EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW — Russia boasts the world’s largest land mass, one of the world’s largest standing armies, and a weapon that it has used to great effect since its assault against Ukraine began in February 2022: a state propaganda apparatus with almost no global parallel. In a series of pieces for The Cipher Brief this year, Stanislav Kucher has reported on how Russian state media and other Kremlin-backed influencers have spread false narratives about the war and demonized the West – most recently in a collection of disinformation about Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
Julia Davis, a Ukraine-born American engineer and journalist, has recently made a career of monitoring Russian state media, and her Russian Media Monitor has been touted as the most sophisticated source of analysis for watching and understanding how the Kremlin promotes its messaging in Russia and around the world.
