While Russia has become increasingly aggressive on the international stage, it has done so tactically, commonly engaging in plausibly deniable clandestine operations such as the 2014 annexation of Crimea. To keep policymakers in the West guessing at what Russia’s true intentions are, Moscow has employed an adapted version of the military doctrine of deception, known as maskirovka.
The Cipher Brief’s Levi Maxey spoke with Robert Dannenberg, a 24-year veteran of the CIA and former head of security at Goldman Sachs, about what Russian application of maskirovka looks like, and what the Kremlin seeks to accomplish by employing it.
First, I would argue maskirovka is today more than a military doctrine, although its historical antecedents date back as far as the battle of Kulikova in 1380 where the Mongol Golden Horde was tricked and defeated by Russian forces under Prince Donskoy.
Maskirovka today is a highly valued and used tactic of the Russian intelligence services, including military intelligence, to deceive and distract an opponent and its allies until an objective is achieved and even long afterward if necessary. The basic concept dates back to Sun Tzu “to persuade an enemy that your strength is a weakness and your weakness a strength.”
In the intelligence context, Russia has a long history of “dangling” sources at Western intelligence services to give misleading information designed to mislead Western national security decision makers on Russia’s intentions and capabilities.
While the use of deception has long been part of Russian military doctrine – and the doctrine of militaries around the world – maskirovka has become a prominent aspect of Russia’s objective of once again becoming a major global power, its surrounding region directly under its influence.
A classic and current example of the use of maskirovka is the operation leading to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, with the insertion of Russian troops in unmarked uniforms and many wearing balaclavas concealing their faces to occupy key targets with speed and stealth, and contemporaneous Russian denial of any knowledge of or responsibility for the operation. This Russian official denial of responsibility for the “little green men” continued until after the referendum in favor of Crimean accession to the Russian Federation. The Russian maskirovka with regard to its intentions toward the Ukraine continues to this day with Russian denial of any presence in the secessionist areas in the Don Basin.
Moscow continues to deny it is a party to the dispute despite the numbers of Russian soldiers captured by Ukrainian Forces. According to Moscow, these soldiers are “on leave” or “volunteers.” Even more cynically, the Russian have disguised military columns as humanitarian relief efforts, frustrating the ability of international monitoring efforts.
The cyber and active measures arms of Russian intelligence have been active in supporting maskirovka as well, planting false news stories about atrocities being committed by Ukrainian Forces against ethnic Russians in the Don Basin and elsewhere in the Ukraine, as well as sending false and misleading communications indicating no affiliation between secessionist forces and Russia. Despite the overwhelming evidence of direct Russian involvement in the Don Basin, maskirovka continues to this day with Putin publicly denying any Russian involvement there.
While traditionally considered solely in the realm of military power, maskirovka has taken on a role of deceiving countries without even deploying troops – most notably in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
I would argue another current use of maskirovka invokes Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. I won’t express a point of view as to whether the Kremlin preferred one candidate over the other. I am certain Russian intelligence collected and used kompromat on both candidates, masking their real intent which was to disrupt and erode confidence in political processes in the United States, which they have certainly accomplished, likely beyond their wildest dreams.
Maskirovka extended to Russian intelligence and their surrogates planting fake news and targeted disruptive messaging in the U.S. using nearly every form of social media at almost no expenditure of resource and without ever revealing Russian origin of the content.
As the United States still grapples with Russian interference in its democratic system, other countries, particularly European allies, are facing an increasingly aggressive Russia on their eastern border. NATO must revamp itself to counter modern Russian use of maskirovka while still remaining a legitimate deterrent through collective defense.
Countering Russian use of maskirovka starts with awareness of its criticality to Russian thinking and doctrine. Maskirovka is a key element in the current Russian doctrine of “hybrid” warfare as articulated in the so-called Gerasimov Doctrine. This doctrine calls for the integration of information operations, cyber, proxies, overt economic and political influence, and clandestine influence agents to support the military objective. Ideally this leads to the creation of conditions for the achievement of the military objective without the need for overt military action.
The annexation of the Crimea and the unrest in the Don Basin are classic examples of the execution of hybrid warfare. There is certainly better awareness in U.S. and NATO military structures of the criticality of maskirovka in Russian strategic doctrine. In January 2016, the NATO Communications Centre of Excellence published a working paper on Russia and Hybrid Warfare as part of its project, “Russia and Hybrid Warfare: Definitions, Capabilities, Scope and Possible Responses”.
The challenge for the West is and will remain, as the example of Russian deception in the November U.S. election illustrates, maskirovka and manipulation extend far beyond the context of military operations into the very processes that are the lifeblood of our open and participatory democracies. Thus, part of the answer needs to be awareness in the mainstream media and social media providers of disinformation efforts and cooperation in the identification and removal of such content.
