Russia actually isn't as good at information warfare as everyone thought

LTC Eugene Chu
..."Separately, the Russians also launch very targeted propaganda campaigns against specific people or on certain issues, and those efforts tend to be more thought out, she said. For example, the Russians are currently putting a lot of time and effort into claims that the Ukrainian government is kidnapping journalists to silence them.

Since Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, though, its information operations have been weaker than in the past because foreign media have been on the ground to discredit Russian propaganda, Lautman said. The New York Times recently exposed Russia’s lies about the massacre of Ukrainian civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.

As long as the media coverage continues, Russia’s propaganda campaign will remain weak, Lautman said. “When it wanes, then you will see Russia’s disinformation operations being a lot more successful because they’ll be able to get their message across,” she said."

LTC Eugene Chu How Good? With All Propaganda the More that Believe the Better for the Manufactures of the Propaganda but the Only Ones You really need to Accept It, Your "Target Audience" is "Your People". People that Unquestioningly Accept What You Tell Them.

Information warfare operations are similar to special operations in that they require extensive time and planning prior to execution. You cannot just throw in a bunch of objectives and expect them to be successful overnight for complex campaigns. This isn't always the case, as some are time sensitive, executed in direct response to the enemy's actions. In the case of Ukraine, Russia was not prepared from an information warfare perspective for a war they expected to already be over by now. Essentially, like failing to achieve air superiority, they ignored the importance of information superiority. This isn't to say they can't do either, they simply did not plan for it. But they have proven to be highly successful at prolonged information warfare campaigns on the strategic levels against the west for many decades. Maybe not to get us to like them so much, but certainly to influence the perceptions of our own people. Human perception operations do not happen overnight and require significant time-based efforts to achieve the desired effects.

Currently I don't think the Russians intended or expected to launch an info ops campaign against the west with regards to the war in Ukraine. I don't think they considered or cared what the west thought. However, human perception operations are definitely taking place in Ukraine and in Russia. But their success in Ukraine is being hampered by our own counter efforts. Objectives like maintaining the information flow to the Ukrainians were hampered by Elon Musk's Starlight satellite based Internet access points.

Personally, I don't think that they are failing because they are not good at IW, but that they failed to plan and use it effectively. There was no attempt to "prepare the battlefield," prior to the invasion, they assumed the Ukrainians wouldn't resist, and they assumed the west would do very little to oppose them. Essentially, they failed in several of the proven edicts in ensuring a successful campaign. In contrast, look at our own actions in against Iraq during the Gulf War (leaving the politics out of it). What did we do? We launched a highly overt and successful IO campaign to get the world to either criticize Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, or outright join the coalition, all during Desert Shield. The perception that Saddam attacked an innocent nation, destabilized the region, could use WMDs, and threatened oil supplies all resonated with most of the world. IW operators capitalized on countering each and every exaggeration and lie perpetrated by Iraqi government officials (Remember Baghdad Bob?). Pictures of Iraqi military using restricted LOAC sites and innocent human shields were constantly plastered all over the news. Finally, when Desert Storm launched, we used overwhelming force, effects-based targeting against their missile defense capabilities (to include cyber operations), and we didn't hold back any resources to minimize US and coalition casualties. Russia simply said "go invade Ukraine, they're a bunch of Nazis," and they failed to prepare the battlefield on all dimensions of warfare. Their strategy was simply to throw enough fodder at the "enemy" until the Ukrainians run out of people or the will to fight. The irony here is, they are experiencing the challenges faced by the Nazis when they invaded Russia. You'd think they'd learn from their own success.