan newsroom featuring curved desks, overhead screens and a central "news hub" looked much like the offices of other large news organizations. Attached to some staffers' phones or computer monitors, however, were ribbons colored in the red, blue and white of the Russian flag or the orange-and-black pattern that has come to symbolize support for the pro-Russian movement in Ukraine.
Russian officials also see an opening thanks to the image problems of the U.S. The U.S. has been battered in privacy-conscious Germany by allegations of American electronic surveillance on European citizens and spying on the German government. An Infratest dimap poll conducted early this month found just 35% of Germans saying they viewed the U.S. as a trustworthy partner, down by nearly half from December 2011.
The U.S. still scores better than Russia. But in some areas, Washington appears to be struggling to keep up with an already intensifying Russian charm offensive. Russian officials in Berlin say they are trying to be as open as possible with German media.
Russian Ambassador Vladimir Grinin is an experienced Germany hand and, unlike his U.S. counterpart John B. Emerson, speaks fluent German. A recent story in leading newsweekly Der Spiegel featuring interviews with both ambassadors described the contrast between the warm, no-security-check welcome offered by Mr. Grinin—a man who "embodies the closeness between Russia and Germany"—with the "security paranoia" at the U.S. Embassy.
"The U.S. was always the symbol of the good, democracy, freedom, alliance, defense, while Russia generally represented the opposite," Mr. Tulchinskiy, the Rossiya Segodnya bureau chief in Berlin, said. "It turns out the first statement isn't so true, so it's logical to think that the second statement isn't so true."
U.S. officials acknowledge that they face public-opinion challenges in Germany but say that shared values and interests still form the foundation for an enduring partnership. Mark Toner, deputy assistant secretary for public diplomacy at the State Department, said the U.S. tries to reach a cross-section of Germany society via exchange programs with German professionals and journalists.
"Of course, we also engage as needed through both social and traditional media to advocate our point of view," Mr. Toner said in a statement in response to questions about Russia increasing its state media activity in Europe. "But we do so in a way that is consistent with our democratic values."
Some high-profile Germans are already welcoming Russia's push into their media market. Martin Hoffmann, managing director of the German-Russian Forum, a prominent organization that promotes ties with Russia, said he frequently received letters complaining that German media reporting was too one-sided.
One of his members, former television journalist Christoph Hörstel, helped seek support for a petition urging RT to start broadcasting in German. He often speaks out against U.S. hegemony and has alleged that the U.S. government secretly planned the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He also sometimes appears as an analyst on RT English, criticizing the "Washington puppet regime in Ukraine" in an appearance in June, for instance. Mr. Hörstel said he expects to be a guest on RT German as well, and has been in contact with Russian officials. An RT spokeswoman declined to comment.
Mr. Hoffmann, though, said RT would need to tone down its often-inflammatory rhetoric to appeal to mainstream Germans. "We urgently need fairer reporting on Russia in Germany," Mr. Hoffmann said. But, he added, "the German television viewer doesn't want to see propaganda."
