Monument to Soviet soldiers, Sofia. (c) Alexey Vitvitsky / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.Two weeks ago, retired air force general Rumen Radev was elected president in Bulgaria. Certain Russian commentators such as obscurantist Aleksandr Dugin proclaimed Radev’s landslide win a breakthrough triumph for Russia — the general had been typed beforehand as a “pro-Russian” candidate. In response, western media went into a near-hysterical tailspin, producing sensationalist headlines implying Bulgaria had “fallen” to the Kremlin.
In the era of “post-truth politics”, Bulgaria’s presidential election appeared foremost a victory for the Kremlin. “Post-truth”, recently named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries, has been associated with the instrumental use of disinformation or the “weaponisation of information” in what has been termed Russia’s new propaganda war. Moscow uses propaganda outlets such as RT and Sputniknews as well as a multitude of other often dubious internet outlets, together with an “army of trolls”, to spread subterfuge, and divide and sway public opinion in order to destabilise the west and undermine the European Union.
But propaganda can, in fact, serve as a distraction to conceal Russia’s pursuit of its interests with or without the complicity of local actors and even elites. Most of the time, Moscow does not even need to steer the propaganda game — western media outlets and commentators often do the groundwork upon which the Kremlin can simply prey. Bulgaria and its recent presidential elections are an illustrative example. Here, the media hysteria masks an uncomfortable reality: a story of state capture that has been in progress for years.
