The Russian threat explained to Conte

Russian disinformation does not work merely when it succeeds in making people believe a lie. Above all, it works when it succeeds in rendering the truth invisible. Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, said as much yesterday at the NATO Defence College: we often do not realise that we are being attacked, divided and weakened, and this is precisely the aim of the attack. The political significance of his words is clear. Anyone who, in the face of Russian threats, chooses to deny, downplay or ridicule those sounding the alarm is not necessarily an agent of Moscow, but ends up becoming a cog in its disinformation machine.

The figure cited by Cavo Dragone should be enough to dispel many misconceptions: over the past two years, allied fighter jets have been scrambled around seven hundred times in response to Russian aircraft approaching NATO airspace and provocations along its borders. Seven hundred times means almost once a day, every day, for two years. This is not a threat concocted in a press release, nor is it propaganda from the ‘warlords’, nor is it textbook tension. It is daily contact. Yet a section of the European political establishment continues to treat Russia as a regional problem, an obsession of the Balts, the Poles or the Ukrainians. Cavo Dragone pointed out that Russia’s strategic arsenal is not directed solely at Eastern Europe: it is also aimed at the United States. The threat is transatlantic even before it is European. No one can afford to be a mere spectator. Democracies, said the admiral, are stronger when citizens hear the truth, not just press releases. Deterrence is an armed peace: strength is built up so that it need not be used. And the most uncomfortable truth is that silence on Russian threats is not neutrality. It is the background noise that the Kremlin’s propaganda needs.