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 a chronicle of key events and trends on the information battlefield from day sixteen through day nineteen of the Russian-Ukrainian war for democracy.
Despite a stall in Mordor’s military progress—and even multiple Ukrainian counter-attacks, including near Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Kyiv, and Mykolaiv—the Kremlin’s disinformation operations compensated the orcs’ martial failures with a spiraling detachment from reality both abroad and domestically. Russia’s own information space continues to be purged of windows into the outside world, including most major Western social media.
This period is also marked by the increasing frequency of Ukrainian and Russian analysts’ categorizing Putin’s—not the Kremlin’s, but specifically Putin’s—situation as a zugzwang, a chess term indicating a position from which making any move at all weakens the player strategically or tactically. Putin cannot admit defeat, capitulate, or otherwise withdraw the troops for too long—that would be viewed as weakness by the circling oligarch-vultures whose fortunes are being confiscated around the world. It would accelerate his already-impending demise at the hands of the Kremlin’s kleptocratic elite, either through deposition à la Khrushchev or—much more likely, considering the involved players—death. On the other hand, continuing a war claiming 500-1000 Russian lives daily—a statistic that the Kremlin’s elite knows even if the average civilian does not—with little to show for it is also politically unsustainable. The sword of Damocles hangs over the odious dwarf hiding in the Kremlin’s bunker, which he has left in recent days only once to meet with “Citizen Lukashenko,” as Ukrainian media call him, taunting his illegitimacy. Indeed, on day eighteen, Ukrainian intelligence reported that Putin, who was always exceedingly paranoid, as all authoritarians are, has recently become even more acutely terrified of being assassinated.
When the war began, onlookers thought Ukraine’s defenders were on a timer. They were incorrect. Time is certainly running out for someone—but it isn’t for Ukraine.
Day Sixteen
Day sixteen began with an ultimately failed provocation by the invaders. A Russian plane took off from an airport in Belarus, entered Ukrainian territory, turned around, reentered Belarusian territory, and bombed three villages. The Kremlin understood that its personnel losses were unfathomably high and that reinforcements were necessary, so it orchestrated a simple provocation in order to force Belarusian troops into Ukraine.
This, however, bore no immediate fruit. Reports from the preceding week indicated that Belarusian troops were preemptively demoralized. Nobody wanted to invade a country that many viewed as friendly, and nobody wanted to attack an enemy whose defensive operations were costing the attacker tens of thousands of lives. Several generals had already been slain. Many Belarusian men and reservists had actually been fleeing Belarus throughout the preceding week. Moreover, as Oleksiy Arestovich, a military analyst and adviser to President Zelensky’s Chief of Staff, explained: “We honestly warned [Lukashenko] that [Belarus shouldn’t invade] because it’s obvious that we’ll just bury all of them. That’s one. And two: I suspect that a third of them will desert, and a third will switch sides and join us or at the very least refuse to obey orders.”
As the Kremlin tried to rein in the Belarusian forces, it simultaneously further isolated itself from the outside world. Roskomnadzor announced a ban on Instagram. YouTube, meanwhile, began blocking all channels funded by the Russian government. In an act of self-regulation destined to bemuse free speech attorneys, Twitter permitted its users to call for the deaths of Kremlin officials, but forbade calls for harassment against ordinary Russians. (They would be further bemused on day nineteen, when Facebook forbade calling for either).
And in Ukraine, the invaders, having proven themselves helpless on the battlefield and obligingly demonstrated to the world the fiction of a “great Russian army,” resorted to nuclear terror and kidnapping. First, Ukrainian intelligence explained that the Kremlin was deciding between two terrorist attacks on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant—with the intention of committing it and blaming it on Ukraine, naturally. Simultaneously, photo evidence emerged showing that the occupiers had turned the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant into a military base. A responsible move, surely, and one done with complete understanding of the stakes at issue.
Unsatisfied merely with nuclear blackmail and unable to get local Ukrainian leaders to assist with their propaganda, the orcs also abducted Ivan Fyodorov, the mayor of occupied Melitopol’, after he refused to cooperate (and they would abduct Yevhen Matveyev, the mayor of Dniprorudne, on day eighteen). In Fyodorov’s stead, they installed a member of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform party. No one in Melitopol’ is heeding her “leadership,” and it is unlikely that her collaborationism will be forgotten.
The day ended with two standout moments, indicating cratering domestic support for the war, publicly and privately. First, a video was posted of a Russian airline captain addressing his passengers after touching down. He welcomed them, after which he said, “I want to add that the war with Ukraine is a crime, and I think that any clearly thinking citizen will support me in saying so and will do everything possible to stop it right now.”
Second, Ukrainian intelligence dropped an interesting bit of news. In an interview, Kirill Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, declared that in the Kremlin, only two members of the kleptocratic junta were still in support of the war: “There are serious problems inside Russia’s military-political leadership…Only two people are openly supporting the war’s continuation: Putin and [Defense Minister] Shoigu. Even Russia’s generals are mostly against it.”
Someone said something about being on a timer?
Day Seventeen
With relatively little new happening in the way of information warfare, a post in Russian social media popped up, teaching people how to create an effective fake. Now you too can be part of the problem! I attach my translation of the post at the end of this report in the hopes that readers will be better equipped to spot such fakes. As the unscrupulous author notes at the end of the guide, the strategy for creating such fakes is universal.
In occupied Kherson, meanwhile, the local authorities warned of the Kremlin’s latest attempt to claim a legal and informational victory: just as with Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk, they would attempt to stage another fake “referendum” and “create” the “Kherson People’s Republic.” On day nineteen, the Ukrainian government would consider declaring Kherson and other such cities legally “temporarily occupied,” thus invalidating in the eyes of Ukrainian law any such attempts.
To the north, as resistance among Belarusian forces continued to brew, morale was becoming so untenable that Mordor began installing its own officers among Belarusian subdivisions in the hopes of compelling them to war.
The day’s last big news was also the most galling—and least surprising. News emerged that, looking to strengthen the Mordor metaphor even further, Russia’s military leadership had organized its army’s backline in a manner familiar to those with knowledge of Russian and Soviet military history. Specifically: we now know that bringing up the rear behind Russia’s main forces are sweeping execution squads whose task is to kill deserters and those too injured to be of any use. The day’s most stunning display of wartime chivalry occurred just west of Kyiv, where Kadyrov’s Chechen enforcers slaughtered a group of twelve injured Russians waiting to be medevac’d to Belarus. As Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, né Djugashvili, once said: “No person—no problem.”
Day Eighteen
On day eighteen, the physical war and the international information war intersected when the first foreign journalist perished. American journalist and filmmaker Brent Renaud was shot and killed by Russian occupiers in Irpin’, near Kyiv. Twelve days earlier marked the death of the war’s first journalist overall, when a Russian missile hit Kyiv’s TV tower.
The Kremlin continued to demonstrate a deficit of originality and adaptability in its disinformation operations. Just as Arestovich had days earlier explained that the orcs had stalled militarily, so were they unable to innovate on the information battlefield. In occupied Kherson, for example, they brought in a troupe of “touring actors,” as Ukrainian media call them, who orchestrated a faux-rally in support of Russia. Some of them waved Soviet flags in the background. Nostalgic.
As the invaders’ forces became hungrier and even more disorganized, it became known that they had received orders to engage in “self-sustenance.” Meaning highway robbery. Russian military leadership had given them the order to pillage in order to sustain themselves. And the invaders did so, pillaging not only villages and errant civilians—there have been multiple instances of Russian tanks flattening civilians in cars—but humanitarian convoys, including those headed for the besieged Mariupol’.
Against this backdrop, Mykhailo Podolyak, another of President Zelensky’s advisers and Ukraine’s chief negotiator, said that the Kremlin’s negotiators were no longer issuing ultimatums, as they had done during the first two rounds of talks. As I indicated previously, how much ground Russian negotiators cede in talks will be worth watching. They have clearly already begun to do so. Note: how much ground they cede in negotiations is not relevant to the war’s outcome, but it is a helpful indicator of the rate at which the Kremlin cognizes its losses and impending fate.
And Arestovich, who has proven himself a reliable prognosticator, explained that the war is likely to end in 1-1.5 months, after the Russians launch another all-out offensive.
Day Nineteen
Any new such offensive would have to be done with second-rate reinforcements. Today, Ukrainian intelligence announced that 400 Syrian mercenaries had arrived in Ukraine. This as the Kremlin is desperately mobilizing on the down-low at home, wanting to throw anyone who can hold a rifle into Ukraine for no good reason beyond one insecure autocrat’s genocidal envy.
Earlier today, the Russians came through on their nuclear blackmail when they blew up munitions stores at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power point, which they are currently occupying. No change in radiation has yet been detected.
After a Russian missile was shot down over the occupied city of Donetsk, it fell into the city. Kremlin-aligned outlets leaped at the opportunity and crowed about how Ukrainian fascists were trying to (unsuccessfully) bomb the city. Meanwhile, the Instagram ban from day sixteen went into effect. Russian Instagram stars tearfully bid farewell to yet another channel of communication with the outside world. But still the protests on Russia’s streets lacked a critical mass.
In occupied Crimea, however, reports were surfacing that the local occupiers, who have been making themselves at home for eight years, have become nervous, irrespective of the Kremlin’s hall of mirrors. Many are preparing to flee.
Today was also an interesting day for open-source intelligence and Ukrainians’ discipline in the information war. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry turned to its citizens—including some elected officials—and asked them to stop posting video evidence of missile strikes immediately after they hit. If they do so, they are essentially working as spotters for Russian artillerymen—free of charge. The Defense Ministry also advised on how to phrase reports of such strikes; for example, instead of posting that “the missile hit school number 7,” it is more helpful to say “the missile hit the residential area of Town X.”
Later in the day, a telling video made its rounds through the internet. In the video, television producer Marina Ovsyannikova, who worked (now likely in the past tense) for Russia’s federal Channel 1, runs into the shot on live air with a poster opposing the war and telling people to stop listening to the Kremlin’s propaganda. She had earlier posted another video in which she apologized for working for the Kremlin’s disinformation machine for so long and how she was ashamed of her complicity. Immediately after her intrusion on live air, she was arrested in accordance with the two-week-old law criminalizing spreading “fakes” about the military (which, you may recall, carries a penalty of fifteen years’ imprisonment).
Would that all her colleagues had joined her.
Concluding Thoughts
(1) I need to write a proper, more thorough condemnation of Western media’s coverage of the war, but that’s an undertaking that exceeds the limits of this already-lengthy report. In brief: I urge you take the war coverage of Western media—particularly American media—with a hefty grain of salt. I do not mean to sound like either left- or right-wing conspiracy nuts who shriek that the news establishment is untrustworthy. What I will say is: (a) there are many cultural, military, and historical nuances that elude most Western journalists, and (b) in the past decade, Western media have erred on the side of sensation and the journalistic equivalent of doom-scrolling. Any time I dare to open the front page of The Washington Post, The New York Times, or—especially—NPR, I am immediately under the impression that Kyiv is either already occupied or that it simply doesn’t exist anymore. Hell, I begin to worry that Russian troops are preparing to storm Budapest or Vienna. The situation in Ukraine is dire right now. But Western media have failed at highlighting Ukraine’s myriad military, political, diplomatic, information war, and organizational successes and adaptations.
Moreover, and this is admittedly a bit of a simplification: Western media continue—as they have for over two decades now—to frame many issues as being a function of Putin’s agency and not the West’s or Ukraine’s. Putin is not a brilliant strategist. He has never been a brilliant tactician. Everything that he has ever done has been done predictably. Everything that any autocrat has ever done has been done predictably. Western media must cease framing events as being controlled primarily by him and those like him. Maybe then people will believe in the power and promise of democracies again.
(2) The West, for all my defense of it, has proven itself resistant to the lessons of history. Here, in place of a lengthy tirade I spent twenty minutes writing, I will instead pose a question to the reader: did the West’s delaying its entry into either of the first two world wars either (a) prevent the war from happening or (b) decrease the ultimate number of civilian deaths?
(3) This report has not focused on the civilian cost as much, and I will rectify that here. The U.N. published today that at least 636 people have died so far in Ukraine. This statistic is flagrantly, offensively low. Over 2,000 civilians have perished in Mariupol’ alone—perished brutally, heroically, criminally. Mordor’s invasion, despite bringing Russia itself to ruination, is resulting in genocidal costs for Ukraine—costs that will not cease unless the collective West finally effects a no-fly zone, one way or another, or until Putin is removed and the war ends.
(4) I will end with a bit of optimism. On day seventeen, March 12th, Arestovich gave an interview in which he explained that Mordor had committed ninety battalion tactical groups (BTGs) to the war. In two and a half weeks of fighting, Ukraine had destroyed thirteen and disabled another eighteen. 31 BTGs. One third of the orc war machine, the fifth-largest army in the world, allegedly the second-best army in the world, was eliminated in under three weeks.
Tomorrow is the Ides of March.
Time is running out. But not for Ukraine.
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How-To Guide: Making Fakes
(Courtesy of a random user on Russian social media)
Since many people are curious about how to make a proper fake, I’ll provide a short guide based on my experience and some knowledge of Ukrainian psychology.
- A fake must be banal. In order to have broad influence, you don’t have to come up with something extraordinary. In fact, you should even add a little absurdity. For example, everyone understands that it’s absolutely impossible to use red marks on the roofs of buildings to spot the flight paths of cruise missiles. But fairy tales about spotters exist in any war.
- A fake must contain a powerful message and leave room for the reader’s own affected imagination. Enemies are all around us! The mayor is a Russian spy! Billy the bum is a saboteur! I mean, think about it—isn’t there a greater-than-zero chance that Billy the bum is a GRU sleeper agent? There sure is.
- A fake must take into account local topography. Its authenticity is enhanced by being tied to the local surroundings. There are Russian tanks in Village X! It doesn’t matter that the village has no paved roads and offers zero strategic value. What matters is that there’s a recognizable anchor.
- Repetition. Something echoed in chat by three different people becomes Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but. And if you chase it down with “The government is lying!,” then there is no argument in the world that can refute the fake.
Strictly speaking, this formula works both ways—the khokhly* use the same methodology. But they’re out of content and are recycling the same things over and over.
So, saddle up, buy some virtual SIM cards, register accounts in social media, get into some Ukrainian chats, and bang out some brilliant fakes that spread panic and discord among the enemy. And for those who think that this is child’s play—I suggest you look up how many Ukrainian soldiers, agents, and militia members have died of friendly fire in an atmosphere of panic and chaos.
*A derogatory term for Ukrainians. –Translator’s note