PREMIUM TIMES NG
“President Putin is putting out a lot of information that’s not true,” the American diplomat said.
On Friday, 28 July, in a one-on-one interview with PREMIUM TIMES, US Special Envoy and Coordinator of the US Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), James Rubin, said, “Disinformation is a tool of war for the Russians.” In a conversation with PREMIUM TIMES, and speaking from Washington, on the second day of the Russia-Africa Summit, he said that when the Russians “claim that they’re the good guys here, those are what we call crocodile tears.”
Excerpts:
MATIBE: Thank you for being available today, Special Envoy. Last December at the end of the US-Africa Leaders’ Summit, the State Department announced your appointment of Special Envoy and Coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, the GEC.
You’ve been tasked with leading one of the most powerful government offices of the United States, to slow down, eliminate, and counter foreign adversaries who attempt to undermine the interests of the United States.
This is the job of countering certain foreign actors: China, Russia, transnational criminal organizations such as ISIS, al Qa’eda, and the Wagner group. There are others, but I’m just naming a few. I’d like to talk to you today about the interests of the United States.
Today is the second, and last day of, the Russia-Africa Summit. Can you comment on the summit in St. Petersburg, and your work related to the actors that I just mentioned? I mean, is there a national security threat to the United States? Thanks.
RUBIN: Thank you. We do believe disinformation and information manipulation are a national security threat and Africa provides some pretty clear examples of that.
The Wagner Group, a brutal private military that now the Russians have accepted that they really make it part of their military, uses lies in West Africa, to try to justify their presence in these countries where they’re paid, and they lie about the peacekeeping initiatives that protected Africans, and they lie about what they’re doing there. And they try to discredit the French, discredit the United Nations, discredit the United States, claiming that, you know, we’re some kind of colonial effort, when in fact, Putin has shown that he wants the Wagner Group countries to be his colonies.
Those are the ones he’s offering grain to at this Summit. So, disinformation is a tool of war for the Russians. Unfortunately, they have seen information that way for a long, long time.
