Only a few decades ago most Ukrainians didn’t think about such a phenomenon as disinformation and mostly didn’t check facts from different communication channels. Mostly, it was due to a lack of a sufficient number of independent objective mass media. Media, the main part of which were politically engaged, used their influence to popularize required messages and informatively disorient inhabitants. The disinformation wave lost its power after the first massive revolution, which was in 2004. At that time began to appear first independent mass media, which provided information truthfully and honestly.
The communication war: A look into the past
Ukraine’s and Russia’s confrontation on the information front can be considered a part of a larger confrontation between Russia and the West. For this, mostly misinformative, war aggressor country has always spent lots of money. Thus, according to data from Debunk analytics center, in 2021 the state budget of Russia allocated on mass media more than 1,5 billion US dollars. One of the main topics of Russian propaganda on Ukrainian territory always were so-called “Russki Mir” doctrine, according to which “Russians” are considered to be three categories of world population:
Ethnic Russians, regardless of place of residence;
Russian-speaking people of any nationality;
Compatriots, who have ever lived on the territory of the Russian Empire, USSR, and their descendants too.
Accordingly, Russia propagandized that Russian-speaking Ukrainians are Russians. The doctrine also aimed to restore territories of Russia to USSR’s boundaries. Through its disinformation actions and falsification Russia tried and continues trying to make an illusion of the former greatness, and also to avoid the responsibility of committing illegal actions. A quite vivid example of making an illusion of its significance was a photo forgery of images of Russian patriarch’s visit to Kharkiv in 2011 with added people, who allegedly were happy to meet Russian propagandist.
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A powerful disinformation campaign was also a result of the shooting down of the aircraft MH17, where Russia used a wide range of measures to hide its involvement in this crime. December 20, 2017, representatives of the Intelligence and Security Committee of the British Parliament emphasized that Russia wages information war in a massive scale, trying to persuade the whole.
Media tools of disinformation influence
The most popular influence channels for Russian propagandists are Sputnik, RussiaToday, Novosti, LifeNews. They regularly form disinformation wave, trying to persuade the world's community of the correctness of Russian leadership’s actions. Russia for many years secretly support and finance its agents in Ukraine (Viktor Medvedchuk, Yevhen Muraev etc.), who were owners many of pro-Russian mass media: First Independent, 112, ZIK, NewsOne, Nash, online-newspaper “strana.ua”, “vesti.ua”.
Besides, Russia managed to involve in its disinformation activity western mass media: BBC News, Reuters, AFP. Despite the declared high standards, these mass media turned out to be not ready for information war and long time spread Russian propaganda. Them helped also western PR companies, which promoted required Russian narratives.
The disinformation war in 2022
From the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia to Ukraine in February 2022 Russian disinformation campaign turned out to be in new unprecedented proportions, as now the aggressor country almost every day needs to find new explanations for its illegal actions.<<<
The difficulty is that the Russian propagandists have to invent another reality not only for the Western world but also for the Russians themselves in order to justify the military losses, the drastic change in the attitude of most countries towards Russia and the massive blocking of their activities.
The fact of spreading a fabricated project of the state budget on occupied territories , where Russian propagandists imitated illegal referendums, gained publicity. In the non-existent state budget seemingly stated that occupied territories are deprived of state financing for 2023. Also, Russians tried to persuade citizens that in Ukraine recognize “traitors” everybody, who stayed in occupied cities and later they will be punished for collaborationism.
Many times propagandists tried to disinform publicity with fake facts about the situation on the front, particularly, about Ukrainian territories. So, pro-Kremlin media at one time stated that CNN journalists denied the statement of Kyiv about the encirclement of the Russian army by the Ukrainian military in Lyman. According to their information, not the Ukrainian army forced out the Russians, Russians themselves decided to move away to greatly “more profitable” positions. In that way, Russians explained their defeats.
Explosions on Crimean Bridge also became a target for disinformation attacks. Russians spread a thesis that the partial collapse of the bridge will open for Russia a window of opportunities for the beginning of a huge war against Ukraine. In such a way propagandists tried to disinform the world’s community and form an image of Ukraine as a state, which commits terror against Russia and Russian infostructure objects. The one “but” Russians didn’t take into account: it is about an incident on an illegally built bridge in Ukraine’s territorial waters, which were occupied in 2014.
Ukrainian media confrontation
Disinformation – is a powerful weapon, which Russia repeatedly and purposefully uses. To resist and win on this front in Ukraine, first of all, need to appear people, responsible for the control of information of individuals and structures. Besides, the ombudsman, who will be responsible for problems of information, manages the monitoring of the information environment, deal with information control, considers the case of disinformation. Also, it is needed to provide the functionality of an independent organization, based on the law and created by the journalists, who will be responsible for complying with ethical standards of journalistic activity.
Among the organizations, which are working now on Ukraine’s territory and managing disinformation and high-quality mass media work problem, are the Center for combating disinformation, the Center for democracy and rule of law, Institute of mass information. One of the newest thematical projects is REALIES, created by betterplace lab and 1991 Accelerator. It is aimed to support representatives of Ukrainian publicity, which combats the disinformation.
Ukraine still has a long way to go to create the necessary protection in the area of information at the state level that will work permanently and make the existence of disinformation-producing media largely impossible. However, we can already be proud, because in the last few months Ukrainian citizens themselves, as well as numerous media outlets, have shown great awareness and have stood up for the country by building a strong information front.
This blog post is a guest article by Yanina Shabanova, Head of Communications at SocialBoost and 1991 Accelerator. In Ukrainian, the blogpost was published on the SPEKA platform.
REALIES - Strong civil society for a healthy information ecology. is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
The text represents the opinion of the author and not automatically the view of the German Federal Foreign Office and the betterplace lab.
Translated from the Ukrainian by Mariia Pysmenna