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 27 through day 31 of the Russian-Ukrainian war for democracy. During this time, all previous trends have held stably, resulting in a slight inflection point of the Kremlin’s publicly changing its stated goals to the “liberation” of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast’s—a tacit acknowledgement of preliminary defeat (being spun as victory, naturally) and the beginning of a coordinated attempt to save face.
Russian forces continue to lack the resources and manpower to continue their offensive, while Ukraine’s counteroffensives have begun to bear fruit in the form of liberated towns. However, Ukrainian forces need much more Western heavy weaponry for their counteroffensives to pick up in tempo and effectiveness so as to more quickly end the slaughter of Ukrainian innocents.
As most trends have been stable, I will limited myself to concisely listing key moments from the past several days. Assuming most trends continue to hold, my next report will be a little interlude for which I will explain the significance of this war in breaking down the eras of post-Soviet Russian media history.
Day 27: March 22
• Throughout the week, the Ukrainian internet went wild over memes about Chornobayivka—the occupied airport near Kherson where Ukraine had launched seven successful strikes against Russian helicopters and troops. A specific strain of these memes is jokes about Chornobayivka’s new municipal slogans: “Chornobayivka: To Die For.” Another: “Chornobayivka: There’s Room for Everyone.” And my personal favorite: “Chornobayivka: Let’s Do It Again.”
• Roskomnadzor continued its unyielding purge of Russian information space, blocking Euronews and other outlets.
• Preliminary assessments indicated that ~82,525 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory will need to be demined.
• The Kremlin continued to scrape the bottom of its reservist barrel: with many refusing to go to the front, even under threat of incarceration, the Kremlin tried to mobilize debtors and alimonyists.
• A Russian soldier surrendered to the Ukrainian armed forces and handed over his tank, for which he will receive $10,000.
• Reports came from Sumy Oblast’ that over 300 invaders had simply deserted.
• One of many examples of Russian barbarism: the invaders shot up a populated supermarket in the town of Severodonetsk, resulting in several casualties.
• In occupied Kherson, Mordor’s occupiers used tear gas to disperse a rally, but the Ukrainian protesters returned soon after.
• Multiple reports surfaced that Citizen Lukashenko is horrified of an assassination attempt by the Kremlin. After he promised Putin that Belarus would enter the war, Belarus has since, obviously, still not entered the war, prompting Putin’s displeasure. Now, Lukashenko has gone to extremes to ensure his own safety. For example, when flying, it is now the case that the territory below his plane’s flight path is to be kept clear of, well, everything.
• On day 27, Ukrainian forces shot down the 100th Russian plane. Russian aerial superiority, which Western analysts thought would enable the Kremlin to take Ukraine quite quickly, has never materialized. As Arestovych would explain a few days later, Russia, with most of its senior pilots now either dead or captured, is now throwing junior pilots into the aerial fray, resulting in their being shot down in droves. This is an ironic turn, considering that just a few months ago, Russian cinemas began showing the sickeningly propagandistic Sky (Kopylov, 2021), a film glorifying Russian pilots and their unrivaled competence.
Day 28: March 23
• The day began with musings on how Russian Defense Minister Shoigu and commander of the armed forces Gerasimov had not been seen in a week. Where could they have gone? Was a coup attempt brewing? Were they simply being muzzled so that they didn’t say anything compromising? Was it mere coincidence? Speculations abounded, mostly unproductively. There exist less ambiguous indicators of what is going on in the Kremlin.
• For example: the Kremlin is planning to forbid Russians’ leaving Crimea. What does this reveal? This confirms what had been alleged the previous week: that many Russian occupiers in Crimea, aware of how the war was progressing, had begun planning to flee Crimea. Naturally, this would not do for Russia’s propaganda purposes, so the Kremlin is looking to prevent scenes of a panicked Russian retreat from the archipelago.
• A new poll was released, indicating that 51% of Ukrainians believe that they will need 5 years to rebuild, 13% think that only a year will be necessary, and 18% think it will take 10 years. In yet another indicator of national rallying, 61% want either to finance the reconstruction or else physically work at construction sites.
• Ukrainian officials published recordings of phone conversations with Belarusian officers who contacted them preemptively to inform them of the officers’ intent to surrender immediately if Belarusian forces are ordered to invade.
• An instance of the Russian economy: in Ufa, a computer can get you a nice bag of sugar.
• As soon as the war began, head of the Russian Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina tried to resign, but Putin did not let her. High-ranking officials immediately tried to wipe their hands clean of the situation. Didn’t work.
• To get away, you have to do what Anatoly Chubais did and physically flee to Turkey. Chubais, who was instrumental in Russia’s mass privatization and inadvertent oligarchization during the 1990s, was named Putin’s special envoy in December 2020, 22 years after his service to Yeltsin ended. Now, as more and more rats flee the ship, he too has finally quit Russia.
Day 29: March 24
• Frustrated Russian occupiers stated that they are prepared to “deport half of [occupied Kherson] to Russia to stop civilian protests. This, as a massive Ukrainian flag was hoisted over city hall.
• In besieged Mariupol’, Russians took to driving around with a loudspeaker, proclaiming (all untruthfully) that nearby Zaporizhzhia isn’t accepting refugees anymore, that it was only possible to flee to Russia, and that Odesa has been taken. Russian troops were now trying to further erode the fighting spirit of a city that has been without food, water, heat, or electricity since March 3rd.
• Ukrainian forces demonstrated the utility of stationary targets when they destroyed the docked Russian landing ship Saratov (initially incorrectly reported as the Orsk).
• Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada (meaning literally “high council”), passed a law criminalizing the unlawful filming and disseminating of Ukrainian troop movements that have not hitherto been published by official sources. Officials had been trying to tamp down on this without resorting to criminalization, but a month in, this had clearly become a problem that was inadvertently abetting Mordor’s hordes in slaughtering innocents, either by tipping them off to the location of strategically important objects or groupings or by helping them adjust their artillery’s aim.
• As Ukrainian forces liberated 80% of Irpin’, near Kyiv, Russian propaganda resorted simply to making up victories where none existed and claimed that Russian forces captured the town of Izyum, near Kharkiv. This was, of course, not true, and the battle for Izyum continues.
• Simply begging to be compared to the Nazis of the 1940s or to Stalin-era Soviets, Russian troops in occupied locations have begun collecting Ukrainian literature—and burning it.
• In its unceasing search for victories of any sort, Russian outlets tried to paint as a massive geopolitical achievement the fact that, over the month of the “special operation,” Putin has beaten his own record for the number of times he has spoken with other world leaders. They helpfully published a graphic in which Putin with a phone is depicted surrounded by the floating heads of all the heads of state with whom he has spoken since February 23rd, with President Macron leading the pack, having called Putin an eyebrow-raising eight times. See? The whole world revolves around our fearless leader.
Day 30: March 25
• Pyotr Aven, the oligarch who was the chair of Alpha Bank’s board of directors, publicly complained that he doesn’t know how to go on, as the sanctions have destroyed him. “I don’t know how to drive a car…maybe my stepdaughter will drive, we don’t understand how to survive.” Poor thing.
• Russia’s Defense Ministry published some curious new numbers: 1,351 Russian soldiers had died since the war began, and 2,825 had been wounded. In an interview with liberal Russian attorney and commentator Mark Feygin, the now-memetically calm Ukrainian military analyst Oleksiy Arestovych explained that, due to their interviews and others, which were receiving millions of views inside Russia, the Kremlin was forced to update its numbers publicly. As I wrote nearly three weeks ago, it is difficult to keep up the façade when several coffins are being returned to the smallest of Russian villages. Otherwise, the Kremlin would still be insisting that Russia has suffered no casualties at all.
• Speaking of numbers, new numbers were published about the Russian bombing of Mariupol’’s theater: 300 people had perished in the bombing. As it turned out, the theater housed many pregnant women when the bombs landed. By all appearances, the Russians weren’t satisfied after they had previously destroyed the city’s maternity hospital.
• Reports confirmed the seventh slain Russian general: Lieutenant-General Yakov Rezantsev. Fittingly, he had been killed in Ukraine’s tenth successful strike on the occupied airport at Chornobayivka. Combined, seven Russian generals have been confirmed slain in 30 days of war.
• In occupied Melitopol’, more evidence of the Russians’ morale: seventy members of Russia’s OMON (essentially the military police) rioted and refused to carry out orders.
• Another instance of the Russian economy: Russia is experiencing a paper shortage, and the cost of standard A4 paper has accordingly increased fivefold.
• In an abrupt change, Kremlin officials came out and declared that “Actually, our goal is the liberation of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast’s.” A far cry from the original plan to take all of Ukraine. What does this signal? It signals that internally, the Kremlin has finally acknowledged the campaign’s failure. And militarily, it signals that Russian forces will most likely now be deployed almost exclusively in the east, with scattered subdivisions harassing the north and south. It’s not like Russian forces everywhere else will suddenly evaporate, but they brunt of the offensive is now likely to refocus on the east.
• In his daily interview with Feygin, Arestovych brought up an oft-overlooked point: historically, the imperial Russian army and the Red Army enjoyed success only when its ranks were composed of a significant number of Ukrainian officers. The Red Army’s success can in large part be attributed to the fact that every second officer was a Ukrainian. “So, if we accept the unrealistic hypothetical that we lose and Ukrainians are drafted into the Russian army, that’s the end of Europe. If Ukraine falls, Europe falls right after. And Poland understands this very well, and I think they’ve found a way to explain this to [President] Biden. So it’s a simple question: arm Ukraine to let it to end this here, now, on Ukrainian land.
Day 31: March 26
• At the time of this writing, 136 Ukrainian children have perished.
• The rate at which Ukrainian forces have been liberating occupied towns has increased. In the last 24 hours, Ukraine has pushed Russians out of Vorontsovka in Kherson Oblast’ and Vilkhivka and Mala Rogan’ in Kharkiv Oblast’.
• With more occupied towns becoming liberated, Ukrainian officials warned citizens not to return to their homes so hastily, as many buildings and streets have been mined. Moreover, the orcs have been even mining corpses, which I have mentioned in a previous report.
• President Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak dropped a beautiful Chornobayivka meme when he said: “Any minute now, we are waiting for Russia to ask NATO to close the skies over Chornobayivka.”
• Important: in the first instance of this since the war began, Western analysts and media published a ludicrously more optimistic assessment of the situation than the Ukrainian side. The Pentagon announced that Kherson is no longer under total Russian control and that Ukraine is successfully pushing the occupiers out of the city. In his daily interview with Feygin, Arestovych explained that this was nowhere near the truth and that one does not simply liberate a city of Kherson’s size. “It won’t be an easy battle,” he said. “We won’t take it tomorrow or the day after, but we’re working on it.”
• As I was writing this, an adviser of Ukraine’s Defense Minister stated that Ukraine might actually be able to liberate Kherson today. Perhaps Arestovych was trying to play down expectations, perhaps yesterday he overestimated the Russians’ municipal defense ability, perhaps the Russians’ morale really is so low that they are incapable of holding the city for long. Kherson will certainly be liberated—we will observe how long it will take, and that will serve a powerful indicator of the likely defense capacity of Russian occupying forces in other towns.
• Arestovych has also said that Russia will send in a new wave of reinforcements in early April. This wave will consist largely of Russian criminals. They are no good at fighting, so militarily, they pose no great threat. The problem, of course, is that they are good at “everything else,” and so pose a serious threat to unarmed civilians in areas not under Ukrainian guard.
• Kremlin-aligned outlets began pushing a new fake about how Poland had devious plans to annex western Ukraine. It is important to remember that, although Russia’s attempts at propaganda aimed at Western audiences is mostly ineffective at this point, the Kremlin is still attempting to push out disinformation strains targeting the West. This has not stopped and will not stop until the Putin regime is no more.
• In Melitopol’, Russian occupiers are planning to hold a paid rally in support of the occupants’ “Russian government.” People will be paid 1,200 rubles for their participation (enough to get you a pack of A4 paper and maybe a small snack in Russia right now), and they will be expected to hold up Russian flags and “widely” smile and emote for the cameras.
• In Kharkiv Oblast’, the orcs damaged a Holocaust memorial.
• In occupied Kherson, the invaders have plans to begin deporting ethnic Armenians, Azeris, and Turks to Crimea.
Concluding Thoughts
I will post here my translation of a brief post from March 25th. Garry Kasparov published it on his Facebook page.
“Today, the leader of the free world is Volodymyr Zelensky. All others are simply playing along. I think that this war will be viewed in history textbooks and a turning point in world history—this is the moment when the advance of the forces of totalitarianism, dictatorships, and terrorism will be stopped.
“The world needs new forms of governance, said President Zelensky in his speech before the American Congress. The deceased senator John McCain spoke about this, and I wrote about this many times too. Today, we see that the U.N. has utterly discredited itself, it doesn’t exist, it is utterly meaningless. This is an organization that was supposed to prevent wars, but now it is instead doing everything but reacting to the world’s most important and tragic events. This is the death sentence of the U.N.
“The future lies in the creation of a League of Democracies in which nations will not only express their concern and make declarations, but support them with concrete actions. The Ukrainian war is a reference point that will kick off a new history, new forms of organizing the global community in the 21st century.”
For myself, I will add: any international organization in which autocracies and democracies sit at the same table and in which autocracies have veto power—such an organization is not viable. The U.N. has indeed proven itself unsustainable, incapable of life—not only in this war, but in the many years leading up to it. Any future international global alliance will need to have as its nucleus the planet’s democracies, who will offer more than lip service to democracy. They will need to be ready to defend democracy anywhere on the Earth where democracy may bloom from the genocidal envy of autocrats with swift, coordinated sanctions and—yes—coordinated military action, which has ever proven the undoing of history’s many dictatorships, all of which fail and are doomed to be buried in time.