Russia’s Strategy for Influence Operations Through Public Diplomacy: The Romanian Case

Russia, as well as other contemporary states, takes public diplomacy seriously as a tool for influence operations in world politics. The use of influence strategies to achieve its goals is determined, on the one hand, by the historical tradition inherited from the Soviet empire, but also by the changes of essence that took place in the nature of the military power of states and the emergence of hybrid warfare as a tool to promote politics in the international environment by other means. This paper argues that Russian global media platforms, NGOs and other public institutions are the rising face of Russia’s information operations through public diplomacy. The article discusses how these actors fit into a historical and theoretical framework of Russian public diplomacy and examines the intersection of public diplomacy tools with other dimensions of Russian state’s operations for international influence in regional and global politics. The paper provides empirical proofs on how Russia since 2015 has used the Russian Centre for Science and Culture in Bucharest to managing its image in Romanian contemporary society through public diplomacy. We conclude that the general objective of Russian policy towards Romania and in the Wider Black Sea Region is to gain a better image in Romanian society and to mitigate NATO’s image in the Wider Black Sea Region.