Way back in mid-December 2024, Translating History presented a case of what appeared to be a Russian government-sanctioned disinformation campaign that was specifically targeting Ukraine, as well as those countries feeling audacious enough to help the beleaguered country in its fight to stay one step ahead of Russia. Russia’s Special Military Operation, after all, was 58 months old, 56 more months than the Russians felt it would take to mop up Zelensky and the rest of Kyiv to establish Russian rule. A large part of any information warfare plan is propaganda, even if it’s made up and planted in plain sight.
The vehicle for this disinformation program was, and still is, the official public voice of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, an online magazine known as Razvedchik (Разведчик), which translates as “intelligence officer” or “spy”. For some time, the magazine has published what it refers to as declassified information, often dated within weeks of publication, that casts a damning shadow on Ukraine and its allies, and that the Russians clearly hoped sowed seeds of doubt in the good intentions of Ukraine and the West overall. We at Translating History tried to point out the oddities of the reporting that highly suggested that the “information” touted as intelligence was nothing more than concoction.
Tast forward a handful of months and we see that the independent Russian website The Insider has caught on to the Russian disinformation campaign as well. The journalist putting the piece together directs our attention to a number of clues, including the use of Western names for its intelligence sources, as well as message internals themselves. It’s a very good article, and well worth your time. You can find the English version here, and the Russian version is available through this link.
The online SVR magazine Razvedchik can also be found in Russian and English versions, but oddly enough, the English versions don’t carry the bogus intelligence reports. If you’re interested in reading these Russian-government hosted magazines, you’ll need two things: a VPN and a grain of salt.
Translation © 2026 by Michael Estes and TranslatingHistory.org
