1992: Russia’s Rare Admission of Intent to Destabilise the West

In a previous article evidence was examined of Russia's widespread creation and use of fake news outlets in the US. Despite frequent evidence for Russian interference in western democracies, such as emergence of sophisticated troll factories, these actions have a long history rooted in Russia’s Soviet past. This cost-effective means of damaging adversaries, destabilising their political systems and societies through doubt, marks the actions on one of the most active yet often ignored fronts; a clandestine information war which only briefly receded in the 1990s.

This article concisely outlines an exceptional moment in history whereby the disinformation campaign Operation Infektion was admitted to, turning speculation of an overarching intent to disinform into fact. Thereafter we can ask, how much of this practice can be seen in the actions of Russia today with a view on how the West can best respond.

Cold War Thaw, from Deception to Admission

By 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (the process of ‘openness in the Soviet Union) and perestroika (restructuring) had begun reshaping the Soviet Union’s political landscape. This process induced a natural thawing of cold war tensions. Thus, with relations warming between Washington and Moscow, disinformation campaigns that had once seemed useful tools of Cold War rivalry increasingly became liabilities. One of the most damaging was the AIDS fabrication—an operation run by the KGB and known in internal files as Operation Denver or Operation Infektion. This campaign, launched in the early 1980s, alleged that the U.S. military had engineered the HIV virus at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and deliberately released it to target developing countries. Under pressure from U.S. officials and in the broader spirit of glasnost, Soviet representatives began quietly retracting the falsehood in 1987–88, and by 1992 Russian intelligence chief Yevgeny Primakov explicitly confirmed that the story had been a fabrication [1][2].

The mechanics of the campaign reveal how deliberately the misinformation was seeded and amplified. The first significant article appeared in 1983 in the Indian newspaper Patriot, a publication often used for Soviet placements. By citing an unnamed “well-known American scientist,” the piece gave the impression of an independent revelation rather than a planted narrative. From there, the story was picked up by Soviet bloc outlets, notably the Novosti Press Agency, and recycled in African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American newspapers, often translated into local languages. To give the story a veneer of scientific legitimacy, East German biologist Jakob Segal produced a pseudo-academic paper in the mid-1980s arguing that the genetic structure of HIV proved an artificial origin. His claims were circulated through East German and Soviet channels, then repeated by sympathetic media abroad [3][4].

This layered dissemination illustrates a core disinformation technique later termed “information laundering” (considered an analog of money laundering). Instead of emerging directly from Moscow, the story was first “washed” through peripheral outlets, an Indian newspaper, a German academic, African or Latin American press, before being re-amplified by Soviet sources. By 1987, however, glasnost made this duplicity harder to sustain. U.S. diplomats directly confronted their Soviet counterparts, and the AIDS story became a stumbling block in public diplomacy. The Soviets gradually halted its propagation, and by the early 1990s the campaign was acknowledged internally as a mistake. Yet despite the official retreat, the damage was lasting: conspiracy theories about the U.S. origin of HIV persist to this day, a legacy of Operation Iinfektion's effectiveness [2][5].

The KGB’s Tradition of Active Measures

The admission of Operation Infektion fits into a much broader Soviet practice of aktivnyye meropriyatiya (“active measures” also known as disinformation campaigns). Within the KGB, these operations were coordinated primarily by the First Chief Directorate’s Service A, dedicated specifically to forgeries, planted stories, and political influence abroad. Their purpose was not simply to persuade but to sow confusion/apathy, to fracture alliances, and to create distrust of the West’s institutions. For Soviet planners, disinformation was considered cost-effective compared with military or economic competition: a small operation, if properly seeded, could destabilize debates in entire societies [6][9].

A key trait of Service A operations was plausible deniability through foreign intermediaries. Stories were often first placed in sympathetic newspapers in the developing world, or in fringe outlets unlikely to be traced back to Moscow. The Patriot article of 1983 was entirely typical of this approach, ensuring that when Soviet media later reported on the “American scientist’s claim,” they could cite an “independent” foreign source. This laundering method allowed Soviet narratives to echo internationally before ever appearing under a Soviet masthead [7]. Hence, the impression that the Soviet Union was only responding to what had already been said by western ‘experts’ and ‘trusted sources’.

This tied neatly into another recurring feature was the use of forgeries and pseudo-expertise. Fabricated U.S. government documents were routinely circulated in Africa, Asia, and Latin America during the 1970s and 80s, while figures such as Jakob Segal were elevated to provide “scientific” backing to otherwise baseless claims. The AIDS campaign demonstrated both strategies: a forged narrative seeded abroad and a pseudo-academic framing to boost credibility. This pattern of combining planted leaks with false authority remains visible in Russia’s modern information operations [8].

From the KGB to Russia’s FSB and the Digital Age

The collapse of the Soviet Union briefly interrupted the machinery of active measures. Under Gorbachev and then Yeltsin, Moscow sought greater transparency and international credibility, and intelligence services pulled back from their most aggressive disinformation campaigns. Nevertheless, this pause was temporary. By the mid-2000s, with the rise of Vladimir Putin and the consolidation of the security services, Russia resumed systematic influence operations, now adapted to the architecture of the internet [10].

The underlying traits remain recognizably Soviet and given Putin’s history in the KGB this should be of little surprise. The laundering of narratives through apparently independent channels continues today via proxy outlets such as Strategic Culture Foundation, NewsFront, and SouthFront — websites that present themselves as foreign policy journals but have been linked to Russian intelligence. This is the same strategy once applied through Patriot in India or Jakob Segal in East Germany, but now executed at digital speed and scale [10]. The use of pseudo-expertise also persists, with Russian state media and affiliated “think tanks” presenting fringe or manipulated research as credible analysis, while bots and troll accounts amplify it into mainstream conversations [11].

What has changed is the delivery system. Social media platforms provide instant reach across borders, while algorithms optimize for engagement rather than accuracy. Problematically there is little accountability for platforms acting as a vessel for disinformation, with quite some ease anyone can profess to be an expert. Hence the velocity of information is much faster with few checks on the validity of claims. This environment suits the firehose of falsehood model, in which a high volume of rapid, contradictory, and repetitive messaging overwhelms fact-checking and corrodes trust in institutions [12]. Recent campaigns have demonstrated the method in action: Secondary Infektion, a long-running operation that planted forged documents and articles across hundreds of websites, and Doppelgänger, which cloned Western media outlets to host fabricated stories, both exemplify the continuity of Cold War techniques in a new digital ecosystem [13][14].

The result is a media environment more vulnerable than ever. Unlike in the 1980s, where a planted story might take weeks or months to spread across continents, today a forged narrative can achieve global reach within hours. Just as Operation Infektion left a lasting mark on public perceptions of HIV/AIDS, modern Russian operations leave behind self-sustaining conspiracy theories about elections, vaccines, or wars that persist long after the original campaign has been exposed with harsher damage to the information space. The conspiracy theory seeded by Operation Infektion itself continues to circulate despite being debunked by those who initiated it.

The Soviet tradition of disinformation thus not only survives but thrives in the digital age, magnified by technologies that amplify its reach and resilience [12][14]. The damage will likely last generations with doubt sowed in genuine sources of information.

The Age of Doubt and the West’s Response

With the rapid acceleration of information flows, and the near-perfect capacity to forge audio and video, doubt is now woven into everything that is read, heard, or seen. In such an environment, misinformation stands on the same footing as what is genuine.

Never have our societies been so exposed to manipulation of the very kind Russia deployed in Operation Infektion. The campaign’s eventual admission confirmed beyond speculation that such methods have been, and will likely continue to be, an integral tool of Russia’s statecraft.

While the frontlines in Ukraine rage on, themselves under-reported, the parallel information war remains dangerously neglected. Troll farms are among the most powerful instruments of disinformation, yet the precise contours of Russia’s oveerall strategy remain opaque. Still, with what is already known, it is reasonable to assume that disinformation constitutes one of the central components of the Kremlin’s conflict with the West with a continued interest in sowing doubt and apathy among western populations. Current vulnerabilities, such as perceptions of migration as a 'threat to our culture', are ripe for exploitation.

The question remains: how should the West respond? Pre-emption and preparation of the information space is key to a less vulnerable populous. Moreover, the antidote to apathy is a genuine improvement in the quality of living, a positive vision based on substance, and ensuring political promises are fullfilled.

Beyond this, a stronger offensive maneuver mounted in Russia’s own information sphere is sorely required, combating the apathy and fear of Russia’s opposition to confront its own government. With soaring prices and fuel rationing, now is the time for such offensives.

Bibliography

[1] Wilson Center. Operation “Denver”: KGB and Stasi Disinformation regarding AIDS. Wilson Center Digital Archive, 2019.
[2] Wikipedia. “Soviet disinformation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_disinformation
[3] The Guardian. “Russian fake news is not new: Soviet Aids propaganda cost countless lives.” The Guardian, 14 June 2017.
[4] The MIT Press Reader. “Lessons From Operation ‘Denver,’ the KGB's Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign.” MIT Press Reader, 2020.
[5] Wikipedia. “Mitrokhin Archive.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive

[6] U.S. Department of State. Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986–87. Washington, DC: GPO, 1987.
[7] George C. Marshall Center. “Active Measures: Russia’s Covert Geopolitical Operations.” Marshall Center Occasional Papers, 2017.
[8] Central Intelligence Agency. Soviet Active Measures in the Era of Glasnost. Declassified Assessment, 1989.

[9] Rid, Thomas. Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
[10] U.S. Department of State. Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem. Global Engagement Center, August 2020.
[11] U.S. Department of the Treasury. “Treasury Sanctions Russia-Based Media Organizations for Disinformation.” Press Release, April 15, 2021.
[12] Paul, Christopher and Matthews, Miriam. The Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood’ Propaganda Model. RAND Corporation, 2016.
[13] Graphika and Atlantic Council DFRLab. “Exposing Secondary Infektion.” Research Report, 2020.
[14] EU DisinfoLab. “Operation Doppelgänger: Media Clones Serving Russian Propaganda.” Report, September 2022.