Ukraine Offers Lessons for Russia’s 2024 Election Interference

During the 2016 and 2020 elections, Ukraine was a key theme of Russia’s interference activities. Numerous Kremlin operatives had ties to Ukraine or to past Russian interference in Ukraine, such as Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian parliamentarian, Russian intelligence agency academy graduate, and son of Ukraine’s one-time intelligence chief. Derkach took direction from the Kremlin to offer manipulated “evidence” of corruption between then Vice President Biden and Ukrainian President Poroshenko. In that vein, some of the disinformation propagated by Russia’s proxy and patronage network fabricated ideas of U.S.-Ukraine corruption. Even though Derkach and his circle were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department and exposed for these activities—and despite Ukrainian authorities debunking these claims—members of Congress and President Trump himself parroted these narratives. 

American policymakers should prepare now for the likelihood that Moscow’s interference in the 2024 U.S. election will have a considerable focus on Ukraine. The specifics depend on the next several months, but the Kremlin will attempt to exploit the situation no matter the outcome; it will likely be a part of the U.S. election debate. 

To prepare for 2024, Congress and the executive branch must implement the legislative and regulatory reforms recommended in the Senate review of 2016 election interference, endorsed on a bipartisan basis. As it wrote, “Unclear laws regarding foreign advocacy, flawed assumptions about what intelligence activity looks like…and the freedom of expression at the root of our democratic society became an opportunity for Russian influence to hide in plain sight.” Congress should update legislation on foreign espionage, agents, and lobbying—most of which is rooted in Cold War-era thinking—to pre-posture for 2024. In tandem, the U.S. intelligence community should update its cyber and intelligence tradecraft to account for increased Kremlin use of dark money, obscure financial webs, money laundering, and proxy groups. 

Policymakers and the intelligence community should also watch the Putin regime’s war on Ukraine and begin to identify any new cyber and information tactics. The 2020 election cycle demonstrated that the time-tested “active measures” tradecraft of the KGB era is still effective, and there is an immense risk that policymakers will fight the last war, so to speak, in assuming the Russian government will not employ new interference tactics. Already, for example, the Kremlin has used the Lukashenko regime in Belarus to launch cyber and information operations against Ukraine in service of its illegal war; Moscow could use those kinds of proxies in the future. 

Finally, the United States should continue and intensify the practice of public intelligence disclosures of Russian covert influence activities, where possible. The U.S., United Kingdom, and Ukrainian governments, among others, publicized several intelligence findings in recent weeks, especially in the leadup to Putin’s illegal attack on Ukraine, to expose Russian activities. This drew attention to the Russian government’s activities, worked to undermine Russian deniability (for example, concerning the use of undercover Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) operatives), and also provided information to social media and civil society organizations in the process. Notably, these recent disclosures were made far faster than even previous ones, with turnarounds occurring seemingly in a matter of weeks if not days. The U.S. intelligence community should continue this pattern and build on its 2016, 2018, and 2020 election track records to keep quickly exposing Russian election interference efforts where it is possible to protect sources and methods in the process. 

The through lines from Ukraine’s revolutions to Russia’s efforts to interfere in the U.S. democratic system are clear. For the White House, Capitol Hill, and the interagency, now is the time to apply lessons learned from Ukraine and the 2016 election interference. 

— Also see: Gavin Wilde and Justin Sherman, Targeting Ukraine through Washington: Russian election interference, Ukraine, and the 2024 US election (Atlantic Council, 14 March 2022)

Gavin Wilde is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a former director for Russia, Baltic, and Caucasus affairs at the National Security Council. Justin Sherman is a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative. This article is published courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).