The Russian-language service of the KGB radio "Voice of Russia" (earlier, Radio Moscow), a leading propaganda tool for abroad, aired a round table discussion with officers and generals of the KGB (FSB): Mikhailov, Gasparian and Grachev, who acknowledged that Russia was defeated in all information wars.
The cause of the defeat - that this country has never brought truth - was not discussed.
In the program, the KGB radio men recognized that Russia is simply unable to wage information, or cold, wars, but it can successfully apply the traditional KGB violent methods of "hot'' war, i. e. cyber terrorism, as well as kidnappings and murdering peaceful journalists (as, for example, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko and many others).
KGB propaganda men said:
"Many argue that the Cold War has ended, and the Soviet Union lost it. But who decided, that it is over? We remain now in the same position as at the beginning of the Cold War. As Russia had its own problems, so it was left with them. With regard to the participation in international games, we must look at these things objectively.
We have never had a strategic alliance in the international arena. Based on this fact, we can start wars or terminate them.
Recall that Boris Yeltsin went to Chechnya and signed an agreement to end the war. We can rhetorically say that the war is over, though we are aware that it does not stop.
The clashes during the previous Cold War are in no way similar to those that occur at present. Now we have a great number of fronts, not only tangible - "us" versus "them". But now there's a lot of fronts, of the people participate in these information wars against us, within the group "us",
Today we moved into the era of new technologies that allow to wage wars, independently of some strategic services. Today we are dealing with a highly efficient war in terms of its impact on the Russian state.
There are many new fronts on different sides. And some of them turned out to be even more challenging than the old classic Western front, from the point of information stress and intensity.
In Ukraine, there is such an intensive anti-Russian propaganda (under former Ukrainian president Yushchenko, truth appeared in the media about the Russian crimes against the Ukrainians - KC) that we (the KGB men - KC) called it "anti-Russian hysteria" (under the Communists, the KGB always spoke about "anti-Soviet hysteria" referring to Western media, but Russia has not basically changed in its totalitarianism for the last 500 years, therefore, 'Russian' and 'Soviet' are basically the same words- KC).
Now we are trying to get out of this long conflict, but the enemy engaged the most advanced part of our youth, who, entering the age of adulthood, has become a part of this war. And they became soldiers in this war. Today, it is impossible to destruct their ideas and return to original positions. This is the most terrible fact for us.
In information warfare, people in the most productive age, the younger generation, begin to get actively get involved in politics. We understand that the army which is fighting against us (i. e. the KGB men - KC) today inside the Russian Federation - we will not even talk about the post-Soviet territory, it goes without saying - does not act according to the same laws of the information wars which took place in the past.
In the West, we have been identified as the Russians. They attack concrete people who are personally responsible. This is the information war. We became guilty for Katyn, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968. And for Poland.
In the Soviet times, it was much easier for us (the secret police - KC) because information wars then still had certain rules of the game. Let us recall the BBC, The Voice of America, Radio Liberty - they had some principles. The society, in which we lived then, initially perceived them as our enemies (and the secret police fought the truth with the terrorist methods of the jamming of Western radio broadcasts - KC).
In 1985, something happened that brought a break in this war. First of all, the Western black propaganda suddenly stopped at those radio stations (it has never been there, in the first place - KC), and only information remained.
A recent example is the Europe Cup Championship which is now held in Poland. In Polish newspapers these days (due to provocations by KGB "Russian fans" and counter measures by the Poles - KC), an interesting phrase was published several times: this is a reaction to the Smolensk attack.
Under the "Smolensk attack" they mean a Polish plane that crashed (due to KGB two blasts on board under the Putin's orders - KC) near Smolensk. In Poland, the words "Smolensk attack" creep across newspapers (what Polish newspapers write in Polish are proper articles, and not just "one phrase'. Ordinary Russians know nothing about them due to the KGB censorship inside Russia. Among all Russian-language media, only the Kavkaz Center reports about these articles and in most cases we just translate them into Russian. That is why the KGB suppresses this information by strong continuous cyber terrorist attacks on us - KC).
Those persons who initially started to write about the Smolensk attack (initially, these were the Kavkaz Center journalists who started to write about the Russian terrorist attack 4/10 when all Polish media still kept mum - KC), who suggested the Smolensk attack, keep actively devoting much attention to it and will always say about any new events (about the events connected with the attack - KC) that this is a "reaction to the Smolensk attack". And the Polish press calmly writes: ''This is the reaction to the attack".
If we go to the Internet today, we can see what huge information warfare is taking place, practically on each website without exception, against the Russian government (i. e. Putin - KC), against its initiatives and the ruling party (the party of crooks and thieves - KC).
The Information warfare, which we now come across, is aimed at the Russian people of completely different generation and the set of mind than in the time of the Soviet Union. The reaction of the authorities to this kind of information war is extremely clumsy and technologically inaccurate.
We're trying to talk to the society through the TV screens, through the radio. But the most well armed participants of this information war do not listen to our radio, or watch our TV. They do not read our newspapers. And every year, there is more and more of participants in this war.
Recently, the local government in Nizhny Novgorod held a conference devoted to saving journalism (the KGB propaganda journalism - KC). But how could it be saved ? How are we to save the newspapers which are read by nobody, with the presence of huge information world without borders, censorship or fees.
We have become totally unequipped for the new information war which is now waged not even under the control of American imperialists.
Soon it will be two years since the start of the Arab Spring. You can see to what events a completely free access into this information world led on the Internet, It is now easy to gather crowds, to organize flash mobs even with simple SMS. That is what we (the Russian KGB - KC) got in Egypt.
The new rules of information warfare have absolutely no restrictions. What is the new information war? It is not known to what this mobility - on Twitter, Facebook and social network websites - could lead.
Previously, it was easy, there were some tools of censorship that regulated the information masses, there were the jamming stations. Now there is only one radical option - to block the Internet with a switch across the entire country.
Please note what is happening today with the meetings. We started making errors, and these errors are used by our opponents, the opposition. When we start saying, that all that is organized for the money of the US State Department, we need to catch someone red- handed. As soon as we start talking about the US money, the last crook and grafter who lives on this money will say "hey, guys, show me where this money is".
We loose the information war due to the fact that they wage the war against us without any rules of the game, and we are trying to work out our war game rules (e. g, the continuous jamming of the KC - KC).
We're losing to them. Recall the information war during the Chechen campaign. Why did we loose it ? The Chechen separatists had only one information center in the person of Udugov, and no one could, under any circumstance, including Dudayev, refute the words of Udugov.
And if our journalists turned to some other Chechen commanders saying that Udugov lied, they told them that his information is true and said: "He is right". But our own special propaganda services could not at that time coordinate their information, our departments could not agree between themselves. That is why we lost.
For the first time in history of our special service, we opened a field press-center during the hostilities. In Pervomaisky, when we started to push back the journalists and tell them, to wait a bit for the information to come, so they had nothing left but to go, to crawl, to the other side where they were met with open arms, given bread, fed with barbecue, poured with vodka, if they chose it. That is the principle of propaganda (The KGB judges everything strictly according to its own standards - KC).
Let us recall the war in the Caucasus in 2008. Tskhinvali has been burning, And the CNN shows the footage, but what was the text? "That's how The Russian troops attack a small defenseless Georgia".
We operate in many aspects in as old-fashioned way. Take for example the history with Georgia which now holds a so called "anti-Sochi campaign", the propaganda campaign based on the assumption that once, in whatever century it was (in the 19th - KC), the Russians presumably "offended" the Circassians (The "offence" was that the Russians slaughtered 90% of the Circassians - KC). Because of that, the Sochi Olympics should not be held, they say.
They wage a very dirty informational campaign against us, contrary to all the rules, therefore, we need to strike back, we must act as during the war (the "hot" war is meant, with cyber- and ordinary terrorism - KC), a la guerre comme à la guerre, otherwise we will be crushed (exactly with the same words Stalin justified his atrocities in 1930s - KC).
We must think less about our image abroad (in using cyber-terrorism, murders, abductions of journalists - KC). They will never look at us in a good way (there is a reason for that - KC).
Using ideological postulates, we will be never able to form in the West the opinion about Russia as a country which is close to them in spirit, a country which has ever done anything good for anybody. Any political leader in the West uses an anti-Russian card (it's the traditional Russian delirium of persecution - KC).
We should not even strive for that. They have called us Byzantium - good, we admit that we are the Third Rome (The Russians invented their Third Rome story to look "great", in their own eyes - KC). They send against us arrows, stones and cannon-balls - anything. When we were strong, we had the Soviet Union, they were afraid of us, and respected us. Even now they fear us. The Russian emperor Alexander III said: "Russia has only two allies - the army and the navy".
On this very interesting topic that Russia has only two true allies - the army and the navy - we now end our round-table discussion", reports the KGB propaganda radio "Voice of Russia" (i.e. the Putin's KGB junta relies solely on physical force and violence, and Russia has no need even to try to participate therefore in the information war - the war of the facts, analysis and arguments - KC),
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
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