Vladimir Putin issued a decree last week authorizing the Russian military to add another 180,000 active-duty troops, reflecting Russia’s ongoing efforts to recruit and coerce men to fight in Ukraine, where Moscow continues to send thousands of Russians to their deaths every month.
This presents an opportunity for the West. The U.S. should conduct information operations aimed at encouraging Russian resistance to the war.
Russian casualties in the invasion of Ukraine are staggering. According to U.S. officials, at least 350,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since February 2022, and some estimates put it closer to 650,000.
Ethnic minority groups are overrepresented among Russian forces and casualties in Ukraine. In 2022, one activist reported that Crimean Tatars received 80 percent of the peninsula’s mobilization summonses despite comprising less than 20 percent of the Crimean population. Buryats, a Mongolic ethnic group largely inhabiting the southeastern region of Siberia, account for 1.16 percent of all identified Russian casualties despite comprising just 0.3 percent of the total Russian population, according to a U.S.-based Buryat researcher. In total, ethnic minorities make up almost 30 percent of all casualties, despite representing less than 20 percent of Russia’s population.
Russian regions populated by ethnic minorities tend to be poorer, so men there are more likely to be drawn by the lucrative salaries offered to volunteers willing to fight in Ukraine. But the Kremlin probably also made a conscious decision to target poorer regions and minorities, as these groups hold less political sway than Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Yet despite the Kremlin’s best efforts, protests have occurred in several regions that have been the most affected by the war, such as Dagestan. Protesters have shouted messages like “No to war!” and “No to genocide!” Frustration has also grown among the mothers and wives of mobilized Russian troops, many of whom have now been fighting in Ukraine for two years with little prospect of rotation or demobilization.
Putin rightly fears this. Russian authorities have sought to delegitimize or even buy off women who have complained about the prolonged deployments.
So far, Russian authorities have managed to keep a lid on public protests against the war. Though some Russians might privately resent the conflict, they’re largely unwilling to take to the streets. Should that change, however, Putin could feel more pressure to end the war.
History shows how Russian mothers have mobilized their grief into action. Soviet mothers played a crucial role in undermining public support for the invasion of Afghanistan. During the conflicts in Chechnya, the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers launched large protests. This same potential exists today, but it needs to be unlocked.
But at present the West isn’t doing much of anything to aid that resistance. While Russian authorities frequently accuse the U.S. of waging an information war on Russia, the truth is that Washington largely fails to “return the favor” for the extensive information operations Moscow continues to conduct against America and other Western countries.
This needs to change. The U.S. has an opportunity to illuminate and fuel discontent among ethnic minorities and the families of Russian soldiers. Washington should demonstrate that Putin is throwing away their lives for a war that will lead to a worse future for them and for Russia.
The U.S. should engage in information operations geared toward supporting anti-war sentiment. For example, Washington could organize social media campaigns on Telegram and the social media app VK, which are popular in Russia, focusing on how young Russians and ethnic minorities are being sacrificed for Putin’s war in Ukraine.
If Moscow already believes the U.S. has declared an information war on Russia, maybe it is time we did so in earnest, to help hasten an end to the war. At the very least, the U.S. can ensure that the Kremlin spends more time and energy defending itself.
American reluctance to engage in information wars, on the other hand, plays into the Kremlin’s hands. U.S. interests, as well as those of Ukraine and the Russian people, would be better served if Washington were willing to get into the fight. America should waste no more time in seizing its opportunity to counter Putin’s narrative.
Ivana Stradner is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is a senior director at its Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation.