Proposals to Address Political Interference

Prior to the events of February 2022, political interference was one of the most significant challenges in Russia-West relations. These proceedings reflect a series of discussions among U.S., Russian, and European Union nongovernmental experts who were convened in 2020-2021 to discuss mutual concerns regarding political interference and to find common ground on measures to address them. Even before February 2022, the European Union, the United States, and Russia had divergent interests, values, and worldviews, as well as significant mutual grievances. Despite these divergences and grievances, the assembled experts came to the view that all parties would have benefited from the establishment of mutually agreed-upon measures to mitigate the destabilizing impacts of political interference. In a text agreed on in January 2022, the expert group proposed the following measures: (1) increase transparency regarding interpretations of prohibited interference, (2) enhance dialogue on interference, (3) establish self-restraint commitments (regarding election-related infrastructure and hack-and-leak operations), (4) develop technical measures to demonstrate compliance with self-restraint commitments, (5) create guidelines to limit cross-border manipulation of social media, (6) relax restrictions on foreign broadcasters, and (7) formulate declarations of intent not to interfere.