Russian servicemen are seen onboard a military vehicle in Tverskaya Street in central Moscow. FILE IMAGE: Tatyana Makeyeva / Reuters
Russia has created Main Directorate for Political-Military Affairs inside its military. The new directorate will be responsible for “military-patriotic” and combating an “information war” waged agaist the country.
Under a presidential decree published on September 3, Vladimir Putin made Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov the head of the new directorate and a deputy defense minister.
“Today we see an absolutely undisguised informational war. It is openly cynical and it is being waged against our country on all fronts,” Colonel-General Kartapolov told reporters on September 5. “The raving propaganda and absolute lies on many issues, the intolerance to our point of view or attempts to hush it up – all of these are changing the society’s political conscience and in modern conditions such changes can have very serious consequences”.
The top military official said that the main objective for his directorate is “informational protection of the military forces and first of all of their personnel and helping servicemen to develop a stable position on the necessity of service to the Motherland and adhering to our traditional principles.”
According to some experts, the creation of the new directorate shows that the Russian leadership understand the threat of the modern information and psychological warfare and its limited capabilities in this field, as the conflict in Syria has already showed. Thus, Moscow is making steps to change this situation.
“The role of the moral and political unity of the Army and society is increasing immensely at the time of global informational and psychological confrontation [with the US-led bloc],” Alexander Kanshin, deputy chairman of the Public Council at the Russian Ministry of Defense, said earlier this year. Then he noted that it’s “necessary” to “fundamentally reform and significantly strengthen the armed forces’ entire structure, which will organize, conduct and be responsible for the moral and ideological aspect of the Russian Army.”
