Since the conflict in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops began eight years ago, both sides have engaged in information warfare, promoting false stories and hyping up questionable videos. The scale and complexity of the war have reached new heights this time.
The eight-year Russian-backed conflict in eastern Ukraine was accompanied by a fierce disinformation battle between Moscow and Kyiv.
Unverified content about Ukraine has been let out by pro-Kremlin media. In one case, Russian and pro-Kremlin media reported an unidentified video showing Ukrainian ground forces firing on immigrants at the Belarus border. In early December, a low-quality video shot with an IR camera was posted on Facebook, urging several Russian media outlets to cite "local media reports" that Ukrainian soldiers shot refugees.
The soldier who first appeared in the video on his Facebook account said that his account was hacked.
A local news website and an NGO that reported allegations of the incident also claimed to have been hacked.
"I think most of this fake news is aimed primarily at Russia's international audience," said Sergei Kubit, a former Ukrainian Minister of Education and director of the Mohira Journalism School. "They seem to be preparing for an invasion," he told AFP.
On the Ukrainian side, media and social networks are not exempt from this information warfare. Kyiv's independent organization, Stopvik, pointed out several reports covering a large anti-war protest in Moscow, using photos of an actual rally in 2014.
In a well-cited example of 2014, Russian state television showed a refugee woman who was repeatedly claiming that Ukrainian troops had executed a 3-year-old boy.
There was no evidence to back her story up, and the story was later withdrawn. The story of "a crucified boy" arose from this incident. The OSCE monitor, according to Channel, found a "mobile crematorium", around the area of operations of a combined Ukrainian army "wilfully intended to be used to dispose of illegally harvested corpses."
Russian television also said the OSCE believes that Global Rescue, an international provider of medical, security, evacuation, and crisis management services, "may be involved in this illegal activity." This was claimed without evidence. However, the OSCE told BBC News that its oversight mission "did not observe or report any of the allegations."
Global Rescue also told the BBC that they had not been to Ukraine for nearly two years and that they had no knowledge of what was happening in Ukraine.
Since last November, an analysis by Schaefer's team shows that Russian supporters and news websites have been declaring: Ukraine is a failed nation and Ukrainian politicians are neo-Nazis. The United States and NATO were blamed for the increased potentiality of war, and Russia was exonerated despite the fact that more than 100,000 Russian troops were deployed near the Ukrainian border.
According to the UK-based information resilience centre, there was a 200% increase in posts claiming Ukraine is an invader against Russia compared to this time in 2021 last week.
Since early 2014, Russia has been using an advanced form of hybrid warfare in Ukraine. This relies heavily on an element of information warfare called reflexive control. According to the Institute for the Study of War, “Reflexive control causes a stronger adversary to voluntarily choose the actions most advantageous to Russian objectives by shaping the adversary’s perceptions of the situation decisively.”
Reflexive control, such as the Kremlin's general information warfare, is not the outcome of any recent theoretical breakthrough. The Soviet Union established all the core rules and the majority of the techniques decades ago.
Russia's strategic thinking today is almost inconceivable, and it is heavily based on Soviet studies that Russian officials are knowledgeable of.
While Russia's war of intelligence is a significant challenge for the West, it is neither new nor insurmountable. It all relies on Russia's leveraging the enemy's current state of affairs and adopting a favorable course of action.
The essential aim of Moscow's reflexive control technology in the Ukrainian conflict was to stay on the side-lines as Russia dismantled Ukraine, accomplishing exactly what its authorities planned from the beginning. The goal was to persuade the Western world.
In the face of Western leaders who are determined to stop Russia's aggression and penalize or reverse its violations of international law, these tactics cannot work.
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