U.S. State Department Facilitates Information Warfare Confab with Ukraine

July 14, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) has reported on the participation of its acting head, Andriy Shapovalov, in the so-called “National Information Resilience Cluster” which met on July 13 for the first time in Ukraine. The meeting was “organized by the Civilian Research and Development Fund-Global (CRDF Global),” a U.S. State Department-linked organization which parades as a “non-governmental organization,” and it was held “with the support of” the State Department’s Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction.

CRDF Global already runs a regular “National Cyber Security Cluster” with multiple Ukrainian ministries and agencies. This new cluster overlaps many of the parties involved in that grouping, but this one appears to concentrate on upgrading Ukraine-U.S.-NATO propaganda warfare and measures against voices opposing their war.

Acting “in partnership” with the CRDF in the cluster are Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (the CCD is also an agency of the NSDC), its Foreign Ministry, and the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy. The Deputy Minister of Defense joined the other deputy-level officials for the opening of the meeting.

NSDC Deputy Secretary Serhiy Demediuk sounded a note of concern. “Information security” is key,

“because the lack of strategic communication allows the enemy to use well-known media in the United States and Europe, as well as in other allied countries. The spread of distrust in mass media enables the enemy not only to manipulate the information factor, but also to prepare for serious massive attacks—both in cyberspace and in the information sphere. We must be ready to respond in time and counter it.”

The first panel addressed how to ensure “information security under conditions of martial law” inside Ukraine. Here the speakers were officials from the NSDC and the Security Service (the notorious SBU) and CCD’s Shapovalov. The second panel took up “Protecting the National Information Space of Ukraine: The Role of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy and Its Key Stakeholders,” and the third was on the “Battle of Narratives: Countering Russian Hybrid Warfare in the Global Information Space.” The CCD did not detail the discussions in those panels.

The CCD only reported from Shapovalov’s presentation, that he warned that “traditional approaches” to fighting “disinformation” have been insufficient, and “the enemy is making great progress.” To wipe out opposition, we must shut down the propaganda “embedded in cinema, literature, music—those areas of life that we hardly look into when looking for disinformation. This is exactly the kind of work that the CCD does, and these are the channels we block.” He cited “pseudo-historical” or “pseudo-entertainment” channels.

The CCD demands anti-war voices internationally be tried as “information terrorists.” Was it in support of this objective, that the State Department’s Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction, whose mandate is to “seek to prevent proliferator states and terrorist groups from developing or acquiring Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and delivery systems that could threaten the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests abroad,” was assigned a role in this meeting?