© AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth/TASS
In my personal opinion, the concept of "British intelligence" is a meme akin to the "British scientists" one. It is widely used in the modern information war against Russia to "attribute" various fakes and misinformation that appear in a variety of media. Here is the most recent example. On August 9, The Insider (designated as a foreign agent and an undesirable organization in the Russian Federation) claimed, with reference to British intelligence, that the one scattering the banned Butterfly mines in Donbass is Russia itself. The Ukrainian press earlier delightfully replicated the piece with nightmarish details, while the social media featured a real song and dance over the Russians’ cruelty.
A modest Russian information consumer has developed a gag response to all of this "British intelligence", which is playing an active part on the side of radical Ukrainian nationalists in the information field against Russia. But in fact, things are not quite as they seem at first glance. Let's try to figure out what's going on.
To begin with, the British ruling class has always taken propaganda quite seriously, considering it a strategic weapon capable of causing irreparable harm (forgive me for saying this horrible, politically incorrect word) to class interests. The first to recognize strategic propaganda as an element of mainstream politics were Anglo-Saxon capitalists who won the First World War and were concerned about the possible influence of communism-related ideas on the population of Great Britain (primarily the workers, sure thing). Such ideas could be actively broadcast by the government of young Soviet Russia. In 1919, the USSR was neither a military, nor a political, nor an economic threat to the British, but the "red" strategic propaganda was deemed as jeopardizing both their domestic stability and plans for a post-war overhaul to "carve" new states from the wreckage of empires.
That's why the British intelligence asked US journalists (America was in accord with Moscow) to arrange a meeting with Lenin. In early December 1919, The Guardian’s "special" correspondent William Thomas Goode interviewed the head of the Soviet state (Lenin’s positive image presented to the readers stirs imagination down to the present), having mainly focused on the Bolshevik government’s stance towards strategic propaganda: "... For the third time I took up the questioning, asking what guarantees could be offered against official propaganda among the Western peoples, if by any chance relations with the Soviet Republic were opened. His reply was that they had declared to Bullitt that they were ready to sign an agreement not to make official propaganda. As a government they were ready to undertake that no official propaganda should take place. If private persons undertook propaganda, they would do it at their own risk and be amenable to the laws of the country in which they acted. Russia has no laws, he said, against propaganda by British people. England has such laws; therefore, Russia is the more liberal-minded. They would permit, he said, the British, or French, or American Government to carry out propaganda of their own." Further on, communist propaganda was only carried out through an international public organization called the Comintern. Just a reminder: the Cold War began after its dissolution, and the Americans feared not the mighty and victorious Red Army, even though they recognized military parity with the USSR, but the fact that red propagandists penetrated into the Western hemisphere.
Secondly, the British intelligence has always been distinguished by the highest degree of intellectualism. It was a matter of honor for all the great and mediocre English writers to volunteer their services in the hour of need for the motherland. But things have changed, and dear old Blighty has long gone. Migrants from former colonies take the upper hand in domestic politics, their coming to power is a matter of time. Moreover, there is no external threat or military danger to Britain. As a result, the indigenous national organism does not produce an efficient "antidote", making the intellectualism of the special services candidly fair to middling, as they just take side work home. The Skripal and Litvinenko cases serve a dramatic confirmation here.
Thirdly, the Ukrainian case is a typical burdening of the British elite by Uncle Sam. Johnson and his alternates have thumbed their nose at all this Bandera Kiev. But the Americans got occupied with the Pacific Ocean, while "persistently" throwing off the "smelly" Eastern Europe to the British. Anything rather than the Germans would get it. One of the elements of such burdening is active work with the Ukrainian "information troops" sitting in the trenches of their Twitter, telegram channels and social media and posting things with reference to the "British intelligence". The entire infrastructure of these "troops" was created for commercial purposes by US digital barons with the State Department’s funds. Quite a money-eater today.
Fourth, the British government has strictly ordered its special services to demonstrate enthusiasm for "this unfortunate country suffering from Putin's aggression." This is an order. British intelligence has a Twitter account, which acts as a news agency when talking about Ukraine, not a narrative generator. The British Ministry of Defense followed suit and joined the banners of the #StandWithUkraine tag. Thus, they cupcake the Ukrainian nationalists with a variety honeyed nothings.
Fifth, the secret service propagandists are careful workers. Johnsons and Bidens come and go, and the reputation remains. Real Twitter texts have nothing to do with banana oil poured in the ears of those visiting their echo-chamber channels by Kiev’s couch soldiers. The original official message of the British military intelligence about the Butterfly mines has three short paragraphs, each containing reservations – the notorious "highly likely". The mines are said to be (probably) used only in the Donbass at the contact line between the allied forces and those of Ukraine, posing a threat to civilians. The mines are said to have been (probably) made in the USSR and used in the war in Afghanistan. The Russians (probably) use mines from Soviet stocks; in Afghanistan children (probably) took them for toys and someone even (probably) died because of them. Looks like intelligence mocking, with texts written by Jaroslav Hašek. Of course, this is a far cry from the propaganda-fueled poisonous creativity of our real opponents.
Sixth, there is a "medical" fact here. In 2016, the reputable RAND Corporation conducted analysis of the online community life to identify the warring groups over Ukraine. Having studied a dime a thousand microblogging texts and Internet conferences, the American pundits came to believe that Russia has the following mass propaganda crews on its side: "official pro-Kremlin", "Donbass journalists and ordinary residents", "news journalists from St. Petersburg" (later "Putin's trolls"), "post-Soviet" or "USSR residents" who glorify the Soviet Union and associate themselves with Putin, and, finally, a noticeable "group of journalists (employees) of the British media, working in the territory of the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Russia, who tend to use pro-Russian rather than pro-Ukrainian narratives in their Internet communication."
So, it is by subordination and not by internal need that the British intelligence sold itself to the historically unreliable politicians and engages in the information and propaganda war on the side of Ukraine, though half-heartedly. But what the heck! As Maximilian Voloshin wrote a hundred years ago in his ever-relevant The Ways of Cain poem,
"Of all patented drugs —
Newspaper is the worst
(And brings large profits,
By the way)."
