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).
Day five has now ended, night five begins.
What follows is a brief chronology of the information war that has raged the last five days between the Kremlin and Ukraine, the Kremlin and the West, and the Kremlin and its own citizens. This chronology is far more organized than the information war has been in reality, and the article is slightly longer than a typical op-ed.
The war began with a miscalculation: the Kremlin believed it could conquer the entire country of Ukraine in 3-4 hours. Looking back now as the war’s sixth day begins, we can safely call the Kremlin’s plan naïve and insolently self-confident at the very least. Just as the Russian regime was forced to begin improvising on the physical battlefield after its initial offensive failed to yield any significant victories, so did it have to pivot into a prolonged war on the digital plane. As it had no strategic plan in place for a sustained information war, the Kremlin’s information tactics have been inconsistent, often lacking the typical coordination of the last eight years, and mostly reactive rather than proactive.
Russian Offensive Information Strategy in Ukraine
On Ukrainian territory, Russian (dis)information strategy has been straightforward: convince as many people as possible that cities are capitulating or being occupied, that Ukrainian troops are surrendering en masse, and that governmental leaders are dead or captured. To this end, for example, on day four (February 27th) the Kremlin cloned Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitchko’s Instagram page and posted a false statement that Kyiv was surrounded and that evacuation from the city was impossible. The cloned page was precise enough that multiple Western outlets picked up the story, incorrectly telling audiences that there was no way out from the capital. However, Ukrainian sources debunked the fake within a matter of minutes—their typical response time for discrediting such disinformation operations.
Separately, Russian forces have recently begun resorting to underhanded tactics forbidden by international law. After capturing over a thousand Ukrainian soldier uniforms in the southern region of Kherson, Russian soldiers have begun masquerading as Ukrainians in an attempt to get closer to their targets. They have also begun raising Ukrainian flags over their motorized convoys and painting over the large white letters “Z” and “O,” which designate Russian forces. Moreover, there have been reports today of Russian troops raising a white flag, approaching Ukrainian checkpoints as if to surrender, then opening fire once in range.
Russian Defensive Information Strategy Domestically
Because the Kremlin’s domestic media had prepared no disinformation plan in advance, they have been forced to improvise, with only a few coherent narrative strains emerging in Kremlin-aligned news outlets.
(1) The most consistent narrative strain has been the barbarism of fascist Ukrainian troops. In the last five days, the most common narrative about the “special operation” (Russian media are forbidden from using the words “war” or “invasion”) has been that the cowardly, intolerant Ukrainian soldiers have been either surrendering one after another or murdering their own comrades when they try to switch sides. Needless to say, both variants are false.
(2) A less common strain is the half-hearted usual refrain that all Western sanctions are illegitimate and the result of clinical russophobia.
(3) Because Russian media were unprepared and military victories have been rare, there have actually been relatively few stories about the war itself, especially in the first three days of the war. However, the victories that have been published have been almost laughable, including articles crowing about the capture of a few villages in the Donetsk Oblast’ or the capture of some Western tech. On the second day of fighting, after Russia had already suffered ~2,800 casualties, one Russian outlet had the inhumanity to publish that Russian forces hadn’t sustained a single loss.
(4) On days two and three, there were also articles (falsely) accusing the Ukrainian side of refusing to negotiate, which the articles then cited as justification for renewing an assault “on all fronts.”
These narrative strains are materializing against the backdrop of increasingly feverish regulatory actions by Roskomnadzor, Russia’s equivalent of the FCC. As soon as the war began, Roskomnadzor ordered that all outlets publish only information “approved by official sources.” On day two, Roskomnadzor was forced to issue a reminder to outlets and partially restricted access to Facebook. Meanwhile, Orwellian billboards began popping up in Russian cities, quoting Putin’s justification of the invasion: “We were left no chance to act differently.” By day three, Roskomnadzor forbade outlets to use the words “attack,” “war,” and “invasion,” and ordered ten outlets (among them Dozhd, Echo of Moscow, New Times, Krym.Realii, Zhurnalist, Lenizdat, Svobodnaya Pressa, and InoSMI) to delete articles that contained “socially significant information that did not match the reality about the shooting of Ukrainian cities and the deaths of innocent Ukrainian citizens.” Today, the Duma introduced a draft law criminalizing “spreading fakes about the actions of Russian armed forces,” threatening up to fifteen years in prison. The Kremlin’s confidence in its ability to maintain order in its domestic information space is cracking with every passing hour.
One final example of the Kremlin’s heartlessness. On day three, the Ukrainian government created a hotline called “Return Alive from Ukraine,” which Russians could call to inquire about the status of their invading relatives. The Ukrainian government then created a website that catalogued the status of every Russian casualty and POW, with photographic evidence, for Russians’ peace of mind. On day four, Russia’s Office of the Prosecutor General banned the website. After all, there is no war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Information Strategy
Ukraine’s strategy for the information war has been unified and effectively coordinated.
(1) As soon as the invasion began, all major Ukrainian television networks united. All channels on TV and YouTube have been streaming the same video live, uninterrupted, with journalists from different stations across the country working in shifts 24/7. This has been an important way for Ukrainians both to maintain morale (which is extraordinarily high regardless) and to obtain important information about air raids, Russian troop movements, etc.
(2) Ukrainian news outlets have been publishing a steady stream of updates on Ukrainian military victories, important international developments (e.g. new support packages from abroad, U.N. and E.U. decisions, Russia’s being evicted from many sport federations, etc.), and Russian losses and strategic defeats. The media do not hide information about Ukrainian losses and publish updates from the Ministry of Defense, but the ready availability of military and diplomatic victories has helped maintain citizens’ morale.
(3) By days three and four, Ukraine organized a “cyber force.” This force, consisting largely of volunteers, is tasked with taking down key Russian websites, including governmental and news sites. By days four and five, many Kremlin-aligned news outlets were inoperative. At one point, the Kremlin’s own website showed only a Ukrainian flag while Ukrainian music played in the background.
(4) On day four, hackers obtained and published the phone numbers of Russian political and propaganda leadership, inviting people to spam the criminals responsible for the invasion.
(5) A few hours ago, Ukrainian mobile phone operators disconnected all Russian cellphones from the network, denying Russian troops an effective vector for communication. Ukrainian outlets warned audiences that Russian troops might now attempt to steal their phones and asked people to report the numbers of stolen phones so that operators could disconnect them as well.
(6) President Zelensky, whom I praised on this Blog three years ago for his rhetorical intuition, has become the government’s most effective representative to Ukrainian citizens and the citizens’ most effective representative to the international community. From his “We Are All Here” video to his now-regular evening press briefings, he has done everything necessary to serve as an admirable figurehead and leader throughout this war. The mass murderer known as Putin, meanwhile, is hiding in a bunker in Russia’s Ural region.
The War Continues
The first five days of this unprovoked war have been brutal. The first five days of the information war have been just as heated. This article has chronicled some key events and trends, but it is not an exhaustive account of the last 120 hours. The war continues. Innocent Ukrainians are continuing to die in the most barbarous circumstances (as of this writing, sixteen children have been blown up). We must continue to aid Ukraine and by extension the entire democratic world that Ukraine is championing.
The war continues. Day six begins.