Information Wars. Richard Stengel
would “never be recognized by the United States and the international community” and that “we are prepared to impose additional costs on Russia for its actions.” Putin, for his part, told Obama that the referendum was “fully consistent with the norms of international law and the U.N. charter.”7
Oh, and one month after the initial invasion, Putin owned up to the fact that they were Russian soldiers—without ever acknowledging that he had denied it in the first place.8 That’s Putin’s way. Establish a new baseline of reality and never look back.
The context for all this was the months of demonstrations in Kiev that began in November 2013 and culminated in the flight of the Putin-supported president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, at the end of February.9 The protests, centered in the neo-Stalinist-style square known as the Maidan, began in reaction to Yanukovych’s rejection of a Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement that would have established a free-trade zone. Putin had urged Yanukovych to reject it, and he had.10 On the Maidan, pro-EU demonstrators carried EU flags and chanted, “Ukraine is Europe.”11 It was the largest gatherings of protesters since the pro-democracy demonstrations of the Orange Revolution in 2004.12 And that’s what spooked Putin—he had long claimed that America was behind these “color revolutions” in the Russian periphery.13 In 2011, Putin had accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of being the invisible hand behind the anti-corruption protests that had rocked Moscow and St. Petersburg that year.14
The U.N. rejected the Crimean annexation and referendum, passing a nonbinding resolution affirming the “territorial integrity of Ukraine.”15 The leaders of the G7 condemned “the Russian Federation’s clear violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine”16 and then suspended Russia’s membership in the G-8 and canceled the planned summit in Sochi—a blow to Putin, as the gathering was meant to showcase Russia just before the Russian-hosted Winter Olympics.17
Over and over, the President and the State Department reaffirmed that Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected.18,19 Secretary Kerry went further. On Face the Nation, he said, “It’s an incredible act of aggression. It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country.”20
I was outraged about Putin’s actions. I was particularly incensed by the stone-cold lying and disinformation. We had been monitoring for months how Russia had been claiming that Nazis and fascists were behind the “Euromaidan” protests. What could I do? Well, heck, I was the head of public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department, and at the very least, we could tweet about it. I know that sounds like shooting spitballs at a tidal wave, but it was no small thing at State. I asked that public affairs officers and State staff and ambassadors tweet out the statements about Ukraine that the President and the Secretary had made. Easy, right? But nothing happened.
So, I started to tweet myself, condemning Putin’s actions in Ukraine, all the while not getting out ahead of the Secretary or the President. Here’s an early one:
The unshakable principle guiding events must be that the people of #Ukraine determine their own future.
Not exactly fire-breathing words, but it was something.
After I began tweeting, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t get much reaction from within the Building, but I would get immediately trolled online by dozens of seemingly furious people. Someone named Petrik Krohn tweeted a few minutes later:
The key to the liberation of #Ukraine is understanding that the US @StateDept = #CIA. #Euromaidan is their anti-Russian #pogrom.
And then this got retweeted by other Russian-sounding Twitter handles. This was all new to me. Here are a few others, all of which were liked and retweeted by one another:
Everyone knows for a long time that the State Department only deals in misinformation.
The US is the empire of evil and fascism [accompanied by an image of a bloodied Obama holding a map of Ukraine].
Why is it forbidden to hold protests like the Maidan in the USA? You are undemocratic and authoritarian.
And the always useful:
Are you a drunk or do you lie deliberately?
In the beginning, there was very little echo of what I was trying to do within the department. The attitude at State was: the President has spoken, the Secretary has spoken, the U.N. has spoken—why do we need to do anything else? Even people who were privately furious about what Putin had done were reluctant to go on social media and say the same thing. Or even support what the President and the Secretary had said.
I asked to be furnished with regular tweets. Public affairs sent me some, grudgingly. Here is one that was sent to me to post, provided, of course, that EUR cleared it, which they eventually did:
U.S. is closely monitoring developments in #Ukraine.
Putin must have been quaking in his boots.
“A Message to America”
August 2014. The video begins with moody, hypnotic music. White type on a black background: “A Message to America” in English and Arabic. A grainy clip of President Obama authorizing air strikes. Then a cut to a man in an orange tunic kneeling in a vast desert against a darkening sky. Shaved head. Stubble on his chin. A strong, handsome face. He looks straight at the camera.
Looming over him, a tall, slender soldier in black with a balaclava over his head. He is holding a knife and has a gun in a leather clip draped over his shoulder.
Then in a strong voice with an American accent, the man in the orange tunic says:
I call on my friends, family, and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the U.S. government. For what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality.
The microphone in his collar picks up the sound of him swallowing. His voice chokes as he mentions his brother.
I call on my brother John, who is a member of the U.S. Air Force. Think about what you are doing. Think about the lives you destroy, including those of your own family.
And then:
I wish I had more time. I wish I could have the hope for freedom and seeing my family once again … I guess all in all I wish I wasn’t American.
Then the man in black spoke. His voice was grim, and his accent sounded as though it could be from East London. With his knife, he pointed to the man in the orange tunic:
This is James Wright Foley. An American citizen of your country. As a government, you have been at the forefront of the aggression towards the Islamic State. You have plotted against us, and gone far out of your way to find reasons to interfere in our affairs …
You are no longer fighting an insurgency. We are an Islamic army and a state that has been accepted by a large number of Muslims worldwide. So effectively, any aggression towards the Islamic State is an aggression towards Muslims from all walks of life who have accepted the Islamic Caliphate as their leadership.
So any attempt by you, Obama, to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic Caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people.
And then, well, they do not show the gruesome deed. Like the makers of horror movies who understand that the most terrifying act of violence is the one that happens offscreen, they cut to an image of Foley’s headless torso lying in the sand, the knife next to him in a pool of blood, a pair of sandals tossed to the side.
The final frame showed a brief glimpse of another American, the journalist Steven Joel Sotloff. “The life of this American citizen, Obama,” the man in black says, “depends on your next decision.”21
It was horrifying and riveting in equal measure. The quality of the video showed sophistication and craftsmanship—a concern with aesthetics and design—like