Radio Svoboda's closure reveals West's reluctance to fight Russia’s information warfare

The problem is that the collective West — both the U.S. and Europe — has essentially abandoned the idea of waging an information war inside Russia. This topic is off-limits for the foundations that pour millions into journalism.

I’m in the minority that believes shutting down Radio Svoboda won’t change much (except for the fact that some truly great journalists will unfortunately lose their jobs).

Radio Svoboda was created during the Cold War with one goal: to weaken the Soviet Union from within. And back then, it played a massive role. Over time, it just evolved into a high-quality media outlet — trusted, widely cited. In other words, it became one of the good outlets.

What no one is talking about now is that, in both 2014 and 2022 (long before Trump, I might add), the West had no real interest in building modern tools for information warfare inside Russia.

What kind of tools? Nothing groundbreaking — TikTok, Telegram, and serious qualitative and quantitative research. The ability to get information into Russia today is exponentially greater than what Radio Svoboda had in the 1980s. But the West is simply too afraid to fight this battle.

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About the author: Vadym Denysenko, political scientist.

The editorial staff does not always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.