Thread by @MollyMcKew

The voyage of @HMSDefender past Crimea made Russia rattle the spears. “Warning shots fired” they claimed.

This was not a display of Russian military might.

It was a demonstration of the primacy of narrative warfare for Russia. /1

On @RenewGreatPower

greatpower.us/p/hms-defender…

The voyage of Defender was a pre-planned display of support for Ukraine — and a chance remind that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was illegal

Russia wanted to alter the ship’s course. It did not.

So instead, they sold a story about an act of aggression /2

RUSSIA FIRES WARNING SHOTS AT NATO VESSEL IN BLACK SEA the Russian MoD claims. This is immediately the headline everywhere.

But it didn’t. It made noise near and around Defender, tho, to make the story seem plausible.

Defender sailed on through. /3

But for Russia, the war is the information operation, and they conduct kinetic actions in support of the narrative objectives.

And they did so in this case, to achieve narrative objectives /4

They set the narrative, and then conducted just enough kinetic operations to push it to the top of the doomscroll. 

This was entirely about achieving goals via narrative warfare. /5

Those goals are: Inflate perceptions of Russian dominance in the Black Sea, inflate perceptions in NATO nations that the cost to operate in totally normal ways in the Black Sea is too high/dangerous, inflate perceptions in Ukraine & Georgia that NATO ain’t coming to save you. /6

In reality, a NATO ally did something very bold today — and Russia couldn’t stop it. NATO (or at least, the UK) stood up for Ukraine, and it stood up to Russia. It did it without firing shots. The significance of this is important. /7

“This sort of challenge to Russian illegal claims is exactly what’s needed,” @general_ben tells @RenewGreatPower of the voyage of HMS Defender through international waters Russia claims as its own /8

Russia has become so accustomed to the low-cost of tactics like using kinetic military operations to populate content for narrative warfare objectives that they are taking risks that constantly escalate the potential of real conflict… /9

… and the West has become so accustomed to not imposing costs for all the nonsense that it is just now waking up to the fact that its posture has encouraged risk-taking and miscalculation by the Kremlin. 

This has to end. /10

To begin, we can stop giving the Kremlin easy victories in narrative warfare, & we can start making more meaningful gestures like the voyage of @HMSDefender—which show we aren’t ceding determination of the rules of engagement to the Kremlin

Read more /11
greatpower.us/p/hms-defender…

Post-script: so much this, and serious 👏 for the British defense attaché, who rolled up like “yeah yeah, just hand me the stupid file so I can get out of this monkey suit and down to the pub, peace”

https://twitter.com/keirgiles/status/1407928117038047232

Postscript 2:
Poke poke

https://twitter.com/us_eucom/status/1408050930373779459

Also since it is clearly going to be a Summer of Fun, sign up for @RenewGreatPower now!

greatpower.us/652d582a