In the information war, Russia draws the short straw

It was a story of unprecedented courage and self-sacrifice, and it inspired millions of Ukrainians in resisting the Russian invasion.

It just wasn’t true.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told of 13 border guards on Snake Island, a small rocky outcrop in the Black Sea. When a Russian naval ship came to moor off the island, the men refused to surrender. Video footage showed one of them yelling “shit bitch” through the megaphone. According to Zelensky, none of the Ukrainians survived the ensuing bombardment.

The story about the heroes of Snake Island was widely reported in the international press – this newspaper also wrote about it. But this week it turned out that the story is not true. The Ukrainians, Kiev confirmed, have surrendered.

So there were more stories of heroic resistance. Like the urban legend about the lone fighter pilot who already shot down six Russian fighters with his Mig-29. ‘The Spirit of Kiev’ probably doesn’t exist, but residents of the Ukrainian capital could hear it, high above their heads.

fake news? Wicked Ukrainian propaganda?

“War stories,” says Nerijus Malukevicius, an expert on psychological warfare from Vilnius University. “It’s not about whether they’re true. It’s about being picked up by the masses.”

In 2014 it was Moscow that sent stories into the world. The unidentifiable armed ‘green men’ who annexed Crimea and then provoked civil war in eastern Ukraine were referred to in the Russian media as ‘polite people’ – liberators. The democratically elected government that came to power after the Majdan uprising was ‘the Kiev junta’, a collection of ‘nationalists’ and ‘fascists’ bent on ‘genocide’ against ethnic Russians in the Donbas.

Unique moment

In 2014, Putin misled the West and won the information war. Now he is 3-0 behind, the experts say. “We are witnessing a unique moment,” says Maria Snegovaja, an expert on information warfare at Virginia Tech University. “The last time the world united like this against one man was against Adolf Hitler.”

The worldwide aversion to Putin’s invasion is fueled by the images of destruction of cities and innocent civilian casualties, and by the natural sympathy for the underdog in an unjust war of aggression. But according to Malukevicius and Snegovaja, that is not the only explanation. Since the annexation of Crimea, both Western services and Ukraine have made detailed studies of the Russian information war and “propaganda”. One important lesson has been learned, says Malukevicius: “It is important to be proactive. It’s about you dominating the information domain.”

Maria Snegovaja can give “only compliments” to the United States and Great Britain in this regard. In the weeks leading up to the invasion, US and British security services leaked sensitive details about Russia’s war plans time and again. This made Putin’s favorite tactic – surprise – call to action† Russia’s traditional psy ops no longer worked. Russia, says Malukevicius, is “fighting the 2014 information war.”

Trained by NATO advisors

The Ukrainian army has been trained in modern information warfare by NATO advisers for some years now. Soon after the conflict in eastern Ukraine broke out, Kiev set up a modern press center where English-speaking soldiers reported on the “anti-terrorist organization” in the Donbas. Last year, the Zelensky administration set up a separate unit at the National Security Council to fight “disinformation.”

As the Russian tanks advanced towards Kiev, the internet was flooded with Ukrainian propaganda. Kiev massively published interviews with Russian prisoners of war – who said they had only been told they were going on exercise.

Ukrainian media also disseminated images of acts of war: not only attacks on civilian targets, but also burnt-out Russian tanks and equipment. Kiev even started a website for Russian mothers who wanted to know if their son had been killed or taken prisoner of war. The name of the website 200rf.org refers directly to the Russian military abbreviation for fallen soldiers: ‘greetings (freight)-200′, an infamous term from the war in Afghanistan.

Maria Snegovaja thinks the site is “a brilliant idea”. According to the Russian expert, it is very likely that American and British specialists in the field of psy ops think along with the stories that Kiev sends into the world.

However, that is not the only reason why our image of the war is almost exclusively determined by photos and Tik Tok videos of Ukrainians. Since the annexation of Crimea, the possession of smart phones has multiplied, and both Ukrainian civilians and military use them. “A partisan war on the Internet,” says Malukevicius. However, according to the Lithuanian expert, that does not mean that Moscow has now lost the propaganda war. Internationally, Putin cannot do much good anymore. But when it comes to the support of the Russian people, all is not lost for the Kremlin.

Moscow has been clearing the last remnants of the independent press for the past week. In recent days there have been rumors about the introduction of martial law in Russia. On Tuesday, the Defense Ministry announced it would conduct “precision weapons” air strikes in Kiev to end the “information war” against Moscow.

on black

On Tuesday, five Ukrainian civilians were killed in a cruise missile attack on the Kiev TV tower. “The Kremlin wants to blackmail both Ukraine and Russia,” Malukevicius said. The Lithuanian expert expects Russian revenge in the information war, especially on the Russian home front. Maria Snegovaja is also pessimistic. “The information war is fun. But in the end it’s all about the hard conventional war on the ground.”