Aggressors may carry out targeted manipulation of the information space and conduct malign influence operations (IO — Influence Operations, FIMI — Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, FMI — Foreign Malign Influence). This technique is used for the coordinated injection of false narratives on the international stage, undermining trust in democratic institutions, and destabilizing the society of the victim state. Information interference is intended to distort the perception of reality, conceal the facts of aggression, and paralyze society's capacity for coordinated resistance. These techniques are covered in more detail in a specialized framework: DISARM Framework.
The head of the Terek oblast, General Loris-Melikov, stressed in a special dispatch to the Main Staff of the Caucasus Army: "For the success of the affair it is necessary that the highlanders not only not know of our desire to assist the resettlement, but the local authorities must, on the contrary, as it were dissuade them from this intention"[1]; its execution was entrusted to the head of the Middle Military Division, Tumanov, and he reported on it to Loris-Melikov himself: "The first and indispensable condition for arousing in the Chechens the desire to resettle to Turkey I consider to be not revealing that this desire comes from the government... consequently, all this must remain in the deepest secrecy; on our skill it will depend to complete the great [work] without bloodshed or particular disorders…"[2]. In Chechnya "forged proclamations were circulated, purporting to come from the Turkish government, in which the migrants were promised a cordial welcome and good material provision"[1] - Loris-Melikov himself asked in writing to be sent samples of Turkish proclamations "for circulation among the population"[2]. Agents frightened the people with the future: they "spread provocative rumours that not a single Chechen would receive a scrap of land, that all the young men would be given up as soldiers, that the Muslim religion would sooner be banned and everyone would become Christians"[2].
The deliberate injection of false historical narratives into the international arena: Ukraine, according to the Russian leader, "is not a nation built in a natural manner" and "an artificial country created back in Soviet times," and its territories were supposedly gifts - "In the 1920s and 1930s Ukraine obtained territory from Russia -- that's the eastern part of the country. In 1956, the Crimean peninsula was transferred to Ukraine"[3]. From this the thesis of its possible disintegration was derived: "the country could just split apart"[3].
The official denial of Russian troops' participation during the operation – and Putin's later admission (call-in show, 17 April 2014) that the denial was a lie: "behind the backs of Crimea's self-defense forces, our servicemen, of course, stood"[4]. In the same broadcast an interlocutor congratulated him on having "honestly said that the 'little green men' are our peaceful military"[4].
A massive campaign of fabricating fakes to dehumanize Ukrainians: on state television it was claimed that "Ukrainian armed forces herded city residents to the central square and publicly executed a small boy and his mother," yet "there is no evidence to support Pyshniak's claim," and the residents of Sloviansk who were interviewed did not confirm the story[5]. The same method produced the fabricated "death of a 10-year-old girl" in the Petrovskyi district of Donetsk (March 2015): BBC correspondents on the ground established that no such girl had ever existed[6]. In parallel ran an operation to conceal responsibility for the destruction of flight MH17: the Russian Ministry of Defense "made a series of self-contradictory claims blaming Ukraine, rather than Russia or Russian-led separatists, for the Boeing 777's shoot down," while a deputy defense minister publicly repeated "a fabricated claim that originated on Twitter of how a Spanish air traffic controller named Carlos saw two Ukrainian fighter jets near MH17"[7].
Total information control and a ban on calling the invasion a war - officially it was declared a "special military operation" whose stated aims were "demilitarization and denazification"[8]. The informational cover for energy terror rested on the "response" narrative: "There is a lot of noise now about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of the neighboring country. Yes, we are doing this. But who started it?"[9].