Russian war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny said a full-scale cognitive war is being waged against Russia, in comments carried by the state news agency RIA Novosti.
Poddubny said the aim of the campaign is to substitute concepts and make Russia doubt its own history and identity. He said the country should counter any attempt to falsify that history.
As a war correspondent, he said, he sees every day how enemy propaganda works.
Rewriting history
Poddubny also pointed to what he described as systemic efforts to rewrite history, in which the victim becomes the criminal and the criminal becomes the victim.
The term cognitive warfare is used in military and security circles to describe efforts to shape how a population perceives events and its own past, rather than targeting territory or infrastructure directly. Russian officials and state media have repeatedly accused Western governments and Ukraine of waging such a campaign against Russian society since the war in Ukraine began in 2022.
Military researchers, including at NATO's Allied Command Transformation, have separately studied cognitive warfare as a potential new domain of conflict alongside land, sea, air, space and cyber. Discussions of cognitive warfare often focus on the role of social media platforms, search engines and messaging apps in shaping public opinion, since these channels can reach large audiences directly without traditional editorial oversight.
Who is Yevgeny Poddubny
Poddubny is a correspondent for VGTRK, Russia's largest state-owned media holding, formally known as the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. He has reported from conflict zones including Ukraine and Syria for VGTRK's Rossiya-1 channel. RIA Novosti, which carried his remarks, traces its roots to the Soviet Information Bureau founded in 1941 and now operates as part of the state-run Rossiya Segodnya media group.
Earlier comments on Ukraine
Poddubny earlier said Ukraine is trying to provoke a rise in tension inside Russia. He also said Kyiv is seeking to create additional challenges for Russia's defense system.
