Pekka Kallioniemi: Western Policymakers Underestimate Disinformation’s Scale

In his latest interview with The Baltic Sentinel, Finnish counter-disinformation expert Pekka Kallioniemi warns that we are losing the information war against Russia, China, and Iran.

Interviewer: Could you give us a scientific definition of what it is that you do?

Pekka Kallioniemi: I conduct qualitative research focusing on personas—understanding who spreads Kremlin narratives and what motivates them. It’s a form of persona-based research aimed at comprehending these individuals and their actions.

Interviewer: How scholarly is your research behind these Vatnik profiles?

Pekka Kallioniemi: I always try to refer to a source. I do add a bit of personal analysis, which would probably be excluded in actual scientific work, but I always cite sources. I don’t make the claim if I don’t have a source. Truthfulness is the essence of what I do. In a Stoic way, we should always strive for the truth.

Interview: What or who constitutes a ‘Vatnik’?

Pekka Kallioniemi: ‘Vatnik’ is a term simply used to refer to a person who believes and/or spreads the Kremlin’s narratives one way or another. While some of the Vatniks catalogued in my book work directly for the Kremlin, others are genuinely unaware of their complicity in furthering the Kremlin’s agenda and have little to no connection to other Vatniks.

Interviewer: Having completed these 300 Vatnik profiles, have you developed a typology?

Pekka Kallioniemi: The typology I use is based on the MICE system from Western counterintelligence, where the acronym stands for Money, Ideology, Compromise (kompromat), and Ego. It’s a simplified categorization of individuals by their motivations. Uncovering the money trail is the trickiest part, as there is limited information on how these individuals are compensated by malign actors such as Russia, China, or Iran.

Interviewer: What percentage of the Vatniks you have catalogued are ideological, truly believing they are working for a good cause?

Pekka Kallioniemi: True believers are quite rare. While some are driven by nostalgia for the Communist system, most Vatniks are motivated by greed. They tend to fight against something rather than for a cause. There is a common ideology that unites almost all of them: strong anti-Western and anti-establishment sentiments. They are vehemently opposed to the democratic systems of Western countries, particularly targeting the United States and NATO. Although NATO is a military organization, their anti-NATO and anti-US stance is a consistent thread among 99% of these individuals.

There has been a significant effort to connect various conspiracy theories and align them with the Russian agenda. For instance, the notion that global elites are attempting to enslave the world is often linked to entities like the World Economic Forum.

This narrative then positions Russia as the opposition to this agenda, portraying Putin as an anti-globalist champion of traditional conservative values. Figures like Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump are also woven into this narrative, making it easy for believers in one conspiracy theory to accept others. This trend of merging different conspiracy theories into a master narrative, where Russia is depicted as the hero and the US or the West as the villain, is something I quite frequently observe.

Interviewer: Can we discuss Russian disinformation operations and any changes you’ve observed over the last two to three years, or even longer? Is it still the same old Cold War tactics, or has it evolved over time?

Pekka Kallioniemi: Russian messaging is pretty much the same KGB-style messaging—claiming corruption, conspiracy theories, and anti-Semitism. But the biggest change in recent years has been the use of AI. Even in the last six months of 2024, the use of AI on a massive scale is something we are now figuring out, but we still have no clue about the full scale of it. That’s what’s changing and what we need to investigate and understand in the West—the large-scale use of AI in all this.

Interviewer: How do you think Western counter-disinformation practices have been influenced by what Putin did to Ukraine?

Pekka Kallioniemi: Well, there weren’t many efforts before 2022. The Ukrainians have taught us a lot. There’s a great research paper published by the Hybrid Center of Excellence in Finland called “Ten Things You Can Learn from Countering Russian Disinformation from Ukrainians.” But we started way too late. Russians started their large-scale online operations around 2012–2013, and we reacted in 2022.

There were some projects like EU vs. DISINFO, but they were small compared to the thousands of people Russia has used for troll farms. Even now, the West isn’t using the necessary resources to counter this effectively. The response to Russian disinformation warfare has been quite pathetic, to be honest.

Interviewer: The overall consensus seems to state that Ukraine has demolished Russia online post-2022, but you call the Western response pathetic. Can you elaborate?

Pekka Kallioniemi: Some narratives still break into the mainstream, and we aren’t learning from our previous mistakes. The Digital Services Act in the EU is trying to make platforms responsible for spreading disinformation, but it’s vague, and the fines are small. We have think tanks identifying small-scale operations, but that’s about it. For example, the FBI found and closed around 100 bot accounts on X, but if there are millions of troll accounts, closing 100 does nothing. We are fighting a losing war in information warfare against Russia, China, and Iran.

Interviewer: How much of the US culture war is being incited from outside? Is there any basis to believe that Russians and Chinese are inflating it online?

Pekka Kallioniemi: Definitely. There’s research showing Russian-funded outlets spreading both pro and anti-Black Lives Matter narratives to polarize society. China has been campaigning around Palestine protests on US campuses, spreading the narrative that the US isn’t a free country. They are using culture wars and identity debates as weapons against the West.

Interviewer: How much does the Kremline domestic info ops playbook differ from what they do abroad? Are they even comparable?

Pekka Kallioniemi: The difference is that domestically, they don’t have conflicting or competing narratives. The main narrative is always pro-Putin. The early research on domestic operations showed that you don’t criticize Putin. You can criticize the Duma or the country, but never Putin. So domestically, the propaganda is about uniting people under Putin. Abroad, they use a lot of conflicting narratives to polarize societies. So, they are different genres altogether.

The interview with Pekka Kallioniemi can be read in full on the Baltic Sentinel site.

The Baltic Sentinel is a premier defense and security journalism platform focusing on NATO’s strategic northeast. It provides military officers, defense officials, journalists, academics, and reserve soldiers with in-depth analysis and insights into regional security dynamics. Led by expert Meelis Oidsalu and supported by Postimees‘ international relations journalists, the platform welcomes contributions from global experts to ensure diverse, comprehensive coverage.