Russia’s Weapon of Words in Numbers. Evolution of Russian Assertive (Dis)Information Actions: Comparative Analysis of the Cases of RussoGeorgian War 2008 & Annexation of Crimea 2014 .

Russian assertive actions over the last decade have led some observers tothink that the Kremlin is employing fundamentally new concepts of anarmed conflict. Subsequently, the scholars of the field came up withseveral buzzwords and ill-defined concepts such as ‘hybrid warfare’ and‘Gerasimov Doctrine’. This paper claims that the novelty of Russianactions is not in terms of its military transformations per se, but ratherthe specific way the military had been integrated with otherinstruments—mostly state-run and coordinated information operations.Thus, the study puts a novel emphasis on information operations andasserts that, while in certain cases Moscow still uses the conventionalmilitary, the Kremlin's new plan is to achieve goals through informationonline in the first place. Thus, the paper focuses on analysing theevolution of Russian information strategy. In doing so, quantitativecontent analysis is deployed to examine narratives built by RIA Novostiand Russia Today/RT during the Russo-Georgian War of 2008 andannexation of Crimea in 2014. The comparative analysis of the twosuccessive cases demonstrates the gradual progression of Russianinformation strategy insofar as by 2014, in contrast to 2008, pro-Kremlinmedia exploited some contested areas of international law in a more sophisticated manner to depict compatibility of the Russian actions withthe democratic procedures and standards of international law.