Russia Accuses the West of "Weaponizing Information." Who Is Doing the Weaponizing? ‎

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused Western governments and media of weaponizing information against Russia and the wider "Global South." He made the charge at the opening of the 4th Dialogue about Fakes International Forum in Moscow on September 22. The claim deserves scrutiny, especially from Africa, where Moscow is competing hard for influence.

What Lavrov said
Lavrov argued that modern technology lets unverified or false news reach millions within hours, and that Western officials exploit this to, in his words, derail a "just multipolar world order." He said Russia has faced an information war since the early 2000s, when it began to free itself from "neocolonial forms of cooperation" with the West.

He cited the Skripal poisoning case and Western reporting on drones over Europe as examples of distorted stories. He also framed the issue as Western fear of fair economic competition, saying the West is losing "within the system that it itself created."

The messenger matters
The forum is organised by the Global Fact-Checking Network, set up in 2025 by TASS, the Russian state news agency, and partners. TASS is the forum's strategic media partner, and Russia's foreign ministry has backed the network as a counter to what spokeswoman Maria Zakharova calls Western "pseudo-fact-checking."

Organisers say more than 2,000 journalists, experts and businesspeople from 80 countries attended. A fact-checking body created by a state news agency has an obvious credibility problem when judging its own government's rivals.

The African record
Lavrov's language, "Global South" and "global majority," is an appeal for solidarity against a common Western adversary. It lands in a region with real colonial grievances. Researchers who have mapped Russian activity on the continent describe a very different picture from the one he presents:

Scale: The Africa Center for Strategic Studies found West Africa is the most targeted region for disinformation, with nearly 40 percent of documented campaigns in Africa, roughly half of them connected to Russia.

It says the Wagner Group was linked to about half of all Russian-linked campaigns on the continent, and that these operations are now being absorbed into the Africa Corps and the Africa Initiative news agency.

The Africa Initiative: The European Council on Foreign Relations says the agency, launched in late 2023 and run by Russian intelligence officer Artem Kureyev, is presented as a news outlet but is recognised by the EU and Western intelligence agencies as a covert information manipulation operation.

It publishes in English, French, Arabic, Russian and local languages including Hausa and Swahili, and recruits or trains hundreds of local journalists, influencers and activists.

Narratives: The ECFR says content has ranged from discrediting ECOWAS to conspiracy theories that Western troops fund jihadists. It also cites a 2024 campaign attacking malaria vaccine programmes.

On the ground: Africa Defense Forum reported that the Africa Initiative has offices in Ouagadougou and Bamako, and organised "friendship lessons" in Burkina Faso schools and Putin-themed cultural events.

Pressure on journalists: Forbidden Stories, in its Sahel investigation, described trips to Russia arranged for Malian journalists, who then organised pro-Russia events at home. It also noted that Russia's cultural network, the Russian Houses run by Rossotrudnichestvo, has been sanctioned by the EU for spreading disinformation.

New tools: The Elcano Royal Institute notes that AI has made these campaigns cheaper and faster, letting small teams produce hundreds of multilingual posts a day and, increasingly, deepfakes.

Moscow is not merely a critic of information warfare. On this evidence, it is also a practitioner, and citing Western distortions does not answer that record.

What a serious response looks like
Both sides run narratives. The practical test for African journalists, governments and audiences is to:

Verify claims independently, whatever their source.

Ask who funds and controls any "fact-checking" body.

Judge Moscow by its conduct on the continent, not by speeches about media freedom.

Accusing others of weaponizing information is itself a way of shaping the information space. The reader's job is to notice that.

Mustapha Bature Sallama
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Analysis,

International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding. (USIP)

[email protected]
+233555275880
Sources
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Lavrov's remarks at the 4th Dialogue on Fakes International Forum, September 22, 2026 (via GlobalSecurity.org)

TASS: "Lavrov says truth will prevail, answer to Western information aggression" (September 22, 2026)

RT: "Fake news is West's tool against rising powers – Lavrov" (September 22, 2026)

Wikipedia: "Global Fact-Checking Network"

Africa Center for Strategic Studies: "Mapping a Surge of Disinformation in Africa" (January 2026)

European Council on Foreign Relations: "The bear and the bot farm: Countering Russian hybrid warfare in Africa" (November 2025)

Africa Defense Forum: "'African Initiative,' a New Russian Media Outlet, Promotes Disinformation" (October 2024)

Forbidden Stories: "Propaganda Machine: Russia's information offensive in the Sahel" (November 2024)

Real Instituto Elcano: "Russia's new security order in the Sahel and its Euro-Atlantic implications" (July 2026)

The Insight, front page, September 28, 2026