Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, participated in the session “Disinformation and Manipulation as a Tool of Hybrid War Against the Global Majority for the Preservation of Hegemony” as part of the International Security Forum.

She spoke about the West’s manipulations using the examples of the provocation in Bucha and its prototype in 1944 (Nemmersdorf) in contrast with the terrorist attack by the Kiev regime in Starobelsk. Unlike the non-existent lists of “victims” of Bucha, Russia presented the names and photos of each of the deceased college students. She also talked about the double standards in USA’s attitude towards Iran and the ongoing rewriting of the history of WWII.

Below is the translated transcript of fragments of Maria Zakharova’s speech and statements. The original video is in the post of her Telegram channel.

Moderator: Colleagues, I would like to give the floor to the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova. Maria Vladimirovna, I would like to hear your opinion on this problem. How necessary is a consolidated reaction of countries to information leaks and attacks? What can be done? Where are we now? Thank you. The floor is yours.

Good afternoon, colleagues. Today we started discussing this topic in the first half of the day when we discussed the problem of neocolonialism. As a rule, we consider the problem of information and fake news separately. Why? Because this is a boundless ocean of problems. In fact, disinformation, fake news, unscrupulous journalism – or, best to say, quasi-journalism, all manipulations in the information environment have specific goals and tasks. And they are formulated very simply: “with the help of information, to subordinate those who need to be robbed, who need to be deceived, who need to be manipulated”.

Within the framework of the whole world, geopolitically, this is a constant confrontation of those who call themselves the flowering garden, as the high representative on foreign policy of the European Union, Borrell, said, and the wild jungles, as he called the rest of the world.

The narrow group of countries, and in the broadest sense of the word “narrow” – both from the point of view of their number and their worldview, because this approach is based on one thesis: “Take away, rob, subordinate, deceive, manipulate”. They are constantly fighting for domination in the world, using all the opportunities for this.

It was largely always like this, but it was the 20th century that demonstrated new technological capabilities and made it possible to fight for domination over others also with the help of information tools.

Not only weapons, not only weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear weapons – I am now dividing these things, because weapons of mass destruction can be non-nuclear weapons. Not only trade wars, illegitimate sanctions can be and are the instrument of the unscrupulous regimes, as a tool to subjugate other states and peoples to their will. But, of course, also information.

We see it constantly, live. Unfortunately, this topic and this problem will only worsen with the mass introduction of artificial intelligence and digitalisation elements into life. Why? Because, again, unfortunately, technology and resources are concentrated – I can’t say in one hand – but they are trying to be appropriated by all the same countries, again – the collective Western minority – which have used various types of resources for their own hegemony or defending the myth of their own domination.

Now they will use new tools, they are already using artificial intelligence and digitalisation. But I think you know this theoretical part very well, and I think my colleagues will continue to develop it today.

I want to give you a specific example how in these very days we observe the use of all of the technological – both traditional and new – capabilities for their unscrupulous use in the context of information confrontation. I will show two situations as an example. They are related to the crisis that takes place around Ukraine, in Ukraine.
Continue reading →