Russian disinformation and you

It affects us all

I stirred a hornets nest this past week trying to counter a significant amount of misinformation being spread online, particularly having to do with Ukraine, which has entered its fourth year of war defending against a Russian invasion.

Ever since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a contentious meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance just over a week ago, my social media feed has been bombarded with pro and anti-Ukrainian memes, posts, images and more.

And crazy as it sounds, Russia has taken advantage of the chaos to spread the seeds of its propaganda.

I recently read “The Plot to Destroy Democracy” by Malcolm Nance, a former military officer and an intelligence and foreign policy expert. His book goes into detail about how Russian President Vladimir Putin has modernized the Kremlin’s propaganda network with a combination of cyberwarfare, state media, fake news and bots on social media to manipulate us into spreading the Kremlin’s message.

Here’s just a sampling of planted anti-Ukraine stories that have origins in St. Petersburg recently:

— Zelenskyy has spent funds from the U.S. on yachts, expensive cars, etc.

— Ukraine sold U.S. weapons given to them to Mexican drug cartels.

— Ukrainian generals had mansions burned down in the California wildfires.

None of these stories have any basis in fact. It’s all been an effort to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine as the country fights for its life against Russia. And it pains me to say it, but it’s working. The Russians take an idea (Americans don’t want to endlessly fund a war) and then fertilize it with complete BS, feeding into assumptions about Ukrainian corruption to persuade regular people that their government’s money is being wasted.

We are so eager to believe anything negative about the “other side” that it makes us susceptible to Russian disinformation campaigns. Hell, an entire impeachment inquiry was opened up into Joe Biden about a $5 million bribery payment from Ukraine based on a story that was completely made up by Alexander Smirnov, a Russian operative who had fed false claims to the FBI and was later arrested for them.

There are people who are rightfully upset that America is spending money on a foreign country’s war instead of using the funds here (although I’ve written in the past that foreign aid actually is an investment in America). But the people who already were upset are some of the top targets of this Russian misinformation. Russia takes their righteous anger and then amplifies it with lies.

And what do people who are angry on the internet do? They don’t check where the story came from and instead share the story, spreading it further like a cancer.

I saw several people on my friends list sharing some of these Russian-based claims and I childishly lashed out. To me, it felt like a betrayal of a democratic ally. I couldn’t comprehend that someone could be manipulated by Russian propaganda into believing something silly like a Russian-based claim that Zelenskyy was a brutal dictator (it’s Putin who is the dictator, being in charge of Russia for 21 of the past 25 years, overseeing the mysterious deaths of politicians, including a decorated former Olympic wrestler who “fell from a window” just this past week).

In refuting some of the online misinformation, I said some things I regret to people who probably didn’t even know they had been manipulated.

“How could they not know?” I thought to myself.

But then I remembered that I, too, have been a victim of Russian manipulation.

During the 2016 presidential primaries, dreams of universal health care, a reduction of money in politics and college education that didn’t take a lifetime to repay had me all aboard the Bernie Sanders train. It was the most invested I’ve ever been in a political primary campaign. I got a bumper sticker, I joined a phone bank and I had a “Feel the Bern” T-shirt.

When the primaries were over and Sanders had lost, I was devastated. Not long after that, both the Republican and Democrat email servers were hacked, but only emails from the Democrats were released. They revealed that the Democratic National Committee had conspired against Sanders to prevent him from winning the primary.

When I saw the news, I was downright livid. I refused to support the primary winner Hillary Clinton, instead writing Sanders’ name in on my ballot when it came time for the general election.

It wasn’t until later that I found out I had been one of many Sanders supporters who had been targeted. Sure, the information was true, but it turned out Russia had conspired with Wikileaks to release all the negative information against Clinton and the Democrats in an effort to elect its preferred candidate — Donald Trump.

Remember the so-called “Russia hoax” where special council Robert Mueller investigated Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election? Well he found plenty. Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals from the Soviet Internet Research Agency, Russia’s online propaganda wing. Later, a bipartisan U.S. Senate intelligence committee report released in 2019 detailed Russia’s foreign meddling in the 2016 election.

And Russia has gotten a massive return on its investment. Already in 2025, the United States has ended a task force aimed at seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs, it suspended offensive cyber operations against Russia, the FBI ended an effort to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics and the U.S. has paused military aid to Ukraine as well as the sharing of intelligence. Trump also made a post on Truth Social lying about the origins of the war, stating Zelenskyy was the dictator and that Ukraine had started the war. And we wrapped things up with a public scolding of Zelenskyy at the White House.

I want this war to end as much as anyone, but Putin and Russia could end the war today if they simply agreed to leave Ukraine. They are the aggressors here. All they have to do is go home. Everyone else should learn from World War II. Appeasement is not the answer. Russia shouldn’t be rewarded with new territory for violating the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, where Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union on the condition that Russia never invade.

It’s been a massive month for Russian misinformation. We must do better. Russia feeds on our political divisions to seep its lies into the cracks. Please check the source of information before you share something on social media. If you don’t, whether right or left, you could be inadvertently helping Putin’s cause.