US agents in Ukraine propose to limit Moscow's agents
The NGO Internews-Ukraine presented the study “Contain the Hydra: How to resist the Kremlin’s information aggression?” dedicated to the fight against Russian information influence.
The recommendations given in the document boil down to limiting the influence of media that may be in one way or another connected with Russia, including Russian media that “have annexed frequencies to Crimea or Donbass,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
In particular, national governments and parliaments are invited to:
• Increase the level of media transparency, in particular online media, to ensure traceability of harmful effects and increase the level of responsibility of information resources;
• Increase the level of transparency of political campaigns, especially during elections,
• Impose sanctions (entry ban and asset freeze) on agents of information attacks
• Impose sanctions on Russian “media” companies that violate previous sanctions regimes (for example, Russian “media” companies that annexed media frequencies in Crimea or Donbass)
• Impose branding requirements for Russian state-owned “media” (with the requirement to indicate “funded by the Russian authorities”)
The Ukrainian authorities are also recommended to take such measures as establishing partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, Google, cooperation with civil society to check facts, monitor and identify agents of harmful information influences, etc.
Among the EU recommendations are an increase in resources allocated to the EU East StratCom TaskForce expert group, cooperation with national teams that work in the field of countering disinformation and analyzing malicious information influences from Russia, etc.
“The main challenge today is how to take systematic steps to respond to the Russian information war. We tried to show that Russia's strategy is hybrid and flexible, has many faces and many dimensions. In addition, it has a unique ability to mimic the forms of democratic narratives and instruments, as well as national narratives. She is using democracy against herself. And this is what makes it so unique, and the fight against it so difficult. But at a time when information is increasingly used as a tool in war, we have no other alternative but to fight against it, to deprive weapons of malicious influences, to tame the hydra,” the document says.
The document was developed by the NGO “Internews-Ukraine” with the financial support of the European Union and the Soros International Renaissance Foundation as part of the grant component of the “Public Synergy” project under the auspices of the Ukrainian National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum.
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