How Ukraine is winning the war in social networks
- Paul Adams
- BBC News, Kyiv
After almost eight months of war, the situation at the front remains uncertain. Ukrainian forces continue their counteroffensive, but the Russian army still maintains significant pressure in many areas.
However, the situation on the Internet is unambiguous.
“This is a nation of memes,” says Olena, a Kyiv entrepreneur who manages teams of volunteers on social media.
“If this was a war of memes, we would have already won.”
Olena is her real name. Due to the sensitive nature of the work she and her team provide on behalf of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, she wished to remain anonymous.
Her team works around the clock, responding to news from around the country within hours. They create spectacular videos, often accompanied by music, for audiences both at home and abroad.
Just as President Volodymyr Zelensky prepares speeches to foreign parliaments on issues of local history and culture, so does Elena’s international team, which consists of five people, focused on their consumer.
A red video thanking Great Britain for military aid features Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth, David Bowie and British racing driver Lewis Hamilton. To the music of English composer Gustav Holst and the band The Clash, anti-tank weapons provided by Britain are shown in action.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to deploy Caesar howitzers to Ukraine was greeted by a video that said: “Romantic gestures take many forms.”
Shots with red roses, chocolates, views of Paris, and then weapons – change as expected to the sounds of Je T’aime Moi Non Plus by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.
This is an ironic allusion to the bromance between Macron and Zelensky.
Olena says that one of her favorite videos is a video thanking the Swedish government for financial and military assistance to Ukraine.
As you can easily guess, the video accompanies the song “Abby” Money, Money, Money.
Thanks to the efforts of the Ministry of Defense Twitter team, there are now 1.5 million followers in our world. Some videos have over a million views.
The team’s most successful video came in August after several mysterious attacks on Russian forces in annexed Crimea, and it garnered 2.2 million views. The video makes fun of Russians for going on vacation to the peninsula, the video was created to the song Bananarama’s Cruel Summer.
“The main idea is to convey to the international audience that Ukraine is really capable of winning,” says Olena. “Because no one wants to invest in a loser.”
Orientation to the Russian audience
With an abundance of videos on social media depicting Russian military failures, the team has no shortage of material. But through trial and error, they saw what worked and what didn’t.
“We started putting the corpses of the Russians on display,” says Olena. “And then I realized that it didn’t really work. It only united them against us.”
Then the team tried to appeal to the conscience of Russian soldiers by showing them images of dead Ukrainian civilians. Again, there seemed to be no reaction.
“We understand that they’re actually proud of it. They don’t judge it at all,” she says. “We understand that we need to find a more sophisticated way to communicate.”
volunteers are scouring Russian social media platforms in an effort to identify sensitive current locations in parts of the country.
“If you make content for Saratov, you should know what is happening in Saratov,” says Olena. “If the audience is in Nizhny Novgorod, you need to understand what is relevant there.”
The impact of this work is not easy to assess, but Putin’s long-standing mobilization gave the volunteers a lot of material to work with.
“We were waiting for mobilization,” says Olena. “We knew it would be very demoralizing for them.”
Most materials can be found in Telegram channels. Olena calls the social platform “Smoke of the Wild West.”
Volunteers who provide materials for the Department of Defense are just a small part of a huge, patriotic, patriotic energy community that responds to events on the ground, sometimes with incredible speed.
Some Telegram channels have a huge number of subscribers.
One of them called “Ukrainian Offensive” has 96,485 followers. Its slogan is “fighting at the forefront of the information war since 2014.”
The channel publishes news on military topics, “trolls” Moscow, sometimes tells what the Western media (in particular, the BBC) write about.
As in other channels, its administrators do not shy away from being depicted with dead or dying Russian soldiers.
The recent explosion on the Kerch bridge caused a wave of videos, jokes and memes from the Ukrainian internet army.
However, the country did not turn into a nation of digital ninjas overnight. Eight years of war in the Donbass have given people plenty of time to hone their skills, from countering disinformation to expanding morale-fueled humorous content.
Ihor Solovei, head of the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, talks about the rare coincidence of official and popular sentiments.
“We may have witnessed for the first time in history when civil society trusts and supports the state,” he says.
“The armed forces take care of their own affairs, and society independently creates content, memes, creativity. Because everyone feels responsible for their future.”
And how does Russia respond?
Surprisingly, given the reputation of the Russian army of Kremlin bots, the Russian response to the Ukrainian offensive on social networks is quite modest.
Earlier, two famous Russian pranksters managed to convince the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, of this mission, who is talking to the former US ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul.
Russian state media broadcast excerpts of the conversation in which Mr. Kuleba allegedly admitted that Ukraine was responsible for recent attacks in Crimea and Russia, even though the prank was made before the Oct. 8 Kerch Bridge explosion.
If Russia really has an equally resourceful Internet army, where is its work? Olena says that she saw little of this sign.
“The Russians couldn’t come up with anything interesting,” she says. “No humor, no beauty. No pain. No compassion.”