"This report, drawing from research, qualitative and quantitative data, Key Insight Interviews (KIIs), digital tools, and Russian information and deception doctrine, explores the Kremlin’s IIOs in non-Western environments using five selected countries as case studies: Egypt, Mali, Kenya, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. The initial set of countries were selected based on their international importance and to represent a cross-section of critical national issues pertinent to Russian information operations, which include food insecurity (Egypt, Mali, Kenya), energy security (UAE), trade and investment relationship with Russia (Mali, Egypt, UAE), military aspects (Mali), and political relevance to the West and Ukraine. The political regime of the countries concerned and stability of governments was also considered.
Central to understanding and explaining the process and potential threat of these operations has been the Theory of Reflexive Control (TORC), a Soviet era methodical framework for shaping perceptions via information inputs based on a cultural and psychological profile or ‘model’ of the target and disseminated via propaganda, maskirovka (masquerade, i.e., deception), and provokatsiya (provocation, such as false-flag attacks and hoaxes) to create voluntary decision-making (a ‘reflexive action’) that is favourable to the practitioner (see Annex A for the full description). Despite being the subject of increased scrutiny in the West since the Crimea Crisis of 2014, it has rarely been used as a guiding framework to analyse ongoing Russian IIOs. This report adapts the existing framework to provide clarity to an intentionally complex and obscure process. Each country report uses the TORC to provide a clarifying overview of Kremlin IIOs and their potential outcomes." (Executive summary, page 5)