It is generally believed that one sign that the secret services are
doing their job well is that the media says nothing about them. In
this respect, Russia is a special case: the services receive an excess
of media coverage. This is only partly due to the media’s natural
interest in an attractive subject, as well as the services’ own self-promotion
(although that is increasingly true around the world).
In fact, it is a symptom of Russia’s information warfare, in which
the special services’ public image is just one block in building
the appearance of a strong state and a strong government. It also
justifies and legitimises the high position which the services and
elite members of the institutions of force enjoy in the Russian Federation’s
political system.
However, this artificial, mythologised image of the services conflicts
with their non-public practices. These are revealed when
their cover is blown, when journalists investigate criminal scandals
involving the services, when controlled and uncontrolled
leaks of compromising information take place, and when the opposition
publicises cases where the special services violate fundamental
rights and civil liberties – something they often do under
the pretext of fighting the ‘fifth column’ of the West, international
terrorists and foreign spies. This produces two different images
of the services: the official one and the common one. The former
presents the services as professional, patriotic and a stronghold
of traditional values, Russia’s ‘sword and shield’; the latter shows
them as pampered by the regime, lawless, corrupt and undisciplined,
involved in brutal competition with one another, bureaucratised
and criminalised.
This text attempts to explain the paradox of the Russian special
services’ dual public image as reflected in the media. By placing
this question in the context of information warfare, it intends to
portray a broader picture of how the services operate domestically
and externally, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.
POINT OF VIEW 03/2019
6
Information warfare itself is discussed only selectively: the
services’ active role in conducting that kind of warfare, which
involves obtaining, defending and distorting information, is
mentioned only briefly; and the text does not address issues concerning
cyberspace, even though this is the services’ main theatre
of operations at present
