The Russo-Georgian War included an extensive information war. Russia spread disinformation to discredit Georgia, Ukraine and the United States even after the end of armed hostilities.
Russian authorities and media Allegations of atrocities Up to 2,000 South Ossetian civilian casualties were often mentioned by Russian and South Ossetian authorities since the eruption of the conflict as the result of the Georgian-organized genocide and this was used as one of the main reasons for Russian invasion. On 9 August 2008, Dmitry Rogozin, Russian envoy to NATO, claimed that Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili was a war criminal responsible for an ethnic cleansing and killing thousands of people. Rogozin also claimed that the war devastated "98 percent of Tskhinvali". Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov suggested that Saakashvili's attack on Tskhinvali was worse "genocide" than German atrocities during the World War II. Russian ambassador to Georgia Vyacheslav Kovalenko claimed that at least 2,000 civilians were killed in Tskhinvali. He called the Georgian actions "the most true vandalism" and claimed that "The city of Tskhinvali doesn't exist anymore."
President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev claimed on 10 August: "The form this aggression took is nothing less than genocide because Georgia committed heaviest crimes — civilians were torched, sawed to pieces and rolled over by tanks." Similar allegations of Georgian atrocities were made by Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin.
Russia Today actively participated in the information war since the start of the conflict.
Pavel Zarifullin, leader of the Eurasian Youth Union and ally of Aleksandr Dugin, claimed that Georgian soldiers captured in Tskhinvali allegedly admitted that they had orders not to show clemency and execute all peacekeepers, Ossetian women and children. Russian media agency Evrazia (founded by Aleksandr Dugin) claimed that Georgian commanders executed Georgian soldiers who had refused to massacre Ossetian civilians. Evrazia claimed that the South Ossetian civilian casualties had reached 4,000 already on 9 August 2008.
South Ossetian media claimed on 10 August that Georgian forces had massacred all Ossetians of all ages living in Akhalgori District. South Ossetian government official Irina Gagloeva claimed by 11 August that Georgian forces were engaged in ritual killings by beheading the Ossetian captives on the graveyards. Irina Gagloeva claimed that Georgia opened the irrigation canal, supposedly in an effort to flood the basements of Tskhinvali buildings with an intention to prevent civilians from hiding from bombings. Russian media claimed that the Georgian soldiers played football with a child's head and that Georgians had deliberately destroyed the majority of graveyards in South Ossetia. Russia media agency Evrazia claimed that the advancing Russian forces were discovering the concentration camps in Georgia where ethnic Abkhazian and Ossetian civilians had been held for years and that the prisoners were emaciated.
South Ossetian and Russian media claimed that the Georgian forces had burned the Orthodox church with the elderly people inside in the South Ossetian village of Khetagurovo. Russian journalist Dmitry Belyakov later visited the area and found out that this report was hoax.
Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Anatoliy Nogovitsyn claimed in an interview: "I take full responsibility in saying the Russian side hasn't hit a single civilian target." Nogovitsyn claimed that he could "prove to the media" that Georgia was committing genocide of the Ossetian people.
Vladimir Putin claimed that Georgian troops "razed ten Ossetian villages at once, ran over elderly people and children with tanks and burnt civilians alive in their sheds." Vladimir Putin reiterated in December 2008 that Georgia had wiped out 10 Ossetian villages from the face of the earth.
South Ossetian military expert Zaur Alborov claimed that Georgian army used American psychoactive drug and such drugs were responsible for the cruelty against the civilians. In late August 2008, South Ossetian envoy to Russia Dmitry Medoyev claimed in an interview: "They started the war with the fact that the Georgian peacekeeping battalion fixedly shot in the back of the Russian soldiers. [...] And they had the same command, but they [the Georgians] brought them forward and shot them all in the back." He also claimed that the Georgian soldiers were under the influence of "100% American made psychotropic drugs".
Journalists were invited to Tskhinvali on 12 August 2008 by the Russian authorities. Russian Colonel Igor Konashenkov claimed during the tour of Tskhinvali, "I think more than 500 bodies were pulled out of this part of town." The Guardian reporter wrote on 13 August 2008 that rumors of total destruction of Tskhinvali were exaggerations and some Tskhinvali areas were undamaged at all.
On 16 August, South Ossetian interior minister Mikhail Mindzaev claimed that the actual number of civilians killed by Georgia was way higher than 2100. On 20 August, the Investigative Committee of Russia reported that they had confirmed 133 civilian deaths. "Perhaps in a while we will reach the figure that is given by the South Ossetian authorities," one representative said. When asked about the Georgian civilian deaths, the representative said that this issue was not their concern. However, the South Ossetian officials still claimed that 1,492 were killed as the result of the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali. Nine days later, prime minister Vladimir Putin still claimed in an interview with German ARD TV that 2,000 Russian civilians were killed during the conflict. He claimed that Russia was the victim of the aggression. On 3 July 2009, the final figure of civilian casualties in South Ossetia was 162. Since no separate lists of killed Ossetian combatants, executed marauders and collateral damage caused by the Russian army were ever published by Russia, it is suggested that the Russian investigators included these casualties in the list of the South Ossetian civilian casualties caused by the Georgian forces for propaganda purposes.
Russian General Anatoliy Nogovitsyn claimed in August 2009 that Georgian planes masked as Russian jets were bombing the refugees in August 2008.
In August 2015, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev claimed that the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali killed "thousands of people" and Russia "responded" to this "grave crime".
Accusations of Western bias and disinformation Nataliya Vitrenko, leader of the pro-Russian Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, declared on early 8 August 2008 that if the Russian intervention had already occurred in the first minutes of the war, "then all Western agencies, as they are used to, in the spirit of Goebbels propaganda, would declare Russia an aggressor."
Dmitry Rogozin, Russian envoy to NATO, claimed that Georgia had the "most powerful propaganda support from the West".
On 9 August 2008, Russian media accused Azerbaijani websites of spreading pro-Georgian disinformation. Pro-Russian Italian politician Giulietto Chiesa accused Italian media of anti-Russian bias.
On 10 August 2008, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin blamed non-Russian media for pro-Georgian reporting on the conflict and said that the western TV channels were not broadcasting the impact of the war on the ordinary Ossetians. According to him, Western media was promoting "a politically motivated version". However, The Washington Post, for example, later argued that Moscow was engaging in "mythmaking".
Sergei Ivanov was interviewed by CNN on 11 August 2008. He accused American media of manipulating the public opinion and portraying Russia as aggressor while the situation "was vice-versa" because according to Ivanov, Georgia was the aggressor.
On 11 August 2008, Russian ambassador to Estonia Nikolay Uspensky accused Estonian media of biased reporting.
On 11 August 2008, a discussion was held at the State Duma. Maksim Mishchenko, leader of Young Russia (youth movement), declared that Russia had to recruit English-speaking people who would write pro-Russian posts on foreign web-sites and upload videos to YouTube. The Russian Federation Council adopted a statement on 11 August calling on the western media to stop supporting Georgia.
On 12 August 2008, RT accused CNN of presenting video footage of destruction in Tskhinvali in South Ossetia, shot by a Russian cameraman, as pictures of destruction in Gori, Georgia.
Israeli journalist Zadok Yehezkeli was wounded during the Russian bombardment of Gori. Russian media agency Life.ru claimed that Yehezkeli was actually injured in traffic collision and Reuters was falsifying the information.
Russian Vzglyad newspaper opined that the support of the Russian actions by Belarus could have meant a lot for Russia against the backdrop of the information war waged by the West, and described the silence of Alexander Lukashenko on the war as "betrayal".
On 14 August 2008, separatist leaders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Sergei Bagapsh and Eduard Kokoity, accused the western media of waging the pre-planned information war against South Ossetia. Bagapsh praised Spanish media and suggested that French and German media became more pro-Russian.
On 16 August 2008, representative of the pro-Russian government of South Ossetia said that more than 110 foreign journalists had been to Tskhinvali in the last 3 days, but no foreign TV channel aired the footage from Tskhinvali.
Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, claimed on 17 August that the multiple reports on Russian looting were part of "the information war".
Dmitry Rogozin, Russian envoy to NATO, claimed on 18 August 2008 that the CNN became a "mouthpiece of military propaganda of Georgia".
Pavel Kassin, who had been working for Der Spiegel since 1990, accused the magazine of propaganda and taking a pro-American position because none of his photos taken in South Ossetia were printed. According to Kassin, the photos were rejected on political reasons. Izvestia claimed that this was influenced by the ousting of the editor-in-chief Stefan Aust earlier in 2008, who had worked for many years in Der Spiegel, and his replacement with Georg Mascolo who had been leading the Washington subdivision of the magazine.
In early September 2008, Pyotr Fyodorov, chief of the Russian Euronews, criticized the wartime reporting of the CNN and Fox as "ugly" and said that these TV channels were "tools of foreign interests of Washington." He said that "TV is not a mass media, but a means of propaganda."
On 11 September 2008, Vladimir Putin accused "propaganda machine of the so-called West" of bias in their reporting during the early phase of the war. "I was in Beijing, I watched all the international electronic media. There was a total silence, as if nothing was happening at all." Putin continued, "It was a remarkable job, but the results were bad, and will always be bad because such work is unfair and immoral."
In December 2008, the students of Rostov-on-Don universities sent an appeal to the State Duma. They asked to defend the honor of the Russian citizens against the information war waged by the western media.
Allegations against Ukraine The Russian government claimed on 9 August that Ukraine had encouraged the "ethnic cleansing" in South Ossetia. Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Anatoliy Nogovitsyn claimed on 15 August that Ukrainian diplomatic license plates were found in the Georgian military warehouses which granted unlimited access to the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The demonstrated plates were actually transit plates. On 27 August 2008, pro-Russian president of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity claimed that Ukraine was responsible for the genocide of the South Ossetian people.