Since Russia launched its “special military operation” in neighboring Ukraine, media, political organizations and researchers in Ukraine’s allied countries have accused Moscow of launching a propaganda blitzkrieg to justify the invasion.
Key Points:
- Propaganda is the use of true or false information to manipulate opinion
- Experts say the Kremlin has focused on deception and defamation along with censorship
- They say Ukraine has used guilt and outrage to gain support from the West
Most notably, the Kremlin has claimed that Ukraine was committing “genocide” against its Russian-speaking population in the east of the country.
He has also accused Kyiv of being aligned with Nazism, citing the “desazification” of Ukraine as a key reason for the invasion, and of operating biological weapons laboratories with US support.
However, experts say the Ukrainians have also waged a propaganda campaign of their own.
And while Ukraine has proven surprisingly effective against better-equipped Russian forces on the battlefield and still suffers some significant losses, the story is also the same in information warfare.
The learning curve of propaganda
Propaganda has been used throughout history as a key tool of war. (Reuters: Gleb Garanich)
War propaganda is the use of true or false information to manipulate opinion and provoke strong emotional reactions, such as fear, anger, guilt, admiration or outrage, explained Paul Baines, professor of political marketing at the University of Leicester.
It has been used throughout history as a key tool of war and has become a “necessity” of conflict that can take many forms, Baines told the ABC.
While Russian claims of major victories against Ukrainian “Nazis” may be seen as laughable in the West, where in some cases evidence to the contrary has been made public before the claim itself, researchers say these tactics have proven very effective in Russia and among Russian allies. .
Read more about the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
Russia has spent decades honing a propaganda machine, through media control, censorship and tough laws banning the spread of “false information” about the Russian military.
But early in the conflict, Ukrainian myths also began to emerge.
Photos from other conflicts, movies and even video games claiming to be Russian attacks were posted on social media.
While investigators say they did not appear to originate from state-sanctioned Internet “trolls,” as was the case in Russia, there were other narratives that were spread by government sources.
One story that was debunked by experts was that of the so-called Kyiv Ghost, a mysterious fighter pilot credited by the Ukrainian government with shooting down 10 Russian fighter jets.
The image below turned out to be an image from a video game.
Not only states or citizens involved in the conflict have been spreading disinformation.
People “who have no apparent interest in the war have also come up with conspiracy theories,” said Esther Chan, APAC bureau editor at the Information Futures Lab.
Ms Chan said they were often just looking to increase their own social media following.
However, Ukraine needs the support of NATO and Western allies, where exuberant claims can backfire in the face of independent media and non-governmental watchdogs and think tanks.
While Ukrainian supporters still regularly post fake videos and false claims, the Ukrainian government in more recent times has taken a different approach.
A screenshot of the Ukraine Facts website discrediting information from both sides of the Ukraine conflict. (Supplied)
More subtle tactics
While the Kremlin focused on deception and smear along with censorship, Ukraine focused on diplomacy with the West, highlighting Russian atrocities and Ukrainian combat victories, Baines said.
As Russia used fear and anger in attempts to justify its invasion, Ukraine, which had been mired in war and by many accounts had high morale, used guilt and outrage to gain the support of the West, he explained.
“Talking about their dire situation is not false, but Ukrainians can play on that sense of guilt,” Baines said.
He added that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian and actor, had effectively weaponized the suffering of Ukrainians to exacerbate feelings of guilt and responsibility in the West.
“Zelenskyy’s efforts to shift the blame to the West have resulted in probably one of the largest transfers of military hardware to another country in history.”
Kyiv and Zelenskyy himself have further built an image of the “brave Ukrainian,” helping with recruitment efforts as well as morale, Baines said.
This image was posted on social media saying they were running away from the Russians. It’s actually a traffic jam from the crowds leaving the Burning Man festival in the United States. (Supplied: Twitter)
In recent weeks, Western media have been awash with accounts of Russians fleeing conscription, with real and fake footage of convoys of Russians fleeing on social media.
Baines said the “overarching narrative” in Ukraine has focused on the thousands of Ukrainians who volunteered to fight.
But conscription has also long existed in Ukraine, and at the start of the conflict the Ukrainian government banned all men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country, instead instructing them to report for duty at a military recruiting office.
Russia is still winning the information war on many fronts
Russia claims that the “desazification” of Ukraine was a key reason for the invasion.
While Ukraine may be winning hearts and minds in the West, elsewhere, Russia’s more blatant tactics are succeeding, according to Darren Linvill, a Clemson associate professor who co-directs the Media Forensics Hub.
“While we like to think that Ukraine is winning the information war, outside of the West, they’re simply not,” Linvill said.
“It’s an uncomfortable reality … but much of the world is on Putin’s side.”
Linvill has been investigating Russian propaganda and social media troll farms since his involvement in the 2016 US presidential election, identifying many millions of accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers across multiple platforms.
But the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns against Ukraine are not primarily aimed at the English-language media.
“The main target audience for most disinformation is a country’s own people,” he said.
He said it was clear that Moscow’s smear campaigns had gained traction everywhere, in addition to English-language social media and Western Europe.
Russia’s false flag propaganda
This image is from a video that claims to debunk Ukrainian propaganda about a seized Russian tank. However, the doctored footage was nowhere to be found outside of the video debunking the false claim. (Supplied)
One remarkably effective tactic used by Russia early in the war was false-flag disinformation operations, Linvill said.
Dozens of videos were circulated claiming to debunk apparently non-existent Ukrainian fakes.
The aim was to cast doubt on the real images of Russian defeats, civilian deaths and destruction caused by the invasion of Ukraine, he said.
Russian troll accounts, which were created to spread propaganda and fake news, began posting warnings to beware of propaganda and fake news, he said.
Darren Linvill is an associate professor at Clemson who co-directs the Media Forensics Hub. (Supplied)
“It is because of misinformation that this particular form of disinformation was so effective in reaching a wide audience,” he said.
“We were prepared to look for disinformation.”
Linvill said the mistrust that has resulted from fake news has led to unhealthy levels of mistrust in society and fueled harmful conspiracy theories.
While critical thinking is important, so is being able to trust.
“You can’t just distrust everything you read,” he said.
“You just have to learn what to trust and learn the processes through which information flows.”