Forget bots and trolls. Russia has stepped up its overt public diplomacy— taking a page from President Donald Trump’s Twitter playbook, and also taking comfort or refuge from his repeated refrain, undercutting his own national security team, that the Russia investigation is a “witch hunt.”
“Over the past nine months to a year, we’ve seen a much more aggressive overt messaging campaign from Russian outlets, from a lot of embassy accounts and the Foreign Ministry,” said Laura Rosenberger, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance for Security Democracy, which tracks such interference. She attributed it to Russian President Vladimir Putin being emboldened by Trump’s dismissive attitude toward Russian interference.“If you look at polling in the United States, particularly among Republicans, President Trump has done a pretty effective job in shifting public opinion, and there is a sense that Putin’s not a bad guy and we should have a better relationship with Russia,” Rosenberger said. That’s lowered normal skepticism toward messages from Moscow, creating an opening for Putin.
