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 63 through day 70 of the Russian-Ukrainian war for democracy.
This is a period in which Russia’s eastern offensive slowed more quickly than even optimistic observers thought possible. The Russians’ accelerating exhaustion is coinciding with a stable lack of innovation among Kremlin-aligned media and, perhaps most interestingly, steadily increasing signs that the Free Russia Legion—a legion consisting of surrendered Russian soldiers who subsequently willingly asked to be armed and thrown into the fray against their invading countrymen—is gaining traction, not just on Ukrainian territory, but within Russia itself.
Day 63: April 27
On Day 63, Russian media continue increasing the heat of their rhetoric regarding Moldova. They also faced the challenge of responding to the impending accelerated implementation of an oil embargo.
Continuing a long trend of relying on unwitting parrots of their propaganda, Russian media gleefully jumped on the words of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that the U.S. is partly to blame for Russia’s invasion. “See? Even a sitting U.S. senator knows that it’s not our fault! We were provoked! All those children in Mariupol’ are dying because the United States forced our hand!”
Desperate for content, Russian media also presented out of context Oleksiy Arestovych’s words from the day prior that Ukraine would not have much trouble capturing Transnistria at Moldova’s request. Kremlin-aligned outlets used what Arestovych said in his interview with Mark Feygin to misrepresent Ukrainian intentions regarding Moldova and to argue that Ukraine’s warmongering tendencies must be stopped.
On Day 63, as today, it was vital to keep an eye on further Russian rhetoric regarding Moldova. It is likely to keep escalating until the Kremlin is convinced by its generals that sending troops to Moldova will only hasten its defeat or until the Kremlin refuses to learn from its military mistakes and begins a campaign in Moldova.
Elsewhere, more and more countries took steps undermining Russia’s position: Brazil, seemingly a regime that should be friendly to the Kremlin, voted to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
Day 64: April 28
Russian media continued ratcheting up the rhetorical heat regarding Transnistria and finally began orchestrating provocations in Kherson to presage the organization of a pseudo-referendum. At the same time, Kremlin-aligned outlets maintained their escalating war of words with the West, as such an escalation remained—and still remains—one of their only viable exit strategies.
Formerly anomalous, narrative strains concerning Moldova/Transnistria became a trend. They will keep evolving and escalating until the situation in Transnistria progresses to the next stage, which will presumably be either a Russian military campaign in Moldova or—if Russian generals convince the Kremlin that opening another front would be suicidal—a Russian declaration that “the situation has fundamentally stabilized.” On day 64, Russian media called the explosions in Transnistria “acts of terrorism.”
The Kremlin’s rhetorical activity regarding Transnistria was also a logical evolution of Russian outlets’ taking potshots at Moldovan President Maia Sandu ever since her election and doubly so since the beginning the war. President Sandu is far less receptive to the Kremlin than her predecessor Igor Dodon, and so, when Russian media have had a bit of spare time, they have been mentioning her unfavorably.
As predicted, Russian media began staging provocations in Kherson as a pretext to a referendum and the “formal” “joining” of Kherson to the Russian Federation. Outlets (falsely) claimed that a Ukrainian-fired Tochka-U missile landed squarely in the middle of Kherson after being shot down by Russia’s infallible air defense system. Russian media also laid groundwork for Kherson’s de facto incorporation by announcing that rubles will be entered into circulation in Kherson by May 1st.
However, at the same time as they staged such provocations, Russian media also rejected that there are plans to hold a referendum in Kherson—something that Meduza reporters wrote would happen on May 15th. This should have surprised no one: this war has shown once and for all that Kremlin-aligned media are incapable of adaptation and will do what they have always done: reject something until it’s about to happen. Their strategy regarding Kherson is no different.
Meanwhile, Russian media killed two birds with one narrative strain, saying that Ukrainian forces were not only bombing the center of Kherson, but were simultaneously sending another barrage at schools and hospitals in Izyum.
Late in the day, Russia did a reason-defying thing, firing a total of five missiles at Kyiv while UN Secretary General was meeting with President Zelensky.
Day 65: April 29
All major trends held steady, with very little out of the ordinary. The lack of major anomalies was itself nearly anomalous, considering the precipitous situation in Moldova. Kremlin-aligned media kept conspicuously, almost brazenly silent on the subject of the prior day’s missile strikes against Kyiv. This signaled that a glimmer of understanding and more than a glimmer of were are at work in the minds of Russian leadership, who cognized that the missile strike against Kyiv could further accelerate anti-Russian processes globally.
Absent anything deviating too much from the usual assortment of articles alleging Russophobia, Russian leadership, Western incompetence, and Ukrainian duplicity, there was a mild spike in articles alleging scandalous(!) sordid details about Russian stars who have fled Russia or have condemned the war effort (i.e. the “special operation”). The day saw articles disparaging famous actress Renata Litvinova, TV personality, comedian, and legendary singer Alla Pugacheva’s husband Maxim Galkin, Alla Pugacheva herself, TV personality and comedian Ivan Urgant, and even one of the founders of Russian rock, Aquarium frontman Boris Grebenshchikov. Such articles are typically leveraged to condition audiences to think about which stars truly represent Russia’s “inherently unique culture and heritage.” On day 65, these strains could have well been a distraction from the impending acceleration of processes adverse to the Kremlin.
Day 66: April 30
On day 66, Russians restored another monument to Lenin, this time in temporarily occupied Nova Kakhovka. Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, maintained limited counteroffensives in the north and south, liberating settlements in Kharkiv and Kherson. At the same time, Ukrainian officials confirmed that the “Ghost of Kyiv” was a myth representing a “composite image of the pilots” of the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade.
In his daily chat with Feygin, Arestovych said for the first time in a while that there were interesting news from the front. I reproduce here a translated excerpt from their conversation.
“Friends. For four days, there has been no movement of Russian forces from Russian territory into Ukraine. Especially in the direction of their main advance. There is, however, lots of movement back into Russia. Much damaged equipment and many wounded and dead. Our forces delivered three huge strikes, two near Izyum. Conservative estimates are: 100 corpses in one place, 200 in another, and at least 100 in the third. Less conservative estimates approach 200-300. This includes senior officers–these were command points.
“They are slowing very seriously. Word on the street (which needs to be fact-checked) is that we’ve slain the commander of the Russian airborne forces. Izyum is existentially slowed. I won’t say that things are in the endspiel there, but things have slowed to a glacial crawl.
“When they began, there were 25,000 in this direction. I don’t know how many exactly are left, but we’ve thinned them out severely. They’ve been enjoying rare tactical successes—but their losses are on the operational level. I’m beginning to ask myself the question, ‘Is the heroic Izyum offensive over?’ Towards Gulyaypole, they are joyfully concentrating forces and trying to advance. But! They have to contend with the steppe. We see their every move. And when we see a critical mass, our air forces and artillery start working and making the mass less critical. Same thing towards Krivyi Rih. We did three strikes there yesterday, two today.
“So. This whole military adventurism of theirs has begun to fail. The prospect of operational failure is becoming clearer and clearer. In 66 days, not one Russian group or subdivision can boast of operational success. Rare subdivisions managed to achieve their objectives, but, because their neighbors failed, it yielded no results. The Russian army has lost its offensive potential in Ukraine. The next step is to go on the defensive. This phase might begin before May 9th. And Putin won’t have anything to announce other than ‘We’ve gone on the defensive.’
“The prognosis for the Russian forces isn’t very sunny. Things might end for them earlier than we thought.”
Later, Arestovych commented on Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s allegation that the Ukrainian-Russian negotiations included the subject of lifting sanctions.
“Lavrov had a slip of the tongue today when he said that lifting sanctions is part of the negotiations. It was a slip of the tongue, and it’s definitely not part of negotiations. People who are asking to have sanctions lifted aren’t people who will risk nuclear war. They don’t want to die. People asking to have sanctions lifted desperately want to keep living. I’d like to address Sergei Viktorovich [Lavrov] personally: after your blabbing, it’ll be very difficult to keep up the nuclear threats with a straight face.”
Day 67: May 1
On day 67, as Speaker Pelosi was warmly received in Kyiv, Russian forces cut off mobile and internet connectivity in occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
New revelations regarding Russian plans in Moldova suggested that we might be in for an action-heavy week. The Times, citing Ukrainian intelligence, reported that Russia planned to attack Moldova the next day. While there was no mass spike of mentions of Moldova/Tiraspol/President Sandu in Russian media that would corroborate such intentions, there were significant such spikes in key Russian outlets: TASS, Lenta, and Gazeta. The limited spikes could have been explained by the fact that it was the weekend. At the time, it was unclear whether calling out the imminent provocations would delay them (as I write this, three days later, Russia has yet to attack Moldova), but Russian media have laid a reliable rhetorical foundation in order for them to attack Moldova at any moment.
Elsewhere, another most curious bit of news surfaced. A group of Russian agents who were tasked with shooting down a civilian plane had been infiltrated by a Ukrainian mole. They wanted to get their hands on a Ukrainian anti-air complex to shoot down the plane and then accuse Ukraine. In order to get their hands on such a complex, they had to gain the trust of Ukrainian volunteers, and to do so, they started betraying the actual locations of Kadyrovites. Meanwhile, because they didn’t want to attack actual Ukrainian defensive, they wanted to fake and record an attack and send it to their command for an honorarium.
As Arestovych pointed out, this episode featured three textbook, emblematic moments reflecting the Russian campaign in Ukraine: (1) A planned terrorist act (shooting down a civilian plane). (2) A deception of Russian command. (3) Betraying the Kadyrovites to their deaths.
Day 68: May 2
On day 68, aside from performing outrage over the desecration of Soviet monuments and bragging about their Hungarian allies, Russian media are having to contend with a string of anti-Semitic comments made by Lavrov, which were perhaps careless, but emblematic of Russia’s traditional last-resort rhetorical strategy.
Kremlin-aligned outlets heralded Hungary’s stalwart allegiance to Russia via its refusal to implement an oil embargo. This specific strain wasn’t anomalous, and it fit into a broader collection of narrative strains bringing attention to Russia’s dwindling allies’ recognition of the Kremlin’s leadership, and so Russian outlets leap at every opportunity to show something like this off. Think of how vocal Russian media were after Vučić’s and Orban’s victories and how they were far more restrained after Le Pen’s defeat.
Meanwhile, Lavrov carelessly remarked in an interview with Italian TV that Jews have historically been the world’s worst anti-Semites and that Hitler had Jewish blood. The Israeli government became rather unamused. Most Kremlin-aligned outlets tried to keep from exacerbating the situation and covered the situation relatively neutrally. One outlet, however—the always-rabid Komsomolskaya Pravda—chose to go on the offensive and instead accused Israel of “[losing] its historical memory.”
In his daily chat with Feygin, Arestovych shed light on some relevant history. I reproduce a translated excerpt from their chat.
“In 1982, when Israel went into Lebanon, Belarus received the order to start fomenting anti-Semitism. Since then, every dissident in Soviet and Russian history has always been labeled a Jew. The KGB immediately resorts to anti-Semitism as a strategy of suppression. And it coincides with the attitudes of a backwards people. In the handbook for Soviet special agencies, it was written that a reliable way to embed yourself into a new environment and quickly make friends was publicly performing anti-Semitism. This is used in Russia to this day. It’s a part of the culture of Russian agencies.
“So. We’re talking about Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, who has seen generations of other diplomats come and go, who squirmed out of diplomatic sanctions until 2020 or whenever, who avoided going to Crimea until he was forced, who tried to quit and even bought a supermarket chain in the US. His own daughter lives in Israel! So he either has become corrupted by the culture so much that it slipped out, or else he received orders. I lean towards the latter. I think he was given the explicit order to lean into anti-Semitism again. It’s such an easy marriage: ‘Kill the Nazis’ and ‘kill the Jews.’ So they tried to combine the two. This is a reliable Soviet and Russian playbook.”
It is worth remembering that, after 2014, the word in Russian media for “Ukrainian extremists” was “kike-Banderovites”—Jew-Bandera zealots—zhidobanderovtsy. In English, the theme could be called “Jewkraine.” Though weaponized by Kremlin-aligned media, the moniker was mercilessly ridiculed by Ukrainian and liberal Russian commentators, who either leaned into it or pointed out the moniker’s absurdity, since Bandera himself was a rabid anti-Semite.
Day 69: May 3
Searching for new “evidence” of existential schisms between Western actors, the Kremlin tried to sell a rhetorical spat between Germany and Ukraine as something that would doom Ukraine’s Westward trajectory. At the same time, the Kremlin inconceivably pursued rhetorical escalation with Israel, a move that immediately caused Jerusalem to become a little less inert with regard to Russia—Israel allowed Estonia to supply Ukraine with Israeli-made weapons.
The latest episode that Kremlin-aligned outlets tried to exploit featured Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany Andriy Mel’nyk accusing Chancellor Scholz of “pretending to be an offended stick of liverwurst”—though Russian media reported that he simply called him “an offended stick of liverwurst.” This was the latest strain in a long-trending series through which Russian media try to play up that there is existential discord between Ukraine and its Western allies. For example, Russian media crowed about how “Germany has called on Ukraine to apologize to Steinmeier” and “Spiegel readers think that Me’lnyk should apologize to Scholz.” The strategy won’t work, but it will keep Kremlin’s domestic zombies believing that Ukraine is actually isolated and the “special operation,” against all reason, is going exactly as planned two months later.
It is worth noting that not a day goes by without several Russian outlets’ desperately spewing bile at President Biden. A reliable and uninterrupted indicator of the Kremlin’s political preferences inside the United States has always been Russian media’s coverage of domestic U.S. political events—for months since before the “special operation” began, Russian outlets published multiple articles slandering President Biden every single day, as they did with Hillary Clinton before him, as they did with Mitt Romney and John McCain before her. Kremlin-aligned outlets’ incessant attacks on President Biden continue to reveal whom they despise the most—and whose sanctions they despise and fear the most.
Still an only somewhat baffling anomaly, the Kremlin decided to escalate the war of words with Israel: the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Israel of “supporting the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine,” going so far as to explain to Foreign Minister Lapid that he is unfamiliar with Jewish history, because Hitler had Jewish blood in his veins.
Later in the day, the Kremlin outlets entered full-on panic mode when the Estonian parliament proposed to revisit the borders drawn in the Treaty of Tartu. Per the treaty, there is some territory currently controlled by Russia that should belong to Estonia, but the measure got voted down. The fact of its being brought up at all, however, is indicative of Russia’s neighbors feeling blood in the water (~a la the Kuriles/Kaliningrad/etc.). More aggressively-minded Estonians likely brought the measure to the floor as a trial balloon, and it seriously frightened the Kremlin, which confirms the Kremlin’s fears here and elsewhere. Kremlin-aligned outlets tripped over each other to assure everyone that nobody will be revisiting the Russian-Estonian border, and Kremlin-aligned social media accounts reacted by screaming for an invasion of Estonia—before the Kremlin could even invade Moldova. This episode is unlikely to have an immediate payoff, though, and if Estonian officials and media say nothing else on the subject in the next few days, it should die down.
Lastly, Ukrainian intelligence revealed that Russian troops in Transnistria are in total combat readiness and prepared to evacuate their families at the drop of a hat.
Day 70: May 4
On day 70, all major trends held steady to the near-total exclusion of anything abnormal. The day’s steady course adopted by all Russian media was reminiscent of the war’s first days, when the lack of any major deviations from the media’s typical coverage of the last eight years screamed that Kremlin-aligned outlets were unprepared for a lengthy military campaign, were unable to adapt to the “unexpected” development of Ukrainian resistance, and therefore did nothing out of the ordinary. Day 70’s similar steadiness is a reliable indicator that Kremlin-aligned media—and the Kremlin itself—are at a loss as to what to do and cannot decide what steps to take next, hence the seeming aimlessness of their coverage.
Concluding Thoughts
A brief anecdote, as retold by Kyiv native Oleksiy Sayenko.
“I exited the bomb shelter and saw next to a store a car with keys in the ignition. I guarded it for two hours, waiting for the owner—he didn’t show up. I took my family, took the car, and drove to Vinnytsia. In the glove compartment, I found a phone number and called the owner: ‘Excuse me, I stole your car. I saved my family.’
“In response, I hear: ‘Thank God. Don’t worry, I have four cars. I took one to save my own family. I left the other cars in different places with the keys and my number in the glove compartment. I’ve received calls from all three cars now. We’ll see each other when the war ends. Take care of yourself!’”
Light will triumph over Shadow.