Active measures (Russian: активные мероприятия, romanized: aktivnye meropriyatiya) is a term used to describe political warfare conducted by the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The term, which dates back to the 1920s, includes operations such as espionage, propaganda, sabotage and assassination, based on foreign policy objectives of the Soviet and Russian governments. Active measures have continued to be used by the administration of Vladimir Putin.
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👉 Active measures in the context of Russian cyberwarfare
Cyberwarfare by Russia comprises denial-of-service campaigns, hacking operations, disinformation programs, and state-directed online repression, including participation of state-sponsored teams in political blogs, internet surveillance using SORM technology, and other active measures, executed by Russian security and intelligence agencies since the 1990s to advance Kremlin geopolitical objectives.
Russian doctrine frames these operations within an informatsionnoye protivoborstvo (IPb), or information confrontation, approach that fuses technical network actions with psychological measures. Units of the GRU, FSB, and SVR oversee hacker collectives such as APT28, APT29, Sandworm, Turla, and Star Blizzard that target governments, infrastructure, and civil society across Europe, North America, and Asia.
In this Dossier
Active measures in the context of International propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism
Starting in the mid-1970s and 1980s, the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism within Sunni Islam and throughout the Muslim world, favored by the conservative oil-exporting Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, achieved a "preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam." The Saudi interpretation of Islam not only includes Salafism and Wahhabism but also Islamist and revivalist interpretations of Islam, and a "hybrid" of the two interpretations (until the 1990s).
The impetus for the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism was, according to political scientist Alex Alexiev, "the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted", David A. Kaplan described it as "dwarfing the Soviets' propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War" funded by petroleum exports. Others such as Peter Mandaville, former advisor in the Secretary of State's Office of Religion & Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, have cautioned against such hyperbolic assertions, pointing out the unreliability of inconsistent data estimates based on "non-specific hearsay".
Active measures in the context of State propaganda in the Russian Federation
The propaganda of the Russian Federation promotes views, perceptions or agendas of the government. The media include state-run outlets and online technologies, and may involve using "Soviet-style 'active measures' as an element of modern Russian 'political warfare'". Notably, contemporary Russian propaganda promotes the cult of personality of Vladimir Putin and positive views of Soviet history. Russia has established a number of organizations, such as the Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests (active 2009-2012), the Russian web brigades, and others that engage in political propaganda to promote the views of the Russian government.