Commentary: How Kremlin Propaganda Foreshadowed Trump’s Call for Ukrainian Elections
A pattern of projection: Russia’s disinformation claims reveal more about Russia than about its Western targets
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Edited by Eric Effron and Sofia Rubinson
Commentary: How Kremlin Propaganda Foreshadowed Trump’s Call for Ukrainian Elections
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from tracking Russian disinformation at NewsGuard, it’s that when Moscow makes false claims about the West — whether it’s recruiting terrorists, looting artifacts, or insisting on new elections in democratic countries — it often serves as a foreshadowing of the Kremlin’s own nefarious plans and actions.
U.S. President Donald Trump suggested this week that Ukraine should hold a special election, describing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “a dictator without elections,” and falsely claiming that he has only a four percent approval rating among Ukrainians. (Polls show a Zelensky approval rating above 50 percent.) (Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint here.)
Zelensky held a press conference stating that Trump’s claims are “disinformation” that “comes from Russia.” That appears to be the case. In comments made on Russian state TV, talk show host Vladimir Solovyov suggested that Trump’s claims, which included the four percent approval claim, came from Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. “Many of the narratives being voiced [by Trump] largely materialized after their [Putin and Trump’s] conversation,” Solovyov said.
Indeed, Trump’s remarks closely echo a narrative that Russia planted months ago, with little public attention. On Nov. 11, 2024, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) issued a statement claiming that the U.S. State Department was secretly plotting to orchestrate 2025 elections in Ukraine to remove the “overly ambitious Zelensky.”
At the time, a State Department spokesperson told NewsGuard, “This claim is false.” Ukrainian officials dismissed the claim as a disinformation linked to Russia’s Maidan-3 operation, an estimated $1 billion disinformation campaign aimed at diminishing Western support for Kyiv and pushing for Zelensky’s removal.
Now, just months later, Trump’s remarks about insisting on an election in Ukraine — which is barred by the Ukraine Constitution during times of war — are breathing new life into that precise Russian talking point, raising the possibility that the original SVR claim is not only a calculated effort to preemptively delegitimize any Ukrainian election, but a possible precursor to Russia’s own interference should such an election be held.
If so, this wouldn’t be the first time Moscow’s disinformation campaigns served as a preview of its own operations. NewsGuard’s three years of tracking of misinformation about the war in Ukraine reveals a larger pattern in which Russia’s state-sponsored campaigns reveal more about its own intentions than about U.S. or Ukrainian actions.
On May 17, 2022, the SVR issued a statement claiming that the U.S. was recruiting ISIS mercenaries to fight in Ukraine. The SVR’s claim, which a Pentagon spokesperson and independent experts denied, spread widely in Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and U.S. conservative media. (Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint for this claim here.)
One year later, in May 2023, independent Latvia-based news site Meduza published an investigation finding that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had been recruiting former Islamic State militants to fight in the war against Ukraine.
The same pattern played out when the SVR issued a June 26, 2023, statement claiming that the West looted ancient artifacts from the Pechersk Lavra, an Orthodox Christian Monastery in Kyiv. The SVR did not provide any evidence to back up the accusation, and the looting claim was refuted by the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra National Reserve, the U.N., and Ukrainian officials.
Extensive evidence has since emerged pointing in the opposite direction. Satellite imagery and reports from on-the-ground researchers have documented Russian forces systematically looting Ukrainian cultural sites since the February 2022 invasion. (Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint for this claim here.)
This pattern of projection suggests that the SVR’s November 2024 claim about U.S.-orchestrated elections may have been an effort to distract from its own interference efforts, or to preemptively discredit Ukraine’s future election results.
President Trump’s statements about Zelensky’s legitimacy, whether intentional or not, risk giving credibility to this apparent pre-positioned Russian campaign. When Ukraine eventually moves forward with elections, Russia has already laid the groundwork to both undermine and potentially manipulate the process to serve its interests.
McKenzie Sadeghi is the AI and Foreign Influence Editor at NewsGuard.
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