{"id":2895,"date":"2020-08-15T21:47:08","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T03:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/supportthebitkovs.com\/?p=2895"},"modified":"2020-08-15T22:01:56","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T04:01:56","slug":"putins-black-pr-has-arrived-in-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/supportthebitkovs.com\/en\/2020\/08\/15\/putins-black-pr-has-arrived-in-britain\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin\u2019s \u2018Black PR\u2019 has arrived in Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESPA\u00d1OL DISPONIBLE AQU\u00cd: <\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Christopher Steele, the author of the (in)famous Trump dossier<\/a>, is right to say Britain has been \u2018behind the curve\u2019 when it comes to combating the threat posed by Russia. The UK\u2019s political parties are being targeted by the Kremlin, he told Tory MP\u00a0Damian Collins on his\u00a0\u2018Infotagion\u2019\u00a0podcast<\/a>, in a bid \u2018to create great polarity, great partisanship, and divisions within political life\u2019. But while dodgy donations and cyber-hacking of our parties has been well covered, Steele also touched on a lesser-know but equally malign influence Russia is playing in Britain.<\/p>\n

\u2018Black PR,\u2019 he said, has \u2018grown and spread like a contagion\u2019 from Russia \u2018out into Western Europe, and into the Western world and Western democracies.\u2019 Black PR emerged in Russia in the 1990s and, broadly put, describes the practices that were associated with the introduction of competitive (if not democratic) elections there. Waged by political consultants \u2013 or so-called \u2018political technologists\u2019 \u2013 black PR made use of\u00a0kompromat\u00a0<\/em>(compromising material), character assassination, fake news, blackmail, the manipulation of public opinion, and a myriad of other questionable practices. It was intended to advantage the political technologists\u2019 clients, who were frequently candidates in local, regional, and federal elections. Whatever it did, however, black PR stretched the country\u2019s ethical, moral, and legal boundaries to their limits \u2013 often redrawing them in the process.<\/p>\n

Some of the political technologists\u2019 first clients were actually modernisers; those individuals who believed Russia had to progress as quickly as possible, and who claimed \u2013 publicly, at least \u2013 that the country should seek to reform along Western lines. But since he came to power in 2000, Vladimir Putin has centralised and systematised these practices in the Kremlin. He has taken control of opposition groups, ideologies, and movements, bringing so-called \u2018opposition\u2019 political parties under the Kremlin\u2019s control. All of this has been part of the effort to convince Russians there is no alternative to Putin, who also just happens to be their saviour.<\/p>\n

This work was led by Vladislav Surkov. Surkov was one of the original political technologists, working for the oligarchs Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky throughout the 1990s. In 1999, however, Surkov joined the Kremlin. Soon after, Putin forced Berezovsky into exile and jailed Khodorkovsky, and Surkov helped run the PR campaign. For almost two decades, Surkov\u00a0coordinated<\/a> the Kremlin\u2019s activities, first as deputy head of the presidential administration and later deputy prime minister, and then as Putin\u2019s personal advisor.<\/p>\n

As Putin gradually hollowed-out and then removed competitive elections \u2013 as part of the process of creating what Surkov called a system of \u2018managed democracy\u2019 \u2013 political technologists moved from politics to business to ply their trade. At the same time, Russia\u2019s authorities and regime insiders began to use a host of black PR-style tactics \u2013 such as fake news,\u00a0kompromat<\/em>, bribery, forgery, corruption, and intimidation \u2013 to steal companies from their legal owners, a practice known as\u00a0reiderstvo\u00a0<\/em>(corporate raiding). As a result, black PR is now, to use Steele\u2019s language, \u2018a feature of Russian business life and business life associated with Russian actors.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Take the Russian state\u2019s illegal dismemberment of Khodorkovsky\u2019s Yukos energy company in the early 2000s (for which a Dutch court has ordered the Russian state to pay US$50 billion (\u00a338 billion) in compensation to the company\u2019s shareholders). Or the treatment meted out by regime insiders to the owners of TogliattiAzot (Toaz), one of the world\u2019s largest fertiliser producers, since the early 2010s; or the Bitkov family, former owners of North-West Timer Company, which was once one of the most successful paper-producing companies in Russia. All involved concerted black PR campaigns by state and non-state actors to discredit and damage the reputations of the individuals involved.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Steele described black PR as having \u2018bled\u2019 into the UK through the Kremlin\u2019s disinformation and misinformation campaigns, and as part of the \u2018information laundering\u2019 process. It is most obvious in the media and on social media, but it also appears in due diligence reports, corporate intelligence investigations, litigation, arbitration, and court submissions, including \u2013 but not only \u2013 as part of the hundreds of Russian commercial disputes that are heard before London\u2019s courts annually.<\/p>\n

Black PR is a central aspect of the Kremlin\u2019s subversive influence operations in the West. As well as threatening to penetrate our institutions and subvert our processes, it threatens to undermine the rule of law itself.<\/p>\n

Dr Andrew Foxall is Director of the Russia and Eurasia Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society, the London-based international affairs think tank<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n