The extensive anti-American coronavirus disinformation campaign orchestrated by Beijing and Moscow is likely to backfire. The crude attempts to sow havoc in Western societies cannot be sustained if the source of the disinformation is widely publicized and the facts about China and Russia are revealed. It was China’s initial cover-up that lulled the world into a false sense of security from the escalating pandemic. And Russia’s duplicity about its own COVID-19 infestation will highlight Moscow’s lack of credibility and trustworthiness.
Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Chinese government disinformation has spread like a virus. To deflect attention from Beijing’s incompetence and global irresponsibility, China’s Foreign Ministry has claimed that the U.S. Army deliberately infected Wuhan with the epidemic. The subsequent claims by the Communist government in Beijing that it has controlled the virus and will save the world from another pandemic simply cannot be believed. Assertions about controlling the virus are a form of positive disinformation but unlikely to convince Western audiences that the ruling Communist Party can be trusted. In an authoritarian state, information is tightly controlled and twisted to serve the interests of the rulers.
Chinese state disinformation has been further amplified by Russian sources with several new ingredients. For instance, Russian websites have quoted Igor Nikulin, a former Russian adviser to the U.N. commission on biological and chemical weapons, claiming that Americans were developing a new generation of biological weapons and that COVID-19 was designed to affect only ethnic Asians.
Russian trolls, fraudulent websites, and disinformation ads have also endeavored to use virus conspiracy theories to influence the U.S. election. American officials and Facebook are reportedly preparing for the possibility that coronavirus conspiracy theories and false information about the spread of infection will be manipulated to dissuade Americans from voting in the November general elections.
According to an EU document compiled by the strategic communication division of the European External Action Service, pro-Kremlin media outlets are spreading disinformation in the West about COVID-19 to undermine public trust in democratic institutions. They have also manufactured falsehoods about the pandemic to aggravate the health crisis in Western countries by sowing distrust in national governments. Pro-Kremlin disinformation also claims that while the West is failing against COVID-19, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is overcoming the virus.
Russia’s regime is currently pushing through constitutional changes to extend Putin’s term in office. The pandemic scare enables the Kremlin to assert that his rule must be prolonged indefinitely to deal with the Western imported virus, prohibit any mass protests on safety grounds, and preclude any further foreign threats. The message is that Moscow’s strong hand prevents the sort of panic and chaos that is currently engulfing Europe and America. Moreover, the Kremlin can blame the “Western pandemic” for Russia’s impending economic decline.
Despite its short-term distraction, domestic disinformation designed to deceive the Russian public is unlikely to pacify indefinitely an increasingly impoverished society. Russia is in the midst of a growing economic crisis, and its withdrawal from the OPEC oil price cartel agreement has added fuel to the flames. Russia’s economy is heavily dependent on oil prices, which have suffered one of their largest drops in three decades. Its budget is designed to balance at an oil price above $40 per barrel, while the current price has dropped into the low $30s. A contracting GDP and the depletion of Russia‘s financial reserves will further drive down living standards, increase unemployment, and reduce government services despite the recently announced stimulus package.
Meanwhile, the enemy coronavirus is seeping through Russia, and the state’s inability to contain it will increasingly expose Putin’s weaknesses. If the contagion incapacitates the tottering Russian healthcare system, the public will become further alienated from the regime and will no longer accept the nonsense that the existential crisis is a Western conspiracy.
Official public opinion polls in Russia are notoriously unreliable. The real test of the popular mood will be visible in public actions against a regime that persistently deceives its people, as well as those in the West.
Janusz Bugajski is a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. His recent book, co-authored with Margarita Assenova, is entitled Eurasian Disunion: Russia’s Vulnerable Flanks, published by the Jamestown Foundation.
