Question: How would you define, or describe, the notion of an information war? Whom does it target and who is directly involved in it? Who is fighting on the information front? Who are these troops?

Maria Zakharova: It is important to note that the so-called collective West has unleashed a full-scale hybrid war against us, and the confrontation in the information space is one of its elements. To provide you with an exhaustive answer, we need to elaborate on the context, the essence of the matter, and how it emerged.

In fact, Euro-Atlantic capitals are still dreaming about inflicting a strategic defeat on us and are ready to do anything to deliver on this delusive compulsion. It is the West that created and nurtured the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, focused on exterminating everything Russian. However, the Blitzkrieg against our country has failed, and the sanctions have failed too, while efforts to supply as many weapons as possible to the thugs and cut-throats in Kiev cannot change the situation along the front.

To justify the aggression and cast Russia as the culprit in the eyes of their people, they unleashed a multi-pronged defamation campaign, fuelled by their never-ending provocations, fakes and outright lies. While facing a dire social and economic crisis, today’s European elites feel that having an enemy is a vital necessity for them, as this allows them to shift the blame for all their travails and failures onto this foe.

Attempts to impose an anti-Russia and Russia-hating mindset on the entire world continue unabated. Moreover, we must recognise that the effort to shape and promote this narrative dates back centuries, starting with 19th-century newspapers and press publications, all the way to anti-Soviet propaganda, Hollywood movies of the 20th century and the fake campaigns and highly-likely-style provocations we have been witnessing in the new millennium. Today, these Russia-hating efforts have reached their peak.

Therefore, by and large, this informational confrontation has never ended. Having gone through the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the turbulence and uncertainty of the 1990s, as soon as Russia got back on its feet and started to assert itself on the international stage, we were once again designated as part of the so-called axis of evil without any particular reason. But why? Just for having our own opinion, standing up for our sovereignty and telling the truth about the West’s lethal and reckless undertakings in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc. Millions of people suffered from these crimes. This is a fact. However, if you listen to Western politicians, whose hands are stained with blood, or read the press they control, it may seem that nothing happened. They can conveniently sweep their dirty tricks, such as Colin Powell’s vial, under the carpet. This is what they always do. But Russia refused to stay silent, and so did the Global Majority.

The West fears the emergence of a multipolar world order and the emergence of new, truly independent and sovereign centres of power. This is why the West seeks to cling to its waning dominance. It clearly seeks to benefit from the transition to a new technological paradigm by trying to monopolise AI technology and to propel us into an AI-driven neo-colonial era. These misguided efforts, in turn, push the Euro-Atlantic forces to spread more misinformation. This is precisely what they are doing, which explains where all these attempts to denigrate our country, as well as BRICS, our partners, African, Asian and Latin American countries come from.

Thus, there is a global audience witnessing an all-out information war unleashed by the West against everyone, with our country as their primary target. This is a global phenomenon.

You may ask how we can counter these developments. In what way? Truth and facts are the most effective weapons.

We use all available means at our disposal for this purpose, including both conventional, traditional methods and newer approaches. For example, we rely on digital diplomacy. In this regard, the Foreign Ministry has a world-leading track record: using our digital network, the social media accounts of our ministry and its foreign missions, and engaging our diplomats, we have been telling the truth and spreading objective information about our country. This approach has enabled us to reach audiences even in the most remote countries. Truth can penetrate censorship and other barriers and bans. Today, there is significant demand in the West for reliable, or alternative, as they say, information and non-mainstream perspectives.

Question: How important is it for Russia to build up its efforts in the fight against fake news? Where do we currently stand in countering information attacks from unfriendly countries?

Maria Zakharova: A separate area of the Foreign Ministry’s work is to counteract disinformation, identifying and exposing fakes through systematic fact-checking. We have created and successfully operate a rapid-response mechanism: we debunk falsehoods and circulate counterarguments. We use what we call “anti-fakes” (a term coined and introduced by the Foreign Ministry), to provide refutations and in-depth analyses of misleading media publications and planted stories. One specific format is our analytical overviews, in which we catalogue and document large volumes of material containing untrue information. Recording these fakes and preserving evidence of the lies spread by Western media and talking heads is an integral part of our work. This is especially important given the constant “cleansing” and censorship of the online space: once their falsehoods are exposed, our opponents work hard to scrub them from the internet and erase them from public memory.

This is a concrete, systematic effort, and we have no right to neglect it. The actions undertaken by the unfriendly countries and the so-called collective West are pushing the entire planet towards disaster, trapping nations in a world of lies, a world of post-truth. We cannot surrender and abandon the truth. It must be fought for and defended every day and every hour.

Just a few days ago, we launched a new section on the Foreign Ministry website (also published on social media), compiling examples of hate speech by Western political figures and the Kiev regime, highlighting their most egregious Russophobic statements. We have already documented several hundred self-revealing public remarks, from Zelensky to Baerbock. And, as expected, the West reacted with hysteria, because they don’t like having a mirror held up to their faces.

Civil society and independent expert initiatives have a special role to play in countering fakes. For example, in November last year, the Global Factchecking Network (GFCN) was established in Moscow. Its mission is to unite fact-checkers from around the world to develop unified verification standards and create tools for exposing disinformation. In April 2025, the association launched its official website and registration platform. It already includes over 55 experts from 20 countries.

Another important aspect is the West’s rewriting of history – an obligatory component of its information war against Russia. Many of the most zealous Euro-Atlantic activists are direct descendants of Hitler’s henchmen or collaborators or those who served them: Friedrich Merz, Annalena Baerbock, Chrystia Freeland, Salome Zourabichvili, Blaise Metreweli, and numerous others. Nazi fugitives who escaped to the West were given refuge and nurtured in an atmosphere of hatred toward the USSR and Russia. They cannot forgive our decisive role in defeating Nazism, liberating Europe, and saving the world from the brown plague.

The falsifiers are seeking to re-format mindsets throughout the world, to justify Nazi criminals and erase the memory of the Soviet people’s heroism. They are willing to pay any price for this, including betraying the memory of previous generations (even their own ancestors), the memory of our wartime alliance, the victims and the immortal feats of our heroes.

To demonstrate the sacrilegious manipulation and distortion of historical truth, one needs look no further than the circumstances surrounding the annual commemorative events held each January to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Since 2005, at Russia’s initiative, the UN has marked this day as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. Polish officials and the museum administration have shut down the Russian part of the exhibition. Russia’s official representatives are not invited to the commemorative events. “Camp liberation” is instead referred to as “the Red Army entering the territory.” This pursuit of historical distortion can reach utterly absurd extremes: certain activists propagate the narrative that Ukrainians were the sole liberators of Auschwitz, based on the fact that some of the units that liberated the concentration camp were part of the First Ukrainian Front. One example of how firmly this sort of misinformation is rammed into public minds by Western propaganda is the Oscar-winning film A Real Pain. This film contains multiple outrageous scenes, among which the following stands out: the main character, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor (meaning she was saved by the Red Army), invites the group to pose with the Warsaw Uprising Monument to the resistance movement that allegedly fought “the f****** Russkies and the Krauts.” The film came out in the year of the 80th anniversary of Victory. 

This historical revisionism could be seen as the West’s potential superfake. What we have witnessed in the recent years – the substitution of facts, the war against memorials seeking to eradicate the physical evidence of Soviet people’s heroism, the rehabilitation of Nazis and the exoneration of collaborators, the rewriting of school and university history textbooks, and the use of AI in pseudo-documentary chronicles to create fake archives – all this suggests a potential malicious synergy of these disparate elements to systematically rewrite history using modern technological means. 

Essentially, we are fighting an information war for the past, the present and the future at the same time. The outcome of this information war and our efforts will determine many things, so there is no room for complacency. 

Question: What is the fundamental difference between communication channels when it comes to waging an information war?  I am talking about television, online media, Telegram, video hosting services, etc. Which channels are least protected against misinformation? 

Maria Zakharova: A global fake news factory is operating at full capacity as part of the information war that the collective West has launched against Russia and the Global Majority. 

This destructive activity exploits all elements of the Western media machine: the world’s leading news agencies and mainstream media outlets, private PR agencies, networks of “the right” bloggers and experts, organised troll groups and bot armies, deep fake teams, as well as other organisations specialised in psychological operations. There is also a neo-liberal team of “Hollywood celebrities” and supporters from cultural and glamorous circles. They have gone all out.

All media formats today are inextricably linked. The majority of information flows and narratives originate in the digital space – on social media – before permeating traditional outlets: television, radio, and print. The reverse is equally true. One might argue that editorial and expert oversight ensures more reliable channels of information. Yet, as demonstrated by Western mainstream media, even traditional press outlets are capable of manufacturing fake news on an industrial scale.

How, then, can one guard against this? The answer lies in practising digital hygiene: rigorously verifying sources, consulting official platforms, and scrutinising the original context of statements or remarks. Today, fact-checking skills are no longer the sole preserve of professionals – they are a duty incumbent upon everyone.

Consider, for instance, our ministerial ecosystem. The Foreign Ministry’s website and social media channels publish every open remark by the Minister in full: unedited video footage, transcripts, key quotations, and thematic summaries. This content is accessible across a dozen platforms in several foreign languages. Never before has it been so effortless to locate and authenticate any statement – a facility available not merely to experts, but to any user, anywhere in the world. To quote Scripture: “He who has ears, let him hear.”

Yet even under these conditions, the Western press deliberately disregards factual evidence and distorts statements to achieve its desired negative effect. This further proves their utter disregard for truth. They are executing an assignment.

It bears noting that Western digital platforms, too, show no inclination to combat disinformation. The absurdity reaches such heights that in 2022–2023, they routinely blocked and deleted remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, briefings by the official representative, and Foreign Ministry publications containing verifiable facts – including uncomfortable inquiries, such as those concerning Bucha.

Ironically, these actions yield the opposite effect, fuelling a growing demand for truth.

Question: What are Russia’s primary methods for defending truth in the information space? In which channels is this more challenging, and where is it easier?

Maria Zakharova: As mentioned earlier, our weapon in the battle for truth <…> is truth itself and factual evidence. We refute lies and disseminate truth, leveraging every tool at our disposal.

For years, we have faced systemic discrimination and shadow-banning on Western digital platforms, enduring unjustified blocks and deletions – censorship holds no surprises for us. That said, the past eighteen months have seen slight improvements in reaching foreign audiences on X, though prior restrictions remain in place. Russian platforms, by contrast, offer a markedly more equitable environment.

It is heartening to witness people worldwide – across unfriendly states and the Global Majority – increasingly seeking truth and growing disillusioned with the West’s web of deceit.

I am convinced truth will always prevail. And we shall continue to assist in this endeavour, to the best of our ability.