Alexander Rojavin ’20, Law & Public Policy Scholar
Alexander Rojavin is a multilingual intelligence, media, and policy analyst specializing in information warfare. He is currently working on a book on modern Russian cinema as a key battlefield in the Kremlin’s information war. He is also co-chair of the Symposium on Disinformation Studies. In his spare time, he moonlights as a published literary translator (Routledge, Slavica Publishers, forthcoming Academic Studies Press).
What follows is an attempt to chronicle key events and trends on the information battlefield from day eight through day eleven of what Garry Kasparov has been calling the third world war.
These four days constitute a period marked by:
(1) Very slowly mounting protests and strikes across Russia as its economy deteriorates.
(2) The continued rallying of Ukrainians from around the world, in cities not under siege, in cities currently under siege, and in towns that have been—as the Ukrainian TV hosts and leaders (accurately) describe them—temporarily occupied.
(3) Plunging tolerance in the Kremlin for anything even remotely resembling dissent, as the leaders of Mordor try to make up for what they failed to close down or take over in their 22 years in power.
(4) Ukraine’s concerted efforts to convince the West to implement a no-fly zone.
(5) Increasingly barbarous attacks by Russian troops on Ukrainian civilians, including in residential areas, humanitarian convoys, and evacuation routes.
A brief note about Mordor and orcs: for close to a decade, if not longer, the Russian-speaking liberal elite has called Russia “Mordor,” and with the invasion, Russia’s armed forces have been labeled “orcs.” The analogy is not a difficult one—post-Soviet Russia, like Mordor, knows only one way of waging war: swarming the enemy with orcs, whose lives their leadership has never valued, and terrorizing civilians. In an attempt to popularize this analogy for English-speakers, I will hereafter also use this terminology, which is currently saturating the Ukrainian and liberal Russian-speaking internet.
Day Eight
Day eight saw the second round of direct negotiations. As we know today, those negotiations yielded little, as their only real agreement—a ceasefire for the purpose of establishing humanitarian corridors—has been violated by the Russian orcs repeatedly.
As the orcs occupied the southern city of Kherson, Russian media immediately began pushing a fake about the city wanting to join Mordor, alias the Russian Federation. To fuel this narrative, busloads of Russian sympathizers made their way into Kherson from Crimea, along with humanitarian cargo. The Russian plan was to occupy Kherson, deny it logistical contact with the rest of Ukraine, then (1) stage a pro-Russian rally attended entirely by the touring “actors” from Crimea and (2) film the locals’ gladly accepting Russian humanitarian aid.
The plan failed immediately. Locals got their hands on a stash of Ukrainian flags and took to the streets, chanting “Kherson is Ukraine” and “Go home!” Moreover, the locals, despite the cold and hunger, refused to accept the Russians’ aid. The spectacle failed. Russia’s propaganda was left with little fuel.
Kremlin mouthpieces instead turned to other content—Putin’s speech, for example. In this speech, the “mindless dwarf,” as many Ukrainians have begun to call him, reiterated the usual detached-from-reality litany of grievances and aims. He managed to utter the words, “Everything is going according to plan.” One need only consult the list of Russian casualties (>11,000 at the time of this writing) to arch an eyebrow.
As the Russians captured Kherson’s TV tower and began broadcasting 24 Russian channels, in Russia itself, Roskomnadzor issued a series of new bans, this time on BBC, Meduza, and Facebook.
Day Nine
Trying to rein in Kherson’s rudely uncooperative locals, Russian troops severed the city’s mobile networks. Khersonians responded by hoisting Ukrainian flags and rallying anew.
Meanwhile, in Russia, the Duma looked to punish the West legislatively—and so it expanded an act known as “Dima Yakovlev’s Law,” originally passed in 2012 in an equally inhumane and head-scratching attempt to punish the West. After the United States passed the Magnitsky Act, the Duma hit back with Dima Yakovlev’s Law, which forbade Americans from adopting Russian orphans, thereby denying uncounted Russian children the chance at a better life (this was in 2012, people—we were already dealing with Mordor back then and even further back too). Now, this law forbids any foreign national who has “taken part in infringing on Russians’ rights and liberties” from adopting Russian orphans.
Not waiting to rest on its laurels, Roskomnadzor continued to dish out bans. No longer content with silencing news outlets (now joined by Deutsche Welle, while the liberal-adjacent Novaya Gazeta was forced to delete all published materials about the “war”), Roskomnadzor dropped the ban-hammer on Twitter and YouTube, along with Apple and Google services. Facebook, which had earlier been partially banned, was now no longer accessible at all.
As Roskomnadzor instituted silence among the remnants of Russia’s dissenters, the Kremlin’s mouthpieces rallied around a new narrative strain. Apparently, while no one was looking, President Zelensky has fled Ukraine and was hiding in Poland. Russian outlets spread this strain on TV, radio, and online. Unsurprisingly, the fake was quickly dispelled for audiences outside Russia’s descending information curtain when President Zelensky recorded another video of himself in Kyiv. Another testament to how much more agile Ukraine has been in the information war and how almost disappointingly slow Russia has been to adapt, resorting to such crude tactics as bans in an era of VPNs and Tor.
As a fun aside, Apple Maps got hacked, and the Russian “Ministry of Defense” was changed to say “Ministry of Fascism.” Roskomnadzor was not amused, but could not do anything but unimaginatively threaten to ban Apple.
At this point, a keen observer could tell that an inflection point had been reached. As Ukrainian generals reported that their forces had begun a cautious counter-attack near Kharkiv, the tone of the “commercials” (more like interludes) being played on the TV-livestream news marathon had evolved. Whereas in the war’s first days, all the interludes told the viewers that “we are all in this together,” these interludes were now augmented with new ones imploring the viewers to look to the future and consider the gem of European liberalism that they would build after their impending victory.
Day Ten
On the war’s tenth day, protests in occupied Kherson and Berdyansk continued, with the latter being so unwavering that the orcs, unsure of what to make of the fearless crowd, actually left the city for a bit to gather themselves. A similar protest took place in Zaporizhia, close to where Russian marauders had occupied Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, on which they opened fire two days prior.
As Kremlin mouthpieces continued to lack any real military victories about which to crow, they fell back on two familiar narratives. The first was widespread pro-Russian sentiment, which they accompanied with clips of pro-Russia rallies…from 2014. The second was an insidious strain that was one of the main ones originally justifying the invasion. This strain claims that the United States has several laboratories in Ukraine in which the Western hypocrites are developing dangerous biological weapons. (A related strain is that Ukraine has been on the verge of acquiring nuclear weaponry, hence why Russia needed to intervene).
Meanwhile, six major Russian oligarchs had now voiced opposition to the war. Not enough.
Day Eleven
While the invaders tried to impose their will in Kherson, they continued to be repelled to the northwest by the city of Mykolaiv. Elsewhere, their barbarism rose to yet newer levels, as they bombarded civilians trying to evacuate from the town of Irpin in the Kyiv Oblast and shelled humanitarian convoys across the country. In the surrounded city of Mariupol, the Russians violated the agreed-upon ceasefire for the second day in a row, yet again preventing the creation of a humanitarian corridor.
Protests in Russia continue to mount—nearly 5,000 arrests have been made since the war began—though they are still wildly insufficient.
By this point, Roskomnadzor is simply rampaging across Russia’s media space. With all major liberal-adjacent outlets gone, it is now looking to the next tier (in terms of popularity or prestige) of such sources. On this day, for example, it banned Republic and Mediazone.
Also on this day, President Zelensky recognized the heroic leadership of several regional and municipal heads. While they have undoubtedly outdone themselves as wartime administrators, some of these governors and mayors’ digital competence is also another point in Ukraine’s favor in the information war. For example, Vitali Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv Oblast, routinely posts selfie videos from his phone, maintaining constant contact with the world generally and specifically with those who democratically entrusted themselves to his care. Whether it is rallying his constituents around a newly-captured armored vehicle or simply informing his viewers of the results of a battle (on day ten, the Russian attack on the city of Mykolaiv left three Ukrainians wounded, seventy Russians dead, and several pieces of Russian tech in Ukrainian hands), his agility in the digital realm is a constant source of motivation and information for his allies—and irritation and demoralization for his foes.
Concluding Thoughts
Maybe anecdotes rather than thoughts. Demonstrations of the Ukrainian spirit and ability to maintain a good sense of humor irrespective of hardships.
A few illustrations.
(1) A Russian occupier is stopped by an elderly woman in a town in the Kherson Oblast. She offers him sunflower seeds. “Why,” he asks. “You came to our land. Put the seeds in your pocket. At least sunflowers will grow from the ground when you die here.”
(2) In the city of Odessa, a group of hobos delivered bags of empty bottles to the Ukrainian troops. Empty bottles. To make Molotovs. Meanwhile, prisoners are asking to be released from prison so they can fight. Even the homeless are defending the country in which they have no housing and prisoners are defending the country in which they are incarcerated.
(3) In occupied Kherson, a Russian soldier by a tank stops a woman driving by him. She opens her window. The following dialogue takes place.
Her (aggressively): What’s the matter?
Him (taken aback): What do you mean?
Her: Exactly what I said.
Him: Well, maybe you’re going somewhere…
Her: Maybe you’re going somewhere!
Him: I mean maybe you’re carrying some sort of weapon.
Her: Maybe you’re carrying some sort of weapon!
Him (unsure, eyes his machine gun): This is my weapon.
Her: Well this is mine!
She closes her window and drives off.
One final thought. Viktor Shenderovich, one of Russia’s most prominent satirists who was, until December, the last clear-eyed commentator left in Russia, characterized the situation as follows: it is a telling referendum when a government is not afraid of arming its own citizens. Ukraine’s government has armed tens of thousands of its citizens, and they have accepted those arms and turned around to defend their government and the freedom for which it stands.
As the twelfth day dawns, the Kremlin openly announced earlier that it would be bombing targets in Ukrainian cities. These targets are almost all located in residential areas.
As President Zelensky said yesterday: “Mankind should make demands of terrorists. Not vice versa.” The West must act more decisively.