This article was originally published on January 27, 2023, on Info Ops France. In March 2021, Andrei Ilnitski, advisor to the Russian Defense Minister, declared that “the West, led by the United States, has unleashed a Mental Warfare against Russia, the consequences of which will manifest themselves at least a generation later”.

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was considered an unlikely event given several factors, including the insufficient Russian troops amassed at the Ukrainian border.

At a press conference on October 21, French Defense Minister Florence Parly and Army Chief of Staff General Thierry Burkhard presented the Military Doctrine of Cyber Influence Warfare (Doctrine militaire de lutte informatique d’influence - L2I).

With the publication of Russia’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) last June, some Western experts began talking about “informational confrontation”. In particular, Michel Duclos of the Institut Montaigne published an article entitled “Russia’s National Security Strategy 2021: time for informational confrontation”, while Sergey Sukhankin of the Jamestown Foundation discussed information confrontation in the context of the use of the Russian private military company Wagner.

After around a year and a half of work on Russia’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), the process was finally completed on June 2 with the publication of Decree No.

On 26th of January, Russia and Iran signed a cooperation agreement in the field of information security. The agreement was signed in Moscow during a visit by Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

In democracies, public opinion lies at the very heart of how society functions and is a factor that influences decision-making by the authorities.

A few days ago, Vladislav Surkov, the man behind the “power vertical” and “sovereign democracy” concept of Vladimir Putin’s first presidential term, published an opinion piece entitled “Putin’s long state”.