NATO acknowledged that it is losing the information war with Russia
The NATO Command called on its allies in Western countries to actively combat the spread of misinformation that accompanies Russian military adventures, the Voice of America reported. The Director of NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, Jānis Sārts, stated that the West is trying to catch up to the Russian Federation in this area.
“The technology is ours. The powerhouses of the market are located in our countries. However, we are holding this discussion, feeling that players such as Russia, the Islamic State and also China push us to this,” Jānis Sārts said. NATO officials say that Russia sees their information strategy as one of the key pillars of conflict planning, while the West is lagging behind in this regard.
“We continue to fight on the roadside despite the fact that work in the area of strategic communications is properly funded and extremely cheap as compared with other expenditures,” the Chief of Strategic Communications at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers of Europe (SHAPE), Mark Laity, said.
It should be mentioned that a senior editor of The Economist, Edward Lucas, called attention to the Russian propagandistic TV Channel, Russia Today, and noted that its work can’t be considered as journalism. “Russia understands the essence of the climate of post-truth times and now they are absolutely and flagrantly lying. They see the weakness of our media in the post-Cold War era, which lays in the fact that justice prevails over the truth for us,” Lucas said.
According to him, the West should work harder on disinfecting social media, where Russian trolls post a huge number of false statements.