In tackling Vladimir Putin’s web of troll farms and hackers, we have one advantage: democracy | Peter Pomarantsev

By focusing on its strengths and pooling information, the west can disrupt Russia's war machine - but there's no time to lose

Russia is a mafia state" trying to expand into a mafia empire", the foreign secretary, David Lammy, told the UN, nailing the dual nature of Vladimir Putin's political model. On one hand Russia represents something very old - a world of bullying empires that invade smaller countries, grab their resources and indoctrinate their people into thinking they are inferior. But it is also something very new, weaponising corruption, criminal networks, assassinations and tech-driven psy-ops to subvert open societies. And if democracies don't act to stop it, this malign model will be imitated across the globe.

Ukraine is resisting the older, zombie imperialism every day on the battlefield, and democracies will have to arm Ukraine and ourselves to constrain Russia properly. But how should we fight the more contemporary tools of political warfare that Russia pioneers? These are becoming ever more prevalent. Globalisation was meant to make us all so integrated that it would diminish the risk of wars. Instead, the free flow of information, money and people across borders also made subversion easier than ever. At the Labour party conference, Lammy indicated that democracies need to work together to stop Russia: Exposing their agents, building joint capability and working with the global south to take on Putin's lies."

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